Tag: corruption

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Accountability general freedom government transparency responsibility too much government

The Confidence Game

Romania, no-confidence vote, Bucharest, democracy, protest, corruption

Romania’s parliament has confidence in . . . itself.

Sorta. A parliamentary no-confidence vote failed, despite 161 lawmakers voting for the resolution and only eight voting with the government.

Confused? The no-confidence measure failed because the Social Democrats, controlling nearly two-thirds of the 465 seats in parliament, abstained on the measure, which required a majority of parliament to vote affirmatively.

Not a very confident vote of confidence.

The vote came after eight days of protests in Bucharest, the capital, and around the country — the largest since the 1989 fall of communism. A quarter of a million people took to the streets of Bucharest last Sunday, and half a million nationwide.*

The protests came after last week’s late night corruption decree, issued “by the cabinet, without parliamentary debate,” as Reuters reported — and “designed to decriminalize a number of graft offences, cut prison terms for others and narrow the definition of conflict-of-interest.”

“The emergency ordinance . . . effectively decriminalized some forms of corruption if the amount involved was less than $47,000,” explained the New York Times, meaning amnesty for Liviu Dragnea, the head of the ruling Social Democrat Party, and dozens of other politicians convicted of graft and corruption.

The decree was hastily rescinded, but Romanians cannot trust their government.

“It’s too late,” one protester said. “Their credibility is zero.”

“This government has offered us a perfect demonstration of what it can do during its first 30 days in office,” another quipped. “Conclusion: they must leave.”

But Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu told fellow legislators, “I do hope that as of today we get back to work.”

Unfortunately, that’s what Romanians fear.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The same ratio of protesters to population in the U.S. would mean eight million protesters nationally.

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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?

Washington, corruption, big government, too much government, book

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

Which is more dangerous?

corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
Corporations cannot and do not tax, conscript, and kill under claim of legal authority to do so.
Only governments do that. 
Click below for a high resolution version of the image:
corporations, government, power, danger, government vs. corporation, which is more dangerous, law, corruption, meme, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense
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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard responsibility term limits

Politicians Bearing GIFs

Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

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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Arkansas, corruption, term limits, Jon Woods, GIF

 

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

Rules for Rulers?

Tampa, initiative, corruption, Mayor, Mike Deeson, Mayor Bob Buckhorn

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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Tampa, initiative, corruption, Mayor, Mike Deeson, Mayor Bob Buckhorn

 

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

Crony Carrier

Carrier, crony, cronyism, Trump, corporate, illustration

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

 

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

United States of Corruption

Romney, Trump, crow, corruption, dinner, illustration

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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Romney, Trump, crow, corruption, dinner, illustration

 

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Accountability national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

How to Corrupt Politicians Without Really Trying

politicians, public servants, service,

In a Townhall.com column last January, I argued that politicians weren’t “stupid,” as Mr. Trump had loudly proclaimed — to few objections.

The problem is worse: too many politicians lack honesty and integrity. They’re in the politics biz for their own lucrative ends.

Six weeks ago, I declared — again, to few objections — that “Politicians Must Suffer.” Despite the provocative, sizzling-with-Schadenfreude title, my point was simple: “lavish pay, pensions and other benefits for city councilmen, state legislators and congressmen constitute a serious problem.”

“It breeds,” I added, “bad behavior when politicians line their own pockets. . . .”

Well, I’m right.

At least, I’ve got some academic back-up from a new study by Mitchell Hoffman of the University of Toronto and Elizabeth Lyons of the University of California-San Diego, entitled, “A Time to Make Laws and a Time to Fundraise? On the Relation Between Salaries and Time Use for State Politicians.”

Sounds like a fascinating read, eh?

“Using data on time use and legislator salaries, we show that higher salary is associated with legislators spending more time on fundraising,” the study’s abstract reads. “In contrast, higher salary is also associated with less time spent on legislative activities and has no clear relation to time spent on constituent services.” [Emphasis added]

While their study jives with my experience, the Wall Street Journal reports that others were surprised. Authors Hoffman and Lyons explain: “When salaries are higher, politicians face a greater incentive to get re-elected (as the value of serving in office is greater). Thus, they will optimally respond by increasing the time spent on fundraising.”

Sounds like in addition to lower pay for politicians, we need term limits, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

This Too Shall Pass

teflon, white house, Hillary Clinton, Obama, corruption, illustration

We are living in what I hope are the latter days of the Watergate Era.

I’m old enough to remember Watergate. The un-making of President Nixon, before our very eyes, informed Americans in a deep and profound way. It led, in part, to the election of Jimmy Carter, often referred to as one of the least effectual presidents. And the Carter presidency led to Ronald Reagan.

While living under Watergate’s dark shadow, not all of us took away the same lesson.

We outsiders learned, once again, that power corrupts.

Insiders, on the other hand, learned something different: never willingly play a part in your side’s unmasking and un-making.

We tend to forget, what with the economic rebound and end of the Cold War, that the Reagan Administration had significant scandals. At the time, Reagan was dubbed the “Teflon President,” because Reagan & Co. figured out how to react: shrug; stall; deny, deny, deny. For this reason, scandal flowed off him, not sticking, as water off a well-oiled duck’s back.

Reagan and the Republicans did not allow what Republicans had allowed in Nixon’s day: there was no turning on one’s own, no (or few) breaking of ranks.

Then, President Bill Clinton took the effrontery of denial and stonewalling to new heights. With great help from fellow Democrats.

And so it goes, even to the present day, with Hillary Clinton carrying on her husband’s tradition. She, the first candidate to run for the presidency while under official investigation by the FBI, just received the current president’s endorsement.

The back-room deal has been made, perhaps? Obama will not allow Hillary to be prosecuted. It would tarnish his legacy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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teflon, white house, Hillary Clinton, Obama, corruption, illustration

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

Listen to Whom?

political parties, elections, party, Republican, Democrat, corruption, illustration

It’s a time for choosing, I concluded yesterday, for Republican voters — between the so-called “establishment” Republicans endorsing Donald Trump’s candidacy and those, such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and both President Bushes, who have declined to endorse.

Sen. John McCain’s admonition that, “You have to listen to people that have chosen the nominee of our Republican Party,” raises the imperative question: Who gets to choose?

Moreover, who should choose?

I’m a big fan of democracy — not pure democracy as a form of government, of course, but voting as a wonderful mechanism for people to control their government, and therefore, to protect our rights, our republic.

Yet, the Republican and Democratic Parties are private associations of citizens. We have a right to vote on who serves in public office, but not a right to decide who is nominated by a political party to which we do not belong.

“Without borders,” Mr. Trump has argued, “we don’t have a country.” To which a Republican friend recently added, “Without borders, we don’t have a party.”

People in political parties, as in any association, have rights, including who they nominate and how. Parties should be independent, not government-controlled.

Nor should political parties be advantaged in law, or their primaries and national conventions subsidized by taxpayers, as they are now.

Trump has railed that the GOP nomination process is rigged. Like most public-private partnerships, it is! But not the way you might think . . . as I’ll delve into tomorrow.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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political parties, elections, party, Republican, Democrat, corruption, illustration

 

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