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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Bring Back the Eunuchs?

“Everybody knows that ordinary Americans are a bunch of idiots,” a Health and Human Services official told Benjamin Ginsberg. “Why do you need to do a survey to find that out?”

Actually, he was not surveying Americans for their IQs and knowledge levels. He was surveying Washington insiders. Like her.

She hadn’t been listening.

Ginsberg and co-​author Jennifer Bachner have a new book out, What Washington Gets Wrong (2016). “We found that public officials,” Ginsberg told C‑SPAN’s Brian Lamb last month, “the people who really govern this country … don’t think much of ordinary Americans.”

Surprise, surprise. This has been an “open secret” for some time. Washington insiders “are wealthier,” “better educated,” and “think ordinary Americans don’t really know very much.” More alarmingly, they think that the government should “not pay too much attention to what ordinary folks think.”

According to Ginsberg and Bachner, this has been a long time coming. Progressive Era reformers transformed government in an effort to make it less partisan.

They succeeded — only to make it less accountable and less … American.

In ancient times, great administrative states were run by eunuchs, men gelded to curb their appetites the better to serve their sovereigns (pharaohs; emperors; kings). Not their own interests.

Is it time to bring back the practice?

Just joking. Instead, Congress can tame the bureaucratic leviathan it has created by trimming its ranks and pulling back on pay and benefits until they’re more in line with the private sector.

Let’s hope the House’s recent passage* of the REINS Act, requiring congressional approval of major regulations, is a sign that Congress’s lackadaisical attitude about the bureaucracy is changing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Let’s hope the Senate follows suit.


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Categories
crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom meme moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Which is more dangerous?

Corporations cannot and do not tax, conscript, and kill under claim of legal authority to do so.
Only governments do that. 

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corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
Categories
Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard responsibility term limits

Politicians Bearing GIFs

Yesterday, we discovered that the biggest term limits opponent in Arkansas — former state senator Jon Woods — also allegedly led an elaborate legislative fraud scheme, whereby he and a state representative traded tax dollars for cash bribes.

For now, Woods is an unindicted co-​conspirator. But last week, the representative involved pled guilty to a felony carrying a possible 20-​year prison term and directly implicated Sen. Woods.

Woods’s alleged criminality involves the GIF program — General Improvement Funds. Legislators can personally direct GIF dollars to pet projects and favored cronies, taking political credit. The process is similar to congressional earmarks. And just as corrupting.

In an article entitled, “How a 1997 Power Grab is costing Arkansas taxpayers millions on pet projects,” the grassroots group Conduit for Action explains that the GIF rules changed just before our new millennium, when term limits first cleaned out the state House (1998). The old batch of legislators gave themselves unchecked control over this vote-​buying slush fund.

And that is when even bigger corruption surfaced. “A Federal grand jury shook the Arkansas political establishment today with a long list of political corruption indictments that reaches to the apex of the state Legislature,” the New York Times reported in 1999.

Back then, Sen. Nick Wilson was Arkansas’s loudest term limits critic … until his three-​decade-​long career ended with a guilty plea to 133 counts of racketeering and other public corruption.

Interesting that top legislative enemies of term limits, both past and present, wear the Scarlet Letter “C” for corruption. Coincidence?

Term limits are no friend to corruption. And vice-versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard

Rules for Rulers?

Politicians in Tampa, Florida, have forced citizens there to vote for term limits, and then vote to keep those term limits again and again — against attempts to repeal or weaken the limits. So I keep my eye out for news from the city.

Earlier this month, Mike Deeson, an investigative reporter with WTSP 10 News, Tampa Bay’s CBS affiliate, exposed Mayor Bob Buckhorn’s open violation of the city charter’s requirement that all department heads must be city residents. Buckhorn hired Sonja Little, now the city’s highest paid employee, to serve as his Chief Financial officer, and admits on camera that he promised her she would not have to move into the city.

“The question is,” the mayor explained, “do you want talent or do you really make the residency — she’s only about a mile away from the city border — the issue?” Buckhorn answers his own question, “I would rather have talent” … than follow the law. 

In even slipperier fashion, Mayor Buckhorn has attempted to get around the clear, unequivocal wording in the charter by claiming Ms. Little has served as the “interim” Chief Financial officer for the last five years!

Reporter Deeson asks the operative question: “[I]f you’re going to ignore the residency requirement, what other parts of the charter should you just ignore?”

Deeson worries about provisions requiring competitive bidding, guarding against conflicts of interest and mandating term limits, which is “particularly problematic for a mayor who is in his second term and has to leave office when it’s over.”

On social media, Tampa residents are unloading on the mayor with numerous variants of: “This is truly what’s wrong with government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability free trade & free markets insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Crony Carrier

Sure, I’ve complained about the over-​the-​top anti-​Trump bias of much of the mainstream media (which may actually have improved Trump’s public standing). But, today, I enthusiastically celebrate that supercilious slant.

Why? Because it means much of the media amazingly finds itself on the right side, panning the recent deal to save 1,000 jobs at the Carrier Corporation.

Saving jobs is good per se. We want jobs to stay here in America. But, at what price?

Thus far, the deal remains secret, but according to Politico, “The agreement reportedly includes $7 million in state tax breaks over ten years offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-​public entity that doesn’t require legislative approval for its deals.”

“Quasi-​public entities” always make me queasy.

“Can American companies now merely threaten to go to Mexico,” asks Chris Rossini in the Ron Paul Liberty Letter, “in order to get a sweetheart deal for themselves?”

This special arrangement’s costs are not merely monetary: Special deals for some companies at the expense of others undermine the whole concept of equality under the law.

File under: crony capitalism.

Even the socialists at The Nation say the agreement “epitomizes corporate socialism at the expense of American taxpayers.”

“I certainly think that, if President Obama had done something like this, conservatives would have been freaking out,” argues Reason’s Peter Suderman.

Many are. Well, maybe not exactly “freaking out” — but vocally opposing the idea of the not-​quite-​yet-​president picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Crony capitalism didn’t make America great. Our revolution’s justification prompts the antithesis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Carrier, crony, cronyism, Trump, corporate, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets insider corruption national politics & policies responsibility

United States of Corruption

When Hillary Clinton assured her insider sponsors (as we learned through WikiLeaks) that there would be a crucial difference between what she tells the people and what her actual policies would be, she was not merely admitting to a private and a public face.

The President is legally, and by honor, bound to serve the American people, not Goldman-​Sachs. What she was confessing to was more than the mere appearance of a conflict of interests.

She boasted a plan of betrayal.

In that light, President-​elect Donald Trump’s international business deals seem … what? His first diplomatic meeting — with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — included his daughter and partner-​in-​business Ivanka.

It seems to at least wander into conflict-​of-​interest territory, if not stake claim and hoist up a flag proclaiming Trumpistan America!

So I was very pleased, yesterday, when the President-​elect vowed to step out from the running of his global business and branding empire.

Earlier, he had brushed off conflict-​of-​interest concerns, saying he could run his empire and … ours.

Apparently, his new White House appointees have convinced him that this business dealing while President was a huge problem. “I feel it is visually important,” he explained Wednesday morning, “as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

Thanks, Steve Bannon?

Or, maybe, Mitt Romney, with whom he dined* the night before?

I hope Mr. Trump follows through with this, as well as distance himself from business partner Ivanka as unofficial policy advisor.

Americans did not reject Corrupt Hillary only to wind up with a Corrupt Trump set.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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