Categories
local leaders too much government

How to Be a Bad-Law Killer

You have a golden opportunity to help kill some of the bad laws infesting San Francisco’s city code.

The news is being passed along by the indefatigable champions of liberty and property rights at the Institute for Justice. Wherever local governments have assaulted the right of citizens to use and dispose of their own property, IJ has fought and won legal battles on behalf of the victims. Now the Institute urges us to accept the invitation of City Supervisor Mark Farrell to help root out the city’s bad laws.

Farrell wants to “clear any unnecessary laws from San Francisco’s books and to tweak laws that need updating.”

IJ has already fingered some of the more egregious San Fran laws that need “tweaking.” For example, there’s Chapter 6 of housing code, which demands that “Private and public storage garages in apartment houses and hotels shall be used only for storage of automobiles.” Thus, residents like Kimberly Conley are breaking the law when they stow their bikes in their garages, and can be fined up to $500 per infraction.

There are onerous regulations on food trucks, onerous rent control laws, a “transient occupancy” tax on rentals by homeowners to travelers, onerous dog-walking licenses. Just for starters. (“Don’t worry, there’s plenty of work for everyone,” IJ assures us.)

The San Francisco Code is presented at a website that seeks to demystify its legal jargon. Mark Farrell’s email address is mark.Farrell@sfgov.org.

Happy hunting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

Hungary border

On May 2, 1989, Hungary began dismantling its border fence with Austria, allowing a number of East Germans to defect.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Term Limits Now

Government of, by and for the people.

Yeah, right.

If government were “of, by and for” us . . . well, for starters, we’d have term limits.

Especially in Illinois. The Land of Lincoln has become the nation’s capital of corruption — four of the last seven governors went on to serve time in prison.

The state’s most powerful politician is House Speaker Michael Madigan, the longest-serving speaker in state history. Madigan is powerful, yes, but not at all popular — rated negatively by a substantial 65 percent of the public.

So much for popular government.

But yesterday, the negativity of Illinois politics was met quite positively — and head-on. The Committee for Legislative Reform and Term Limits delivered to the state Board of Elections a 36-foot long box, weighing nearly two tons, filled with 68,000 pages of petitions containing nearly 600,000 voter signatures.

That’s more than enough signatures to place the constitutional amendment onto the ballot. The measure will limit state legislators to eight years in office. It will also reduce the size of the state senate and increase the size of the state house, while upping the legislative vote needed to override a governor’s veto to the same two thirds threshold found in 37 other states.

Yet, hours before all those voter signatures were presented to officials, an attorney connected to Speaker Madigan filed a lawsuit hoping to block the vote. The news report on the lawsuit quoted “sources who asked not to be identified for fear of risking their ability to secure state grant dollars.”

Term limits. Now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

Herbert SpencerAll socialism involves slavery.

Categories
Today

May 1 Great Exhibition

On May 1, 1851, Queen Victoria performed the ritual function of opening the Great Exhibition in London.

Categories
Today

Theodore W. Schultz April 30

On April 30, 1902, future Nobel Laureate for his work in economics, Theodore W. Schultz, was born.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Legislator Knows Best?

In Florida, microbreweries are growing, creating customer demand, profits and new jobs. In 2007, there were only seven such craft breweries in the entire state; by year’s end, nearly 90 will be open for business.

Don’t worry, though, Sunshine State legislators are hard at work . . . getting in the way of work, snuffing out any whiff of economic success and the jobs that come with it.

Sen. Kelli Stargel’s Senate Bill 1714 just passed the Republican-dominated upper house. It slaps new regulations on brewers to the delight of beer distributors.

Sen. Jack Latvala dubbed SB-1714 “an attack on craft beer to protect distributors.”

“We’ve got this industry that’s growing,” noted an official with the Florida Brewers Guild. So, he wondered “why are we putting arbitrary restrictions on how they can grow and how their business model operates?”

“This bill is not going to limit their growth,” maintained Sen. Stargel. “We are not restricting one single craft brewer and we are not limiting what they can do. I know they don’t believe it.”

Yet, currently Florida’s craft breweries can sell as much of their beer as they want. Under the bill, they’re limited to 20 percent of total production. The remaining beer would have to be sold through — you guessed it! — a distributor.

“I know my kids don’t believe it when I tell them they can’t do something, but sometimes I know it is what’s best,” Stargel offered. “I believe this is what is best for their industry.”

Beer is a good business . . . that only politicians could screw up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

Herbert SpencerSpeaking broadly, every man works that he may avoid suffering.

Categories
Today

Dachau, April 29

On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

Categories
crime and punishment national politics & policies

DOJ Op Is Tyranny

asset forfeiture, banks, banking, IRS,TIGTA, Bank Secrecy Act

Tyrants traditionally lash out at any number of people and groups they find dangerous or inconvenient: churches, entrepreneurs, voluntary associations, you name it. In America, our government has been having difficulty not showing some amazingly tyrannical leanings. Mass spying and data accumulation, partisan tax programs, and now …

Operation Choke Point.

In the Wall Street Journal, Frank Keating, CEO of the American Banking Association, wrote that government officials in this wing of the U.S. Department of Justice are “asking banks to identify customers who may be breaking the law or simply doing something government officials don’t like. Banks must then ‘choke off’ those customers’ access to financial services, shutting down their accounts.”

One target? Porn stars, according to a variety of reports.

Teagan Presley, “adult film” actress and stripper, had her Chase account abruptly closed — along with her husband’s. She was told that she was “high risk.” Other adult industry professionals have revealed similar treatment.

Don’t blame the banks; they’re being coerced by the DOJ. According to Keating, a bank that won’t “shut down a questionable account when directed to do so, Justice slaps the institution with a penalty for wrongdoing that may or may not have happened.”

As distasteful as the porn industry may be, this DOJ program is worse. It’s full-blown rogue government.

It may have been designed to prosecute those breaking the law via fraud and identity theft, but its modus operandi is outside the law, bullying regulated banks into punishing other businesses and people, without any court proceedings taking place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.