Tag: corruption

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom insider corruption

The Ayatollah for Governor?

Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is running for governor.

Again.

You may recall, as I certainly do, that Mr. Edmondson prosecuted — more like persecuted — me and two others involved in a 2005 petition drive. He charged us with “conspiracy to defraud the state,” a felony carrying a 10-​year prison term.

At our arraignment and processing, the three of us were shackled together with handcuffs and leg-​irons and paraded before TV cameras.

“Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?” was how a Forbes magazine editorial greeted the spectacle. The conservative Wall Street Journal connected the Sooner State to the kind of repression practiced in Pakistan, while liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader also condemned the prosecution. New Jersey Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine noted that Russia’s Vladimir Putin “could learn a thing or two from the Oklahoma boys.”

We became the Oklahoma 3. The AG earned the label “Ayatollah Edmondson.”

Loudly expressing our innocence, we waited for our day in court.

It was a long wait.

Edmondson held the indictment over our heads for a year and a half, publicly attacking us and calling us criminals. But he never permitted us our day in court. He went to great lengths to avoid completing a preliminary hearing, which would have allowed a judge to determine if enough evidence existed to hold a trial.

Finally, in 2009, as he prepared to launch his previous unsuccessful run for governor, he dropped all the charges.

When someone abuses power so recklessly, that someone shouldn’t be given more power.

Today, career politician Drew Edmondson tells voters he will “Put Oklahomans First.” He can’t even come up with his own slogan.

Ayatollah Edmondson: Dangerous. And unoriginal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

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Additional Information

Capitol Beat: In critical analysis, Edmondson ranked among worst attorneys general
CEI: Drew Edmondson’s Prosecution of Paul Jacob Is Unconstitutional
Wall Street Journal: Still Oklahoma’s Most Wanted – Attorney General leads posse chasing critics of government
NewsOK: State’s Unjust Prosecution 
Capitol Beat: Edmondson should free “The Oklahoma Three”

My Writing on Edmondson’s Attack on Petition Rights

We, the Oklahoma 3 — Oct. 7, 2007
Guilt & Innocence in Oklahoma — Jan. 21, 2008
Constitutionally Unsuited for the Job — Feb. 13, 2008
Above the Law — March 14, 2008
Opposed to Answers — April 28, 2008
Edmondson vs. Term Limits — May 20, 2008
Another OK Court Decision — June 4, 2008
Petitioners May Petition — July 8, 2008
Scare Tactic in Oklahoma — July 23, 2008
Feeling Sorry for Oklahoma — Nov. 17, 2008
The Wheels of Injustice — Dec. 4, 2008
The Oklahoma Three, Free at Last — Jan. 26, 2009
The Year of Reform? — Feb. 18, 2009
The Untold Story of the Oklahoma 3 — May 1, 2009
Change Sweeping Down the Plains — May 19, 2009

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Corruption, Arkansas-​Style

Arkansas, term limits, corruption, rules, regulations, initiative, democracy

On Friday, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck Issue 3, a citizen-​initiated measure to restore legislative term limits, from Arkansas’ November ballot. The Court declared, 4 – 3, that there weren’t enough “valid” signatures.

This, despite opponents never disputing that more than enough Arkansas voters had signed the petition.

In recent years, legislators have enacted a slew of convoluted laws, purposely designed to wreck the initiative and referendum process.* The regulations give insiders and partisans a myriad of hyper-​technical “gotchas” that can be used to disqualify whole sheets of bonafide voter signatures.

“The legislature,” explained former Governor Mike Huckabee recently, “sucker-​punched the people of Arkansas and expanded their terms. They did it, I think, very dishonestly — by calling it an ethics bill … that had nothing to do with ethics. It was all about giving themselves longer terms.”

Since getting away with that 2014 ballot con job, giving themselves a whopping 16 years in office, seven Arkansas state legislators have been indicted or convicted of corruption. The author of that tricky ballot measure, former Sen. Jon Woods, just began serving an 18-​year federal prison sentence for corruption.

Other corruption, that is.

“It’s one reason I think term limits are a very important part of our political system today,” said Huckabee. It is, he argued, “easier to get involved in things that are corrupt the longer you stay.”

Now, sadly, after 2014’s fraudulent ballot measure and two 4 – 3 state supreme court decisions neutering the entire ballot initiative process, political corruption can continue unabated in the Natural State. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The state supreme court has ignored the clear language in the state constitution regarding such petitions: “No legislation shall be enacted to restrict, hamper or impair the exercise of the rights herein reserved to the people.”

N.B. For relevant links, check yesterday’s splash page for this weekend’s Townhall column.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment moral hazard property rights U.S. Constitution

Forfeiting Common Sense

civil, asset, forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, cash, grocery bag, Whole Foods, theft, police, corruption

Is it okay to steal if you can get away with it?

A full answer would require a treatise. But most of us common-​sensibly understand that evil does not magically become good when perpetrators are not stopped or punished. Thrasymachus was wrong to contend, in Plato’s Republic, that justice is merely the “interest of the stronger.”

When it comes to crimes like bank robberies, muggings and car jackings, we have no doubts about this. In such blatant cases, we suffer nothing like the legitimate confusion to which we may be prone regarding the exact border between adjacent parcels of land or the niceties of intellectual property law.

Well, somebody tell the New Hampshire state police.

Some of them apparently believe it’s okay to steal if you can evade laws against the stealing.

New Hampshire’s recent reform of civil forfeiture laws requires criminal conviction of a person before there can be any forfeiture of his property. But a loophole enabled officers to grab $46,000 of Edward Phipps’s money — from his car, stopped on the road — even though he was never accused of a crime. 

How?

It seems that if state cops collaborate with the feds, safeguards established to prevent such abuse can be evaded.

To retrieve even a little of his money ($7,000), Mr. Phipps was forced to relinquish all claim to the balance ($39,000). Even if lawmakers close the loophole, as they should, the robber-​cops will probably get away with this particular larceny. 

They shouldn’t.

That’s injustice, not common sense.  I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo Credit: N.H. State Police

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom government transparency incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

“Dorky” Doesn’t Define It

term limits, Congress, myth, power, corruption

“Term limits,” said Daniel McCarthy, editor of The Modern Age, in a recent podcast conversation with historian Tom Woods, “was one of the dorkiest ideas of the 1994 so-​called Newt Gingrich revolution.”

He characterized it as not having really gone anywhere.

Huh?

Granted, Congress is still not term-​limited. But Americans in 15 states — including California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, and representing 37 percent of the nation’s population — do enjoy term-​limited state legislatures.*

And it sure wasn’t Newt Gingrich’s idea. Gingrich opposed it.

McCarthy repeats the old chestnut that what term limitation “winds up doing is actually weakening Congress and congresspeople in particular — relative to their own staff, who stay in Congress and become sort of experts and learn how to manipulate their congressman, and also relative to the executive branch who have people rotate in from time to time.”

Nifty theory — one very popular with politicians, who know that voters fear unelected influences on legislation.

The reality, however, is that Congress, designed by the Constitution’s framers to be both most powerful and closest to the people‚ is, today, the weakest branch.

And legislators are not term limited.

Ditch the “manipulation theory”; adopt a “collaboration theory”: legislators with Methuselah-​long careers learn, sans “rotation in office,” to feather their own nests and those of the interest groups that fund their re-​elections (and insider trading schemes).

Term limits remain popular with normal Americans because voters intuitively grasp the reality of such everyday corruption, which is directly tied to Congress having sloughed off so much constitutional responsibility. 

We need term limits to restore a Congress sold out by professional politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Nine of the ten largest cities in America likewise have termed-​limited their elected officeholders. For more information, see the links to the column from which this episode of Common Sense is condensed.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics privacy property rights responsibility tax policy too much government

Progress, DC-​Style

gentrification, renewall, Washington D.C., corruption, crony capitalism, housing, dirigisme

Is the black, Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., actually a “racist”? What about the city council, which is 46 percent African-​American, 85 percent Democrat, and 100 percent liberal/​progressive?

That’s what a lawsuit argues — the DC ‘powers that be’ are racist in their development and housing policies. Filed on behalf of several African-​American DC residents, it alleges that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the council have been striving mightily, as the Washington Post reported, “to ‘lighten’ African American neighborhoods and break up long-​established communities.”

“Every city planning agency,” states the complaint, “. . . conspired to make D.C. very welcoming for preferred residents and sought to displace residents inimical to the creative economy.”

Nothing that a billion dollars couldn’t make right, of course — for which the plaintiffs ask. 

But is gentrification a crime?

As American University professor Derek Hyra told the Post, “Developers want to maximize their return. This is not a conspiracy. This is capitalism.”

But no, this certainly isn’t laissez faire “capitalism.” It could be described as dirigisme — or “state capitalism” or “crony capitalism” or just a bad old-​fashioned mercantilism, revised to work at the city level, where governments partner up with particular groups to extract as much wealth for the insiders as they can. Professor Hyra acknowledges that Bowser and the council were “providing subsidies” to bring in richer citizens and push out poorer ones. 

Most importantly, we discover yet again that the power politicians claim they need to help the poor, is used to help the rich. 

Way to go, “progressives.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Note: The mayor is a Democrat and the 13-​member council is composed of eleven (11) Democrats and two (2) independents. There are no Republicans.

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Categories
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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