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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility tax policy too much government

Berating Bernie?

Bernie Sanders has risen in the polls. He may even beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus and primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A cause for celebration! Witnessing a huge hunk of Americans accept Mrs. Clinton, the consummate and corrupt insider, is too disheartening.

Bernie Sanders, for all his faults, is at least not an insider like Hillary.

And even when he’s obviously wrong, he’s a breath of fresh atmosphere. Take his recent call for turning the credit ratings institutions into non-profits, or into government-run bureaus. It’s good to hear someone on the left blame something other than the partial repeal of Glass-Steagall as the cause of the Crash of 2008, and (thus?) of the current “Great Recession.” Glass-Steagall was utterly irrelevant to the institutions that were hit hardest in 2008’s collapse; it has, nevertheless, served as leftists’ idée fixe for years now. Embarrassing.

The ratings agencies, on the other hand, did play a part in the crash.

Still, remember: their prominence and importance (and very existence) in financial sectors rests entirely upon one provision of FDR’s New Deal.

More importantly, Bernie’s favored solution — government bureaus — is no solution at all. Europe’s ratings system failed in 2008, too, as Mark A. Calabria has noted, and “it was the international financial regulators, not the rating agencies, who decided that Greek debt was ‘risk-free.’”

Earth to Bernie: government regulatory failure is normal.

Calabria agrees that we need to have a political conversation about the ratings agencies, but insists it be “based on facts,” not ideology.

I’m all for the facts, but ideologies are inevitable. And ideologies promoting Big Government inevitably fail.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility tax policy

Bankrupt Leadership

Sen. Rand Paul wasn’t the only thing absent from the GOP presidential stage last Thursday.

Also missing? Any meaningful talk about reducing federal spending and avoiding a sovereign debt crisis. The debt looms over all our heads. But you wouldn’t know it to listen to the GOP hopefuls. (And the same nearly goes without saying for the Democratic Party’s debt-denying presidential aspirants.)

Way back when the Bush Administration had lost America’s confidence, deficits and debts were a common concern. Much of the disgust that birthed the Tea Party movement was disgust at Republican over-spending, as well as at the bailouts that spurred the initial protests. And then came Obama, Obamacare, and a 70 percent increase in federal debt.

Why the silence now?

Nick Gillespie, of Reason, figures that Republicans don’t really care about deficits and debts.

Andrew Flowers, of FiveThirtyEightPolitics, wonders whether the GOP has abandoned the issue because Republicans don’t want to face the fact that Obama has, indeed, reduced deficits — though definitely not the debt, which has nearly doubled.

Alternative theory? Republicans have given up hope, because the last two Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have successfully threatened government shutdown over even the itty bittiest spending cut, safe in the knowledge that the mainstream media’s full spin-cycle will be blaming conservatives.

This has made it easier for Big Government Republicans to embrace greater military funding and other spending programs, as Gillespie notes.

But real leadership recognizes the present danger of debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability general freedom government transparency local leaders porkbarrel politics tax policy term limits

The Reign of Trickery

Arkansas State Sen. Jon Woods’s reign of trickery is ending. As reported Monday, he has chosen not to seek another term in the legislature.

It’s ironic. Woods defrauded Arkansas voters with a deceptively worded 2014 ballot measure. His successful scam weakening term limits allows him to stay in the Senate for 16 years, instead of just eight. But now, angry voters won’t allow Woods another term.

At least, that sure appears to be the case.

If voters in next year’s March primary could possibly be as uninformed about Woods’s record as they were about last November’s Issue 3, he would have gotten away with it. But Woods has made enemies: term limits supporters and Conduit for Action, a group sharply critical of him for gutting the Arkansas Ethics Commission, to identify two. He not unreasonably fears they would communicate with his constituents.

In effect, “tell on him.”

Fool the voters once, shame on Woods. Fool the voters twice . . . well . . . ’tain’t going to happen. That’s not to say the sly schemer didn’t have another unethical, underhanded, anti-democratic trick up his sleeve. Of course he did.

“I’ve had serious conversations with my family about leaving . . . since April,” Woods told reporters. Yet, the incumbent didn’t bother to announce publicly that he was vacating the seat until the November weekend before a Monday filing deadline.

Seeking to pick his replacement, Woods informed insiders of his intentions, while leaving the rest of his district in the dark until it was too late.

Luckily, Justice of the Peace Sharon Lloyd, had already stepped up to challenge Woods — and his insider political games.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. Circumventing meaningful elections to provide a leg-up to a crony by waiting until the last moment to announce a retirement, as Sen. Woods did, happens far too often. It’s another good argument for term limits.


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Pass/Fail/Pass

While the Ohio measure to legalize marijuana did not pass, this week, the Washington State measure to wrest tax limitations out of a recalcitrant legislature did indeed succeed, with a 54 percent win.

Win some, lose some.

But in both these cases, there is some evidence for a general smartening up of the voting public.

With Ohio’s Measure 103, the support for cannabis legalization, a few weeks before Election Day, seemed strong. But the more voters looked at the measure, the more they caught a whiff of stink — and it wasn’t skunk weed. It was crony capitalism and insider favoritism. So, while a solid majority reasonably favors legalization — even in Ohio — it strikes most reasonable people that the measure’s secondary provision of setting up a monopolistic/oligopolistic production cartel is as anti-freedom as the legalizations is pro.

Smart folks saw through the proposal. Cannabis legalization is proceeding, state by state. Better results for legalization next time?

Perhaps, provided a better measure is offered.

Washington’s I-1366, on the other hand, had several levels to it, too, but they worked together. Voters seeking a constitutional tax limit, got it — or, if the legislature balks at delivering it as a future referendum (as the measure instructs) then the initiative’s main feature would kick in and the sales tax would be lowered. Low-tax voters get low taxes either way, legislature cooperating or resisting.

As I’ve explained some time back, repeated legislative betrayal had forced Evergreen State super-activist Tim Eyman to concoct this rather clever ploy.

In both Ohio and Washington, what voters voted against was against politics-as-usual — and that is good, no?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Not Plutonium

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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Gold Leaf

The experiment in legalized marijuana begun by citizens in the states of Washington and Colorado has, from the beginning, faced a huge obstacle: marijuana is still illegal, federally. State nullification of federal law is not merely “problematic,” it’s hard to “get away with.”

Take Colorado’s experience. The Centennial State, which has made the swiftest and most extensive progress regarding marijuana retail sales, has come up to an inevitable problem with the federal government.

Over banking.

Interesting Reason reporting tells us that “Marijuana-related businesses in Colorado are so profitable that the government doesn’t know what to do with all of the tax revenue they’re generating. But business owners face a more immediate problem: Where to stash their own profits when banks won’t take it.”

Congress has been very active making banking less and less private and less and less free for decades now, in part because of the War on Drugs. Existing banks refused to take new cannabis clients.

So a new credit union was formed, to handle the cash.

And now, NBC News tells us, our central bank, the Federal Reserve (dubbed by NBC “the guardian of the U.S. banking system”), said “that it doesn’t intend to accept a penny connected to the sale of pot because the drug remains illegal under federal law.” Which makes modern banking difficult, even for a credit union, apparently.

What are “weed” businesses to do . . . other than what they are doing, hiring security guards for all the cash?

Maybe Bitcoin will step in. Or old gold-warehouse banking, as was not unheard of even in the 19th century.

Or, maybe, the federal government will cease its over-reach?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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