Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Good and Bad News

Civil Asset Forfeiture, crime, drugs, marijuana, stealing, theft, police abuse

On the issue of “civil asset forfeiture” — police seizing property from folks merely on suspicion, without a criminal conviction — there is good news.

In Idaho, House Bill 202a just passed both legislative chambers overwhelmingly. “Among other changes, HB 202a would no longer allow civil forfeiture of the vehicle of a person who merely possessed a controlled substance,” explained a Spokesman Review report, “without using the vehicle in connection with trafficking offenses or obtaining it with drug-trafficking proceeds. . . .” It also puts off the table “property that’s merely in proximity to illegal drugs” and the mere possession of cash.*

Legislation is moving forward in Arizona, too. House Bill 2477 passed to the Senate Judiciary Committee last week — which unanimously cleared it despite what the Arizona Republic called “strong opposition from . . . primarily people representing law-enforcement and prosecutors’ groups that benefit from the funds.”

The bill heightens the standard of proof required for making seizures stick from “preponderance of the evidence” to “clear and convincing evidence.” HB 2477 also increases reporting requirements, and creates a process police must follow to spend seized funds.

Unfortunately, there is also bad news.

Even with the new Idaho law and the enaction of the Arizona legislation, police in both states will continue to take people’s stuff without a criminal conviction. The level of abuse would be diminished, but not ended.

Citizens in both states can and should use the ballot initiative process to end this injustice. In total.

We must restore the bedrock principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Other provisions include a court determination on “whether a property seizure is proportionate to the crime alleged,” absolving “innocent owners from having to pay the state’s costs associated with an attempted seizure,” and some required record-keeping.

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Tags civil asset forfeiture, crime, drugs, marijuana, police abuse, stealing, theft

Today

Hyphen War

On March 29, 1990, the Czechoslovak parliament proved unable to reach an agreement on what to call the country after the “Velvet Revolution” — in which the Communist Party was booted from sole power. This sparked the “Hyphen War,” a tongue-in-cheek moniker for the dispute between Czechs and Slovaks about official recognition of the two nations’ equal status. (The Slovak representatives wanted to insert a hyphen into the name, to make the Slovak part stand out.) Eventually, the dispute was resolved with the “Velvet Divorce,” in which the two countries split up, on New Year’s Day, 1993.

Thought

Greg Gutfeld

It pisses me off that nearly every major talking head advocates gun control, arrogant in their belief that most Americans can’t be trusted to arm and protect themselves without hurting others. Meanwhile, it’s these same talking heads who never have to worry about being shot at by a crazed lunatic, because the lunatic and the talking head are separate from each other by five layers of security.

Greg Gutfeld, “Katie Couric’s Life Is More Important Than the Average College Freshman’s (Even If She Looks Remarkably Like an Elf),” The Bible of Unspeakable Truths (2010), p. 4. Photographs, above, depict: journalist Juan Williams, who has nothing to do with this snippet of Gutfeldiana; a sidearm, which does; and Greg Gutfeld himself. Gutfeld is the one that is not black. Or gun-metal gray.

Accountability government transparency ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Legislating in the Real World

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 28, 2017
3 Comments on Legislating in the Real World

Steve Bannon, Trump, Freedom Caucus, big government, Ryancare, Trumpcare, Obamacare

Rolling back Big Government is not easy, especially when you are not that into it.

Robert Draper, profiling Steve Bannon in the New York Times, gives us a view into the mind of Trump’s right-hand man, who appears to think GOP insiders are obsessed with principles. “[I]t’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world.”

At best, this only fits the Freedom Caucus members, who killed RyanCare. But who is avoiding reality, here?

“Bannon clearly is not as familiar with the mindset of congressional Republicans as he imagines,” counters Jeff Deist, head of the “Austrian” Mises Institute. “They are primarily concerned with how the whole ‘repeal and replace’ debacle plays back home.”

Like Deist, I see the spectacular fizzle of RyanCare as evidence of the increasing irrelevance of Republican compromising. “The GOP is the party of trillion dollar military budgets,” Deist insists, noting that it “won’t even kill an openly cronyist program like the Export-Import Bank.”

If keeping Big Government secure is all Republicans can do, what use are they?

“All around us are the almost unimaginable benefits of markets, cooperation, and technology,” Deist explains, “yet somehow we’re naïve if we don’t want to funnel human activity through government cattle chutes.”

Bannon will not secure solid GOP support if he keeps pushing the usual establishment compromises while pretending they are either realistic or revolutionary. Freedom Caucus Republicans seem bent on doing something Republicans usually avoid: change “the real world” for the better by practically limiting government.

Not just in theory.

Bannon seems to have other goals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags big government, Freedom Caucus, ObamaCare, Ryancare, Steve Bannon, Trump, Trumpcare

Today

Vargas and Vaughn

On March 28, 1936, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was born. This recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature ran, in 1990, for the presidency of Peru, but lost to Alberto Fujimori. His novels include La casa verde (The Green House), La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World), La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat), and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was filmed as Tune in Tomorrow.

On the same date in 1970, Vince Vaughn, American actor, producer, and screenwriter, was born.

Vaughn is one of a small minority of non-left-leaning Hollywood stars; his ideas on politics and economic policy were greatly influenced by Ron Paul.

Thought

Aristotle

The law is reason unaffected by desire.

free trade & free markets moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility subsidy too much government

TrumpCare Trumped

Trumpcare, Ryancare, healthcare, Obamacare, Freedom Caucus, socialism

It took awhile for the Obama Administration to accept the term “ObamaCare.” Nancy Pelosi was the initial driver of the massive scheme to permanently alter American medicine and insurance, and “PelosiCare” would have been a fit moniker for the wildly mis-named “Affordable Care Act.” But the administration put the whole of the new president’s political capital behind it, and the ACA went into law popularly known as “ObamaCare.”

The Republicans pledged to repeal it, from Day One. And repeatedly passed repeal bills, certain to be vetoed by the president named Obama. They needed a Republican in the White House.

Donald Trump ran, in part, on the promise of getting rid of ObamaCare. But upon taking the reins, two things became obvious: Republicans in Congress lacked the guts to repeal the ACA, and even lacked a coherent scheme to alter it.

The new president could hardly be expected to possess the plan they lacked, though on the campaign trail he suggested* the best approach: repeal, then open up insurance markets across state lines. The GOP Congress, on the other hand, was all promise and no clue.

So Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hastily cooked up what was to be the new TrumpCare — a ridiculous reform package with nothing much to say for it.

He failed to gain support from Democrats (of course) and Freedom Caucus representatives.

TrumpCare, trumped, became RyanCare. A failure.

The Freedom Caucus representatives? They breathe freely.

Sure, they “betrayed” the new president, “robbing” him of glory. But they also saved the country from a “reform” in many ways worse than ObamaCare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It’s worth keeping in mind that Trump had been for socialized medicine before running for office. This is why there was no reason to expect policy leadership on his part.

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Tags Freedom Caucus, healthcare, ObamaCare, Ryancare, socialism, Trumpcare

Today

Typhoid Mary

On March 27, 1915, Mary Mallon, popularly and scandalously known as “Typhoid Mary,” was put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life, over 23 years incarcerated.

Ms. Mallon was the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States. As an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid, she was a puzzle to science, and, once discovered, an apparent threat to those around her, with at least three deaths attributable to her presence. She did not co-operate with officials, and preferred to work as a cook, which paid higher wages than less dangerous-to-the-public occupations. She had been quarantined once before her final permanent quarantine in a hospital.

The civil liberties aspect to her incarceration loom large, and it is obvious that health officials of her time were not exactly any more respectful of her rights than she was with those of her clients and neighbors. The case was an obvious turning point in American legal practice, and can be categorized along with eugenics and “social hygiene” — along with prohibition regarding alcohol and recreational drugs — in the increasing illiberality of legal practice in America in the early part of the 20th century.

That being the case, Typhoid Mary was the very opposite of a heroine.

Thought

Arthur Latham Perry

“The Greek writer, Aristotle, quoted some centuries before Christ from ‘the African,’ probably some Carthaginian writer on agriculture, the now familiar saying, ‘the best manure for the land is the foot of the owner.’ This homely word long attributed to Dr. Franklin, who stole it for his ‘Poor Richard’s Almanack’ more than a century ago, is based on the sound principle, that personal supervision to be most effective must be limited in its sphere, and that the best agricultural skill becomes weak when it attempts to exhibit itself on too broad a surface. Because a man can cultivate 100 acres better than any of his neighbors, it does not prove that he will cultivate 50 acres additional to them better than a neighbor of inferior skill, who is the owner of these 50 and no more.”

Arthur Latham Perry, Principles of Political Economy (1891).

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