Our first step in making a better world is, almost certainly, making ourselves better. Understandably, we do not mention this that often when dealing with public policy, but, when it comes right down to it….
On February 3, 1783, Spain recognized United States independence.
Walter Bagehot (pronounced “badge-it”; pictured), famed editor of The Economist and author of Lombard Street, was born on this date in 1826.
War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993), Ch. 6
“Politicians in prison garb,” headlined a recent Sun Sentinel editorial, “shake trust in government.”
It was not a fashion statement.
“What is it about a long career that makes some politicians — not all, let’s be clear about that — feel the rules don’t apply to them?” asked the paper, which serves Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties.
This week, after spending the last 24 years in Congress, former Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) began serving a five-year term in federal prison. Brown was convicted of 18 separate fraud and corruption counts stemming from her use of a public charity to benefit herself.
Not to be outdone, last week the FBI arrested Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper on various corruption charges following a six-year undercover sting operation. “From what is now known,” the editorial board judged “the case against Cooper” to be “devastating.”
There are taped conversations, reportedly, between FBI agents posing as “wealthy land owners [seeking] political favors” and the mayor, discussing pay (her) to play (with the city). At one point, undercover agents say a bribe was delivered to the mayor in “a Dunkin’ Donuts bag stuffed with $8,000 in cash and checks from people with a ‘bunch of Russian names.’”
Russians?
“If not so tragic,” the paper wrote of the corruption, “it would be laughable to imagine Russians colluding to control the Hallandale Beach city election.”
Humor is needed, truly. Yet, the Sun Sentinel concluded instead that “term limits are needed in Hallandale Beach.”
Of course.
And needed for Congress.
Now more than ever.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On February 2, 1887, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, celebrated the first Groundhog Day. On the same day in 1976, the Groundhog Day gale hit the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
In 2009, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe officially devalued the Zimbabwean dollar for the third and final time, making Z$1 trillion now only Z$1 of the new currency, equivalent to Z$10 septillion before the first devaluation. Politicians in Zimbabwe looked up, saw their shadow, and realized that they had only a couple months more of their inflation binge. Indeed, the legalization of trading currencies, the previous month, had sealed the fate of Zimbabwe’s independent dollar. The Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned officially on the 9th of April, 2009.
My plan is to let people do whatever they please, so long as they do not invade the right and freedom of other persons to do the same.
It took me a moment. And I assure you, I wasn’t high.
When I read that California State Treasurer John Chiang was considering a “marijuana bank,” my first thought was that he was talking about warehousing bud and leaf.
Well, no. That would be stupid.
So, maybe reporters and bloggers shouldn’t call it a “marijuana bank.” What these government officials are doing is trying to determine “the potential of a public bank to service the cannabis industry in California.”
A state bank, in other words. Not unheard of.
But would it be stupid?
Not according to Treasurer Chiang.* But his notion is not just about serving an industry that the federal government still tries to suppress — and continues to use its regulatory powers over banks to monkey-wrench.
Chiang defends his move in part on anti-capitalist grounds: “We see deepening public dissatisfaction and cynicism over the private banking system — a dissatisfaction that can be traced to the financial excesses of Wall Street, which triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression.”
Was the financial crisis the result of “bad actors” in the industry alone? No. The American banking industry is heavily regulated, the government-created Federal Reserve is very hands-on in its control of money and banking, and federal regulatory and financial bodies have exerted similar influence over housing industry financing for scores of years.
So of course a Californian politician wants to solve a government-induced problem by creating more government.
That’s what’s stupid, if you ask me.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* He’s going forward with a big study to “answer questions about costs, benefits, risks, and legal and regulatory issues, including the needs for capitalization, deposit insurance, and access to interbank transfers of funds.”
When we lack the will to see things as they really are, there is nothing so mystifying as the obvious.
Irving Kristol, “‘When virtue loses all her loveliness’ — some reflections on Capitalism and ‘the free society,’” National Affairs, No. 21, Fall 1970.
On February 1, 1835, slavery was abolished in Mauritius. Twenty-six years later, in the American Civil War, Texas seceded from the United States. On this date in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed a Joint Resolution from Congress formally submitting the proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the states for ratification.
This Amendment abolished chattel slavery throughout the union.
The Washington Post sports a new masthead slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness,.”
A story in last Sunday’s Metro section suggests that the editors are yet to fully implement the slogan’s implicit mission — providing impartial, unbiased illumination. “Term limits for Maryland legislators?” reads the headline. “Here’s why that’s unlikely,” it immediately answers.
“Term limits seem highly popular in Maryland,” begin the article.
Seem?
What produces that elusive sensory perception? I mean, other than every poll ever taken and, as the Post elaborates, “Voters in the state’s two largest jurisdictions, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, strongly endorsed them at the polls in recent years.”
Add to that three other counties, which had previously enacted term limits, the paper informs.
Still, the idea is “widely considered dead on arrival.”
Why? you ask.
“It’s very difficult,” explains Gov. Larry Hogan, “to convince people to willingly give up their power.”
“People” not as in “the People” but, instead, such as Senate President Mike Miller, a 46-year incumbent and the Senate boss for three decades running, and Speaker Mike Busch, a 31-year incumbent and the longest serving speaker in state history.
But wait . . . why didn’t politicians in those five Maryland counties block term limits like state legislators “likely” will? Did their lack of experience cause them to forget to be self-serving jerks?
No. Counties in Maryland have a ballot initiative process whereby citizens can petition term limits directly to a democratic vote. Their elected servants simply cannot ignore them.
The Post piece could have pointed out that very difference — between the democratic outcomes in those counties and an unrepresentative one at the state capitol.
It did not.
Democracy dies in darkness.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
