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Accountability local leaders media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility term limits

Sic Transit Gloria Flake

Yesterday, a major American politician gave up.

Sort of.

Senator Jeff Flake, the junior member of the upper chamber from the State of Arizona, took to the Senate floor to announce that his “service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January, 2019.”

Actually, most of the speech was an appeal to President Trump.

Or a lambasting.

In either case, he was echoing his recent book, Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle, which columnist David Brooks has described as a “thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it.”

In the Age of Trump, anti-Trumpian manifestos are . . . controversial in GOP ranks. And his opposition has cost him. All bets were against him winning re-election.

“I believe that there are limits to what government can and should do,” Flake wrote in a letter to supporters, going on to say “that there are some problems that government cannot solve, and that human initiative is best when left unfettered, free from government interference or coercion.”

Solid principles. Principles I share. But how principled was Flake? He began his career promising to limit his own terms, in accordance with . . . conservative principles. And yet the man from Snowflake, Arizona, broke that promise in 2006, holding on to his House seat for three more terms.

For his remaining 14 months in the Senate, Flake can return to the principle he reminded himself of in yesterday’s speech: “Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office.”

There’s life after Congress. And Jeff Flake can do good things in the real world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Omission of Character

One downside to jumping to the wrong conclusion is that the failure to even look for the correct, accurate conclusion inevitably follows. 

This sleepy odd-year campaign for governor of Virginia has recently been riled by charges of racism. Democratic Party gubernatorial nominee Frank Northam made the “mistake” of “omitting the party’s candidate for Lt. Governor, Justin Fairfax, from a small printing of literature for union members about the Democrats’ statewide slate. 

Northam is white and Fairfax is black. 

“[A] slap in the face to Justin and to black voters,” is what Quentin James, who runs a PAC working to elect black candidates, called the removal of Fairfax from the literature. He added that it “reeks of subtle racism” and “sends a signal across the state, that we, as black voters, are expendable.”

Noting that black voters make up 20 percent of the state’s electorate, Think Progress dubbed Fairfax’s deletion: “mindboggling.”  

Was this a “dis” and did it really have anything to do with Fairfax being black?

Well, Fairfax labeled it a “mistake,” but his exclusion from the flyer was certainly not inadvertent. It was by clear-eyed design.

The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LiUNA), a $600,000 donor to the coordinated state Democratic campaign, requested that Fairfax be removed from literature their members will distribute. The union is at odds with Fairfax over his opposition to two state pipeline projects the union favors.

So, Northam didn’t throw Fairfax under the bus because Fairfax is black. No sirree. Northam threw Fairfax under the bus to placate a powerful, well-heeled special interest group.

Northam isn’t a racist. He’s just a self-interested, disloyal politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability government transparency incumbents local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Frail and Disoriented

Senator Thad Cochran sure is experienced: eight years in the House of Representatives followed by 36 years in the upper chamber. So who better to chair the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee?

Rephrase that: who wouldn’t be better?

“The 79-year-old Cochran appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday,” Politico reported. “He was unable to answer whether he would remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and at one point, needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located.”*

The senator also allegedly had trouble correctly casting his vote on legislation, i.e. deciding between yea and nay.

The Mississippi Republican “has faced questions about his health for the past several years,” the article noted, adding, however, that “his aides and political allies insisted he was fine.”

Fine?

That seems to be the party line. “Top Senate Republicans say they are not pressuring Cochran to retire or step down as Appropriations Committee chairman,” acknowledged Politico.

Why not? Were Cochran to step down — in 2020 or sooner — his replacement would likely be more aligned with President Trump than with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican congressional establishment.

Super-incumbent Cochran only narrowly survived a 2014 challenge from a more conservative candidate in the GOP Primary. How? By mobilizing Democrats to cross over and vote for the more liberal Cochran.

A statesman steps down when no longer able to perform effectively. But the Establishment, on the other hand, sees Cochran’s role not as a representative but as a placeholder.

For their power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* Opponents of term limits always told us that it would take six or eight years for newbie legislators to find the capitol’s bathrooms. That hasn’t turned out to be accurate, but obviously finding the Senate chamber, even after four decades in the capitol, is no gimme.


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Accountability general freedom government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders political challengers

Initiative Surplus?

Only nine out of 50 states can pay their bills and meet their obligations; 41 cannot, barring major tax increases or spending cuts.

That’s what we learn in last month’s “Financial State of the States” report from Truth in Accounting (TIA).

Alaska is in the best shape, “with $11 billion in assets to pay future bills”; New Jersey’s in the worst, needing “to come up with $208 billion in order to meet its promised obligations.”

Sheila Weinberg, TIA’s founder, works hard to counter governments’ creative accounting. It’s trickery, really, which “would be considered criminal for private sector corporations.” One gimmick is “promising to pay employee benefits in the future, but not fully funding the benefits programs as they rack up obligations.”*

Thankfully, TIA’s financial analysis includes items such as already-made pension and healthcare commitments.

Now, let’s expand the analysis, collating these findings to separate between initiative and non-initiative states**:

  • Seven of the nine states with a “taxpayer surplus” — where government can pay its bills and meet its obligations — have the ballot initiative process.
  • The 23 initiative states comprise 46 percent of the states. Yet, initiative states comprise a whopping 78 percent of financially healthy states.
  • Of the 20 states carrying a larger-than-average taxpayer burden, 15 states (75 percent) lack the initiative process.

Granted, this represents a correlation between states with citizen-initiated ballot measures and healthier fiscal policy, not necessarily causation. Still, I’m not surprised states where citizens have more say so are better governed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “This short term fix allows governments to artificially ‘balance their budgets’ by not counting certain obligations as official debt.”

** There are 23 initiative states and 27 non-initiative states. Two referendum-only states— Maryland and New Mexico — are considered non-initiative states, and so is Illinois. Illinois is considered a non-initiative state, because its ballot initiative process is so severely restricted as to be non-existent. Only one measure has ever appeared on the ballot.


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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics

Interfering With a Sweet Racket?

One way for governments and enterprises to save money is to contract out some or all of their services. Towns, cities, counties, states — even the federal government — engage in such practices all the time.

It is really just outsourcing, as business lingo dubs it.* But, like any system for shifting responsibility away from direct management, it can be corrupted.

As Seattle citizens now learn, courtesy of Seattle Times reporters Mike Carter and Steve Miletich.

It appears that Seattle City Light, the public utility providing electricity to the city, has been contracting exclusively with Seattle’s Finest Security & Traffic Control. For a half a decade. Despite there being direct competition from another firm.

The utility paid “more than $7.8 million over the past five years to provide off-duty police officers for traffic control or security work,” the Times tells us.

The whole story came to light (no pun intended) when a new outfit offering similar services, but based on “gig economy” principles, sought to enter the market. Seattle’s Finest challenged the firm’s licensing, and, allegedly, directed abuse at the firm’s chief executive officer.

A Seattle detective off-handedly described the dominance of Seattle’s Finest “in organized-crime terms — using the word ‘mafia’ — and said nobody would be allowed to interfere with it.”

The FBI has now been called in.

Usually, local government may seem rather humdrum. But a lot of money can go through powerful, privileged hands. Things can get exciting. Terms like “murky” and “intimidation” abound.

Is this a surprise?

Remember: power corrupts; local power corrupts locally.

Right there where we live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* An economist, R. H. Coase, got a Nobel Prize in no small part for explaining why this sort of contract can work better than establishing a complete firm-employee wage system.


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Categories
Accountability local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Renewed Interest in Self-Service

“Michigan’s strictest-in-the-nation term limits law will force nearly 70 percent of state senators out of office in 2019 and more than 20 percent of representatives,” reports the Detroit News, “a mass turnover that is fueling renewed interest in reform.”

What?!! Could term limitation laws actually make our poor underpaid and overworked politicians vacate their powerful perches . . . even when they don’t want to?

Heaven forbid!

Who could have foreseen this strange turn of events, whereby limits on the number of terms politicians can stay in office would mandate that politicians, having reached that limit, would be summarily cast out?*

Of course, that “renewed interest in reform” comes not from citizens, but politicians.

Oh, and powerful lobbyists and special interests.

The paper continues: “Term limits remain popular with the voting public, but critics say Michigan rules have thrust inexperienced legislators into complex policy issues they may be ill-equipped to address.”

Rich Studley, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s head-honcho, argues that “experience really matters.” His lobbying outfit, “an influential business group with significant financial resources,” is working to organize a ballot measure to weaken the limits it has long opposed.

“Any reform plan is unlikely to extend or repeal term limits,” explains the News, “but may instead allow legislators to serve longer in the House or Senate.”

Come again? If legislators could serve “longer” than currently allowed, that would clearly “extend” the limits.

I smell a scam swirling around Lansing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The “mass turnover” consists of 26 of 38 senators termed-out and 24 of 110 in the House. Yet, there were 25 senators and 34 representatives termed-out in 2010, and the state survived.


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