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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

We Are At War — So What Else Is New?

As if on some hellish, punitive treadmill, we keep “experiencing” the last federal election, over and over.

Hillary Clinton, who didn’t get a majority of all votes and who lost in the Electoral College, keeps on grinding through her long list of people who failed her.

Her nuttiest charge, that “Russia ‘Hacked’ the election,” reached its apogee, last week, in the bizarre video featuring Morgan Freeman. The actor, who’s played both the President and God, intones that “We have been attacked; we are at war.”

Financed by a cobbled-together Committee to Investigate Russia, the notion seems to be: stretch Hillary Clinton’s conspiracy theory into the talking points for . . . a coup d’état.

Congress is, of course, investigating “what Russia did.”

Unearthed, so far? Not much.

As James Freeman wrote, in The Wall Street Journal, considering the paltry Russian presence on Facebook, “if Russian disinformation managed to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential contest, the Kremlin must have created the most influential advertising in the history of marketing.”

And when you add in the FBI’s multiple FISA requests to bug Trump’s campaign manager, it’s hard not to come to this conclusion: it was not Trump, but the Deep State that colluded with the Russians.

The Committee/Freeman video talks about “using social media to present propaganda and false information,” which puts the “hack” on the level of ideas — not real manipulation. Propaganda from the Kremlin is not appreciably different from propaganda from Clinton or Trump.

Lies were everywhere, and if “false information” were worth declaring war over, the American people would have revolted against Washington, D.C., decades ago.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption local leaders national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Great Faction

Politics isn’t a pretty business.

Frédéric Bastiat called the beast it serves “that great fiction” not because it doesn’t exist — intrusive state power sure persists — but rather because what it promises cannot really happen: “everyone living at the expense of everyone else.”

What can we do? How do we counteract a game that is rigged to increase the insanity, not reduce it?

Last week I indicated one thing a minor party with that goal in mind could do: use its power of spoiling elections to change major party behavior, and thus give citizens a fighting chance to restrain governmental metastasis.

Cancer.

I also suggested “blackmailing” the major parties into setting up a system of voting that . . . ends the power to blackmail! I believe that system — ranked choice voting — holds many positives, not the least of which is ending strategic voting, wherein voters are tempted to “falsify” their own preferences and support candidates they might dislike. This is as corrupting to the citizenry as the Great Fiction itself.

Let’s hope a savvy minor party leverages the major parties, gaining reforms to improve the system. Regardless, we can all — independently — push two other limits on political power:

  1. term limits at all levels, and
  2. initiative and referendum rights in all the states, not just the 26 that have it now.

Initiative and referendum rights would give ordinary citizens the leverage to possibly restrain the mad rush to live at each others’ expense. With the initiative, citizens can gain term limits, which produce more competitive legislative elections and lead to fewer legislators captured by the interests loitering in the capitol.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Wabbit Season — or Duck Responsibility Season?

Venezuelans are starving. The country’s children are malnourished and — if something is not done soon — “it will be very difficult for these children ever to get back onto their nutritional growth curve.”

That is the testimony of the director of Caritas Venezuela.

Clearly, “Bolivarian” socialism has failed.

And yet, dictator Nicolas Maduro blames American “sanctions” for “exacerbating” the situation.

And offers up a “Rabbit Plan” to feed the people.

Yes, Maduro has called upon his countrymen to raise rabbits . . . and eat them.

But the source of the dark comedy isn’t just a dictator waxing eloquent on bunnies. “There is a cultural problem because we have been taught that rabbits are cute pets,” said the agriculture czar . . . whose first name is “Freddy.”

Holding a televised press conference with Maduro himself, last week, he insisted that “a rabbit is not a pet; it’s two-and-a-half kilos of meat that is high in protein, with no cholesterol.”

The funny part — the gallows humor, here — is this is what the grand planning of socialism has come to: not mass collaboration and an extended division of labor, but the people feeding themselves on small plots of land.

The Inca had developed a more effective mode of socialism.*

Just as humiliating for Bolivarians must be the trade embargo charge. Socialism is all about how superior government control is to the “anarchy in production” of market life. To blame their problems even a little on a capitalist country >not trading with them doesn’t merely admit defeat, it evades the last shred of responsibility.

I have a better “Rabbit Plan”: the tyrants should hop on down the bunny trail . . . freeing Venezuelans to recover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It depended upon radical inegalitarianism, subordination, drudgery, servility, and lack of any meaningful freedom.


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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard responsibility too much government

Half a Win Is Better than None

Jennifer Anderson criticized her local sheriff. Her family’s home was raided in 2016 by the sheriff as a result.

Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter’s reaction to criticism was ugly and unconscionable, but it hasn’t been allowed to stand. On the other hand, the sheriff hasn’t been adequately punished, either.

Jennifer Anderson’s pseudonymous blog ExposeDAT criticized various public figures in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana, including with respect to the business relationships between Larpenter and others. Bridling at the criticism — which had to do with assessment of publicly available facts — the sheriff submitted warrants to Facebook and AT&T to track down the identity of the blogger. Then he sent men to raid the Andersons’ home and grab computers and cell phones.

The Andersons fought back, suing in federal court. They wanted the raid and seizure and search of their private stuff to be declared unconstitutional.

Finally, this September, the Andersons reached an undisclosed settlement with Larpenter out of court. According to its terms, the Andersons aren’t allowed to discuss it any detail. But their attorney says the settlement is “a victory for citizens’ right to be critical of their elected officials without fear of retribution.” U.S. District Court Judge Lance Africk has said that “Jennifer Anderson’s speech [in her blog] falls squarely within the four corners of the First Amendment.”

All that’s fine, but why hasn’t this sheriff also at least been kicked out of his job for his blatant abuse of power?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability ideological culture local leaders national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Crazy Like a … Spoiler

Seven Republican members of Congress — three in the last two weeks — have announced their retirement.* The Democrats, needing 24 additional seats to gain a majority, see an opening.

Steve Kornacki, MSNBC’s national political correspondent, calls these seven “pure retirements.” That is, these politicians aren’t seeking another office, they suffer from no scandal, and are “pretty good at getting re-elected”; they’re “just deciding to leave.” Kornacki notes that the GOP had eight pure retirements in 2006 when they lost the House, and the Democrats had eleven when their majority was destroyed in 2010.

On his MSNBC program, The 11th Hour, an exasperated Brian Williams complained, “On top of all that, since down is up and up is down, Bannon [is] threatening to — to use the verb of the moment — primary incumbent Republicans! Which is crazy.”

Williams refers to Steve Bannon, late of the Trump administration and now back at the helm of Breitbart News. Bannon is now working, as CNN reported, with “conservative mega-donor Robert Mercer, who is prepared to pour millions of dollars into attacks on GOP incumbents.” Incumbent Republicans thwarting Trump, that is.

“I don’t think anyone should be surprised,” remarked Ned Ryun, American Majority’s CEO. “It’s a natural reaction by the base to what they’ve perceived as a perhaps intentional inability to pass any Trump agenda items.”**  

Ah, more spoilers! This week we’ve talked about Libertarian spoilers; now, pro-Trump spoilers. And, for years, non-profit groups such as the Club for Growth and U.S. Term Limits have helped a challenger against an incumbent, and been dubbed dangerous to Republican hegemony for their trouble.

Seems what connects all these anti-establishment folks is a commitment to principle over power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*  The retiring Republicans are Rep. Sam Johnson (R, TX-3), Rep. Lynn Jenkins (R, KS-2), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R, FL-27), Rep. John Duncan Jr. (R, TN-2), Rep. Dave Reichert (R, WA-9), Rep. Charlie Dent (R, PA-15), and Rep. Dave Trott (R, MI-11).

** Steve Kornacki responded to Brian Williams: “Absolutely unheard of for a nominee in either party to have that complete lack of support from Capitol Hill and then go out there and win the nomination [for president]. . . . You have this element where all these members of Congress, even though it’s a president of their party on paper, don’t really feel they’re part of this presidency.”


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Accountability ballot access folly media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers term limits

If This Be Blackmail. . .

The Republican Party now boasts of more positions of power than . . . ever? And yet the GOP is in danger of falling apart.

The Democrats, now forced to endure Hillary Clinton’s new absurdity, What Happened, appear at wits’ end. They just do not “get it.”

Alas, “not getting it” is not limited to the major parties. The Libertarian Party (which is my subject this week) has been around since 1972 . . . doing the same things over and over . . . with spectacular lack of electoral success.*

Sure, the party has had no small subtle influence — perhaps most notably the change in marijuana policies. Yet it could have even more. Without electing anybody, as I argued yesterday.

But that’s just the tip of the Titanic-killer.

Not only could party organizers threaten the major parties with running — and taking away votes — based on their candidates’ positions, Libertarian organizers could also threaten to run against candidates who will not publicly take up the cause of electoral reform.

Particularly, ranked choice voting.

Because of our first-past-the-post elections, Libertarians tend to take away votes from those most similar to themselves. With ranked choice voting (see a sample ballot), a voter whose favorite is a Libertarian will have his second-favorite choice count** towards that candidate; minor party candidates would no longer work as spoilers.

And that would allow voters to embrace their real preferences, not pretend to like candidates they actually distrust.

Since major party candidates would, in most circumstances, be hurt less by those closest to them, they should be willing to be “blackmailed” on this.

Jumping into the briar patch of supporting fresh reform to stop the spoilers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*  The 3 million odd votes for the Johnson/Weld presidential ticket, though a leap ahead from previous outings, was seen by many as a disappointment: that’s all the dynamic duo of former governors could do in a year with the unpopular duo of Trump and Clinton as R and D standard-bearers?

** That is, in cases where only a small percentage of the vote favors the Libertarian most.


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