Tag Archives: government

“Justice” Redux

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It turns out the Secret Service Director, Joseph Clancy, not only can’t keep his Secret Service straight, he can’t even keep his own stories about what he heard about his Secret Service’s misbehavior straight. The AP has reported, via Fox News, that Clancy’s claims of when he heard “rumors” of his agency’s illegal search of House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz’ personnel records keeps changing.

What’s interesting to me about this, though, is what the AP buried at the end of its article.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday that his department will proceed “expeditiously” to determine whether any laws or policies were broken. To avoid a conflict of interest, Johnson said the determination about accountability will be made by him and not Clancy.

DHS will decide whether any laws were broken? Whatever happened to DoJ and its role in determining whether any laws were broken?

Oh, wait….

Government Responsibility

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At least one charity is figuring out the impediment that is government involvement in what is, at bottom, an individual responsibility.

Andrea Koppel, Mercy Corps’ Vice President of Global Engagement and Strategy, wants the UN’s involvement in the current Middle East refugee crisis severely downsized. Her focus is on the UN as a quasi-government, but she’s also moving further and wanting sovereign government roles downsized, too.

The better idea, Mercy argues, would be to sweep away the old institutions where they are not likely to be effective and place greater reliance on new combinations of private-sector organizations, civil society groups and different levels of government. This, the report says, would allow humanitarian organizations to take bigger risks to support local victims regardless of government response, and work faster and more easily with local communities when national governments are virtually non-existent.

It’s not an explicit call for government(s) to be the last resort rather than the first, but it’s a move in that direction.

A Step in the Right Direction

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But it remains woefully insufficient, and further changes need to be pushed—apparently from outside—and those additional changes need to happen quickly.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Thursday it will overhaul its in-house tribunal following months of escalating legal challenges and criticism of its increased use of its own judges.

Under the new rules, defendants will get more time to prepare: up to eight months, instead of the SEC’s “rocket docket” of pacing that suits the agency, regardless of the time actually needed to prepare. Defendants also will be able, for the first time, to get sworn testimony as part of their defense preparation.

These are crucial changes, to be sure.

However.

The SEC still will use judges that are explicitly on the SEC payroll to hear the cases the SEC brings against defendants. The SEC still will use judges that are explicitly on the SEC payroll to hear defendants’ appeals of the SEC’s house judges’ decisions.

Absent corrections to those failings, the SEC’s “courts” will remain very much kangaroo courts.

The Democrat in the Socialist

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Or is it the other way around? At any rate, here’s the Bernie’s Bill for what he wants his fellow Democrats to help him do once he’s elected President.

His agenda includes an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run health-care program that covers every American….

He wants, also, $1.2 trillion to expand Social Security and its benefit payouts, so as to increase the dependence of Americans on government for our well-being.

He wants $750 billion for tuition-free public schools and easier “refinancing” of student debt. With the cynicism typical of today’s Democrats, he knows full well the tuition won’t be free, it’ll be paid for by the rest of us in higher taxes and greater Federal debt—which is higher taxes tomorrow. What he carefully elides, too, is that his easier “refinancing” amounts to converting student debt to taxpayer-funded grants. Behind our backs.

And on, and on.

The full Bernie’s Bill runs to $18 trillion over the next 10 years, a sum for which he’ll pay over those same 10 years with tax increases of $6.5 trillion and…debt: an additional $11.5 trillion in higher taxes later on.

The bottom line, and the carefully shrunken fine print, of all this is the enormous expansion of the Federal government. This is the Democratic Party. This is the Progressive Party of Herb Croly, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama…and Bernie Sanders. The Party holds that the

average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

We need our betters, these Democrats, these Obama/Clinton/Progressives, to tell us what we must do, what our moral and intellectual responsibilities are. And as Clinton herself put it, they’re going to take things away from us on behalf of their common good.

Walker and Unions

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Governor Scott Walker has some plans for unions, if he’s elected President. Walker says he would

eliminate the National Labor Relations Board, prohibit federal employee unions; institute right-to-work laws nationwide; and repeal the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, which requires the payment of local prevailing wages to workers on federal construction projects, often boosting pay and project costs.

There’s much to like here. All of these boost competition and lower costs to American consumers, which in turn will be highly stimulative of our economy.

The only one I disagree with is the elimination of federal employee unions. Unions greatly simplify contract negotiations, and that can lower costs, even for a government employer. However. The right-to-work position applied to federal unions, and as Walker applied to Wisconsin government unions, is a good move. What Walker did in Wisconsin was to take away the unions’ privilege of collecting union dues from non-union members as a condition of working at all. He also took away the privilege of state government unions to direct a portion of member dues to political purposes unless the member agreed to the diversion. He also took away the privilege of state unions to strike. These all are worthy of application at the Federal level.

On his right-to-work proposal as a Federal law: it’s not a blanket right; Walker fully respects the 10th Amendment. Accordingly his proposal is structured to make right-to-work the baseline, but individual states can vote themselves as union shops if they wish.

Of course, if these proposals look like they’re taking off, we can expect very vociferous misbehavior by unions and their Democratic Party pets as they try to intimidate the proposals into defeat. It’s only necessary to review union and Democrats’ thuggery in Wisconsin as Walker worked his will there a few short years ago. Here, for instance. And here. And here.

Most of these are sound ideas, regardless of union fireworks and threats and actions, and they should be supported by whomever gets the Republican nomination for President, and they should be pressed for in Congress should that candidate be elected. That President, too, should go over Congress’ heads to their—and his—boss, us American citizens if Congress hesitates. That President should identify, clearly and by name, those Representatives and Senators who remain in union pockets.