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

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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Tags chained, poverty, welfare, West Virginia

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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Tags Berlin, fingerprint, illustration, privacy, surveillance, targeted, terrorism

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

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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