Tag: corruption

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Accountability education and schooling folly government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Reading, Writing & Racketeering

schools, corruption, D.C., Washington, education, cheating, incentives, teachers, union

When I attended a public school — many decades ago, in a galaxy far, far away — teachers told students that cheating was unacceptable and would be punished.

Harshly.

Today, the idea has students laughing — all the way to graduation.

Last year, after DC Public Schools officials breathlessly announced massive improvements in graduation rates, several honest teachers broke ranks, and an investigation uncovered massive fraud: a whopping one of every three graduates across the city resulted from falsified records.

Many students played hooky for a third or even half the school year. Administrators also pressured teachers to improve grades to hike the graduation rate.

“The problem,” Washington Post columnist Colbert King concluded, “is systemic indeed.”*

You see, employment evaluations and cash bonuses for teachers and administrators were — and still are — tied in part to student graduation stats. It turns out that an incentive to good work can also serve as an incentive to cheat. Could it be that government employees grading their own work does not encourage honesty?

Just months after confirmation of the worst fears of public school corruption, new allegations against teachers and administrators at Roosevelt High School more than suggest fudging attendance records is ongoing.

“This growing environment of fear and mistrust,” asserts Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, “has never been addressed and continues to be a disservice to students and teachers.”

City officials have had plenty of time to address the issue. And of the common sense idea that the best way to avoid fear and mistrust is to follow the rules?

Crickets.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Nor is the fraudulent behavior limited to dishonestly boosting graduation rates. Former DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned back in February after it became public knowledge that his daughter jumped 600 other students on a waiting list for her school. A recent Post story about enrollment fraud, whereby non-residents grab spots at prestigious schools such as the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, without paying the non-resident fee, was entitled, “Stop enrollment fraud? D.C. school officials are often the ones committing it.” Two-thirds of pending cases involve a current or past DCPS employee.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people Popular

Sweet Schadenfreude?

Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods, corruption, Arkansas, conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering

Yesterday, jurors convicted former Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods on 15 felony counts consisting of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

Woods was at the center of a corrupt scheme to reward cronies at Ecclasia College and AmeriWorks with GIFs — state General Improvement Funds — in return for kickbacks. Former State Rep. Micah Neal, his co-conspirator, pleaded guilty more than a year ago. And last month, the former president of Ecclesia College, Oren Paris III, also admitted guilt.

Regular readers may remember Woods as the Senate author of Issue 3, placed on the 2014 ballot by legislators — along with a summary for voters to read that fibbed about “establishing term limits” and imposing a gift ban between lobbyists and legislators.

Enough voters were hoodwinked,* leading to the gutting of term limits (allowing a legislator to stay in the same seat for 16 years), the empowering of a legislature-appointed “Independent” Commission to bestow a 150 percent pay raise on legislators, and the enabling of legislators to eat every meal at the lobbyists’ trough.

Mr. Woods now faces as many as 20 years on each of 14 counts and ten more years on the money laundering conviction. Having experienced, in a previous life, the poor customer service in the federal prison system, I do not wish that on anyone.

But justice has been done.

More good news: the Arkansas Supreme Court has since ruled the entire corrupt GIF program unconstitutional . . . while Arkansas Term Limits closes in on completion of their petition drive to place a measure on this November’s ballot to restore the term limits stolen by Woods.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The measure passed 52 to 48 percent at the ballot box.

 

Previous coverage here of Woods’ corruption:

 

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

Thwarting Cops Who Are Robbers

asset forfeiture, corruption, police, traffic, theft, robbery, traffic stop

“Carrying cash is not a crime,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban informs us, “yet too often the government treats it like one.”

Musician Phil Parhamovich learned that the hard way. He was porting his life savings, almost $92,000 — earmarked for a down payment on a recording studio — when cop-robbers of the Wyoming Highway Patrol stopped him for not wearing a seat belt.

It turned out to be an extremely expensive infraction. The officers intimated that it was illegal to travel with so much cash and pressured him to hand it over. Scared and believing that his alternative was jail, Phil signed a preprinted waiver letting them grab his life savings.

Preprinted waiver? This means it’s routine for these guys to try to legitimate their actions as they premeditatedly intimidate and rob people.

The state of Wyoming tried to keep the money. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice took Phil’s case, and a judge accepted the facts presented by Phil and his IJ lawyer. After months of tribulation and suspense, the robbery victim got his money back.

Another win for the good guys.

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice’s freedom-defenders have won a great number of such cases. Yet, IJ lawyers certainly cannot litigate all the forfeiture injustices being committed by government  authorities all across the country.

That’s why the group is pushing to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. 

And you can help. How? Launch efforts in your town or state, or work to push infant efforts to a higher level. Take the initiative. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense

Corruption Beyond Imagination

Baltimore, police, corruption, crime, Gun Trace Task Force

“Two Baltimore detectives were convicted Monday of robbery and racketeering,” the Washington Post reported, “in a trial that laid bare shocking crimes committed by an elite police unit and surfaced new allegations of widespread corruption in the city’s police department.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise presented the jury with “things more horrible in some cases than you ever could have imagined.”

Test your imagination:

  • Four police officers, already convicted, testified to routinely violating the rights of citizens in order to steal cash and property worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
  • Officers left the scene of an accident they caused without summoning assistance for those injured, and then covered up their involvement.
  • Detectives “doubled their salaries by lying to claim extravagant overtime when they were actually at bars or . . . out of the country on vacation.”
  • There was an allegation of murder against one policeman and a charge that another high police official covered it up.

A total of eight officers of the Gun Trace Task Force have now been convicted of or pleaded guilty to felonies.

Where was Internal Affairs? “The head of internal affairs has been transferred” the Post informed, after he was “implicated in misconduct during trial testimony.”

We could sic the feds on them! Oh, wait, “[m]ost of the behavior charged in the case took place even as the [Baltimore police] department was already under federal investigation by the Justice Department . . .”

Prospects for reform?

Last Wednesday, Mayor Catherine Pugh claimed to having been “too busy to follow the trial closely or read Baltimore Sun coverage…”

Baltimore, we’ve got a problem.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies term limits too much government

Captured Congress

House Oversight Committee, lobby, lobbyist, bribes, control, congress, corruption, puppet

“Do you think party leaders exert too much control over members of Congress and over the agenda,” Full Measure host Sharyl Attkisson asked retiring Rep. Darrell Issa, “in a way that might be motivated by donations and corporate influence and special interests?”

Winner of five Emmys, as well as the 2012 Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video Investigative Reporting, Attkisson’s “exit interview” with Congressman Issa (R-Calif.) is illuminating.

“It happens every day,” he replied, “that a lobbyist calls the majority leader, the minority leader, the speaker, and some chairmen or ranking member gets a call saying, ‘hey go light on that.’”

Issa pointed out that the committee chairs “really don’t control the committees. More and more it’s controlled out of the speaker’s office and out of the minority leader’s office. You know, they pick who gets the committees and then they pick really what you get to do.”

And it’s getting worse, he said.

As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Issa has led a number of very high-profile investigations. His investigation of Countrywide, Attkisson noted, “revealed that federal public officials and their staffers, both Democrats and Republicans, had quietly received lucrative VIP loans from Countrywide as the company sought to influence their decisions.”

“It was much more effective than political giving,” Issa offered.

He also accused Republican leaders of removing the Benghazi investigation from his committee to a select committee to “keep it from going too far.”

“I have seen the defense-related committees that take money from defense contractors go easy on defense oversight,” Attkisson explained, prompting the congressman to agree “that happens every day here.”

Between the party bosses and the special interests, our Congress has been captured.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N. B. Full Measure is broadcast every Sunday on 162 Sinclair Broadcast Group stations reaching 43 million households in 79 media markets.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency incumbents term limits

The Smoking Russian Donut

Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.), corruption, Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper, Dunkin Donuts, FBI, Russia, Russian

“Politicians in prison garb,” headlined a recent Sun Sentinel editorial, “shake trust in government.”

It was not a fashion statement.

“What is it about a long career that makes some politicians — not all, let’s be clear about that — feel the rules don’t apply to them?” asked the paper, which serves Florida’s Broward and Palm Beach counties.

This week, after spending the last 24 years in Congress, former Rep. Corrine Brown (D-Fla.) began serving a five-year term in federal prison. Brown was convicted of 18 separate fraud and corruption counts stemming from her use of a public charity to benefit herself.

Not to be outdone, last week the FBI arrested Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper on various corruption charges following a six-year undercover sting operation. “From what is now known,” the editorial board judged “the case against Cooper” to be “devastating.”

There are taped conversations, reportedly, between FBI agents posing as “wealthy land owners [seeking] political favors” and the mayor, discussing pay (her) to play (with the city). At one point, undercover agents say a bribe was delivered to the mayor in “a Dunkin’ Donuts bag stuffed with $8,000 in cash and checks from people with a ‘bunch of Russian names.’”

Russians?

“If not so tragic,” the paper wrote of the corruption, “it would be laughable to imagine Russians colluding to control the Hallandale Beach city election.”

Humor is needed, truly. Yet, the Sun Sentinel concluded instead that “term limits are needed in Hallandale Beach.”

Of course.

And needed for Congress.

Now more than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Earmark This Bad Argument

earmarks, ear marks, pork, Congress, spending, corrumption, deals

With President Trump endorsing a return to earmarks, House Republicans too are reportedly “reconsidering” their usefulness and pondering “how they might ease back into the practice.” Lawmakers fret that they have lost too much power by giving up this instrument of corruption. (Not their characterization.)

Wikipedia defines “earmark” as a budgetary provision that “directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or [competitive] allocation process.” An earmark is a taxpayer-funded goodie bestowed on a congressman’s constituent, the sort of crony willing to contribute to the bestower’s next election campaign in return.

Quid pro quo, pay-for-play, bribery. Whatever you call it, there’s darn good reason why political leaders who fight corruption have fought to end earmarks.

Congressional Republicans imposed a ban on earmarks in 2011 to show that they were anti-corruption. So why relapse? Well, “the time is right,” according to GOP Representative John Culberson, for Congress to prove it can use earmarks responsibly. His bad argument is that the “excesses” of a decade ago were committed by “knuckleheads [who] went overboard.”

Somebody alert Culberson to the fact that many of the same knuckleheads are still in office. Ahem. Congress is not yet term-limited, remember?

The more basic point is that earmarks are by nature corrosive of sound government. President Trump’s only metric is apparently “getting [things] done” as opposed to obstructionism, preferring “the great friendliness” when we had earmarks. Sure, stuff got done — a lot more spending, a lot more bad stuff.

To the extent they’re gone, earmarks should stay gone. The only appropriate action is to make it even harder to bring them back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom insider corruption local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics too much government

The Biggest Loser

Illinois, corruption, exit, vote with your feet, taxes

Government is supposed to serve everybody . . . according to good, old-fashioned republican theory. But most governments serve some more than others. We can define as “corruption” any attempt to make government serve a few at the expense of the many — or the many at the expense of the few.

Illinois is corrupt, and most of us can only watch it get worse. But what can we say about those who live under the Prairie State’s thumb? When citizens see an institution slipping out of control, they can remain passive or take charge. Illinois citizens have petitioned for term limits, redistricting reform and a more transparent legislature only to be blocked again and again by the state supreme court.

What more can conscientious citizens, folks I like to call “liberty initiators” do? Well, they can

  • express themselves in criticism as well as offer alternatives;
  • vote thoughtfully and be well informed;
  • consider running for office or work for good candidates;
  • donate money to reform projects.

Alas, these and other expressions of “voice” have not exactly forestalled disaster.

The last resort is to “exit,” leave — vote with your feet.

The population of Illinois has declined. Many have pulled up stakes and fled across the border to Indiana and elsewhere. In the most recent year for which we have data, Illinois lost nearly 34,000 people, more than any other state.*

Unfortunately, this population loss is only an indicator of how bad Illinois State Government is doing. It offers no solution.

Except, of course, for the people who leave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Idaho has experienced the biggest population increase. See Reason’s reportage.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard Regulating Protest tax policy

Been Burned

IRS, I.R.S., corruption, taxes, budget, tears

“They’ve been burned. They’ve been hammered. They’ve been bludgeoned,” George Washington University law professor Miriam Galston explained to the Washington Post. “They’re trying to survive.”

In this heartbreaking discussion at this special time of year, the “they” are the poor, long-suffering folks . . . at the Internal Revenue Service.

According to the Post analysis, “conservatives” have schemed to “scale back the IRS and shrink the federal government.” (I guess this is supposed to tear at every American’s heartstrings.) Notably, they “capitalized on revelations in 2013 that IRS officials focused inappropriately on tea party and other conservative groups based . . . Among conservatives, the episode has come to be known as the ‘IRS targeting scandal.’”

Note that term of art: episode.

The Post saw no scandal, however — despite the IRS having admitted to harassing, blocking and delaying Tea Party and conservative groups from exercising their most fundamental First Amendment rights to freedom of association and freedom of speech, in some cases for four years.

Instead, the Post decries the response to this gross violation of citizens, a congressional check on the power — and budget — of the agency responsible: reducing the budget for the Exempt Organizations division of the IRS from $102 million in 2011 to $82 million in 2016.

Heavens, Washington is never supposed to work like that! It actually approaches . . . accountability.

The budget cuts, along with hefty settlements the IRS is now paying to victimized groups that sued, make it less likely the IRS will repeat this scandalous . . . episode.

“To many, the IRS targeting of Tea Party and conservative and even some progressive groups is not a scandal,” my Sunday Townhall.com column concluded. “To me, that’s the biggest scandal of all.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

N.B. The title reference is to Neil Young’s song, Burned, which begins, “Been burned, and with both feet on the ground . . .”

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IRS, I.R.S., corruption, taxes, budget, tears

 

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Accountability education and schooling folly local leaders responsibility

Learning to Cheat

Ballou High School, corruption, cheating, scandal, WAMU, DCPS, Washington D.C. , D.C. Public Schools

Months ago, Ballou High was widely lauded for posting impressive gains in graduation rates — from a abysmal 51 percent two years ago to a much less terrible 64 percent this year — and for the even more remarkable feat of getting every single graduate accepted by a community college or university.

“Pay-dirt!” I sarcastically proclaimed at Townhall.com.

But the real dirt was dug up by WAMU, a National Public Radio affiliate in the nation’s capital. What did Ballou students learn? How to cheat.

Well, that appears to have been the lesson plan, anyway.

In numerous interviews — many given on conditions of anonymity for fear of retribution — teachers charged they were pressured by the administration to give grades that students did not earn, so those students could nonetheless graduate.

“Last year, DCPS put school administrators entirely in control of teacher evaluations. . . .” And those evaluations, which grade teachers and administrators on student performance, can mean as much as $30,000 in bonus pay.

The incentive to cheat is both obvious and sizable.

The mayor and the chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools quickly announced an investigation, but regular observers suspect the usual “white-wash.”

“This is [the] biggest way to keep a community down,” protested one black teacher. “To graduate students who aren’t qualified, send them off to college unprepared, so they return to the community to continue the cycle.”

That tragic cycle is captured in public education’s corrupt cycle: promised reforms followed by false claims of progress . . . followed by the discovery of cheating.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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