Political Quickie: Marco Rubio for President?

Marco Rubio has disqualified himself by reason of his position on Economic Freedom. Economic Freedom is not just a Republican issue. It is directly correlated to the prosperity of all Americans.

The freedom to trade is one of the principal determinants in the calculation of the amount of Economic Freedom enjoyed by a country or other jurisdiction. Rubio wants to continue to trade the Economic Freedom of Americans for the exertion of political pressure, via an embargo on Cuba, to achieve increased freedoms for Cubans. He wants the national constituency to pay for benefits to his Cuban-born constituency, tenuous though the underlying argument may be.

This philosophy is fundamentally flawed. While the premise may be hidden from as many as were duped by Gruber, it is nothing less than trading one person’s freedom for the freedom of another. It is comparable to exchanging the freedom of one to buy shoes for another’s freedom to buy socks – either way someone’s feet suffer.

Political intervention in domestic and international trade and commerce has helped drop the US from near the top in Economic Freedom to 12th on the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World Index.

We hope Americans will exert pressure on Washington to remove the barriers that restrict Economic Freedom in the United States.   

Bruce Hillis

Political Quickie: Jeb Bush for President?

No matter how sincere and good a person, no matter how effective a governor he was, Jeb Bush has disqualified himself by reason of his positions on Common Core and amnesty of illegals. These are not Republican issues. They are of deep concern to all patriotic Americans.

The Common Core standards, despite much disinformation, are national and will control curriculum. If our broken society is to start to heal, it is necessary to teach children right and wrong, the sanctity of marriage, the dignity of work and vocation. It is fanciful in the extreme to imagine that these reforms would ever come out of Washington. We should be dismantling No Child Left Behind, not following the left in concentrating more power in D.C.

Amnesty for illegals? For those who stole Social Security numbers? For those who collect welfare and vote illegally? Should we ignore employers who look the other way? Extend Social Security retirement and disability benefits to illegals? Ignore all the legal immigrants who worked hard to get their green cards? Big Government types like Jeb Bush posit false alternatives so that unless we want mass deportations on the one hand we have to accept on the other his proposal to make illegals, many of whom are migrants, not immigrants, citizens in every sense. Inconceivable.

Are there better examples of broken government than these?   

Troglo

We’ll miss you, Doctor (and Senator) Coburn

Over the years we have figured among the biggest fans of Senator Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma obstetrician who never ‘evolved’ and turned Washington. He is well known for his honesty and struggle to reform the Washington Way. We want to express our gratitude for his service and the honest, open, sincere, non-lawyerlike way in which he carried out his Senatorial duties. This great patriot is the author of several books:

• Breach of Trust
• Wastebook 2014
• The Debt Bomb

The Democrats on the Senate Ethics Committee did him the great honor of threatening censure for continuing to practice medicine while a Senator. (We are not making this up.) He kept his promise to retire after two terms. In a parting shot across the bows of the Big Government fat cats, he has now issued a 320-page report, The Tax Decoder, specifying in detail over $900 billions in outrageous giveaways scattered throughout the tax code. This brief 59 second YouTube video is a great introduction to the report. We recommend a quick glance at the highlights .The press release with the link to the entire report is here.   

Troglo

Ferguson has no race problem: update

Update: the pastor at the First Baptist Church of Ferguson does not believe that Ferguson has a race problem. See here. He has credibility on this issue since he marched with Martin L. King as a student in Louisville and has a sizable black membership in his church.

Troglo

Political Quickies: Today’s PQ is Ban the Box in Columbia, Missouri

December 2, 2014 the Columbia City Council unanimously voted to prohibit city and private employers from asking about or investigating applicants’ criminal histories until after a conditional job offer has been made. See a newspaper article here. The box on a job application form asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a crime is now banned.

This step, the first for any Missouri city, is intended to:

 

• Level the playing field for offenders
• Reduce violent crime
• Reduce recidivism by having more offenders employed
• Compensate for the “flaws” in our criminal justice system
• Reduce the cost of enforcement and increase tax revenue
• Benefit society as a whole

 

So what’s not to like?

 

In our opinion just about everything. This is a horrible example of feel-good government activism and abusive overreach, a precedent for even more far-reaching legislation. Regulating essential aspects of business practice is not a legitimate function of local government. It is not government’s business to level playing fields, particularly those tilted by criminal activity. In our opinion it is not a bad thing for criminals released from prison not to have an easy time finding a job. Bad decisions should have consequences. What will happen if this experiment in social justice should be seen not to work? Will we then see affirmative action quotas? Reduction in violent crime by waving magic wands of unproven legislation is wishful thinking. Crime can be reduced – but never eliminated – by incarceration and hiring more police officers. These are costs of essential government services, not frills to be reduced. As for the ‘flaws’ in our justice system, this is liberal twaddle. For some it is too easy to blame the ‘system’ and not the criminal.  

 

Troglo

Ferguson, Missouri: the path forward

A few facts about Mike Brown and Officer Wilson.

That fateful day Brown, having robbed a convenience store, was deliberately violating the unwritten compact between the police and the community that jaywalking would be tolerated, but not walking in the center of the street.

• When told by Officer Wilson to move to the sidewalk, Mr. Brown reacted violently, slamming the police car door shut so Officer Wilson could not get out
• He then punched the officer in the head and reached for his service weapon
• The officer managed to fire two shots inside the car
• Brown was intoxicated on marijuana, with an elevated concentration of 12 ng/ml in his blood. This may help explain his rage and self-destructive behavior
• Brown ran away, but then turned around charging the officer as if to make a football tackle or wrestling takedown
• In a fight Mr. Brown could easily have overwhelmed the much smaller Officer Wilson
• Brown was shot when he was dangerously close, less than 10 feet from the officer
• If Officer Wilson had not fired, he would have suffered severe bodily injury, possibly death
• Wounding in the leg or arm was not an option; police training emphasizes that multiple torso shots are sometimes needed to neutralize the threat of an enraged criminal
• In these situations Missouri law authorizes the use of deadly force
• In the ordinary course of events this open-and-shut case would not have been brought to a grand jury

Liberals and radicals will not be persuaded by facts. For them somehow Mike Brown must be declared innocent and someone or something else guilty of his death. Thus the emphasis on non-issues such as that Mike did not deserve to die. (The issue is not deserving death, but that his own actions put him in jeopardy of death.) Thus the Brown family is pursuing a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Officer Wilson. Thus the President is calling this a matter of civil rights. Liberals are accustomed to conservatives cowering at the threat of being labelled ‘racist,’ but react with bullying outrage when their ‘facts’ are challenged.

Are we not permitted to be as blunt as the liberals and the protestors? Responsibility for his death belongs to Mr. Brown himself and responsibility for the riots belongs to the black community and its supporters. Pointing out self-inflicted wounds is not blaming the victim. Rewarding bad behavior (see here) leads to more of it, just as paying ransom for a kidnapping leads to many more.

Justice for Mike Brown? What injustice has he suffered? There was no injustice. He is responsible for his death. Nor is there anything relating to civil rights. The Eric Holder investigation is a sham. It is a truism that prosecutors can indict a ham sandwich. Civil rights laws have been stretched to the point at which they are used to coerce behavior that the government desires, under threat of prosecution by hundreds of ‘Justice’ Department attorneys. If Officer Wilson is indicted, it would be a violation his civil rights, the consequence of black racism and the crime of policing while white.