Tag: Chicago

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Guilty of Innocence

Spencer Byrd, crime, asset forfeiture, police, Chicago, law enforcement, theft, stealing, government

If you are innocent of a crime, should you be punished as if guilty? Despite no arrest, no trial, no conviction?

If you say “Yes,” raise your hand.

I see no raised hands among my regular readers. But my readers don’t include the wicked Chicago officials who impounded the automobile of Spencer Byrd.

Byrd’s case is reported in a Reason article by C.J. Ciaramella. The author relates how Chicago extracts money by grabbing the vehicles of innocent people. The drug war and asset forfeiture laws help make it possible. 

Byrd is a carpenter and auto mechanic who sometimes gives rides to clients stuck without their cars. One night, when he was stopped on the road for an allegedly broken turn signal, police discovered that a new client riding with him was carrying heroin. Byrd was questioned but quickly released. He was never charged with a crime. 

But his car was impounded; it’s been impounded for years. This has hurt his business. For one thing, he has $3,500 worth of tools in the trunk. 

Byrd persuaded a judge to order that his car be returned to him. But the city still wouldn’t release it unless Byrd paid $8,790 in fees and fines (later reduced to $2,000). He is still struggling to retrieve his car, within a labyrinth the injustices of which I’ve barely touched on. 

May I suggest … ? If you do ever recover your Cadillac, Mr. Byrd, put pedal to the floor and get the heck out of Dodge.

I mean, Chicago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders national politics & policies responsibility too much government

SEZ Ed

education, free trade zone, Shenzhen, Chicago, Detroit, regulations, reform

The great barrier to educational advance in our time is the federal government. The second great barrier? Your state government. The third great barrier? Your local government.

Proposals to break up government-​subsidized and ‑enforced school monopolies have ranged from tax credit proposals and voucher programs to charter schools and (the biggest success so far) home schooling.

But it may be time to advance something a little … more daring. Break the stranglehold of government on dysfunctional schooling.

How?

Apply the “free trade zone” (FTZ) idea to education.

We remember the FTZ proposal because of its rise in popularity amongst academics and policy wonks in the 1980s and 1990s. But the notion is an old one. And in China, where they are called “special economic zones” (SEZs) — and it is this term that is catching on — they have been amazingly successful, the former fishing village of Shenzhen being the most obvious example.

What about America? Take a devastated region, like inner-​city Chicago or Detroit,* and simply nullify the regulations and rules. (This probably would require federal enabling legislation on top of state leadership.) With the ensuing freedom and opportunity, entrepreneurs, established businesses and schools, teachers, community groups and activists could cook up new solutions to the oldest schooling problem there is:

actual education.

I’ve heard whispers of this Educational SEZ idea for some time now.

It is time for rational and quite public discussion.

And then the shouting. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Of course, any area could work. The reason to focus on demonstrably failed educational regions is that such areas have lost hope, and thus the politically resistant are likely to give in and allow it.

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Accountability education and schooling

A Public Fraud in the Midwest

Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Chicago, school, education, graft, corruption, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

The standard case for government-​run industry runs like this: some goods, by their very nature, are best provided by government … to ensure high quality and low cost.

City sewers, firefighting, roads and education are traditionally explained as requiring government operation, organization, and tax funding.

The trouble is, it’s no longer plausible, really, to say that one of the most expensive and omnipresent of these industries, “public education” (government schooling) guarantees much of anything.

Certainly we aren’t getting quality at low cost.

But a few folks do get wealthy.

I wrote about Barbara Byrd-​Bennett a few weeks ago. She’s the Chicago public school administrator who had to resign her CEO-​ship because of the overwhelming evidence against her scamming Chicago’s schools … for over $2 million in kickbacks.

And now, it turns out, she has a prehistory — in the Motor City. “Federal investigators were looking at Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s role in a $40 million textbook contract that was awarded while she worked in Detroit,” explains the Chicago Sun-​Times, “long before she became Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief.…”

Republican, democratic government relies upon an alert press and citizenry to catch folks like Byrd-​Bennett. Why? Because government, by its nature, is most efficient in delivering wealth from many into the hands of the few. Having it serve the many is difficult, and requires eternal vigilance.

Which is one reason why we need limited government: the more extensive government’s scope, the harder to keep track of all the frauds and exploitative con jobs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Chicago, school, education, graft, corruption, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

 

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Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-​million-​dollar no-​bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-​compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding …

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government … beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

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Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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education and schooling too much government

Freedom Is a Brown Bag

American society still features a fair degree of freedom and respect for the individual. We’d all be pretty shocked were a public-​school bureaucrat to dredge up Plato’s old notion of forcibly removing babies from the care of their parents and letting the state raise them communally.

We’re not that far gone. Nobody advocates the utter communization of the care and feeding of the young. 

Instead, we confront more incremental yet ever-​bolder assaults on parental responsibility and rights in favor of such Grand Liberal Ideas as Puritanical State-​Subsidized Nutrition. Thus, the educrats at a Chicago public school, Little Village Academy, prohibit kids from bringing lunch from home.

Yep. Not only are students prohibited from toting squirt guns and pictures of paper knives, at LVA they’re now also prohibited from importing such dangerous products as Coca Cola and Twinkies. It’s all about “healthier choices,” blathers a Chicago Public School spokeswoman, who stresses that it’s up to individual schools whether to adopt such bans. After all, what could be “healthier” than training families to be dependent on the state for homogenized sustenance?

Not surprisingly, some Little Village kids dislike the cafeteria food. Sometimes they throw it in the garbage. “We should bring out own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!” they shout when asked about the policy.

They should do more than chant. They should flout the ban en masse.

They can’t all be arrested for smuggling in peanut-​butter-​and-​jelly sandwiches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access

The Competition in Chicago

When politicians begin messing with ballot access and signature requirements, watch out. Usually, they’re up to no good. (Always.)

Illinois State Representative Joseph Lyons would likely disagree. He’s sponsoring a bill to equalize the number of signatures required to get on the ballot for a Chicago alderman position. Currently, many wards require just a few hundred signatures. Lyons wants to up that to 500 per ward. Every ward should be equal, dontcha know.

Besides, he says, “To get 500 signatures should not be a burden.” Then comes his kicker. “The more friends you’ve got, the easier it should be. And if you don’t have any friends, you shouldn’t be running for alderman.”

And there’s the rub. Just who are his friends that would benefit?

Could they be his current Democratic buddies who already serve as aldermen, and don’t want the competition?

Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, is certainly skeptical about this reform. Quoted in an excellent Chicago Tribune article, she insists that the bill would have “a big effect in low voter-​turnout wards.” But then, as she admits, she’s interested in getting more people to run for office, not making it harder to do so. 

We know where Lyons stands on this. He’s like most politicians. Once he and his buddies get in, they want to keep the competition out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.