Category: responsibility

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folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility U.S. Constitution

Deplorable Distrust?

democracy, freedom, ranking, The Economist, pure democracy, republic

The United States is no longer a “full-fledged democracy.”

According to a New York Post story, our union is, instead, a “flawed democracy.”

Hmmm. Where to begin?

Despite the article’s featured photo of President Trump, the downgrading of America’s democratic status occurred prior to the billionaire’s swearing-in.

Technically, of course, the United States is not now nor has ever been a full-fledged (much less a flawed) democracy. We live in a republic . . . if we can keep it.

As is often the case, folks use the term “democracy” not to indicate it as a form of government — a pure democracy — but as a shorthand for a country with democratic elections, where “basic political freedoms and civil liberties are respected,” and with “an independent judiciary.”

An organization associated with The Economist, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), has for a decade been rating the world’s countries based on numerous political factors. For the first time, this year, the United States has dropped out of the top tier and into the second, joining the likes of Botswana, Ghana and India.

“The U.S. is the second-highest ranking flawed democracy,” the Post noted, “coming in right behind Japan and tying with Italy.” Norway garnered first place among the 19 “full-fledged democracies,” including most Western European countries.

Why was the U.S. downgraded? The EIU report explained the lower score “was caused by the same factors that led Mr. Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials.”

So, if the American people simply placed their heads in the sand, blindly trusting politicians, we’d be “full-fledged,” eh?

Full-fledged fools fiddling away our freedom, that is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability responsibility too much government

Out of Our Misery

Obamacare, ACA, Trump, Chickens home to roost

Obamacare may be on the way out.

According to The Atlantic, “the powers of the incoming Health and Human Services secretary are broad enough to cripple the [Affordable Care Act] so it has to be replaced.” Which is significant since the new President has just “signed an executive order empowering his administration’s agencies to do all they can — within the bounds of the Affordable Care Act — to undercut that law.”

The Atlantic’s Vann R. Newkirk II suggests this is . . . “ironic.” The executive leeway Trump is taking is not without precedent. “The irony of that component,” he writes, “is that it rests on precedent set by the Obama administration, which used executive and regulatory power liberally to make the law work in the face of Republican opposition.”

Irony? How about chickens returning to the home roost?

Obamacare itself undermined Obamacare. The plan, from the beginning, was so gimcrack with hidden redistribution that, to both opponents and proponents, it was designed to fail . . . to usher in the Glorious Era of socialized medicine.

Since Obamacare increased “insurance” costs for hundreds of thousands of previous insurance policy holders, and increased medical costs generally, too, it actually discouraged participation from the healthiest, many of whom would rather pay the exorbitant fines, er, “taxes.” Throwing the insurance industry into a death spiral.

So, putting the system out of our misery sooner seems sensible.

But Congress and Trump cannot stop there. Either they repeal more federal regulation and subsidy*, or keep parts of Obamacare, despite a lack of financial stability. A new bill in the Senate promises to do the latter.

We haven’t seen much hint of the former.

But can hope. Audaciously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* To let markets work. Note that The Atlantic tends to miss the point of Obamacare critics. In describing more market-based options, the magazine characterizes the Medical Health Savings Account approach as “For people sick of high deductibles, Republicans offer high-deductible plans as replacements for Obamacare.” The idea is to incentivize people to pay for their own care, which would bring costs down generally.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard responsibility term limits

Politicians Bearing GIFs

Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

Yesterday, we discovered that the biggest term limits opponent in Arkansas — former state senator Jon Woods — also allegedly led an elaborate legislative fraud scheme, whereby he and a state representative traded tax dollars for cash bribes.

For now, Woods is an unindicted co-conspirator. But last week, the representative involved pled guilty to a felony carrying a possible 20-year prison term and directly implicated Sen. Woods.

Woods’s alleged criminality involves the GIF program — General Improvement Funds. Legislators can personally direct GIF dollars to pet projects and favored cronies, taking political credit. The process is similar to congressional earmarks. And just as corrupting.

In an article entitled, “How a 1997 Power Grab is costing Arkansas taxpayers millions on pet projects,” the grassroots group Conduit for Action explains that the GIF rules changed just before our new millennium, when term limits first cleaned out the state House (1998). The old batch of legislators gave themselves unchecked control over this vote-buying slush fund.

And that is when even bigger corruption surfaced. “A Federal grand jury shook the Arkansas political establishment today with a long list of political corruption indictments that reaches to the apex of the state Legislature,” the New York Times reported in 1999.

Back then, Sen. Nick Wilson was Arkansas’s loudest term limits critic . . . until his three-decade-long career ended with a guilty plea to 133 counts of racketeering and other public corruption.

Interesting that top legislative enemies of term limits, both past and present, wear the Scarlet Letter “C” for corruption. Coincidence?

Term limits are no friend to corruption. And vice-versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly government transparency insider corruption local leaders porkbarrel politics responsibility

Hog-Wild Corruption

Arkansas State Rep. Micah Neal, Independent Citizens Commission, Senator Jon Woods

Former Arkansas State Rep. Micah Neal pled guilty last week to a felony charge of conspiring “with an Arkansas state senator to use their official positions to appropriate government money to certain nonprofits in exchange for bribes.”

Neal, who embraced graft his first month in office, received $38,000 in “legislating-around” money between 2013, when he entered the House, and 2015.

Court documents mention a number of seasoned conspirators, though not by name. There’s mysterious Senator A, who took Rep. Neal under his crooked wing.

Their scheme, reported Arkansas Business, “direct[ed] $600,000 in state GIF funds to the Northwest Arkansas Economic Development District, which then distributed it to two nonprofit entities.” Those two outfits — Entities A and B — then kicked back dough to Rep. Neal and Senator A through bagmen.*

Arkansas Business sorted out “the alphabet soup of unindicted people and entities.” It turns out Senator A, the ringleader, is someone we’ve encountered before: former State Senator Jon Woods.

Remember Issue 3, the dishonestly-worded 2014 constitutional amendment that weakened term limits (while telling voters it “established term limits”), imposed a gift ban so “tough” that now all legislators can get free meals from lobbyists anytime, and created an “Independent Citizens Commission” (a majority appointed by legislators) that gave legislators a 148 percent pay raise?

That was Woods’s.

His indictment appears imminent.

Meanwhile, Neal’s attorney extends to us his client’s wish that “this case does not overshadow all the good he did while serving as [a] representative.”

What good? The term limits scam.

Neal’s corruption doesn’t overshadow all he did as a legislator — it illuminates it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Three additional conspirators were engaged in delivering the bribe money to Rep. Neal and Sen. Woods. In court papers, these bagmen were referred to as Person A (a lobbyist for Entity A), Person B (“the president of Entity B and a friend of Senator A”) and Person C (“a friend of Senator A and Person B”).

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Arkansas State Rep. Micah Neal, Independent Citizens Commission, Senator Jon Woods

 

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folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Town, County, Stasis

chained, West Virginia, poverty, welfare,

The savvier economists (and intellectuals like Steven Pinker) like to remind us that it is progress that must be explained; poverty is natural.

But when you see poverty settle in like an infestation of slime mold, staining a whole modern city or region, you begin to wonder. As Ron Bailey wonders in his excellent Reason report on West Virginia’s impoverished McDowell County . . .

WHY DON’T THESE PEOPLE JUST MOVE?

The feeling of being trapped in your community — in your hovel, in your own blighted life — does not come, these days, from mere poverty alone. I remember the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath; my family has a history. Once upon a time, folks in America, when industry ran out, left. Traveled. Migrated — to find work where industry boomed.

And sure, McDowell used to be much more populated. Bailey’s family left two generations ago.

But the stragglers?

Almost any community has its specific enticements.

But one thing becomes clear, as you read through Bailey’s sad survey (in part memoir, since he has family ties there): government is the worst culprit.

A lot of welfare goes into McDowell, and a huge percentage of the population is retired or on disability.

“If you get public assistance to supply your needs without any effort from you,” explains one young man who came back to his beleaguered hometown, “you’ve got no incentive to better yourself or your situation.”

Government subsidizes poverty. Sure, it prevents destitution. Utter misery. But it also traps people, robbing them of their wherewithal to get up and go and achieve something.

Modern government is in the stasis business. Our assistance programs don’t just assist.

A modern American nightmare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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chained, West Virginia, poverty, welfare,

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies privacy responsibility

In Plain Sight

terrorism, surveillance, privacy, fingerprint, targeted, illustration

The Berlin terrorist attack just a little over a week ago fit a noteworthy pattern. German authorities had investigated Anis Amri — the Tunisian man who drove that large truck into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 and wounding 56 others — and found “links with Islamic extremists.”

Later killed in Milan, Italy, Amri had been wanted in Tunisia for “hijacking a van” and jailed in Italy for arson and a “violent assault at his migrant reception center.” And yet with all that known or easily knowable, the German authorities couldn’t prevent him from killing innocent Germans.

It’s not just a European phenomenon, either.

Consider Omar Mateen, this country’s worst mass shooter, having massacred 49 people in Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. The FBI had spent ten months looking into Mateen.

Years before the Boston Marathon bombing, the FBI had tracked Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the bombers.*

“In case after case . . . authorities have come forward after the fact to say that they had enough cause to place the suspect under surveillance well before the violence,” the Washington Post recently noted. This was the case with the majority of recent lone-wolf terrorism plots.

“If any lesson can be learned from studying the perpetrators of recent attacks,” a report in The Intercept concluded, “it is that there needs to be a greater investment in conducting targeted surveillance of known terror suspects and a move away from the constant knee-jerk expansion of dragnet surveillance . . .”

Yet intelligence agencies are still grabbing our metadata in violation of the Fourth Amendment. That needs to stop.

The fact that known threats are consistently not being stopped suggests curtailing mass surveillance won’t hurt our security, but improve it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The same is true regarding the Ft. Hood (work-place) shooter, Nidal Hasan. Likewise, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (formerly Carlos Bledsoe), who was under the active eye of the FBI after returning from Yemen . . . until he opened fire on a Little Rock, Arkansas, recruiting station killing one soldier and wounding another. Ditto Ahmad Khan Rahami, the less deadly bomber in New York City and New Jersey.

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general freedom individual achievement national politics & policies political challengers responsibility U.S. Constitution

Capturing Christmas

Christmas, Common Sense, American, freedom, Paul Jacob, patriotic, citizen, illustration, Christmas Card

The festival of Hanukkah begins tomorrow at sundown; Christmas is on Sunday. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, a time to spend with family and friends, to appreciate what’s most important in life.

And maybe even to forget about politics for a bit. But remember one political or historical thing this holiday season: in addition to its religious significance for Christians, Americans share an excellent historical reason to celebrate on Christmas day.

Back in January of 1776, Thomas Paine published his runaway bestseller and our namesake, “Common Sense.” His pamphlet was read publicly throughout the colonies, galvanizing opinion in favor of the Revolution that had begun the previous year at Lexington and Concord with the shot heard ’round the world.

Later, in July, the Declaration of Independence was written, signed and proclaimed to the new nation by the Continental Congress.

But by December of the same year, the prospects for the American cause were looking bleak.

British forces, along with their mercenary Hessian reinforcements, had manhandled the Continental Army. Gen. George Washington’s troops were routed at Long Island, pushed out of Manhattan, forced to retreat across the Hudson to New Jersey, and then run out of Jersey across the Delaware River to Pennsylvania “exhausted, demoralized and uncertain of [their] future.”

Soon, the British believed, the American revolt would be extinguished.

“To compound Washington’s problems,” recounts the EyeWitnesstoHistory.com website, “the enlistments of the majority of the militias under his command were due to expire at the end of the month and the troops return to their homes.”

Yet, on Christmas night, Washington marshaled his ragtag soldiers and crossed the icy Delaware, then marched his men nine miles to Trenton. In the wee hours of that Dec. 26th morning, the Continentals attacked, catching more than 1,000 Hessian soldiers by surprise and capturing nearly all of them.

In strictly military terms, the victory was not terribly significant. But in terms of American morale, as well as the perception of important potential allies (think France), the military success was absolutely the perfect Christmas gift for the new Republic.

Our Republic, always in the hearts and hopes of the people dedicated to liberty and justice for all, continues to this day.

And today, you and I are left to defend it — just like the barefoot minutemen who walked through the snows at Valley Forge and faced their world’s most powerful military force.

Without smart phones.

If on this happy and historic holiday you too want to launch a surprise attack against modern day tyranny and Big Brother government, to give a gift that will protect and grow freedom, there’s a link here to speed your way across the Delaware and right to the donate page of Citizens in Charge Foundation.

Perhaps you’d like to join Team 1776 by making a monthly pledge of $17.76, or to make a one-time contribution to keep Common Sense coming.

While you’re still free to do so.

Or maybe you’re all gifted out for now. Still, be sure to share the good news — er, the other good news, the Christmas story about initiative, daring, courage . . . about the battle won by the forces of freedom 240 years ago. Post this commentary on Facebook, Google+, Minds, Instagram, email it to a friend, you name it — or just mention it to loved ones while you’re relaxing after dinner.

And best wishes for a safe and happy 2017. Let’s hope we freedom-loving folks find even more success.

Merry Christmas, America! Happy Hanukkah! Peace and good will to all.

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Christmas, Common Sense, American, freedom, Paul Jacob, patriotic, citizen, illustration, Christmas Card

 

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general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government

Whack the Bob

pendulum, noose, politics, left, right, change, Republicans, Democrats

It’s a truism in politics: the pendulum swings. Now, around the world, we see a deep swing rightward:

  • Brexit, and the collapse of Britain’s Labour Party;
  • Donald Trump, and the routing of the Democrats;
  • German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s turnaround on Muslim refugee acceptance; and,
  • in France, the rise of the National Front’s Marine Le Pen.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported on events in Poland. There, the Law and Justice Party is not only making sweeping changes of a pro-family, religious conservative nature, it has also grown in popularity.

Fearing an anti-intellectual “neo-Dark Age,” the Post finds cause for that worry in the fact that the Poles are downplaying evolutionary science in government school curricula.*

Before the big freak out, note the why of this: the dominant progressive-left paradigm has proven itself incapable of dealing with the challenges of the present age — most being caused by their own policies. Worse yet, those on the vanguard left have become moral scolds and petty language tyrants.

Yes, political correctness is one of the big offenders, here.

So, of course there’s a backlash.

But, turnabout being fair play, if the move to the “right” goes too far — as it probably will — we can expect another swing leftward.

Isn’t it time to give that pendulum bob a whack, to initiate something like an equilibrium position? Many of today’s problems are caused by partisans trying to force their kind of change down others’ throats. There is an alternative: limit government, setting it to just a few tasks, letting society evolve naturally, without forced central planning.

That would be “evolutionary,” and thus neither rightist nor revolutionary-left. Call it neo-Enlightenment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Poland’s new government has become scary, by reducing transparency, limiting press access, purging the government news network of anti-rightist journalists, hiking subsidies to traditional families and the elderly, shelving the gay marriage issue and allowing local governments to cut back on granting public protest permits. Not all of these are equally frightening, of course. Why should any government be allowed to maintain a government-run news agency? (Ideological purges come with the territory.)

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pendulum, noose, politics, left, right, change, Republicans, Democrats

 

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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Conscience Clear?

electoral, college, election, voting, popular, Hamilton, illustration

Today the Electoral College meets to elect the 45th President of these United States.

But if they fail to cast the required majority for a candidate, the contest goes into the House of Representatives, where each state gets one vote — Wyoming and California equally weighted — and a state’s vote can only be cast for one of the top three Electoral College vote-getters.

Of course, only two candidates won electoral votes, because only they won states. Donald Trump won 30 states comprising 306 electoral votes; Hillary Clinton won 20 states with 232.

That’s the arithmetic. But, as I explored at Townhall yesterday, nothing in the Constitution requires an elector pledged to Trump or Clinton to vote for that candidate.* They can vote their conscience.

That’s why in recent days, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, a California elector, petitioned to have electors receive an intelligence briefing about Russian hacking — hoping to sway electors.

Her petition was denied.

Desperation showing, a group of Hollywood actors led by Martin Sheen starred in a Unite for America video talking down to — er, directly to — Republican electors. Asserting that the Electoral College was designed by “Hamilton himself” to prevent an “unfit” “demagogue” (they mean Mr. Trump) from attaining the presidency, the actors claim to “stand with” and “respect” GOP electors, who could be heroes in Hollywood (no honor more tempting!) if only they’d cast their vote for someone other than Trump.

Anyone! — who meets presidential qualifications. “I’m not asking you,” three actors in a row assure, “to vote for Hillary Clinton.”

As much as I support the idea of voting one’s conscience and as much fun as this election has been, I think we’ve all now had enough. Let’s prepare ourselves to help Mr. Trump do what’s right and stop him from doing what’s wrong . . . with a clear conscience.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Some electors do sign a loyalty pledge to the candidate and there are state laws, almost certainly unconstitutional, which penalize electors who do not vote for the candidate they are pledged to.

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Original (cc) photo by Crosa on Flickr

 

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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Climate Change Assertions

Scott Pruitt, EPA, Global Warming, Climate Change, illustration

I know Scott Pruitt, Donald Trump’s pick to head the EPA; he replaced the egregious Drew Edmondson as Oklahoma Attorney General.

Pruitt seems like a good man.

But Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) says different. “Mr. Pruitt’s record is not only that of being a climate change denier, but also . . .”

Wait: that “climate change denier” charge is everywhere. But all I’ve seen is assertion.

It would indeed be weird were he — or anyone — to deny the reality of climate change. Way back in my Seventies’ youth, I saw all sorts of climate change articles . . . predicting a new Ice Age.

Decades later, the headlines began to change: Global Warming was in.

But note: those Seventies’ articles usually mentioned that the world had been heating out of the recent Little Ice Age, with the thaw beginning before the dreaded Industrial Revolution.

I bet that what our new Trump pick really believes is that

  • warm weather is generally better than cold weather;
  • CO2 is not a poison as such (plants thrive with more carbon dioxide);
  • every major climate model has predicted more warming than we’ve experienced; and
  • stifling progress to offset poorly understood climate events would be disastrous, especially for the poor.

Betting aside, what does Pruitt believe? The Advocate actually repeats the disproven “97 percent of climate scientists” meme to pile on the abuse*, but did link to a National Review article Pruitt co-authored with Alabama’s attorney general.

They did not deny climate change, merely insisting that “the debate is far from settled.” More importantly, they argued that governments should not intimidate energy companies in service to the climate cause. Instead, they called for open debate.

Shocking!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Advocate also irrelevantly charged Pruitt with “transphobia.” But then, Trump’s Small Business Administration pick, Linda McMahon, has also been tarred with the “climate denier” charge, which is as irrelevant to an SBA head as vegetarianism would be for a Secretary of Treasury.

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Scott Pruitt, EPA, Global Warming, Climate Change, illustration

 

Original (cc) photo by Gage Skidmore on Flickr