Tag: image

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government transparency ideological culture

“Representatives” Who Avoid Voters

Here’s a surprise. Congressional Democrats who faced angry voters in town halls last summer have scrupulously skipped the pleasure during more recent visits home.

The New York Times suggests that although the open town-​hall style political meeting may not be quite dead yet, it’s “teetering closer to extinction,” inasmuch as only a few of 255 House Democrats held such meetings during a recent week-​long recess. Instead they arranged invitation-​only, scripted meetings with that portion of the electorate who believe that super-​sizing the nanny state and burying the country in an Everest of debt are the best things that could ever have happened to us.

These congressmen evade communicating with unhappy constituents to “avoid rage.” And to prevent video clips of their fatuous non-​answers to highly pertinent questions about mega-​billion-​dollar bailouts and pork barrel projects and socialized health care, etc., from showing up on YouTube.

One politician explains that town hall attendees last summer didn’t want to “get answers” so much as pursue a political agenda. I can’t help but remember the YouTube video in which a congresswoman “leading” a town hall forum seemed more interested in her cell phone than in a constituent’s explanation of why she didn’t want a government solution to medicine’s current institutional problems. Anyway, who really expects to escape “political agendas” at political forums convened to discuss politics?

Hopefully, the brilliant campaign strategy of ignoring voters and their legitimate concerns won’t pay off on election day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders term limits

“A” For Effort

They don’t make it easy for citizen initiatives in Alaska.

According to state law, legislatures there are prohibited from repealing a successful initiative for two years. Two whole years. Whoo hoo! And that’s it. After this two-​year moratorium, lawmakers can haul out the shredder.

In 2007, voters in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula Borough passed a term limits measure that caps the tenure of the borough’s assembly members to two consecutive terms. The Alliance for Concerned Taxpayers gathered signatures to put the measure on the ballot.

For some strange reason, the Alliance doesn’t trust incumbent lawmakers in the borough to leave the term limits on themselves alone. They’re not the trusting type, I guess. But these term limits activists are not just wringing their hands and wailing, “Oh, I sure hope those incumbent lawmakers leave the term limits alone!”

Instead, two years after 2007, Alliance members have been out gathering signatures to put the same term limits measure back on the ballot.

Mike McBride, a spokesman for the group, says it’s easy as pie to get the signatures. “The public wants term limits, that’s the bottom line.… It’s a real popular idea.”

McBride says if the group has to go out and gather signatures every two years to keep term limits in place, they will. Good for them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
judiciary property rights too much government

© Is for California

You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupified to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone.

The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!

The state’s out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-​out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.

Yes, what’s ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.

Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.

On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free.

Obviously, Malamud is spoiling for a fight. Good. He should win it. He has, after all, the law (if not the state) on his side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

“Safe” Kids Are Fat Kids

Even the most careful athlete sometimes pulls a muscle. Does that mean that vigorous and sometimes even risky exercise is more dangerous than being a cordoned and cosseted couch potato?

Many of the gendarmes who oversee America’s playgrounds seem to think so. I don’t know how real the so-​called “epidemic” of obesity is. (Is the fat infectious?) But it wouldn’t surprise me if kids banned from playing one “dangerous” game after another tend to accumulate more flab than when they were rambunctiously running around like they always used to do.

Even playing tag is outlawed in some places. Along with cops and robbers, monkey bars, and sliding into third base. Playground mats laid down to break possible falls are the latest terror. The sun sometimes makes them hot, and barefooted kids can burn their feet.

Playground activists are in an uproar over this latest bogus crisis. When are the canopies going up?

Philip Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, says we’re teaching kids to be flabby in more ways than one. He notes that scrapes and bruises are one way “children learn their limits, and the need to take personal responsibility.”

Life is an inherently risky venture. You don’t learn to cope with those risks if you are never allowed to take even modest ones. And that’s dangerous.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Your Money and Your Life

It’s getting illegal to have money these days. Don’t carry lots of cash on your person, that’s for sure. If somebody from law enforcement bumps into you while the cash is on you, they could grab it and you might never get it back. Not unless you can prove it belongs to you. If ever.

Yeah, thanks to the drug war, that kind of thing has happened, even in these United States. Guilty until proven innocent. And oh don’t deposit or withdraw any large amount of money in your bank account, either. Don’t inherit from your uncle, don’t get a big bonus at work, don’t win the lottery. Banks must report transactions larger than $10,000 to the government, and you could be tagged for investigation. Guilty until proven innocent, remember?

A few years ago federal banking agencies wanted to tighten these reporting requirements even further. So-​called “Know Your Customer” rules would have forced bankers to monitor your bank accounts and report any deviation from “normal” activity to the feds. Well, there was such an uproar over this Big-​Brother-​like proposal that the government backed down. But now an international organization, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is pushing its 28 member nations to impose “Know Your Customer” laws anyway. It seems that OECD and other global groups don’t like it when some countries have more freedom than others. They want everyone to be equally oppressed. Let’s hope our government will not only resist this new demand, but also act to restore the presumption of innocence that has already been eroded.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Your Media on Drugs

Now and then I must admit that the career politicians don’t produce bad laws based on bad thinking and venal motives all by themselves. They have help. Some of their enablers are in the media. If all you knew about global warming was what you read in Time magazine, you might think the earth was about to turn into a burning crisp.

A recent cover even featured our globe as the yolk of an egg sizzling in a frying pan. I find this kind of apocalyptic reporting to be egg-​scrutiating. For example, the article says glaciers are retreating around the world, and blames our bad habit of carbon-​dioxide-​emitting industrialization, which in turn supposedly increases average global temperature. But as Paul Georgia with the Competitive Enterprise Institute observes, “the glaciers on Kilimanjaro mentioned in the Time story aren’t retreating due to higher temperatures, since local temperatures haven’t changed in that area.”

Georgia argues that temperature is only one of the factors that affect glacier movements. He points out other bloopers in the article too, which could easily have been avoided by an outfit with the resources of Time magazine. Despite the impression the media sometimes convey, there is no scientific consensus about the causes of global warming, the extent of it, or what the effects must be. But nuance and complexity can be a burden for those who have an agenda to promote, legislation to push, or grants to apply for. And that kind of non-​objective rush to judgment can lead to a different kind of crisis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.