Category: too much government

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free trade & free markets too much government

Why the Banks Are Failing Us

banking, surveillance, government, control

We depend on big businesses, especially upon banks. We pay for our food, clothing, medicines, and much else with little plastic cards from our banks. So when those cards stop working, all of a sudden — without warning — our hearts are going to do a bit more than beat just a little faster.

Why would there be big hiccups at all? 

As Brian Doherty remarks at Reason, it’s not just “frustrating when those businesses make seemingly arbitrary decisions that cripple your ability to function in a modern economy,” it’s hard to understand. After all, “the incentives of businesses are to, well, do business with customers.”

Why would banks, then, increasingly treat customers badly?

I’m not talking about the allegedly transient snag in the direct deposit system last week — apparently due to human error — but something more persistent, if scattershot.

Doherty found an answer in The New York Times, in an article “giving infuriating details of innocent Americans being cut off by their banks.” 

It should not shock the reader, Mr. Doherty explains, revealing: “the real cause of the banks’ seemingly arbitrary behavior is government rules designed to make sure it knows everything it can about citizens’ banking business, to discourage big cash transactions, and to ensure businesses the government disapproves of have as difficult a time as possible without being explicitly banned.”

Nearly ten years ago I wrote about it in a discussion of Operation Choke Point. Since then, in the words of the New York Times, “a vast security apparatus has kicked into gear, starting with regulators in Washington and trickling down to bank security managers and branch staff eyeballing customers.”

Who’ll be next?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights international affairs too much government

The $145,000 Virtual Fine

China, VPN, censorship, mind control, surveillance

A Chinese programmer who worked remotely for a foreign company between 2019 and 2022 has been fined his entire earnings from that work, 1.058 million yuan or almost 145,000 USD.

We know only the surname, Ma, of the robbed developer. Ma’s crime was using a virtual private network to evade China’s great firewall, a censorship net used to keep people from seeing anything too politically thought-provoking.

Many others in China also use VPNs to circumvent the great firewall, and many China-based companies couldn’t function without using VPNs.

Authorities first noticed Ma because of a Twitter account that was not even his, and which authorities agreed was not his. But now they were looking at him.

He says that he explained that while his remote work could be done without bypassing the wall and that the company’s support site could be reached without doing so, he needed to use a VPN only to access Zoom for meetings. 

These details fell on deaf ears.

Whatever Ma’s exact alleged violation, something in what passes for law in China could be found to rationalize punishing him for it. He seems to be a victim of bad luck. A mix-up about a Twitter account. He ticked a few boxes. He had money. Money the local officials wanted.

The message to other Chinese: “You may think you’re getting away with X [“X” being one of the many peaceful activities that the Chinese government arbitrarily outlaws]. But we can get you any time.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Fiscal Protector

California, condoms, Gavin Newsom

Why doesn’t California Governor Gavin Newsom care about kids?

What is it with this “conservative”? 

Last week, Newsom coldly deployed his veto pen to deny to Golden State public high school students the sex subsidies — in this case, free condoms — that a solid majority of their state legislators had determined were essential to their healthy development.

Senate Bill 541 would have mandated that all public schools make condoms available free to all students, grades nine through twelve. According to an Associated Press report, the legislation would also “have made it illegal for retailers to refuse to sell condoms to youth.” 

The bill’s author, State Sen. Caroline Menjivar, a Los Angeles Democrat, contends the legislation is needed to help “youth who decide to become sexually active to protect themselves and their partners from (sexually transmitted infections), while also removing barriers that potentially shame them and lead to unsafe sex.”

Newsom agreed that free condoms, even if not yet recognized as a fundamental human right, are “important to supporting improved adolescent sexual health.”

His problem? Condoms cost too much. 

“With our state facing continuing economic risk and revenue uncertainty,” explained the governor, “it is important to remain disciplined when considering bills with significant fiscal implications.”

Seems California is already running a $30 billion deficit. Becoming the condom supplier of first resort for 1.9 million hormone-infused students each year would annually add a few million more to that deficit.

Ah, California . . . where Gavin Newsom is the voice of fiscal restraint. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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First Amendment rights Ninth Amendment rights too much government

Unlisted Help

charity, regulations, rights

Kindness; generosity; aid — even these need defending from government.

In “Performing Charity Is a First Amendment Right,” C. J. Ciaramella writes about the difficulties people have had in feeding the poor in their towns and cities.

The problem is not lack of charity — unless you mean the lack of charity that local governments sport.

In Houston, Texas, and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Santa Ana, California — and in many other communities around the country — local governments have fined and prohibited the charitable from doing the good they do, often on grounds of “health and safety.” 

Houston even set up a hyper-specific charity area — reminiscent of the “free speech zones” set up for political rallies in recent years — in a parking lot near a police station. Just the kind of place that the destitute want to hang around in!

After the usual forms of police harassment came the court cases . . . and appeals to the First Amendment.

And as I read through Ciaramella’s article, the attempts to defend charity as a right of “religious expression” struck me as odd. Santa Ana politicians, for example, characterized charity as “incidental” to the core religious missions — a bizarre tack to take when dealing with Christian doctrine anyway! — and for once the U.S. Justice Department took the common-sense position on this. Thankfully.

But charity as “expression” leaves a bad taste. Charity’s more basic than “expression,” isn’t it? Some might see the art of giving as a duty, others as a rite, and others as mere generosity for its own sake. Jesus spoke of charity as something one did without speaking about it.

Could it even be more basic than free exercise of religion? Might it not more accurately be a Ninth Amendment right — one “retained by the people”? 

So fundamental there seemed no need to spell it out specifically. 

Our most basic rights are general rights, and charity is fundamental to being human.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights partisanship too much government

Insane in the Meme Brain

Hillary Clinton, conspiracy, Donald Trump, deprogramming, cult

Sane Republicans do exist, says Hillary Clinton. Even in the House of Representatives!

We know this because they voted to continue federal government operations by raising the debt limit. Or so Mrs. Clinton says. It’s just “common sense”!

Talking with Christiane Amanpour on CNN, last week, the former presidential candidate explained that these sane Republicans are “intimidated,” adding, “they oftentimes say and do things which they know better than to say or do.”

To get to common ground with these compromised GOP folks, however, the measures that intimidate them — while exciting their extremist, insane MAGA proponents — must be roundly defeated. 

No compromise.

In times past, our representatives in Congress could work together; but back then, argues the former First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, “there wasn’t this little tail wagging the dog of the Republican Party.”

That is, conservative representatives would kindly admit defeat every time the green light was given to more and more spending. Now they won’t cooperate.

It’s extremism, in Hillary’s judgment, to oppose the ceaseless growth of the warfare-welfare state.

But, Hillary being Hillary, she had a corker to unleash. “Maybe at some point there needs to be a formal de-programming of the cult members.”

Just like Mrs. Clinton to generously offer re-education camps to her opponents.

Followed by an admonition: “we have to be smarter.”

How is it smart (or sane) to continually grow the federal debt, its mere service now larger than the defense budget?

By talking about formally deprogramming MAGA extremists Hillary Clinton skillfully deflects her supporters’ attention from the real need: informally deprogramming their own insane debt-piling status quo mindset.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Mass (Private) Transit

Washington D.C. metro, public transit, train

“Metro is dangling from a fiscal cliff,” hollers last Saturday’s Washington Post editorial headline. The “transit system faces a ‘death spiral’ starting next summer,” according to “the usually stolid pages of Metro’s financial projections.”

The Post informs that Metro’s “systemic budget problems have been compounded by pandemic-driven revenue shortfalls, inflation and the upcoming expiration of a federal bailout for transit systems.” 

Oh, what a cruel turn of events, Washington’s ill-mannered and unsafe transit system needs a bailout from local politicians . . . because the current financial bailout it receives from federal taxpayers is about to fizzle out. 

Life is tough. 

Metro has only about 70 percent of the funding it needs, so get ready for blood-curdling cries of “drastic service cuts”— until or “unless the region’s elected officials, along with Congress, devise a fix,” The Post tells us.

Hell of a way to run a railroad — not earning a profit. Constantly failing customers and just as regularly begging for more money from politicians who get that moolah from folks like me . . . who rarely if ever use the mass transit we are told is so essential to us. 

There’s a better way.

“Rail company Brightline began operating trains Friday from Miami to Orlando,” reports The Post, “using the fastest American trains outside the Northeast Corridor to become the first privately owned passenger operator to connect two major U.S. metropolitan areas in decades.

“The debut of the 235-mile, 3.5-hour ride completes a $6 billion private investment in Florida.”

With speeds “quicker than Amtrak’s” and fares “comparable to Amtrak’s and competitive with airfare,” Brightline chief executive Michael Reininger talks of “the beginning of a new industry and a blueprint for expanding rail in America.”

Two approaches. One uses my tax dollars and fails. The other uses private investment. 

And seems to be expanding.

Rather than complaining. And begging.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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