Category: Accountability

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Accountability general freedom government transparency

Less Oversight?

Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan, Audit, spending, taxes

There are long-standing debates among those who oppose big government. One is whether we should promote every budget cut and any tax cut, or whether we should more-or-less carefully support only some cuts — on the grounds that some possible cuts might scuttle future reforms.

This came to mind upon hearing Michigan Governor Gretch Whitmer’s plan to reduce the budget of one of her state’s bureaucracies by 28 percent.

Hooray!

But wait a moment: the department to be cut is the Office of the Auditor General!

Whitmer’s proposal is to take the $30 million budget and bring it down to a lean $21.7 million.

The point of an auditor is to make sure that government does not misuse the money taken from taxpayers, allegedly for the public benefit. Take that away, and what do you have? 

Waste. Corruption — a recipe for it, anyway. Maybe an engraved invitation for it.

Is there any merit to this reduction? Democrats are not known to love budget cuts. 

They say Michigan’s auditor’s office has been “too partisan” — and certainly said things about Democrat programs that don’t make those programs look good!

“If there is ever a place in Lansing where we should rise above petty partisan politics, it should be oversight and ethics,” Rep. Tom Kunse (R-Clare) said, expressing a perspective I share.

So what’s really going on here? Well, the state is facing a $418 million surplus. That’s a lot of money to play with. What’s the likelihood that the party in charge wants to reduce the Auditor’s Office for any other reason than to reduce scrutiny of how they plan to spend that money?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling ideological culture

Bathroom Blundering 

school, bathrooms, trans

“A bunch of people from our school, John Jay, feel uncomfortable,” says a student at John Jay High School, Shauna Neilan. “We want to change that and give them their own spaces to make us more comfortable and them more comfortable.”

Students attending the Wappingers district school in New York State are rebelling against a government-imposed policy that lets students use bathrooms designated for the opposite sex. The protest has provoked a counterprotest by those who want the bathrooms to be open to all.

All this controversy even though, as Spectrum News reports, the school boasts “male and female restrooms, as well as a gender-neutral single-stall restroom that any student may use.”

Meanwhile, a school official says the school will “continue to provide a safe environment for all of our students. And ‘all’ means all, each and every one of them.” But this goal is self-contradictory if a few students are willing to make most others feel uncomfortable.

These administrators should at least say: “We agree 100% with students who object to this wrongheaded policy. Unfortunately, we are too worried about funding and/or legal repercussions and/or the possibility that the government will send troops to enforce the the current transgenderist orthodoxy.

“Until we can gather enough courage to rebel ourselves, we implore students eager to use the wrong bathroom to use, instead, the bathroom designated for their sex. Please respect the sensibilities of your fellow students even if you wish you were a member of the opposite sex.”

Three cheers for the students fighting the insanity, three jeers for the dishonesty of school officials.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture too much government

Fifteen Days to Flatten America

Fauci, Trump, Covid

The most important lesson of “Fifteen days to flatten the curve!” occurred on the 16th, when  governors kept lockdown measures going.

No state limited its lockdown measures to a mere 15 days.

The public rationale for the lockdowns had been to save hospitals from being swamped with COVID patients — though the Army Corps of Engineers had built emergency COVID care centers near pandemic hot spots around the country, which were unceremoniously dismantled, without having been used, even as governors continued their hysterics.

And tyrannies.

Out west in Washington, for example, Governor Inslee shut down the whole state with a March 24, 2020, order, and, on April 3, unilaterally extended it to May 4, despite the fact that most of the state had hardly experienced the virus yet. On May 29, the stay-at-home order was still in effect, with the governor dictating a county-by-county re-opening order that he fiddled with incoherently for the next year. 

Across the country, most hospitals suffered from under-use.

John Stossel just “celebrated” the four-year anniversary of the lockdowns with an article titled “‘15 Days To Slow the Spread’: On the Fourth Anniversary, a Reminder to Never Give Politicians That Power Again.” Mr. Stossel provides a concise litany of the idiocy of that brief, if far too long, epoch of . . . . what he calls “government incompetence.

But does incompetence exhaust the fault?

At the beginning I had expressed caution, even suggesting a little lenience for our leaders. Then came the enormity of the mass liberticide.

It was President Trump who put out the “guidelines” for shutting down the country; it was Trump who stuck to his guns on the efficacy of the lockdown “mitigations.” Trump did so because he was mesmerized, perhaps, by Drs. Fauci and Birx — whom he had promoted into the spotlight.

Little did Trump know, however, that Fauci had funded the very disease he was allegedly fighting, and that Birx, privately, had pushed lockdowns not in good faith for reasons stated, but with every intention of pushing “longer and more aggressive interventions.”

Trump? Played, yes; incompetent, sure. 

But Birx and Fauci? Malevolent. Evil. Pick the word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability election law Tenth Amendment federalism

States Still Have a Role

Nancy Pelosi, Federalism, Nationalism

When asked what kind of government had been proposed at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin famously responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

But Old Ben did not clarify the nature of the republic. 

It was to be a federal republic. 

In the new Constitution — which was adopted by the states over the next few years — the States were sovereign, the general government given a concise and limited list of tasks to perform.

Since then, nationalism has won most of the big battles, but federalism remains vital as a principle, re-asserting itself in interesting ways.

Most recent? “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton receives huge win with court ruling delivered on Tuesday deeming the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package passed in 2022 unconstitutional,” as Leading Report explained on Tuesday. “This victory marks a pivotal moment in Paxton’s challenge against the legislation, highlighting concerns over the bill’s approval process.”

At issue is Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which President Biden signed in December 2022, with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, concluding that “by including members [of U.S. Congress] who were indisputably absent in the quorum count, the Act at issue passed in violation of the Constitution’s Quorum Clause.”

As Paxton gleefully summarized, “Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi abused proxy voting under the pretext of COVID-19 to pass this law, then Biden signed it, knowing they violated the Constitution.”

The story, as Leading Report argues, “showcases the role of state attorneys general in upholding constitutional principles and ensuring adherence to legal frameworks within the realm of federal governance.”

The States have some say. Still.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability deficits and debt international affairs

The Shock of Surplus

Rooting for Argentina and President Milei

The current president of Argentina is an avowed “anarcho-capitalist.” He isn’t really — but close enough for government work.

It’s more accurate to say that Javier Milei is a capitalist and libertarian. He has taken on the job of extricating the Argentinian economy from the mire of socialism and corruption — unleashing outlawed market processes.

He seeks to do it not by pushing for micro-changes around the edges of the margins of government spending and intrusions but by figuratively wielding the chainsaw that he literally wielded during his election campaign.

One sign of the success of his “shock therapy” cited by The New York Sun is the “first budget surplus in more than a decade.” A monthly surplus of almost $600 million is the first surplus since the summer of 2012.

But, the Sun quickly adds, Milei’s various radical proposals still face an uphill battle in the legislature. All those people who created the mire are still around.

There are hopeful signs. The lower chamber has already passed a preliminary or framework agreement to make various basic reforms. These include privatizing of currently state-operated companies, deregulation, and revamping of criminal and environmental laws.

The lawmakers “chose to end the privileges of the caste and the corporate republic, in favor of the people,” Milei says.

Meanwhile, though, egged on by unions, thousands of Argentinians have taken to the streets in a general strike to protest the reforms. Milei can win, but it won’t be easy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PREVIOUS COMMENTARIES ON JAVIER MILEI

Milei Defends Capitalism
January 24, 2024

Market Rents Work in Argentina
January 23, 2024

Milei’s Chainsaw
January 6, 2024

To End the Great Declension
December 13, 2023

The Outsider Who Won
November 20, 2023

The Ultimate Outsider
October 24, 2023

Two Libertarians, North and South
September 19, 2023

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Accountability folly national politics & policies

Sympathetically Diminished

senile Joe Biden, memory, guilt

“I’m sympathetically diminished.”

That’s how legal analyst Jonathan Turley described President Joe Biden’s “victory lap” over news that special counsel Robert Hur would not charge Mr. Biden with felonies for his “willful” mishandling and disclosure of classified documents. 

You see, in the special counsel’s “searing” 300-plus-page report, one reason for not prosecuting Sleepy Joe is that investigators found our president’s “memory was significantly limited.” In interviews, Biden couldn’t “remember when his son Beau died,” CNN explained, “nor the years he was vice president.”

Sure, it’s hard to testify about past criminal willfulness if one cannot remember the past. 

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him,” the special counsel points out, “as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Ah, our 81-year-old commander-in-chief! Where did I put those nuclear codes?

Mr. Biden is “someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.”

Yes, I certainly have my own misgivings about our commander’s . . . er, cognitive skills. How can a man incompetent to stand trial possibly be competent to preside over the federal government?

Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer and White House counsel Richard Sauber expressed their own doubts “that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate.”

“Appropriate”?

They claim “a lack of recall” is “a commonplace occurrence among witnesses.”

If not leaders of the free world.

Is our major party choice for president going to be between a sitting chief executive who cannot be charged for criminal conduct because he is “not all there” and one who can be and is being prosecuted, strangely disadvantaged by his pre-octogenarian mental acuity?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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