Tag: corruption

When in Rome

Italy, housing, corruption, government, bureaucracy

Americans concerned with government corruption really should study Italy.

Why?

“You know Italians,” septuagenarian Elio Ciampanella was quoted in the New York Times last week. “If there is a law, they will try to find ways to go around it!”

But it is not just ordinary citizens — the people — who are evading bad laws. It is government workers who won’t do their jobs, and who engage in a wide range of corrupt deals and shady incompetence.

I know, this seems awfully unfair to the Italians. What I’ve said is the case with governments around the world. But not equally. (Scandinavian countries have a long history of government worker probity, if not ultra-competence.) And Italians do have a well-earned reputation for government corruption.

Arguably, it’s the form freedom takes in Italy.

Be that true or not, Mr. Ciampanella’s story, as related in the Times, is a fascinating one. He asked for a government-subsidized apartment, and had to wait ten years to get one … only to discover the problem wasn’t a lack of apartments, but a surfeit.

Yes, the government owned too many apartments to keep track of!

And so they didn’t.

And gave special deals to “special people.”

In other words: incompetence and corruption as a way of life.

Market institutions that behave so chaotically and with so little attention to efficiency go out of business. But government? That’s “necessary,” so: too big to fail. And so, commonly excused.

No wonder, then, that the common-sense approach to government is to limit it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags bureaucracy, corruption, housing, Italy

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

Return to Robbery

civil asset forfeiture, asset, forfeiture, police, abuse, stealing, theft, property, Common Sense

Last week, the crooks in Washington proved themselves nice enough to let us know that their rip-off machine is back in action. The Obama Justice Department announced the resumption of the “equitable sharing” program, whereby the Feds sing Kumbaya with state and local police while sharing the loot they snatch from innocent folks through “civil asset forfeiture.”

Yes, there again is that strange three-word, legalistic, police-pocketing term: civil asset forfeiture.

Free country? Not so long as local police and federal government agencies seize people’s stuff without ever charging or convicting those people of a crime. Simply by claiming suspicion … about their stuff.

To get their money or property back, the victims must hire an attorney and sue the government. Guilty until proven innocent. Only those raking in the ill-gotten gains are shameless enough to defend this completely un-American practice.

Which more than doubled in use during President Obama’s first five years in office, according to The Washington Post. Today, police and various government agents actually take more value from innocent Americans through civil asset forfeiture than do burglars through burglary.

“As President Obama counts down the days of his last year in office,” the Cato Institute’s Adam Bates wrote back in January, “one positive step he could take for his legacy would be to halt the federal government’s use of civil asset forfeiture and make the suspension of the equitable sharing program permanent.”

Yet, despite Mr. Obama’s talk about criminal justice reform, and despite his ability to bring justice with a stroke of his pen (and actually within his constitutional authority), last week the Feds instead went back to business as usual, ripping people off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, corruption, crime, law, police

Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Forfeiting Forfeiture

Asset, Forfeiture, police, crime, Department of Justice, DOJ, illustration, Common Sense

“The Department of Justice announced [last] week that it’s suspending a controversial program that allows local police departments to keep a large portion of assets seized from citizens under federal law and funnel it into their own coffers,” reports the Washington Post.

The Feds call the paused program “equitable sharing”; as I explained last month, I call it “equitable stealing.”

Even when state and local laws prohibit it, local police have been using this federal program to continue taking people’s money and property without ever convicting them of a crime.

The loophole? They split the loot with the Feds.

Now that has ended. According to the Post, this is the result of “budget cuts” in the recently passed omnibus spending bill; the Wall Street Journal calls it a “reallocation of funds.”

Either way, Happy Holidays!

Yet, sadly, the return to freedom, justice and the American Way may be short-lived.

“The Department does not take this step lightly,” wrote M. Kendall Day, the chief of DOJ’s Asset Forfeiture and Money Laundering Section. “We explored every conceivable option that would have enabled us to preserve some form of meaningful equitable sharing.…”

In his letter, he proclaiming a commitment to the principle of guilty-until-proven-innocent and to grabbing people’s stuff, telling state and local and tribal police departments, “We will take all appropriate and necessary measures to minimize the impact of the rescission and reinstate sharing distributions as soon as practical and financially feasible.”

As the Wall Street Journal editorialized, “Congress should make sure that never happens.”

Of course, Congress will likely need a mighty nudge from us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, corruption, crime, Department of Justice, DOJ

Accountability general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

A Broken Fix

carrot, sticks, congress, compromise, influence, illustration, Common Sense

It is universally acknowledged that Congress is all screwed up, but ideas differ on how to reform it.

Representative Paul Ryan (R‑Wisc.), in accepting the Speaker of the House position, admitted, “The House is broken. We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.”

But how to fix what is broken?

In my opinion — and according to virtually every survey of Americans for the last 20 years — term limits would be the best first step.

Speaker Ryan, sadly, is no term limits fan. But at least he calls for “opening the process up” and a “new spirit of transparency.” Ryan promises “not [to] duck tough issues,” while seeking “concrete results.”

Chris Cillizza, writing “The Fix” blog for The Washington Post, predicts Ryan will “probably not” succeed.

Cillizza cites four big problems, the last two are obvious, though undefined: “3. Polarization in the country” that results in “4. Polarization in Congress.”

His No. 1 reason for the dysfunction in the House? The ban on earmarks. “Without a carrot to offer wavering members on contentious legislation,” Cillizza complains, “leadership had to rely almost exclusively on relationships and goodwill.”

Forget persuasion on the merits; apparently, congressional leadership should bribe members for their votes.

Next, Cillizza bemoans the “rise of outside conservative groups” able to speak against incumbents they oppose and for those they support. This means “the party leadership could no longer choke off campaign funds to those who refused to fall in line.”

“Falling in line” isn’t the right reform goal.

Meet another member of the Washington press corps with a strange hankering for boss rule.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Congress, corruption, influence, lobby, Paul Ryan, reform, speaker

Accountability Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom meme

Progressive Logic

Government is so corrupt that its power to intervene in the market can be bought and sold by the rich…

…Therefore government should be bigger and more powerful.

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Tags big government, corruption, crony capitalism, government failure, intervention, Progressive Logic

Accountability education and schooling

A Public Fraud in the Midwest

Post author By CS Admin
Post date October 28, 2015
5 Comments on 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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