Category: Accountability

Categories
Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Eternally Postponing Responsibility

responsibility, Denmark, education, welfare, socialism, Bernie Sanders, freedom

There is a common sense element to economics. We ignore it at our peril. So let’s take a cue from the Democratic Party’s current and de facto leader, Bernie Sanders.

Turn to Denmark for a model.

The Nordic state has what Bernie wants: higher education “free for all.” But there are . . . costs involved.

It turns out that “some Danes, especially older citizens already in the labor force,” explains Business Insider, “say the extra freedom can eliminate a crucial sense of urgency for 20-somethings to become adults. The country now deals with ‘eternity students’ — people who stick around at college for six years or more [not to mention advanced degree work] without any plans of graduating, solely because they don’t have any financial incentive to leave.”

Hardly a shock. Young Danes would not be the first to see in college life what satirist Tom Lehrer identified as the prolongation of “adolescence beyond all previous limits.”

Give young people an incentive to suck up resources year after year, and some will certainly take you up on that.

It’s hard to counter, too. The Danish “eternity student” problem remains even after taking policy steps to discourage it.

Business Insider ends its report by quoting an expert who insists that “motivation to succeed in your studies is in no way linked to whether you’re paying for your tuition or not.”

Yup, that’s what proponents of “free” education keep telling us. But there is more at play here.

Responsibility is on the line. Adulthood is about responsibility. Free tuition is about postponing responsibility.

Do we really want to go further in that direction?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

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

Government Control

gun control, shooting, church, government, violence, 2nd Amendment, rights

“When do we say enough is enough?” asked California Senator Kamala Harris after Devon Patrick Kelley murdered 26 churchgoing Texans in cold blood, last Sunday.

“The terrifying fact is that no one is safe so long as Congress chooses to do absolutely nothing in the face of this epidemic,” argued Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy.

President Trump, on the other hand, not only pointed out that criminals will violate gun laws to acquire weapons, he speculated that had Stephen Willeford, the former National Rifle Association instructor, not come upon the scene, armed, “instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead.”

After previous mass shootings, Democrats pushed legislation that, even if it had been the law, would not have prevented that particular killer from obtaining the weapons. This time it’s different, since the killer should not, by current law, have been allowed to purchase the firearms he used. Kelley’s conviction for domestic violence, while serving in the Air Force, disqualified him.*

But the Air Force did not do its job, failing to report his record to the FBI. So the background check found . . . nothing.

“The Pentagon has known for at least two decades about failures to give military criminal history information to the FBI,” the Associated Press informed, “including the type of information the Air Force didn’t report about the Texas church gunman.  . . .”

The Obama administration, through its command of the military, failed to execute the law designed to keep guns out of dangerous hands. And it sounds like this failure dates back to Bush and Clinton days.

Where does the buck stop?

We don’t need gun control; we need government control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Note also that the murderer, as Ben Shapiro recounted at National Review: “escaped from a mental institution in 2012, threatened his superior officers and attempted to smuggle weapons onto a military base to carry out those threats, cracked the skull of his infant stepson, beat his wife, abused a dog.”

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

More-Equal-Ness

George Orwell, Kaya Henderson, Washington D.C., equal, Animal Farm, favors, corruption, crony, cronyism, politicians,

“All animals are equal,” wrote George Orwell, “but some animals are more equal than others.”

That was the regime’s final slogan in Orwell’s allegorical novella, Animal Farm . . . and it currently serves as the operating principle for local government.

Well, at least in Washington, D.C., our country’s pig trough.

Washington Post reported that the District of Columbia’s Board of Ethics and Government Accountability spelled out the details of its official reprimand of Kaya Henderson, the former chancellor of D.C. Public Schools.

Henderson, the article explained, “violated the city’s Code of Conduct by granting permission for some people — including a White House official, an employee of the mayor’s office, a district principal and a former classmate — to choose the school they wanted their children to attend even though other D.C. families had to go through a competitive lottery system.”

Using one’s position of trust to hijack a public benefit and gift it to one’s cronies at the expense of everyone else is clearly corrupt. Henderson deserves more serious repercussions than a belated reprimand, especially since she has already moved on professionally. She now works as “a distinguished scholar in residence at Georgetown University,” researching “racial justice.”

Ms. Henderson offered weighty reasons for her cronyism. Regarding her special treatment for City Administrator Rashad Young, she offered that D.C. officials “do not necessarily get paid as much as we should.”

Young’s annual salary? $295,000 a year.

Did you also notice she said “we”? As chancellor, Henderson was paid a mere $284,000 a year.

Being “more equal” is nice. It’s especially nice to be friendly with those “more equal” folks, who can bestow a little more-equal-ness on you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

The Owners of Twitter Have Rights

Twitter, freedom, social media, bluebird, government, internet, speech

Roger Stone is suing Twitter for kicking him out.

Without saying exactly why they booted him, Twitter implies that the reason is abusive language. For his part, Stone accuses the social media giant of targeting right-wing tweeters while letting left-wing tweeters off the hook for the same or worse alleged wrongdoing.

I’ll stipulate that Stone is justified in accusing Twitter of rank, ideologically motivated hypocrisy in applying its micro-blog policies. But he’s wrong to sue.

As I have argued before — indeed, just yesterday — government should not regulate Internet forums and should not compel Twitter or other firms to provide a soapbox for anybody else. The only relevant legal issue here is whether Twitter has violated a contract. But Twitter does not agree to let anyone use its services unconditionally. And I don’t think that Stone is alleging any violation of contract.

Our right to freedom of speech does not include the right to force others to give us access to their property in order to exercise that freedom. Nor do the rights of any individuals to use and dispose of their own property disappear if they happen to create a very big and successful enterprise. There are many ways to try to make Twitter pay for bad policies without using force against the company, including boycott and direct competition.

I agree with the guy who said that one’s right to freedom is not contingent upon a guarantee “that one will always do the right thing as others see it.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Photo by Nigel on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights folly media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Our Royals Are Not Amused

Dianne Feinstein, First Amendment, free speech, censorship

“You created these platforms,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) informed the top legal minds at Facebook, Twitter, and Google, “and now they’re being misused.”

“And you have to be the ones who do something about it — or we will.”

Take that as a threat.

But also take it as the grand moment when the Establishment showed its hand.

Consider: Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (a Google product) are “media platforms.” So are books, libraries, newspapers and newsstands. Imagine being a king right after Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Very quickly, the world changed.

People thought differently. And they began demanding change from government. The sovereigns had to make room for subjects-turned-citizens.

Royalty and aristocracy did try to regulate the new platforms of information and opinion. Censorship was all-too-common. The rulers killed upstarts for writing the wrong things, saying the wrong things.

So, which side would you be on, Mrs. Feinstein?

That is Scott Shackford’s basic take on this. I’m with him.

I just wish to expand: in my lifetime the media platforms of newspapers and television were regulated. Heavily. Mergers and business purchases were subject to government permission; the electromagnetic spectrum was licensed rather than treated as private property, and the actual content of radio and TV shows were regulated by the FCC.

And the Feinsteins of Washington got awfully secure in their positions. Had the regulation of American media done its trick?

Enter new media, uncorking the bottle of opinion.

No wonder the Establishment is scared.

We shouldn’t let them regulate political content on the Internet. Demand, instead, the opposite: a complete repeal of the regulation of business management — and non-criminal content regulation — of all media platforms

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

 

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Stranger Counsels

special prosecutor, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russia, corruption, Trump, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates

The office of special counsel, like that of the special prosecutor in days (and administrations) of yore, is a strange one. Not mentioned in the Constitution, it is institutionally slippery. An executive branch position designed to investigate the executive branch — there is no way it cannot be . . . “problematic.”

Just in time for Halloween, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, tasked with looking into the Russian connections of the Trump administration — particularly electoral mischief* — landed his first fish this week, Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The two have been charged with, and pled innocent to, twelve criminal counts related to their activities in Ukraine before their association with Trump. There are tax dodging charges, too, including something called “conspiracy to commit money laundering.”

And while the whole bizarre Russia story has now launched into a feeding frenzy, it appears that it just became . . . mundane. “Legal experts said the court filings indicate Mueller is running a serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry,” says The Atlantic.

Meanwhile, the weird relations between the Clintons and Russia loom on the horizon, rather like that smoky monster from the Upside Down on Stranger Things 2.

But hey, none of this is shocking. Troll through the modern state and you will find corruption. You can land all sorts of fish.

Including suckers.

Could we be those suckers?

Since this sort of thing can always be found — and the Manafort skullduggery seems somewhat tangential to Russian electoral influence, despite the man having served a stint as Trump’s campaign manager — is this just a way to get us to look the other direction from anything really meaningful?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*And let’s not pretend this is new. Foreign influence was an issue in the campaign of 1800.

PDF for printing