Category: too much government

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crime and punishment general freedom government transparency judiciary moral hazard national politics & policies property rights too much government

Government Burglars

civil asset forfeiture, police, abuse, robbery, Common Sense

If you try to compare those police who take people’s money and property through civil asset forfeiture laws to burglars, who rob folks in more traditional ways, you are just not being fair.

To the burglars.

The Institute for Justice recently released an updated Policing for Profit report showing that federal asset forfeiture topped $5 billion in 2014. The FBI disclosed that in that same year $3.5 billion of value was lost in burglaries.

Then, folks did the math.

Steven Greenhut’s piece at reason.com was headlined, “Cops Now Take More Than Robbers.”

At The Washington Post Wonkblog, Christopher Ingraham explained there was an especially big haul in seized assets in 2014, including $1.7 billion from Bernie Madoff. Moreover, the dollar figure for burglary doesn’t include larceny, motor vehicle theft, etc. All such theft combined totaled more than $12 billion that year.

So, law enforcement isn’t stealing quite as much from citizens as the criminals they are supposed to be protecting us from are. Sort of a backhanded compliment, though.

Recent polling finds more than 70 percent of Americans opposed to seizing assets without a criminal conviction, i.e. innocent until proven guilty, but taking cash and cars and stuff from folks never charged with or convicted of a crime has become a big business for “our” government.

When legislation to mildly reform civil forfeiture failed recently in California, Mr. Greenhut called legislators’ votes “about money, not justice.” Ferocious lobbying by the California District Attorneys Association and the California Police Chiefs warned money-grubbing legislators that budgets would take an $80 to $100 million hit.

Theft is apparently quite lucrative. Who knew?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement property rights responsibility too much government

Roman Rockets?

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, rocket, private, privatize, Common Sense, illustration

Is Big Government necessary to accomplish Big Things?

Big government built the pyramids. Big government erected the Great Wall of China. Big government put Man on the Moon.

But humanity could have reached Luna over a thousand years ago, had Roman civilization not gone into a death spiral.

Bill Whittle made this point in some recent talks on Afterburner and guesting on Stefan Molyneux’s philosophy show. He blames the fall of past civilizations on “sexual strategies”: the sociobiology of r/K. (The “r” strategy organisms make lots of babies, invest little in them, accept widespread predation; the “K” strategy makes fewer babies, invests heavily in each, and suppresses predators and parasites.) Civilizations start K-style and decline with r.

It’s a theory.

Whatever the biology, Big Government was integral to Rome’s decline, with its exploitative systems and corruption, monetary inflation and “handouts.”

Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day. There were delays and cost-overruns, like any government job.

But Whittle’s right about progress. Humanity would be a lot further along if it didn’t get caught in government/conflict/exploitation traps. Private companies might be on the Moon today were it not for Big governments that destroyed promising civilization in the past.

But hey: private enterprise is catching up.

“In an historic first,” Popular Science informs us, “the private company founded by Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos has become the first to land a re-useable rocket that’s traveled to and from space.” The rocket lands as envisioned in old science fiction flicks, vertically — though with the aid of “drag brakes” (parachutes).

Let’s hope our civilization doesn’t once again collapse before we witness (and contribute to) further progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture too much government

Bitter Pill

Martin Shkreli, Turing Pharmaceuticals, Daraprim, greed, FDA, ilustration, Common Sense

When Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, announced his August acquisition of Daraprim, the only available version of the anti-parasitic pyrimethamine, and his plan to raise its price from under $14.00 to $750 per dose, I did not comment. Everybody else seemed to know exactly how evil the man was, and how awful the system that allowed his machinations.

I knew only that I didn’t know enough.

After reading Mary J. Ruwart’s “The $750 Pill: Corporate Greed, Excessive Regulation—or Both?,” I’m glad I waited. According to Dr. Ruwart, who has worked in the pharmaceutical industry, even the barest facts in the case incite suspicion:

Daraprim was patented in the 1950s, and is used for treating parasitic infections in fewer than 13,000 people a year in the U.S.  Turing bought exclusive rights to distribute the drug in the U.S. from Impax for $55 million; drug sales are less than $10 million/year. Impax itself bought daraprim several years earlier. It upped the price from $1 to $13.50/pill, causing the number of prescriptions to drop about 30%.

As Ruwart explains, the drug is no longer patent-protected, and “any generic company could make daraprim. . . .” So, what gives?

A company cannot just jump into the market. It has to prove — to the Food and Drug Administration — that its new generic would enter the bloodstream exactly as the old one. With the FDA’s red tape, this costs millions.

Which allows companies like Turing to effectively reclaim a monopoly for a little-used generic. Blame the FDA.

Still, there is some competition, from a company with a similar drug, priced at $1 per tablet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Post Dated

USPS, Postal Service, Post Office, Mail, bankrupt, government, inefficiency, Common Sense, Illustration

What does a business do whose market share is decreasing, is billions of dollars in debt, and which incurred one-third of that debt just last year?

Realistically, it cannot be sustained. Not as a normal business.

Of course, the business in question has been struggling to reform, has been cutting costs. But can’t cut enough.

I’m referring to the United States Postal Service. Not a “normal business,” either: no “normal business” is authorized in the U.S. Constitution — or must suffer with the 535 members of Congress as its board of directors.

Kevin Kosar, writing at the Foundation for Economic Education, says the “existential crisis is already happening.”

And by this he doesn’t mean that the organization is going through a bout of anxiety leading to Nausea, or is so estranged from humanity that on a beach the company will kill an Arab — though that may be indeed true, “going postal” and all. He means, simply, what his title says: “USPS Is Going Down, and It’s Taking Billions with It.”

Many on the left say the problem is Congress’s insistence that the enterprise fund its employee retirement program. Kosar quotes an economist who figures that, even without current (and still inadequate) levels of pension contributions, the post office would have “lost $10 billion over the past seven years.”

Besides, those pensions must be paid for at some time — postponing them just delays the inevitable, making a future bust that much bigger, less manageable. (Current level of unfunded liability? $54 billion — which is not accounted for in its official debt.)

The Internet is more important than the post, now. Could it be time to junk mail?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom responsibility too much government

Security vs. Compassion?

Syrian refugees, refugees, Syria, immigration, welfare, food stamps, compassion, charity, Common Sense, illustration

My family isn’t in a position to take in any Syrian refugees.

Not that we’ve been asked.

Months ago, President Obama simply announced that “we” would take 10,000 refugees. After last Friday’s terrorist attack in Paris, and upon evidence that one of the perpetrators came into Europe with other refugees, 31 governors declared that their states will not accept Syrian refugees.

But note: this country doesn’t belong to Obama; those states don’t belong to those governors.

Back in September, I floated a different approach. “If I were president, I’d push for Congress to pass legislation specifically authorizing the acceptance of as many Syrian refugees as [Americans] stepped forward to sponsor. . . .”

“Sponsors could be individuals, families, churches, glee clubs, what-have-you, and would agree to cover costs for the Syrian person or family for one year or two or three,” I proposed. “But no welfare, no food stamps, no government housing. . . .”

Granted, my suggestion came before the latest terrorism. It was aimed not at security concerns but at sparing taxpayers. Why shouldn’t voluntary generosity dictate the extent of “our” generosity?

But come to think of it, my plan offers greater security, too. Why? It involves the personal faces of citizens, not merely a faceless bureaucracy. No matter how much vetting the government does, an ongoing link to an actual American provides another check.

There’s a legitimate debate about security vs. compassion. Millions are in need, displaced by terror — from both Daesh (ISIS) and the Assad regime. The Niskanen Center’s David Bier notes the resistance to accepting Jewish refugees prior to and during World War II, out of fear some might be spies. Christians may find Matthew 25:44-45 compelling.

On the other hand, there is undeniable risk. GOP presidential aspirants have called taking Syrian refugees “insane” and “looney.” Speaker Paul Ryan argues for a “better safe than sorry” pause.

Me? I support accepting the risk . . . but only if committed individual citizens step forward.

Not by any politician’s decree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Artwork based on original photo by Phil Warren on Flickr (endorsement of this message is not implied):

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crime and punishment general freedom nannyism national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Not Plutonium

marijuana, legalization, Ohio, law, crime, illustration, Common Sense

If Ohioans pass Issue 3 today, the days of pot prohibition will disappear like the smoke from a wild night’s last bong hit.

That’s sorta what Nick Gillespie of Reason argued yesterday, anyway. “[I]f marijuana can be legalized in Ohio,” he wrote, “it can — and will be — legalized everywhere and the war on pot is effectively over.” Why?

Ohio is the ultimate embodiment of mythical “middle America” and a state that once plastered “the Heart of It All” on its license plates. It’s poised to become just the fifth state to legalize weed — before liberal blue states like California, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts, and perhaps most importantly, before its dark twin in college sports and economic dissipation, Michigan. Given its paradigmatic normalcy, Ohio can be the place where the drug war . . . finally goes to die.

But there is a disturbing aspect to Issue 3: “Crony Capitalism.”

The constitutional amendment would not simply legalize growth and sale, subject to regulation similar to alcohol or tobacco. Though it would legalize home growth, it stakes out a complicated limited licensing system for commercial sale, allowing for only a handful of growers in the state.

Gillespie quotes one pro-legalization activist who objects to the very idea that “any group or corporation has the exclusive right to grow marijuana and sell it. It’s not plutonium. It’s an agricultural commodity that should be regulated like one.”

A recent poll shows voters evenly split on Issue 3, but increasingly troubled that the measure creates an un-free market, a lucrative marijuana monopoly for those funding the initiative.

Today’s balloting may determine only whether voters like marijuana more than they dislike monopolies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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marijuana, legalization, Ohio, law, crime, illustration, Common Sense