Tag: government

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Grading Democracy on the Curve

public schools, education, democracy,, propaganda, ignorance

Voters, we are told, are amazingly ignorant. So, what to do?

“Ultimately, the ideal democracy is one in which as many citizens as possible vote,” writes Dambisa Moyo at The Guardian, “and the voters are armed with the most objective information. Yet today only a fraction of the electorate are voting, and many are armed with a diet of hyped-​up statistics and social media propaganda.” Among her proposals is a voting booth access test: “why not give all voters a test of their knowledge?”

I can think of a whole bunch of reasons, as can Ilya Somin, over at Volokh Conspiracy, who considers just a few. One of the more interesting is this: whereas Moyo has no wish to shove poor people out of the voting booth, and so envisions public schools to teach to the test — “the knowledge needed should be part of the core curriculum” — Somin quotes John Stuart Mill about the very political dangers of the very idea of public schooling: “A general State education,” wrote Mill in On Liberty, would inevitably be devised to please and serve “the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation” and must constitute “a despotism over the mind.”

Though Moyo does observe incumbency and political careerism as big problems, she is innocent of the more fundamental issues.

Indeed, she does not consider the obvious: today’s voter ignorance of politics and government is in no small part the result of government schools.

For politicians, general ignorance is not a bug, it’s a feature.

Let’s look for solutions to political problems that do not give politicians more power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

PDF for printing

 

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

Guilty of Innocence

Spencer Byrd, crime, asset forfeiture, police, Chicago, law enforcement, theft, stealing, government

If you are innocent of a crime, should you be punished as if guilty? Despite no arrest, no trial, no conviction?

If you say “Yes,” raise your hand.

I see no raised hands among my regular readers. But my readers don’t include the wicked Chicago officials who impounded the automobile of Spencer Byrd.

Byrd’s case is reported in a Reason article by C.J. Ciaramella. The author relates how Chicago extracts money by grabbing the vehicles of innocent people. The drug war and asset forfeiture laws help make it possible. 

Byrd is a carpenter and auto mechanic who sometimes gives rides to clients stuck without their cars. One night, when he was stopped on the road for an allegedly broken turn signal, police discovered that a new client riding with him was carrying heroin. Byrd was questioned but quickly released. He was never charged with a crime. 

But his car was impounded; it’s been impounded for years. This has hurt his business. For one thing, he has $3,500 worth of tools in the trunk. 

Byrd persuaded a judge to order that his car be returned to him. But the city still wouldn’t release it unless Byrd paid $8,790 in fees and fines (later reduced to $2,000). He is still struggling to retrieve his car, within a labyrinth the injustices of which I’ve barely touched on. 

May I suggest … ? If you do ever recover your Cadillac, Mr. Byrd, put pedal to the floor and get the heck out of Dodge.

I mean, Chicago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Graceless Memphis Politicians

instant-runoff elections, Memphis, city council, government, term limits,

“We could care less about instant runoff voting,” fibbed Allan Wade, the city attorney for Memphis, Tennessee. 

Wade was rebutting the recent Commercial Appeal revelation that Memphis’s “City Council worked behind the scenes to find a sponsor for legislation this year that could ban instant-​runoff elections statewide.” 

After long relying on the mayor’s lobbyists, was it purely coincidental that the council suddenly spent $120,000 on its own Nashville lobbyists?

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White (R‑Memphis), missed the memo. He acknowledged being “approached … on the council’s behalf to ask if he would again sponsor the bill.” A lobbyist also confirmed to the Memphis Flyer that the council engaged him to push the ban on what is also known as ranked choice voting.

So, the city council is directly lobbying the Tennessee Legislature to overrule their city’s residents — who voted 71 percent YES for instant runoff voting in 2008. 

And there’s a twist. The council has placed two measures that would repeal instant runoff voting on this November’s ballot, hoping to somehow convince voters to scrap the reform. Wait … why lobby the legislature when the voters are already set to make the decision?

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Now they are using our money to take away that choice from us,” protests Aaron Fowles with Save Instant Runoff Memphis.

This city council — in addition to their sneaky, anti-​democratic assault on instant runoff voting — has also placed a measure on the ballot to weaken their own term limits, passed by an 80 percent vote.

To paraphrase Memphis’s King, these rabid-​dog politicians ain’t never caught a rabbit and they ain’t no friends of ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After media coverage, a hearing on the Senate version of the bill to ban instant runoff voting, SB 2271, was abruptly postponed for three weeks.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility tax policy too much government

Billionaire Theater

Bill Gates, taxes, tax, government, entrepreneurs, responsibility

“I need to pay higher taxes,” Bill Gates told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.

He was making a case against Republican tax cuts, but his actual argument? Insignificant. It’s just another unlearned, narrow-​perspective “growing inequality” farrago. But his conclusion intrigues … as a man-​bites-​dog story, because people have this goofy idea that rich people are somehow against government and for reduced taxes. 

They aren’t. Not even most of the richest.

“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else,” says the man worth $90 billion, “but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.”

Why? To spend his money better than he could? 

Were all the wealth of America’s billionaires confiscated whole and that sum would actually pay off the federal debt (which I doubt), what do you think Washington politicians would do? Go on the straight and narrow and never over-​spend again?

No. Politicians would take the new influx of funds as a signal to go on an even bigger spending binge.

But what about his mere income tax increase notion? What then? As sure as the Blue Screen of Death it would be applied down to millionaires, too. And then rates for less-​than-​millionaires would likely go up. We have a history with this. And what would that do?

It would hit up-​and-​coming entrepreneurs the hardest. It would nip Bill Gates’s company’s competition in the bud. 

But surely Gates wouldn’t be mercenary in his theatrical play for media adoration, would he? 

Not Saint Bill!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
general freedom individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Red Roadster Rides Outer Space

Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, launch, space, orbit, government

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched one of the largest rockets ever, the Falcon Heavy. Because it is still experimental, it didn’t carry up an expensive satellite. Too early for that. Instead, it has sent up a Tesla Roadster.

And it’s not aiming for orbit … around Earth. 

It’s aiming for, well, “a precessing Earth-​Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.”

All the while playing the late David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

This is all very bizarre, of course. But SpaceX is headed by Elon Musk, who is one of those daring people who do daring things. The very fact that he kept finding funding (no small amount of it from taxpayers, sadly) for Tesla Motors (which he also founded), while failing to make a profit, is a tribute to … something.

Sending Musk’s personal car into space — to circuit Sol for a billion years — is, the visionary says, at least not boring. (Musk, perhaps not coincidentally for that word choice, also founded the Boring Company.) The Roadster, “piloted” by a dummy “Starman,” is an upgrade with flair.

But who is he playing to? The masses of auto buffs? Stargazers? Science fiction fans?* 

Maybe the mad-​scientist/​eccentric-​mogul is playing for bureaucrats, Capitol Hill staffers, and politicians. For, by one estimate, his companies have received $4.9 billion in government subsidies.

So, think of what’s going into orbit as just another part of the skyrocketing — spacerocketing — federal debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The odd payload choice might make sense in sci-​fi context, for, in the early days of science fiction, one idea often mentioned was to literally send a bomb to the Moon: an explosion, after all, could be seen, in early Space Age days, with old technology right here from Planet Earth surface. This was the case in the boys’ book The Rocket’s Shadow as imagined in 1947.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility term limits too much government

The Politics of Inertia

Frankenstein, monster, shut down, shutdown, Congress, government, deep state

Congress’s failure to establish, last week, any semblance of budgetary responsibility led to one of those “government shutdowns” that the press likes to yammer about so breathlessly.

Then, early this week, Senate holdouts caved, allowing a short-​term fix to bring the federal government fully back to life, like the monster in Dr. Frankenstein’s lab given a defibrillator jolt.

Usually these government shutdowns are caused by Republicans not playing along — Obamacare being the sticking point most recently — but this time the desperate negotiators were Sen. Chuck Schumer (D ‑NY) and his Democrat gang, whose “heroic” stance was all about immigration reform and “the Dreamers.”

After they folded, and the Monster was bequeathed new life, CNN’s Brooke Baldwin asked former Democratic National Committee chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz what her party had gained from its temporary obstructionism.

Her answer? “Potential for momentum.”

That had to be one of the more bizarrely drawn happy faces over complete and utter failure that we have witnessed since … well, the last one. 

Even Ms. Baldwin was incredulous.*

The Democratic Party’s disarray is astounding. If any party has momentum on its side, it is the party of Andy Jackson and William Jennings Bryan, the party of the elitist media, insider government and the Deep State, and the resistance to Trump.

So why its current pathetic fortune? Because the Democrats have rested so long upon their “momentum.”

Inertia can sure have its downside.

On the “bright side,” Democrats will have occasion to revisit this, for no real budget has been established. All Congress even tries to do these days is provide temporary fix after temporary fix.

Call it potential for catastrophe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The CNN anchor may have been nonplussed by the specter of entropy in the odd Newtonian metaphor.

PDF for printing