Tag: corruption

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Accountability folly moral hazard too much government

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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Italy, housing, corruption, government, bureaucracy

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Progressive Logic

progressive logic, crony capitalism, corruption, big government, government power, meme, illustration, photomontage, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

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.

Click here for a large resolution version of this image:

progressive logic, crony capitalism, corruption, big government, government power, meme, illustration, photomontage, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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Accountability education and schooling

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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Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Chicago, school, education, graft, corruption, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

 

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Common Sense incumbents meme term limits

Scandal-Less

Term Limit Protection

In the 15 states voters have enacted term limits for their state representatives and senators, those politicians and the lobbyists and heads of powerful interest groups constantly complain that the limits are a problem.

I know. That’s why I like term limits.

Am I a broken record on the subject? Perhaps. But let me tell you about a different type of record . . . criminal.

“Are term limits good ideas for Pa. elected officials?” asked a Newsworks.org headline, after Steve Reed, the former 28-year mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, “was arrested on nearly 500 criminal charges that included corruption, theft, bribery and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activity.”

“Top N.Y. lawmaker arrested on corruption charges,” read a January USA Today headline. Sheldon Silver, after more than 20 years as Assembly Speaker was “arrested on federal corruption charges alleging he was involved in a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme for more than a decade.”

In 2009, after Massachusetts saw its third House Speaker in a row indicted, I ranked New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts as the three most corrupt states. The top contenders all have one thing in common: a lack of term limits.

A couple years ago, I joined Greg Upchurch, a St. Louis patent attorney and entrepreneur at a conference on term limits in Missouri. Greg (the driving force behind the state’s 1992 initiative) told the audience, mostly opposed to term limits, that the limits are here to stay.

Before term limits, Upchurch pointed out, legislative leaders were going to prison for corruption. With term limits, there simply haven’t been such scandals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Term Limit Protection

 

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folly government transparency porkbarrel politics too much government

Lagniappes à la Legislators

Arkansas Fools

Finally, a legislator with the guts to strike directly at the root of the problem: the People.

Well, not all the people. Just the ones who speak out, who show a lack respect for their elected betters.

In recent years, the Arkansas Legislature has heroically tried to control the chaotic and dangerous excesses of freedom and democracy in the Natural State. Legislators have proposed laws clamping down on citizen petitions, requiring employees to friend their employers on Facebook, outlawing photography in public and . . . well, you get the picture.

Last November, legislators convinced voters to amend the state constitution to weaken term limits and establish an independent commission (appointed by legislators) to raise their pay 148 percent. How? By astutely telling voters that the amendment would “set term limits,” while saying nothing about the pay hike.

Legislators also cleverly curtailed the citizen initiative process, regulating paid petitioners in ways the state constitution prohibits. But they got a pass on that; the eminent state supreme court has ruled in their favor. Then, unwilling to rest on their laurels, legislators introduced a new bill requiring petition campaigns to conduct costly criminal background checks on their paid petitioners.

One opponent called this deeply thoughtful measure “mean-spirited” and “unnecessary.”

Sen. Jon Woods argued the legislation doesn’t go far enough. He filed Senate Bill 0401, which mandates that any person speaking out in any way not in sync with the legislature must shut up.

“Enough pussy-footing around. Let’s end all this free speech hogwash,” Woods said. “We’re the boss!”

For real?

Unfortunately, everything prior to the previous three paragraphs is 100 percent true. Yup, every day is April Fools’ Day at the Arkansas Legislature.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Arkansas Fools

 

Categories
insider corruption

Battle of the Corrupt States

The name. The hair. The gall. Illinois Governor Rod Blogojevich is getting lots of attention.

However, the governor’s favor-trading is unique only in blatancy. The longer politicians hold power, the more readily they regard pay-to-play corruption as acceptable, profitable. Which is one reason I advocate initiative rights, term limits, mandatory caps on taxes and spending, and other reforms that pay-to-play politicos despise.

The desire to thwart such reform begets even more corruption.

Pundits say that if Illinois’s state government isn’t the most corrupt in the union, it’s in the running. But I nominate Oklahoma for the title. In Oklahoma, the bad-old-boy political establishment is so eager to thwart reform that politicians are willing to jail you for the “crime” of abetting democracy.

Two citizen activists and I found this out the hard way, when Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson indicted us in October 2007 for allegedly “defrauding” the state by running a petition drive to curb state spending.

The charges are phony, and Oklahoma’s residency law for signature gatherers — which we did not violate — has just been ruled unconstitutional.

Winning attorney Todd Graves said the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling “upholds an important free speech principle and joins other federal courts in upholding citizens’ First Amendment right to petition their government without threat of political prosecution.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.