Tag: control

Categories
budgets & spending cuts too much government

How Audits Work in Real Life

DOGE, panic, civil service, public servants, control

Corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are panicking. 

O, the prospect of any significant shrinking of the federal behemoth!

Any significant rooting out of the corruption that benefits them.…

Many combat this horror by flinging every fallacy in the book. Like the notion that Elon Musk and his team are unqualified. They ask, is Musk a certified public accountant? 

He’s only a mega-​successful serial entrepreneur, not an accountant.

Monster Hunter Nation’s Correia45 answers a slew of the fallacies, not in the most genteel manner. Cover your ears if you click in.

First, there’s nothing odd about an internal audit, which “is what Donald Trump (the man in charge) is doing now, by having his people (DOGE) audit the executive branch he runs. CEOs and owners do this all the time.”

Nor need you be a CPA to contribute. That’s essential for only certain types of accounting, which “isn’t even close to what DOGE is doing.”

Correia45, an accountant, has been on teams that included programmers, lawyers, machinists. Machinists because, when auditing a factory, “I could count the parts, but I couldn’t tell you if the parts were b******t or not.”

Another thing: I can certainly think of reasons to have smart energetic young people on an auditing team. 

But, contra some assumptions (based on the fact that 20-​somethings are “who got doxxed first”), young people are not the whole team. Newsweek’s list of known DOGE staff includes persons ranging in age from 19 to 67.

And so DOGE goes. Godspeed. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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education and schooling national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism

Nixon & Trans Athletes

Trump, federalism, state's rights, Constitution

The President of the United States clashed with the governor of Maine over transgender participation in government-​organized athletics. Quite a hoot.

Behind this fracas looms the legacy of … Richard M. Nixon.

First, the fracas: “In a tense exchange with Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills, President Donald Trump threatened to strip Maine of its federal funding,” explains CNN, “if the state refuses to comply with his executive order banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.”

The brief volley of promises (threats) between the governor and the president made other governors “uncomfortable.” Yes, that’s a news story.

“Is Maine here?” he wondered aloud. “The governor of Maine?”

“Yeah,” Gov. Janet Mills answered from across the room. “I’m here.”

And then came a testy political exchange, the kind you don’t often see, culminating in this from Trump: “You better comply, you better comply, because, otherwise, you’re not getting any federal funding.” 

“See you in court,” she promised.

“Good; I’ll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one. And enjoy your life after governor, because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”

Trump may not be wrong. He may have the better legal case.

But doesn’t it seem weird that the president of the United States can extort compliance from the states on matters that are not enumerated in the Constitution?

Well, back in his first term Trump signed an executive order to direct a new devolution process of turning back education to the states. But the transgender issue is a big deal, and most Americans (around 80 percent) are against “biological” “men” competing with girls and women in sports, and since much of sports in America takes place in state-​directed/​taxpayer-​funded contexts, Trump is leveraging federal bloc grants against states that balk at his agenda.

Thank Nixon and his “New Federalism.” While an attempt to give power back to the states, it also tied federal money to the devolution, which has effectively turned states into welfare queens begging big bucks off Washington, severely compromising the states’ … basic competence.

It’s this policy that Trump should be fighting.

But that would make governors even more uncomfortable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Krea and Firefly

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crime and punishment folly too much government

The California Experiment

safety first, California, socialism, globalism, global warming, climate change, control

California is determined to give us the full bleak picture of totalitarianism, American-style.

Anticipating proposed SEC regulations, Newsom’s California is set to impose nonsensical mandates for reporting greenhouse gas emissions and “climate-​related financial risk” that target companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more (according to the terms of SB253) and $500 million or more (SB261).

Billion-​dollar businesses will have to report all direct and indirect emissions, including emissions produced throughout a business’s supply chain. Business travel. Employee commutes. Penalties for failure to report could be as high as $500,000.

The cost is in time, money, privacy, freedom, with no benefits except to bureaucrats and politicians who enjoy bossing us around and destroying our ability to function.

These requirements are tyrannical in the same way they’d be tyrannical if required of you and me as individuals. 

Do you know all about the emissions produced in delivering the water, electricity, electronics, gas, paper you use each month? 

Care to drop everything you’re doing to find out? 

And submit the data in a bureaucrat-​satisfying format?

We already know what the results of California’s experiment will be. We already know that crushing freedom and giving unfettered power to slave-​masters is not the road to wealth and happiness.

What we don’t know is exactly how far the Tarnished State’s aspiring totalitarians will go. But whatever the consequences, they’ll blame others … or just mutter “Good riddance, we didn’t want that prosperity and those evil businesses anyway.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with DALL-​E2 and PicFinder​.ai

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national politics & policies property rights

Zoning by “Outsiders”

zoning, property, freedom

“In recent years, there’s been a push to move zoning decisions further from the local level,” writes Matt Ray for Mises Wire — engaging in no small understatement. 

“In 2019, Oregon passed House Bill 2001, making it the first statewide law to abolish single-​family zoning in many areas. By expanding the state government’s jurisdiction to include zoning decisions previously handled by local agencies, the law entails an alarming centralization of state power.”

This trend is old, going back at least to the Progressive Era. 

But the trend continues — “progresses” — and Oregon’s centralizing law has been “quickly followed by the introduction of similar bills in Virginia, Washington, Minnesota, and North Carolina,” Matt Ray explains. “Now President Biden is attempting to increase federal influence over local zoning.”

The problem should be obvious. Government land-​use regulation by “zoning” is an awesome expression of rights-abridging power, usually becoming nothing more than what most regulations are: special-​interest protection schemes, helping the in-​crowd at the expense of “outsiders” (you and me, actually).

Most savvy people understand this in specific instances, but not generally, so when they see zoning they don’t like, they might leap to the notion that bad local regulations should be replaced by good state or federal regulators.

Trouble is, we have less ability to ensure that regulators in distant political centers aren’t captured by special interests or malign ideologues. 

The only way out is a general rule-​of-​law approach, limiting all zoning powers. Barring that? Well, no matter how bad your city’s zoning, I wouldn’t trade it for zoning decisions from Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency ideological culture responsibility

People Power in the Republic of China

responsibility, command, politicians, control, self reliance,

Which country has handled this worldwide pandemic best?

The question was asked on Facebook, by one friend, and answered this way by another: 

“Government: South Korea; People: Japan.”

My response?

“Combo of people and government: Taiwan.”

There is a lot in the Taiwanese response to explore. 

“The first cause of Taiwan’s success,” write Javier Caramés Sanchez and William Hongsong Wang on Mises Wire, “is the transparency of information, which stopped the rapid growth of infection.” While on Mainland China the corrupt government was no more transparent than the very murky Yellow River, in the Republic of China (commonly called Taiwan, and once listed on the globe as “Formosa”) the Ministry of Health and Welfare began informing the public as early as December 31.

The second reason? “The type of quarantines established by the Taiwanese government are mostly self-​quarantines. The Taiwanese government acknowledges that it is crucial to rely on people’s voluntary actions to resist the pandemic.” In Japan the people regularly don masks when sick. That kind of compliance is cultural there. In Taiwan, there has been a lot of spontaneous and “all you need to ask” compliance with social distancing and the like.

“The key is that the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people understand that the individual’s own responsibility and actions are essential to suppressing the coronavirus pandemic, not a mandatory massive shutdown,” the authors conclude. “This is what the world needs to learn.”

Responsibility is what a free people practice. And learn to master.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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responsibility, command, politicians, control, self reliance,

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initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Gig Is Up

California, gig, freelance, law, control, interference, intervention, labor,

Eventually, champions of government intervention, of all forms of thwarting independent judgment and killing dreams, find themselves under assault. From the public. 

And you don’t need an economics degree to grasp why. 

Initially, an intervention prevents other people from pursuing projects, getting jobs, earning a living. Then, finally, government meddling goes a step too far. Maybe lawmakers had “good intentions,” but hey! This is me now! 

Your legislation needs tweaking!

This is where we are in California’s attack on the so-​called gig economy. Hatched to “protect” Uber drivers or some such nonsense, Assembly Bill 5 makes it massively harder for companies to classify freelancers as independent contractors. After it was signed into law, many companies — from blogs to transcription services — told California-​based freelancers adios. 

Millions of people lost work and options.

What walks of life are affected? All. 

“California’s new gig worker law is … threatening all performing arts,” complains Brendan Rawson at CalMatters​.org. California has “overreached.” Gotta nip-​and-​tuck that otherwise “worthy” bill! Use only the magic arbitrary intervention in our lives that works!

Not everybody now being hurt was previously okay with pushing other people around, of course. I’ve never been a fan. One of my missions is defending the right of citizen initiative. Well, AB5 makes it much harder and more expensive for petition campaigns to hire people for such gigs as collecting signatures for an initiative in California. 

AB5 attacks earning a living, speaking freely, associating freely, and petitioning one’s government freely. Maybe the law will be rescinded. But there’s more mischief where that came from. 

So let’s protect other people’s freedom … and stop the overreach before it reaches us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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California, gig, freelance, law, control, interference, intervention, labor,

Photo by Dairo Cervantes

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