Categories
Common Sense First Amendment rights

More than a Breach of Professional Ethics?

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority has a mission, to provide “Public Television For All of Oklahoma.”

And its top-listed production is news.

Oklahoma Educational Television Authority website
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority

And yet when the non-profit organization I work with, the Citizens in Charge Foundation, sent out a press release to OETA — that’s the outfit’s acronym — OETA sent an official complaint to our Web host, calling the press release spam.

Our former Web host, Hostica, shut down our site and our email.

This is the second time this happened. Obviously, we won’t be sending any more press releases to that news source.

But think about this. OETA is in the news biz. For it to call a press release “spam” — unwanted — is not just nasty, it’s an astounding breach of professional ethics. It’s like a weather man refusing to cover snow, or a preacher refusing to talk about God, or . . . a politician refusing to read the Constitution.

Now, it could be that we sent the press release to the wrong department. Their proper response? Forward it to the right people, then reply back.

But email routing is not what this is all about. Our press release covered a story that put a top Oklahoma politician in bad light. The public TV folk in Oklahoma aren’t independent. Being all-too-political, OETA — or someone at OETA — attempted to squelch our speech rights.

So I ask you: What should our response be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets too much government

New Prez Pleads for Common Sense

I like a president who pleads for common sense.

Here’s the story, headlined in the New York Times: “Obama Calls for ’Common Sense’ on Executive Pay.”

The president announced a salary cap for top executives working for companies garnering the greatest gobs of booty under the most recent federal bailout. The cap? Half a million bucks.

President Obama allayed a few qualms, right away. He said that “This is America, we don’t disparage wealth. . . .” And he said, “we certainly believe that success should be rewarded.”

But he does talk about the “height of irresponsibility” in Bush administration bailouts, with execs taking huge bonuses after running their companies into the ground. Who wasn’t sickened by this? Obama sees it as common sense to make sure we don’t reward massive failure with the usual rewards of success.

Still, America is also about respecting contracts. Those corporations had negotiated very explicit contracts with their execs regarding the big bucks. And — surprise, surprise — Congress wrote up the law on the gargantuan bailouts without requiring those contracts be renegotiated.

And consider: Do we really want our politicians setting non-government salaries?

This is all a side issue, though. Take the bailouts themselves. Where’s the common sense there? They do reward failure. They will not help the economy. If our leaders had acted according to common sense, the whole salary issue wouldn’t even have come up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Fake Grit

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Or maybe not: I prefer it when “cooler heads prevail.”

But as our times get desperate, here comes Tony Blankley with a new book, True Grit.

Blankley calls for a universal draft that would delay college or work for your 18- or 19-year-old boy or girl, forcibly placing them under government control. Under Blankley’s plan the military would get first dibs, but those not forced into military service would be corralled into civilian government service.

This is, well, stupid. One of the federal government’s few big successes has been the all-volunteer military. Forcing people, not suited or interested, into armed service may seem egalitarian, but it undermines the military, which ought to concentrate on winning wars.

Moreover, to force millions more into government make-work programs, again in the name of fairness, will cost taxpayers plenty — and uproot the lives of young people.

Charlie Rangel has been the most persistent conscription pusher. His draft legislation proved so overwhelmingly unpopular that when it was brought up in Congress even he voted against it.

In a review of True Grit at Human Events, Blankley is described as progressing politically from being a libertarian to a conservative to a nationalist.

Sorry, that’s not progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability government transparency

Opaque Transparency

Colorado’s state treasurer, Cary Kennedy, is on the hot seat. When running for office, she promised to make the state’s spending more transparent. She has not followed through.

In a different age, such dilatoriness might have been overlooked. Today, the very medium that makes it easy to report what is happening with taxpayers’ money, the Internet, also makes it easy to pressure delinquent officials.

There are websites. The one calling Kennedy to account is a blog called Colorado Spending Transparency. Or COST.

COST recalls that during his 2006 campaign for Colorado State Treasurer, Kennedy observed that when you buy groceries, the receipt shows what you bought. Kennedy, too, she said, would “show you where your money goes.”

Colorado does post its annual budget online. But the COST blog wants a detailed, searchable database, as fifteen other states have provided.

Representative Don Marostica, who also championed transparency in his 2006 campaign, introduced a bill to require such online itemizing. The bill never made it out of committee. Marostica had planned to re-introduce the bill until Governor Ritter stated in a recent speech that he would work with Treasurer Kennedy and others to put the state’s checkbook online.

COST says doing this will only reveal what the state paid, not necessarily what it paid for. COST wants the whole story. And will keep pressing until it gets it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy

Howard Jarvis Must Be Growling In His Grave

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is getting a bum rap.

The organization is named after fiery tax-cut advocate Howard Jarvis. Jarvis authored Proposition 13, the California tax limitation measure approved in 1978 by a two-to-one margin.

In recent months, like everywhere else, California has suffered economically. And now the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is being angrily berated, for nevertheless still advocating lower taxes for besieged taxpayers.

The Sacramento Bee declares that there’s a “difference between protecting taxpayers and rigidly opposing all new tax increases, regardless of the state’s finances.” Watchdogs who commit the latter become “demagogues,” according to the editorial writers at the Bee. The Howard Jarvis folks are supposedly “charting a course to disaster.”

Oh, I don’t think so. I’m happy when foes of ever-larger tax burdens stick to their guns.

The Bee blithely ignores the true culprit here, asserting that in recent years, tax revenues have “plunged” in California as “deficits have deepened.”

Recent tax receipts are down slightly compared to a year ago. But for years, state government spending has skyrocketed, which the Bee says nothing about. The state budget was $56 billion in 1998. In 2008, $131 billion.

Here’s a suggestion, one the late Howard Jarvis would have liked. Cut spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption term limits

That Bloomin’ Blatherer Bloomberg

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, once a man of the people, claimed his billions immunized him from the pitfalls of politics-as-usual. Who could bribe him, right?

But it seems power seduces even without payola.

New Yorkers passed a two-term limit on city officials. But Bloomberg wants another term, and couldn’t be bothered taking the question to voters yet again. So he convinced the city council to water down the law so both he and they could run for a third term.

So, why did Bloomberg overthrow the voters’ decision? Not because he’s seduced by power. No. Because he’s so darned indispensable. In an economic downturn, the city needs a financial wizard like him to steer things.

Except this is the same maestro who dug New York’s current financial hole. The city is looking at a $7 billion budget deficit in a couple years if nothing changes. And according to a new report by the Citizens Budget Commission, the average cost of city employees has increased 63 percent since 2000. Average pay has jumped from $52,000 a year to $69,000. Then you have benefits, which ballooned from $13,000 a year to a whopping $38,000 a year.

Bloomberg can’t say no to unions, so taxpayers suffer. He can’t say no to a power grab, so democracy suffers.

Gee whiz, who but Bloomberg could give us all this suffering?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Is More Regulation the Answer?

Regulation. We’re told that it would have saved us from this and that event associated with the current economic downturn.

Well, probably not.

First off, remember that we have had regulation during this period. Clinton upped regulatory oversight of businesses; so did Bush.

Next, the mere fact that there are regulations doesn’t make them effective. Take Bernard Madoff. What Madoff engaged in was a swindle — not a hard-to-control best-intentions-turned-wrong investment fiasco but an actual, intentional fraud.

But as columnist Steve Chapman recently observed, the federal bureaucrats whose job it was to regulate investment businesses investigated Madoff “at least eight times in 16 years,” never, ever “coming close” to the fraud.

”So what,” Chapman asks, “makes you think that future bureaucrats, no matter how vast their authority, will be able to do better?”

Another thing about regulation is that there are several kinds.

When the founding fathers talked about regulating trade, they didn’t mean micromanaging trade to get specific outcomes. The founders meant “to make regular,” as in establishing standards . . . like what is the difference between sound investments and elaborate frauds.

That’s hard enough. Micromanaging a million businesses, to prevent certain unfortunate outcomes, is pretty much impossible.

Past performance is a good indicator of future performance. Just adding a bunch of regulators? That’s no help, since we haven’t discovered any new magic since the last batch failed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Amendment 2 . . . In Plain English

NOTE: This is a revised, updated episode, as played on radio stations.
The original episode can be found here

On January 22, two separate issues appeared on the ballot in Nashville, Tennessee. But voters may not have known that. Seems some folks didn’t want them to know.

You see, Amendment 1, called “English-Only,” stirred up lots of controversy. That initiative read, in part: “all official government communications and publications shall be in English.”

A group called Nashville for All of Us raised $300,000 and, along with the mayor and the governor, campaigned against it. In the course of their campaign, every advertisement urged a vote against both Amendment 1 AND Amendment 2.

Yet, strangely, there was absolutely no mention in their ads or on their website as to what Amendment 2 was about.

Well, in plain English, Amendment 2 had nothing to do with English-Only. Amendment 2 was called Hear the People, and sought to protect the people’s initiative rights. Unfortunately, it went down to defeat along with English-Only.

That’s too bad, because Amendment 2 would have made it easier to put issues on general election ballots rather than on costly special elections, like this one. Amendment 2 would have lowered the number of signatures needed to place an issue on the ballot. And it would have prevented the Metro Council from amending or repealing measures passed by voters . . . at least for four years.

No wonder some folks didn’t want the voters to know about Amendment 2.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Discord Over Spending in Concord

I’ve read the proposed amendment to the Concord, New Hampshire, city charter and read it again. It looks like a fine, responsible attempt to limit government growth.

But Paul Cavanaugh, Concord’s city solicitor, has quite a different view. While three state agencies have given the proposed amendment their go-ahead, he filed an appeal, arguing that the amendment’s spending cap would interfere with the city’s ability to pay for legally required welfare and public safety services.

On first blush, it seems he may have something. If you limit government growth with a charter amendment, and the state still requires you to pay out certain services, and there’s an influx of people who ask for such services . . . what do you do?

Well, you could develop a rainy day fund for just those services, to cover unexpected demands. Or, perhaps, prioritize spending just a tad. Stop spending so much on discretionary items so you have the funds to fulfill your constitutional duties.

Yet the first thing that came to mind for Cavanaugh and Concord’s politicians was to block the citizens from voting on the spending limit. Force it off the ballot.

Politicians! They will do anything, it seems, rather than spend wisely.

It’s sad, really. Politicians hate saving. They hate not spending. Most of all, they hate citizens control of their prodigal ways.

That’s why it is citizens who should decide, directly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Trillions I Say

I hate to talk bailouts all the time. But the feds keep throwing more misallocated trillions at the problem.

What problem? Oh, you know — the predictable consequences of all the previously misallocated trillions.

We keep hearing about fresh piles of governmental largesse being devoted to making our troubles as long-lasting and burdensome as possible. Of course, the central planners in D.C. don’t admit the necessary effects of their wastrel social-engineering ways. They would rather call it, say, “investing,” or “economic stimulus.”

Economist Henry Hazlitt pointed out that government spending does nothing to “stimulate” the economy. It merely directs “labor and capital into the production of less necessary goods or services at the expense of more necessary goods or services.”

What politicians are really doing is buying votes, keeping themselves in office longer . . . while the bad times roll.

Our calculations of red ink should consider not only the federal debt on the books, which is now more than $10 trillion, but also the unfunded liability for Social Security and other programs. Adding all that, we get something like $70 trillion or more we’re on the hook for.

I did some quick math. A stack of 70 trillion one dollar bills would be close to 48 million miles high. More than half the average distance between the earth and the sun.

Just thought I’d mention it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.