4 Myths about Impeaching Brazil’s President by Juan Carlos Hidalgo

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On Sunday night, Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies voted overwhelmingly (367-137) to open impeachment proceedings against President Dilma Rousseff. The Senate will now vote on whether to take the case and try her, which is all but guaranteed. As a matter of fact, barring some unforeseen event, Dilma’s days as president are numbered.

These are Brazil’s most turbulent months since the return to democracy in 1985. Not only is the president about to be removed from office, but the country is also mired in its worst economic recession since the 1930s. It is not coincidence that Dilma’s popularity (10%) stands at a similar level to Brazil’s fiscal deficit (10.75%), the unemployment rate (9.5%), and the inflation rate (9.4%). The economic and political crises are feeding off of one another.

Here are some facts and myths regarding this impeachment process:

1. “It’s a coup!”

For some in the Latin American left, anything that cuts short a president’s tenure in office —even if it’s an impeachment process stipulated in the Constitution— is a coup. The same narrative was applied when left-wing President Fernando Lugo was impeached by Paraguay’s Congress in 2012.

The impeachment process and the crimes for which a president can be impeached in Brazil are clearly outlined in articles 85 and 86 of the Constitution. Moreover, the entire process has been overseen by the Supreme Court, which has thus far found no fault in how things have been conducted. It’s important to add that 8 of the 11 justices in the Supreme Court were appointed by Dilma and her Workers’ Party predecessor, Lula da Silva.

Tellingly, when the Guatemalan Congress voted last year to strip right-wing President Otto Pérez Molina of his immunity, so he could be prosecuted for corruption charges, no one claimed it was a coup.

2. “Dilma hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing”

It is true that Dilma hasn’t been accused of personally being involved in the Petrobras bribing scheme that inflicted loses of $17 billion on the state-owned oil company. Even though she was the chairwoman of the oil giant when most of the corrupt deals took place, her defense is that she was unaware that this was going on; at any rate, not a very good show of competence.

However, President Rousseff is not being impeached over the Petrobras corruption scandal, but over her government’s illegal handling of budgetary accounts. In this regard, it was an independent court — the Federal Accounts Court — that ruled that the Rousseff administration had broken the law. According to article 85 of Brazil’s Constitution, this is a crime for which a president can be impeached.

3. “Most of the members of Congress are implicated in corruption scandals”

This is actually true. According to an NGO called Transparência Brasil, 60% of members of Congress have been convicted or are under investigation for various crimes, including corruption and electoral fraud. The speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, has been charged with taking millions of dollars in bribes under the Petrobras scheme.

It is true that Brazilians aren’t simply dealing with a corrupt ruling party, but a crooked political class. Impeachment won’t fix this, but it will certainly set a powerful precedent. However, if the ultimate aim of Brazilians is to clean up the political system, they must be more rigorous in how they elect their political leaders in the future.

Other reforms are badly needed, such as overhauling the rules that grant immunity to members of Congress when they face criminal charges. Brazilians who have taken to the streets demanding the ouster of Dilma should now set their sights on political reform and those who oppose it.

4. “There is a political vendetta against the Worker’s Party from the Judiciary and the right-wing media”

It is true that Brazil’s judicial institutions, including the federal police, the attorney general’s office, and leading judges have been very active uncovering, prosecuting and convicting politicians involved in corruption scandals. But those implicated thus far have belonged to different political parties, including those of the opposition. As mentioned above, the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies leading the impeachment process against Dilma has been charged with corruption.

The media has also played a critical role in exposing the Petrobras scheme. This is good. Unlike other South American countries where the press has been stifled by their governments, in Brazil there is a vibrant and free press that hold politicians accountable, and not only those that belong to the incumbent party. As a matter of fact, big news outlets considered “anti-Workers’ Party” have exposed the shenanigans of Speaker Eduardo Cunha and pointed out the fact that numerous Congressmen impeaching Dilma are also facing their own corruption charges. This doesn’t look like a cover-up.

The impeachment process is without a doubt a distressing affair for Brazil’s young democracy. But the country will emerge stronger if the right lessons are learned.

Cross-posted from Cato.org.

Juan Carlos HidalgoJuan Carlos Hidalgo

Juan Carlos Hidalgo is a policy analyst on Latin America at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.

Obama’s former DOE Secretary Wanted More Mayoral Control of Public Schools Nationwide

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Not long after President Obama brought former Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Arne Duncan to Washington, D.C., to become U.S. Secretary of Education, Duncan spouted out this March 31, 2009, declaration regarding his desire to establish mayoral control over more school systems. As NBC Chicago reports:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Tuesday that mayors should take control of big-city school districts where academic performance is suffering.

Duncan said mayoral control provides the strong leadership and stability needed to overhaul urban schools.

Mayors run the schools in fewer than a dozen big cities; only seven have full control over management and operations. That includes Chicago, where Duncan headed the school system until joining the Obama administration.

Speaking at a forum with mayors and superintendents, Duncan promised to help more mayors take over.

“At the end of my tenure, if only seven mayors are in control, I think I will have failed,” Duncan said.

He offered to do whatever he can to make the case. “I’ll come to your cities,” Duncan said. “I’ll meet with your editorial boards. I’ll talk with your business communities. I will be there.”

To my knowledge, no school system has been placed under mayoral control since Duncan was appointed as U.S. Secretary of Education in December 2008. Certainly there was no rush for U.S. cities to place their education systems under control of a mayor. And though there is a lot more about Duncan to which one might tie failure (not the least of which are his coercive No Child left Behind waivers), let us consider a marvelous irony about mayoral control in Duncan’s own backyard of Chicago, Illinois:

On March 03, 2016, the Illinois House passed a bill to convert CPS’s mayorally-appointed school board into an elected board. The legislation, HB 4268, sponsored by Rep. Richard Markwell (D-Chicago) passed by a vote of 110-4 and is currently in the Senate. From the article:

The bill would partition the city into 20 local districts and a 21st board member would be elected at large as president. Each would serve an initial five-year term if elected on March 20, 2018, then four years each to coincide with municipal elections.

The legislation also addresses a few regular criticisms of the appointed board by pushing at least half of the elected board’s meetings until after hours so working parents and community members can attend.

Some believe that the Senate might not get to act on HB 4268 because of addressing Illinois’ state budget crisis. Still, what is remarkable about HB 4268 are the numerous House sponsors the bill has garnered along the way– 44 co-sponsors in all– and all Democrats– the same party affiliation as Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Duncan praises mayoral-run districts for their top-down control– which logically appeals to a guy who held states ransom via Title I funds connected to his NCLB waivers. From Duncan’s 2009 NBC spiel:

Duncan told The Associated Press that urban schools need someone who is accountable to voters and driving all of a city’s resources behind children.

“Part of the reason urban education has struggled historically is you haven’t had that leadership from the top,” he said.

“Where you’ve seen real progress in the sense of innovation, guess what the common denominator is? Mayoral control,” Duncan said.

I do not know of anyone who would describe what Emanuel has done to CPS as “progress” and certainly not as “innovative.”

Furthermore, Emanuel made sure he was not “accountable to voters” by suppressing evidence of the Laquan McDonald shooting until after his runoff election against Chuy Garcia on April 07, 2015.

As of February 01, 2016, Emanuel’s approval rating hit a record low of 27 percent. As WGN-TV reports:

According to the poll, only 27% of Chicagoans approve of the job he is doing.  41% believe he should resign.  55% would support legislation to allow a Chicago mayor to be recalled.

59% of those surveyed say Emanuel is not honest and trustworthy. 70% believe his administration is not transparent. Only 25% believe Emanuel is in touch with people like them.

The mayor’s slide in the polls has accelerated as the result of his handling of the investigation into the police shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald.  A police dashcam video that shows McDonald being shot 16 times was not released until last Spring, after Emanuel was re-elected.

58% of the poll respondents believe the mayor was not justified in withholding the release of the video; 74% don’t believe his statements about the shooting.

985 registered Chicago voters were polled between January 20 and January 28.  The poll has a margin of error of 3.2%.

Looks like Emanuel is losing his mayoral control on many fronts.

As for the condition of CPS under his (and his appointed board’s) control, Emanuel is also taking a hit. As HB 4268 co-sponsor Greg Harris (D- Chicago) notes on his web page circa November 2015:

There is only one school district in the State of Illinois that does NOT have an elected school board, and that is the Chicago Public Schools.  Currently all members of the Chicago Board of Education are appointed by Mayor and are not accountable to the parents, students or communities they serve. It is time for a change. That is why I am proud to cosponsor HB 4268 which would change Chicago’s school board from appointees to an elected school board.

We know about the recent pay-to-play scandals rocking CPS. But for our neighborhoods there are so many other reasons that we need to take back control of our schools. We have seen our neighborhood schools losing resources for enrichment programs such as music, art, sports, foreign languages, advanced placement and special education. This year, CPS is proposing over $8.7 million in cuts to schools in our area.

It is also worth noting that at the same time the Board is cutting our schools and asking for a property tax increase, we will be paying $238 million in termination fees to banks and investors to get us out of interest rate swaps and other financial deals that the CPS Board itself instigated.

Harris posted the above appeal right around the time of the CPS scandal related to a federal investigation and guilty plea of former CPS CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and Emanuel’s withholding emails related to the incident.

Add to the above the following observations regarding an Emanuel-controlled board by Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis in the March 03, 2016, NBC article:

Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis has complained for years that the appointed board rarely listens to teachers and families when imposing decisions — or it wouldn’t have closed 50 schools or rubber-stamped a no-bid contract deal that since ousted the CEO and might land her in prison.

“Nearly one year ago, 90 percent of Chicago voters expressed their support for an elected school board, and now, the city’s students and their families are closer to ending the devastation of mayoral control and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked Board of Education,” Lewis said. “The CTU now calls on the Senate to pass this bill and give the voters what is long overdue — democracy in our education.”

Mayoral control has not worked in Chicago. Whether or not Duncan admits as much in 2016 is irrelevant. He is currently in no position to advocate for mayoral control.

However.

Illinois should stay alert to Duncan’s December 2015 return to Illinois and the possibility of his doing so in order to qualify to run for governor in November 2018.

For now, as of February 2016, Duncan is not in the public eye, though he has signed Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to represent him, as Deadline reports, “in all areas including books and speaking engagements.”

I wonder what Duncan would get CAA or any other agency to market as his USDOE success in a future bid for any political position of note, Illinois governor included.

And I wonder if he plans to write or speak on the glories of mayoral control, especially in Chicago.

Three words:

Litter box liner.

The First Amendment Could Break the Grip of Government Unions by Charles W. Baird

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On January 11, 2016, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association. It will be one of the Court’s most consequential cases this term. A decision in favor of Rebecca Friedrichs, a California public school teacher, could begin to undo the catastrophic damage caused by the widespread unionization of government employees in the 1960s and 1970s.

Municipal bankruptcies, state insolvencies, decaying public education, political corruption, and attacks on the freedom of speech and freedom of association of government employees are only the most visible wreckage of that disastrous mistake.

The question before the Court is whether forcing government employees to pay dues to a government employee union is a violation of the First Amendment.

In the Abood decision (1977), the Supreme Court sanctioned such coercion. Government workers could be forced to pay for the collective bargaining activities of the unions that represent them, but, the majority held, they could not be forced to pay that portion of dues unions use directly for political advocacy, as that would violate their right to free speech.

In his concurring opinion, Justice Lewis Powell warned the Court that there is no “basis … for distinguishing ‘collective bargaining activities’ from ‘political activities’ so far as the interests protected by the First Amendment are concerned. Collective bargaining in the public sector is ‘political’ in any meaningful sense of the word.”

In Abood, the majority disregarded Powell’s concern. But in Friedrichs, the Court will have to reconsider Powell’s insight that collective bargaining in the government sector is inherently political. The wages, salaries, and other conditions of government employment are political questions: they directly affect voters, taxpayers, and the actions of government agencies. Therefore, no employee should be forced to pay dues or fees for government sector collective bargaining.

If the Court finally agrees with Powell, no union will be able to force any government employee to pay union dues or fees for anything. This will shut down the vicious cycle whereby government unions collect forced tribute from government workers and then use it to help pro-union politicians obtain and maintain political power — who then empower and enrich the government employee unions.

The California Teachers Association (CTA) is panicked by the possibility of losing this case. It’s been showing this PowerPoint presentation throughout the state to try to prod its sympathizers to counterattack. It begs for ideas for “next steps and timelines necessary for CTA to respond to the impact of a negative rulings [sic].”

At the end of the presentation, the CTA finally does what it should have alwayshad to do: It considers how it might do a better job of convincing teachers that union membership is worthwhile. Forced dues and fees make it unnecessary for unions to justify themselves to their captive members.

The unions’ main argument in support of forced dues and fees is the chimerical “free rider” problem. They argue that, under the principle of “exclusive representation,” certified unions must represent all government employees, and if any of those workers did not pay dues and fees, they would receive the benefits of union representation for free. That would be unfair.

But this argument raises a more fundamental question: Why should government unions represent any workers who are not their voluntary members? Without exclusive representation, there could be no free riders. Without free riders, there is no case for compulsory union dues — political or otherwise.

Exclusive representation is not before the Court in this case, but if forced dues and fees in government employment are forbidden, exclusive representation itself may be challenged. After all, forcing anyone to accept the representation of an unwanted union as a condition of government employment seems clearly to violate that worker’s freedom of association. I look forward to such a case.

Charles W. BairdCharles W. Baird

Charles Baird is a professor of economics emeritus at California State University at East Bay.

He specializes in the law and economics of labor relations, a subject on which he has published several articles in refereed journals and numerous shorter pieces with FEE.

Only Obama Can Shut Down the Government

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The inclination many establishment Republicans have shown for premature legislative and ideological surrender is, at times, only matched by their eagerness to surrender the messaging battle as well.

Committed conservatives are already fighting a difficult messaging battle. They face committed liberal activists, far-left elected officials at the local, state, and federal level, an entrenched federal bureaucracy, an ideologically blinded media, an influential entertainment community, and an insulated, left-leaning academic community. We do not need to waste precious resources fighting against our own party. But the establishment has backed us into a corner by integrating the language of the Left into its own messaging.

I witnessed this recently at a Republican debate I attended for Florida’s 18th congressional district. The moderator of the debate asked the candidates a question about a vote for or against a debt ceiling hike, and insinuated via the wording of the question that a “no” vote would be a vote for shutting down the government. I was hoping the candidates would see through the messaging magic trick the debate moderator was playing on them, but many did not. By answering this “question,” without challenging the inaccurate premise of the question, many of the candidates lent credence to the premise that the GOP is responsible for “shutting down the government.” This is complete garbage and no activist, candidate, elected official, or responsible member of the GOP with a media voice should make room for this nonsensical idea.

Democrats, and their ideologically-aligned media friends, invented the false narrative that the GOP is responsible for any government shutdown as a tool to force the GOP to forfeit the constitutional congressional power of the purse, which the GOP-led House of Representatives rightfully holds.

Now that the narrative has been firmly implanted in the American public conscience, with the assistance of many in the GOP, and with Republican leadership afraid to tell the truth about how the government “shuts down,” the GOP insider class has effectively disempowered itself, along with the voters who busted their butts to get them elected and millions of conservative Americans who are pleading for their lawmakers to fight back against President Obama’s “fundamental transformation.”

Here are the very simple, and indisputable facts, about government “shutdowns.” The Republican-led House of Representatives has the constitutional duty to put forth, and pass, a federal budget. When a compromise budget is accepted by both the House and the Senate, it is then passed on to President Obama who can choose whether to sign the budget. If the president refuses to sign the budget and the government “shuts down”—a misnomer in itself because the government’s essential functions continue unabated during a “shutdown”— it is the exclusive result of presidential inaction. This requires no leap in logic or world-class imagination to figure out.

With this said, I am pleading with Republicans across the grassroots and elected spectrum to please stop saying, “We shouldn’t shut down the government.” Of course we shouldn’t shut down the government because we can’t shut down the government. Only the president can do that.

Do you really think that if the roles were reversed, and the Republicans held the White House and the Democrats held the House and Senate, that the media narrative would be the same? Of course not. The media would be blaming the Republican President for “shutting down the government” if he refused to sign the Democratic congress’ budget.

So please stop playing along like media lapdogs and carrying their messaging water for them. Just gather yourselves together and commit to doing the right thing and not the easy thing, and tell the people the truth. We deserve it.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared in the Conservative Review. The featured image of President Obama is by Pablo Martinez Monsivais | AP Photo.

Gallup: More Americans Say Federal Government a Threat

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The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution is there for a simple reason: Our Founding Fathers wisely understood that even a national government of supposedly limited powers could overstep its bounds and infringe upon the rights of the people. In the landmark Heller decision, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the Founders considered the Second Amendment a failsafe that would provide the people with the means “to oppose an oppressive military force if the constitutional order broke down.”

Whatever else can be said about the efficacy or integrity of the government these days, America is fortunate that its people still have ample means to seek peaceful redress of grievances. Yet a new poll shows that the Founders’ concerns about the overreaching tendencies of centralized power remain on the mind of many U.S. citizens. Gallup reported on Monday that the share of Americans saying that the federal government poses “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” has risen from 30 percent in 2003 to 49 percent today.

Those who believe the government poses a threat say that it does so in a wide variety of areas, ranging from the feeling that the government wields too much power in general, to numerous specific concerns. Gallup notes, however, that “[t]he most frequently mentioned specific threats involve gun control laws and violations of the Second Amendment to the Constitution, mentioned by 12% who perceive the government to be an immediate threat.” That was a greater percentage of Americans than those expressing concern over government surveillance of Americans’ email and phone activities, Obamacare, and encroachments on freedom of religion and other First Amendment rights.

Gallup also reports that during the four-year gap between its 2006 and 2010 polls, the share of Democrat and Democrat-leaning respondents believing the government posed a threat decreased from 59 percent to 26 percent, while the share of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents holding the same opinion increased from 24 percent to 63 percent. For that reason, Gallup concludes that party affiliation tends to determine whether a person perceives a threat, with Democrats more likely to having felt threatened during the presidency of George W. Bush and Republicans more likely to having the same opinion since Barack Obama took office.

However, Gallup’s numbers show that adherents of both parties are more threatened by government power under Obama than they were during the Bush administration. Comparing responses from the two parties by averaging the results of the four polls taken during each administration shows that Democrats are four points more suspicious of government under Obama than Republicans were under Bush. The poll also shows that, overall, Republicans are more threatened by the government under Obama than Democrats were under Bush.

But make no mistake.  Any way you break down the numbers, a growing number of people of all political persuasions see the Obama administration as a threat to our freedoms.

Gallup’s take-away from its polls is that “the persistent finding in recent years that half of the population views the government as an immediate threat underscores the degree to which the role and power of government remains a key issue of our time. . . . From the people’s perspective, then, a focus on the appropriate role for government should be at the forefront of the nation’s continuing political discourse and should be a key point of debate in the current presidential election campaigns.”

The United States is unique in its commitment to an armed citizenry. It is also unique in the level of personal freedom and self-determination enjoyed by its citizens. We don’t think that’s a coincidence. We also don’t think it’s any surprise that more Americans are feeling concerned about a government that increasingly signals it doesn’t trust them with their fundamental freedoms, including the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

One solution, of course, is provided by Article II of the Constitution, which details the manner in which Americans are to elect their president. We again have the opportunity to exercise that sacred freedom next year. Candidates on both sides of the aisle have already begun articulating their views on the Second Amendment, and gun owners should be paying close attention. If Americans again elect an executive who does not hold the trust of the people, we will have only ourselves to blame.

The Most Impossible Thing in “MI: Rogue Nation” by Jeffrey A. Tucker

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There’s a scene in “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” that seems entirely plausible. The bad guy is transferring a huge amount of money, something like $1 billion. He has a hand-held device and clicks the button. We see a progress bar. The operation takes only a few seconds and then there is a ding. Done! Wow, impressive.

Surely, this is the way rich, powerful, well-connected people do it.

Actually, this is the most impossible thing that happens in the movie. It is more impossible than holding one’s breath for 3 minutes, more impossible than hanging onto the side of an airplane as it takes off and lands, and more impossible than riding a motorcycle at 120 miles an hour around curvy Moroccan roads and not crashing.

It can’t be done — not with any existing service. Viewers hardly question that it should be possible to move money that quickly. Sadly, it is not. Our money transmission technologies in real life are like the 1950s.

The only way to do what they did would be the use of a technology invented in 2009 but is still in extremely limited use, for now: cryptocurrency like Bitcoin operating on a distributed ledger. Otherwise, you are going to have to wait several weekdays, pay high fees, or have a trusted (credit-based) relationship with some third-party provider.

There is currently no way, using national money, to move a billion dollars from one person to another instantly. You can’t do it with a million dollars. There are better and worse ways to move thousands of dollars, but they all cost money, all require a trust relationship, and all take time. And there is no way to do this peer to peer using even $1 (except, of course, physically handing you a piece of paper in person).

National Currencies Limit Transfer Choice

Consider the most common way of moving money from me to you. It is ACH, which stands for Automated Clearing House. It moves a total of $40 trillion per year in 25 billion transactions, and is increasingly preferred over credit cards. It seems clean and, once you have verified accounts, works without a credit relationship.

However, it is slow. It takes at least one day and as much as four days, not including weekends. If you push on Thursday, the funds might not be there until Tuesday. It’s also expensive: 1-3%, which doesn’t sound like much until you realize you can get a nice car for how much it costs to move $1 million.

ACH is the most advanced, most common, most direct, most reliable method. And it is still terrible. It’s closely related to wiring money — an ancient method that uses Western Union (founded 1851!) or Moneygram (the new name for Travelers Express founded in 1940). These are very expensive services, though they are very fast.

PayPal is a mixed bag. If you have a balance or have it directly linked to your bank account, there are no fees, though there is a transaction limit of $10,000. If you are using a credit or debit card, the fees can be 3%. And the clearing time can be 3-4 business days, though if you have a balance in your account, the transfer is instant. This doesn’t really mean anything, though, because it takes 3-4 days to make the PayPal balance achieve liquidity outside of PayPal. If you are using it internationally, the fees go through the roof, regardless.

Other services improve on this record. Google Wallet is one of the best. It’s been known to be fast when it is linked up to your bank account. But you can’t know for sure. It could take several days. And there are strict limits to the amount to you can move. If you have more than $50,000 to send in a week, you are completely out of luck.

It is the same with Square Cash, except that this service absolutely requires a debit card hook up. It is mercifully free of fees, but you have to wait 30 days before your account is verified, and, until that time, you are limited to moving $1,000.

There is a fancy new application on Facebook that allows you to move limited amounts of money, and it is wonderful and exciting.

Except: it can take three to four days before your money movies via instant messaging. And Facebook doesn’t permit credit cards, debit cards, or other third-party payment systems.

SnapChat is experimenting with something similar.

There are many other services that are desperately trying to resolve the problem. Think of companies like Dwolla, which started in 2008 with such promise. But this company, just like PayPal and everyone else, bumped into a crazy system of regulations that forced compliance with every form of “know your customer” rules and navigating a highly regulated banking system with a money that is ultimately controlled by government and, therefore, moves digitally only according to its diktat.

Risks of Anachronistic Systems

Another big flaw is that any one of these trusted third parties can reverse, freeze, or seize the transaction funds and there’s nothing anyone can do to avoid this risk. For a billion dollar transfer, the risk of seizure, freezing, or reversal would be enormous and would last for months.

It’s not a surprise that innovation is difficult under these conditions. We can get ever fancier interfaces, ever more accessibility, ever friendlier ways of going about things. All of this is great.

But, in the end, transferring money from one person to the next bumps into the same problems: trust, fees, waiting times, dollar limits, and grave problems with international transfers. Each problem has a slightly different source. But they all add up to the weird reality that doing what would seem completely normal in 2015 — moving money instantly from here to there — is still exceedingly difficult.

How much further are we going to get into the digital age before our monetary and payment systems catch up? There is a crying need. Everyone knows it. This is why so many people are excited about Bitcoin.

Bitcoin blows up the current system through several critically new innovations. It combines a money and payment system into one single process, bypassing national monies altogether. It also bypasses the banking system completely through a ledger system that is open source and monitored through software. It also requires no trust, credit, or identity verification. If you have an Internet connection, and you hold some amounts of the currency, you can move that property from you to anyone else in the world without asking anyone’s permission.

The time for transaction processing is almost instant; the transaction clearing time can be several minutes. Compare that clearing time to 1-3 days for equity markets, 3-5 business days for a check or wire transfer, and 60-90 days for a credit card transaction.

The costs associated with moving cryptocurrency are negligible. For example, in December 2014, there was an $81 million transaction that cost just $0.40 to conduct. That compares to the $2.4 million or so this same transaction would cost using conventional payments systems and national monies.

This is a huge benefit of Bitcoin but only one feature of a larger innovation. Cryptocurrency completely rethinks the way we bundle, title, move, and verify all kinds of information. The potential applications for this technology are awesome to consider. It’s not just about money, though that would be significant enough. The spillovers affected titling, securities, and all forms of contracts.

The headlines over Bitcoin today are all about the fallout from the failure of one firm, Mt. Gox, an early mover in the space that mishandled its business. It’s just another in a long series of blows Bitcoin has endured in the 6 years of its existence. And yet, when you look at it today, you see an innovation that has been tested, survived, and thrived.

Bitcoin is Mission Impossible — an innovation that finally moves money into the 21st century — coming true.


Jeffrey A. Tucker

Jeffrey Tucker is Director of Digital Development at FEE, CLO of the startup Liberty.me, and editor at Laissez Faire Books. Author of five books, he speaks at FEE summer seminars and other events. His latest book is Bit by Bit: How P2P Is Freeing the World. Follow on Twitter and Like on Facebook.

Defended: Term Limits in Nashville, TN

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Don’t you just love when citizens take a stand against slippery politicians? That’s what happened last week in Nashville, when U.S. Term Limits helped citizens defeat two anti-term limits proposals foisted on them by the city’s Metro Council.

Nashville Council members have now tried five times to weaken their two-term limit, failing each time because voters are too smart to allow it.

Councilwoman Emily Evans thought she had finally figured out how to trick the people, combining weaker term limits and a smaller Council size into one ballot measure. But thanks to the efforts of local activists and USTL on the ground, that was not to be.

A late yard sign campaign informed citizens at every polling place that Evans’ amendment was crooked, and it was beaten in a landslide 26-point margin. The special interests that funded her campaign were shocked!

USTL assists in local term limits campaigns because elected officials at all levels will veer into corrupt and self-serving behavior. When this happens, the wealthy lobbyists and donors who prop up politicians will do everything they can to beat term limits.
We cannot let it happen.

Thank You,

Nick Tomboulides
Executive Director, U.S. Term Limits

Senator Rand Paul Introduces ‘Read the Bills Act’

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AKRON, Ohio /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — “Congress has to read the bills, if they want to claim they represent us,” declares Jim Babka, President of DownsizeDC.org, Inc. “The ‘Read the Bills Act’ restores fiduciary duty in Congress.”

Under the Read the Bills Act (RTBA, S. 1571), members of Congress would have to sign an affidavit indicating they’ve read the bill or heard it read to them before voting “For” the bill. Courts would be prohibited from enforcing laws that didn’t meet this requirement.

“You can’t claim ignorance of the law as a defense in court,” Babka continues. “So there shouldn’t be any excuse for politicians to pass huge bills they haven’t read.”

Senator Paul has been featuring this issue as one of his priorities while on the campaign trail.  The Senator himself observes that, “Too often in Congress, legislation is shoved through without hearings, amendments or debate. Elected officials are rarely given an adequate amount of time to read the bills in full, and unlike Rep.Nancy Pelosi, I believe we must read the bills before passing them into law.”

RTBA also requires the bill to be posted online for seven days before the final vote. This, Senator Paul notes, will give Americans “sufficient time to read and give input to Members of Congress as they consider legislation.”

This simple, “transpartisan” act is hard for members of Congress to accept. But Americans love it. Grover Norquist, in his book, Leave Us Alone, called the bill an essential reform for transparency, applauding the fact that it prohibits sneaking-in last minute deals.

Babka commends Senator Paul. “He’s not only re-introduced this bill, which would be a law that would protect individuals, but he’s also put forth a Read the Bill rule, which would require the Senate to have a waiting period of bill publication for the vote. Truly, he’s committed to this issue.”

To help attract more co-sponsors to Senator Paul’s bill, DownsizeDC.org offers a free tool for constituents to deliver letters directly to their Representative and two Senators. Here’s the link: https://secure.downsizedc.org/etp/rtba/

DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

http://www.DownsizeDC.org

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Soviet Fascism in the 21st Century: The Ideology of Death and Destruction

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The killing of five servicemen in Tennessee mobilized the entire security forces looking for a motive and wrongly identified the shooting as a Domestic Terrorism. For me the motive is as clear as a blue sky—it was an act of Islamic terror. The entire week starting on July 14, 2015 was full of killings, deceit, and destructions going on in America and around the world. It was an apogee of the ideology I called Soviet Fascism and its assaults on the West. The picture was presenting a system of political believes and all its deadly components acting simultaneously. I am writing about the ideology again, because 55 per cent of young people in America are planning to leave the country. I feel, it is my duty to educate them and tell them the truth about the political party called Democratic Party, which is responsible for the destruction going on in our country and throughout the world.

Liberals and Conservatives

The term “Classic Liberals” came to life as a representation of the people with strong principles and beliefs, embracing a certain philosophy in a conception of liberty. It describes and indicates various types of individual freedoms, such as religious liberty, political liberty, freedom of speech, right of self-defense, and the like. This is a very positive identification of the “Classic Liberals” in the history of the nineteenth century. They are for all the liberties plus they are the patriots of their country, pursuing national security along the path of the truth. They are self-sufficient and love the flag, country, and religion. I love them and share their ideas and feelings. I don’t like “Modern Liberals.”

The “Modern Liberals.” have usurped the honorable term of liberty that has nothing in common with their activities and agenda. Lacking a grasp of reality, they have always been soft on Soviet Socialism and now actually soft on Soviet Fascism. All the good words describing “Classic Liberals” belongs to the people who call themselves Conservatives, who are for SMALL government. They are self-sufficient, they love the flag, country, and religion.  Contrary to them, “Modern Liberals” are apologist for a big government, controlling people and economy, as Obama has been doing during his entire presidency. They are using Stalin’s Political Correctness to do so in order to fool and mislead you.

The defrauding of the political names and their political titles had happened and this is the crux of the matter. I have some explanation of how it happened and proof that all negative development in our country has been caused by the ignorance of some and, perhaps, treachery of others within the “Modern Liberals,” we called them today Liberals or Leftist. I see a constant use of Stalin’s Political Correctness by them in both domestic and foreign affairs to deceive, fool and mislead people—a typical manipulation of the human mind.

In writing this series, I am trying to open up an avenue showing the way Socialism proceeds from a theory to reality, from the 19th to the 21st century. To a certain degree it is the avenue of politics and semantics from Karl Marx to Joseph Stalin. Semantics is a branch of Linguistics, it is the study of the word’s meanings and ways in which the meanings changed and developed. Stalin, by deceiving the world used it to create his own ideology of Socialism by preaching Marx’s postulates—the fraud, I have been presenting since the first article of this series. Stalin’s Political Correctness is the reflection and manifestation of his fraud to fool you during two centuries. Pay attention to Semantics—Social and Socialist are two completely different words: not all Social-Democrats in Europe are Socialists, some are.

Big Brother is Watching You

Eric Arthur Blair, who used the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. It was around the 1930s and 40s, when he completed his brilliant book—1984. Living in the Soviet Union at the time, I couldn’t read it. The book was forbidden by the Stalinist regime. Coming to America, I was able to read it when my knowledge of English allowed it. And… I was stunned—that book was about my childhood and my life in the Soviet Union. The narrative of a communal apartment and its kitchen had described my exact life in Leningrad, and the smell of cabbage that has followed me since. The world classified the book as a fiction and satire, I would argue that– the book is much more than that.

All works of George Orwell presents a thoughtful and careful warning to the decent people of Western civilization. You wouldn’t argue that his warning is a thoughtful one, it is careful, because Orwell was writing and publishing his works at the time of Stalin’s butchery in Russia. I have an impression that besides the smell of cabbage, Orwell also grasped Stalin’s Political Correctness, which is a central issue of all his writings—a manipulated human mind. Fiction allowed him to create without a fear of being assassinated.  Don’t forget, Trotsky was assassinated by Stalin’s order in the 1940s.

Orwell knew Stalin’s character and his connection to the Muslim culture and Islam. Using his knowledge, he is definitely addressing the upcoming generations and that is the reason, I am reporting about Stalin’s time as a child of Stalinism. Let me illustrate my thoughts by using George Orwell’s words, which will remind you of your own life in America today:

“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

This was said in 1930-40s—during Stalin’s time, when I had lived in Leningrad. Look at my identification of Political Correctness: “To indoctrinate us in the Stalinist ideology, an arsenal of different devices was used: lies, fraud, deceit, distortion, and fabrication, perjury, and so on to cover-up the crimes committed and substitute the promising result with a process…

“… Political Correctness is a Stalinist policy, driven by the political agenda, a skillfully crafted design and a long-term strategy of war against Western civilization and creation of One World Government.”

Do you grasp the resemblance with Orwell and the reason why I am writing about Stalinism?

A malignant and Ubiquitous Ideology of Stalinism

Never underestimate the power of a symbol: Symbol plays an extremely important role in history and in our lives today. Stalin was and is a mighty symbol of power in Russia today. Below is a quotation I took from a chapter in my book that shows Stalin’s role in the creation of the Chinese Communist State and Russia’s activities in the Middle East. Pay attention to a tremendous symbol of Stalin and his ideology of Socialism—it plays a crucial role in the 21st century of the world and that is the reason I dedicated all my writings to that exact topic. Remember, history repeats itself, please, see the beginning of the chapter The Red Menace: From China to Jihad, in What is Happening to America, written in 2006, p.145:

“In accordance with my habit, I would like to return to the chronology in the Kremlin’s Foreign Policy of the 1950s-1960s. The next target in the agenda after China was the Middle East—to control oil reserves and suffocate the West. It was Stalin’s idea. He was the first to acknowledge a new Jewish State in 1948, hoping for another satellite now in the Middle East. When Israel turned her face to the United States, the Stalinist foreign policy had drastically changed—the intelligence forces, a second echelon, came to achieve world domination by hook or by crook. Stalin had tremendous experience as a commissar for the nationalities in the country of more than one hundred different ethnic groups. He knew how to deal with them, and pitted them against each other—it was his paramount agenda. Now it was the Middle East’s turn to experience Stalinism.”

That means a total indoctrination and a process of radicalization by Stalin’s ideology in the countries of the Middle East for the last 65 years—as a result the ideology of Radical Islamism was born. If you want to know how it was done, please, read the above mentioned book and also The Russian Factor. Yet there is another reason to present Stalinism to the world and especially to the young Americans who planned to leave the country, it is that—Stalinism is Soviet Fascism. Many young people do not know anything about the Iron Curtain, Cold War, or the KGB activities. For them Russia has changed to the better after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Wrong! Nothing has changed in Russia, Stalinism is the ideology of the current Russia with the same agenda—destruction of Western civilization.

The leftists pretend not to know that. But, I hope, you remember Obama’s and Hillary’s reset with Russia in 2013-2014. Look attentively it is again the tactics of delays, which provide Russia with time to organize Iran’s nuclear deal, I believe the entire issue was created and highly coordinated by Russia, behind the scene through Iran’s Rev. Guard. Read my description of an inextricable connection of Russia and Iran to achieve the Russian agenda to change the balance of power in the Middle East, making its proxy a major force in the region, regardless of oil’s prices going down. Iran is a huge market for Russian arms and equipment’s, which will compensate losses in the price of oil.

Only understanding Russia’s role in current geopolitics, we can answer this question:

WHY IS OBAMA ABANDONING 70 YEARS OF U.S. NONPROLIFERATION POLICY?

Never mind the finer points of the bargain being struck with Iran.

“Since the beginning of the nuclear era, scientists have understood that the exact same technology could be used to produce fuel either for nuclear energy or for nuclear weapons. The two methods for producing nuclear fuel, uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing, therefore, became known as “sensitive nuclear technologies.” The United States has always opposed the spread of sensitive nuclear technologies to all states, including its own allies, and it should not make an exception for Iran.”  Tablet, by Matthew Kroenig June 15, 2015.

The answer to the question is clear to me—the old Soviet/Russian policy 1950-1960 of inflaming the Middle East and instilling the Soviet style leaders is alive and well. Obama is a contemporary conduit of this policy and due to this policy the world is more dangerous today than ever before—Stalinism and its Soviet Fascism is working around the globe in the 21st century. Political Correctness is used by all parties involved: America, Iran, and Russia. Watch how the Obama administration makes incredible concessions to two global sponsors of international terrorism Iran and Russia. The way the liberals have been soft on the Soviet Union in the 20s century, is similar to the way they are collaborating with Putin’s Russia today.

Some observes compare the Obama nuke deal with Iran, and betrayal of Israel to Munich’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia by the West. Perhaps, yet I can tell you even more. If you compare the Obama deal to Clinton’s nuke deal with North Korea, you will be surprised—they are identical. I have a suspicion that both documents had been designed by the same group of people. I haven’t checked it, because I believe that both have been designed by Russians. Do you remember the Russian military document dated 1955? The Soviet Academy of Science had produced the research. I am afraid that both deals with Korea and Iran have the same master- architects in the best traditions of Soviet Fascism.

In addition to that, I’d like to make another two points: Obama sold Ukraine to Russia as well. Have you seen the tactic of delay and procrastination in helping Ukraine? And the second one: it was Clinton, who did two things to the contrary to the American interests in 1994—he made nukes deal with North Korea and

prohibited carrying arms in the military recruit’s stations. Please, consider the results of both and many other Clinton’s “achievements” in 2015. Maybe infiltration of Soviet Fascism to the American soil had begun much earlier?

What does Jane Harman know about Soviet Fascism? I ask about Jane Harman because I watched her on the Fox channel in the Sunday Show, of July 19, 2015. I was surprised that the incompetent Democrat was chosen to answer the questions. I was even more surprise when she became a Director of the Center. Watching her as a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee I knew how poor her knowledge of Russia was and the assignment to lead the Woodrow Wilson Center disappointed me. I am not alone having a negative opinion of her. Read what another person thinks about her and the Center.

“I wrote that last year in two exposés: “The Selling of the WWC” and “The WWC Desecrates its Namesake’s Legacy.”  They revealed that the Washington, DC based Wilson Center is violating its Congressional mandate and is up to its neck in tainted corporate cash. A leading Congressman, a Wilson family descendant, citizens’ groups, and many others agreed. One prominent journalist called the WWC “a global joke.”

The Marriage from Hell: Jane Harman and the Woodrow Wilson Center

By David Boyajian / January 9th, 2012

I am a grantee of the Woodrow Wilson Center and due to that, I have a connection with other professors who were researching the Soviet Union and Russia in their respective universities. They informed me that since Obama’s presidency the money for research of Russia or the topics connected to Russia are not available.

If you read the whole article, you will grasp my concept of the Obama/Putin joint venture. Yes, the Woodrow Wilson Center is “a global joke” and Obama wants to make all university studies of Russia a joke, a global one. As you can see it is something more than only concessions to Iran—it is capitulation to Soviet Fascism. All written is the results of multifaceted activities of American Democratic Party working in cahoots with Russia, the major sponsor of Global Terrorism. The leadership of the Party is making America blind, deaf, and defenseless.

I can give you a list of the Democratic Party’s activities against American interests, which are helping Russia in WWIII. This war is a forceful application of the ideology by violence. The recent sanctuary regions are the direct fronts against America. Show me the logical reason for the sanctuary regions at the time of war. There is none. Moreover, look at the hundred cities allowing protections for the illegal aliens, who violated our law. In the last year they killed 125 people. Look at those regions and cities, they are all runs by the Democrats against American interests. The brother of recently killed Kate Steinle is right: “The system failed my sister and evil killed her.”

Another example is the Planned Parenthood harvesting for aborted baby’s bodies parts to sell. Just listen to the doctor describing the process and your heart will bleed. Don’t you sense a smell of German Fascism in the 1930-40? I do. All Planned Parenthood centers are run by the Democrats. Of course, there are some decent Democrats, but the leadership of the party is adhered to the ideology of Soviet Fascism and to prove the fact, I am writing this column and making a logical case for you.  Unfortunately, the Republicans are not using that major fact, they also don’t know Soviet Fascism and the difference between Social and Socialist.

“As we have seen with the last election, resulting in a Republican-controlled House and Senate, things in Washington didn’t change at all. The socialist agenda continues, regardless of which party is in control. What is needed is for all voters who are concerned with the destruction of their country from within to recognize who the socialists are. If we are ever to really turn things around politically, we must vote for candidates who believe in the constitution as the basis of law and uphold traditional American values and morals.”

Read more.

I am afraid that some Republicans cannot assess correctly importance of the immigration’s issue. It is one of the major fronts in WWIII. The illegal alien situation has been a major problem festering in America for decades, yet “most Presidential candidates are afraid to address the issue because of the established political correctness machine in Washington.” Yes, I agree and addressed the topic many times. Look at Trump, he is the first candidate making the real discussion on the issue and none of the Republican candidates vigorously supported him, they have no idea of Soviet Fascism and WWIII—without this knowledge it is impossible to win the Presidency.

Trump actually exposes Republican’s weakness; they like the incompetent medical doctors are fighting the symptoms not the disease and The Red Menace grows and is fighting us—the killings keep going on. To win the Presidency the identification of the enemy and its moduse operandi is imperative– Knowledge of Soviet Fascism is a must.

I will end the column, the same way I ended the preceding one: A compromise is not a dirty word, a compromise with Soviet Fascism constitutes Treason.

To be continued at www.simonapipko1.com.

Razing the Bar: The bar exam protects a cartel of lawyers, not their clients by Allen Mendenhall

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The bar exam was designed and continues to operate as a mechanism for excluding the lower classes from participation in the legal services market. Elizabeth Olson of the New York Times reports that the bar exam as a professional standard “is facing a new round of scrutiny — not just from the test takers but from law school deans and some state legal establishments.”

This is a welcome development.

Testing what, exactly?

The dean of the University of San Diego School of Law, Stephen C. Ferrulo, complains to the Times that the bar exam “is an unpredictable and unacceptable impediment for accessibility to the legal profession.” Ferrulo is right: the bar exam is a barrier to entry, a form of occupational licensure that restricts access to a particular vocation and reduces market competition.

The bar exam tests the ability to take tests, not the ability to practice law. The best way to learn the legal profession is through tried experience and practical training, which, under our current system, are delayed for years, first by the requirement that would-be lawyers graduate from accredited law schools and second by the bar exam and its accompanying exam for professional fitness.

Freedom of contract

The 19th-century libertarian writer Lysander Spooner, himself a lawyer, opposed occupational licensure as a violation of the freedom of contract, arguing that, once memorialized, all agreements between mutually consenting parties “should not be subjects of legislative caprice or discretion.”

“Men may exercise at discretion their natural rights to enter into all contracts whatsoever that are in their nature obligatory,” he wrote, adding that this principle would prohibit all laws “forbidding men to make contracts by auction without license.”

In more recent decades, Milton Friedman disparaged occupational licensure as “another example of governmentally created and supported monopoly on the state level.” For Friedman, occupational licensure was no small matter. “The overthrow of the medieval guild system,” he said, was an indispensable early step in the rise of freedom in the Western world. It was a sign of the triumph of liberal ideas.… In more recent decades, there has been a retrogression, an increasing tendency for particular occupations to be restricted to individuals licensed to practice them by the state.

The bar exam is one of the most notorious examples of this “increasing tendency.”

Protecting lawyers from the poor

The burden of the bar exam falls disproportionately on low-income earners and ethnic minorities who lack the ability to pay for law school or to assume heavy debts to earn a law degree. Passing a bar exam requires expensive bar-exam study courses and exam fees, to say nothing of the costly applications and paperwork that must be completed in order to be eligible to sit for the exam. The average student-loan debt for graduates of many American law schools now exceeds $150,000, while half of all lawyers make less than $62,000 per year, a significant drop since a decade ago.

Recent law-school graduates do not have the privilege of reducing this debt after they receive their diploma; they must first spend three to four months studying for a bar exam and then, having taken the exam, must wait another three to four months for their exam results. More than half a year is lost on spending and waiting rather than earning, or at least earning the salary of a licensed attorney (some graduates work under the direction of lawyers pending the results of their bar exam).

When an individual learns that he or she has passed the bar exam, the congratulations begin with an invitation to pay a licensing fee and, in some states, a fee for a mandatory legal-education course for newly admitted attorneys. These fees must be paid before the individual can begin practicing law.

The exam is working — but for whom?

What’s most disturbing about this system is that it works precisely as it was designed to operate.  State bar associations and bar exams are products of big-city politics during the Progressive Era. Such exams existed long before the Progressive Era — Delaware’s bar exam dates back to 1763 — but not until the Progressive Era were they increasingly formalized and institutionalized and backed by the enforcement power of various states.

Threatened by immigrant workers and entrepreneurs who were determined to earn their way out of poverty and obscurity, lawyers with connections to high-level government officials in their states sought to form guilds to prohibit advertising and contingency fees and other creative methods for gaining clients and driving down the costs of legal services. Establishment lawyers felt the entrepreneurial up-and-comers were demeaning the profession and degrading the reputation of lawyers by transforming the practice of law into a business industry that admitted ethnic minorities and others who lacked rank and class. Implementing the bar exam allowed these lawyers to keep allegedly unsavory people and practices out of the legal community and to maintain the high costs of fees and services.

Protecting the consumer

In light of this ugly history, the paternalistic response of Erica Moeser to the New York Times is particularly disheartening. Moeser is the president of the National Conference of Bar Examiners. She says that the bar exam is “a basic test of fundamentals” that is justified by “protecting the consumer.” But isn’t it the consumer above all who is harmed by the high costs of legal services that are a net result of the bar exam and other anticompetitive practices among lawyers? To ask the question is to answer it. It’s also unclear how memorizing often-archaic rules to prepare for standardized, high-stakes multiple-choice tests that are administered under stressful conditions will in any way improve one’s ability to competently practice law.

The legal community and consumers of legal services would be better served by the apprenticeship model that prevailed long before the rise of the bar exam. Under this model, an aspiring attorney was tutored by experienced lawyers until he or she mastered the basics and demonstrated his or her readiness to represent clients. The high cost of law school was not a precondition; young people spent their most energetic years doing real work and gaining practical knowledge. Developing attorneys had to establish a good reputation and keep their costs and fees to a minimum to attract clients, gain trust, and maintain a living.

The rise in technology and social connectivity in our present era also means that reputation markets have improved since the early 20th century, when consumers would have had a more difficult time learning by word-of-mouth and secondhand report that one lawyer or group of lawyers consistently failed their clients — or ripped them off. Today, with services like Amazon, eBay, Uber, and Airbnb, consumers are accustomed to evaluating products and service providers online and for wide audiences.  Learning about lawyers’ professional reputations should be quick and easy, a matter of a simple Internet search.  With no bar exam, the sheer ubiquity and immediacy of reputation markets could weed out the good lawyers from the bad, thereby transferring the mode of social control from the legal cartel to the consumers themselves.

Criticism of the high costs of legal bills has not gone away in recent years, despite the drop in lawyers’ salaries and the saturation of the legal market with too many attorneys. The quickest and easiest step toward reducing legal costs is to eliminate bar exams. The public would see no marked difference in the quality of legal services if the bar exam were eliminated, because, among other things, the bar exam doesn’t teach or test how to deliver those legal services effectively.

It will take more than just the grumbling of anxious, aspiring attorneys to end bar-exam hazing rituals. That law school deans are realizing the drawbacks of the bar exam is a step in the right direction. But it will require protests from outside the legal community — from the consumers of legal services — to effect any meaningful change.

Allen Mendenhall

Allen Mendenhall is the author of Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism (Rowman & Littlefield / Lexington Books, 2014). Visit his website at AllenMendenhall.com.

Black and Blue: How the State Brings Order

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We need rule of law, not law and order by Sandy Ikeda:

Today, the difference between law and order and rule of law is literally a matter of life and death. Rarely has that difference been illustrated so starkly as on the streets and inside the courtrooms of St. Louis County, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York. The tragedy is that too few can articulate it; the terror is that too many can’t even see it. At least, not yet.

Rule of law

The rule of law is often contrasted with the rule of man. According to the rule of law, law should lie as far as possible beyond the arbitrary, unpredictable choices of public authorities.

But the rule of law also contains the idea that the law should neither deliberately privilege nor harm any individual or group. Legislation that aims at a certain outcome for a specific person is contrary to the rule of law. An edict that intentionally takes property from persons in group A in order to benefit persons in group B also violates the rule of law. The law should apply equally to everyone regardless of their status. But as F.A. Hayek pointed out, when the state attempts to impose any large-scale plan on its citizens, its commands must necessarily discriminate against some and favor others.

At the same time, those who believe government (that is, a monopoly over force) is necessary for a free society — to provide national defense, for example — but who also believe in the rule of law tend to support aggression under certain circumstances. One is tax collection, so long as it doesn’t target particular individuals or groups, and so long as the persons or groups benefiting from the tax revenue can’t be identified beforehand. The rule of law is supposed to constrain political power.

The rule of law implies stability and predictability. It weighs against expediency and opportunism in legislation, shifting this way and that as circumstances change. And it weighs in favor of governing according to abstract principles that apply universally. Laws that avoid privilege and favoritism (“rent seeking” in modern terminology) tend to do just this.

When government is small and nonintrusive, the rule of law may, in fact, promote a peaceful kind of law and order. But today, when governments around the world are anything but small and nonintrusive, the difference between law and order and rule of law has never been so stark.

Law and order

No one disputes that a certain kind of social order is a good thing. In general, rioting and pillaging are wrong. But when oppression becomes intolerable and peaceful forms of protest have been ineffective, disorderly conduct and even the destruction of property can be positive forces for political and social change. Think of the Boston Tea Party.

I think it’s safe to say that behind that level of oppression is the authority’s fear that it is losing control, a fear sparked by significant acts of individual defiance against authority. That defiance is usually against the authority of police, the blue tip of the spear wielded by the State and aimed at the heart of the most vulnerable citizens.

Ironically, the very chaos governments fear is itself the consequence of too much “law and order,” and their response is then usually to try to impose even more oppressive and unequal “law and order.” Think of the American Revolution. Think of Tiananmen Square. Governments equate order with control. They view society not as what happens when people freely follow their own plans, but as a machine that they must consciously direct, maintain, and occasionally overhaul, lest the cogs freeze up and the wheels stop turning. For them, society cannot order itself, but must be deliberately ordered by law — the law and order of a police state.

In a police state, no one knows how many people the police kill every year. In a police state, the police are not accountable for the harm they do to the same degree that ordinary citizens are. In a police state, the police have extraordinary privileges under the law that the rest of us do not.

The “law and order” of a police state is the result of surveillance, discrimination, and aggression. The law and order that emerges from a minimal government under the rule of law derives from privacy, equality, and peaceful cooperation.

ABOUT SANDY IKEDA

Sandy Ikeda is a professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.

James O’Keefe on Government Power — Corruption — Arrogance

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James O’Keefe exposes Department of Justice corruption in the Louisiana U.S. Attorney Office and the DOJ Civil Rights Division Regarding Landrieu, Danziger Bridge and other cases.

Project Veritas Action investigates the U.S. Department of Justice and their Civil Rights Division that has been involved in “grotesque” prosecutorial misconduct in cases against law enforcement. The same division, and even the attorney involved in past misconduct, is now investigating the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT BELOW:

VO #1: Was Senator Mary Landrieu’s connections to the U. S. Attorney’s office the reason I was so aggressively prosecuted five years ago?

(pause)

In light of new revelations…Ethical Conduct Complaints have been filed with the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board. The complaints were filed against former Assistant U.S. Attorney Jan Mann, Salvatore Perricone and the former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District James B. Letten. An ethics complaint was also filed with the Justice Department against Karla Dobinski.

Letten: Listen to me, pay attention to me, listen to me, listen to me you hobbits. You are less than I can ever tell you.

VO #2: This is Former U. S. Attorney James Letten on the sidewalk in front of the Tulane University law School where he is an assistant Dean.

Letten: blah blah blah…(throws book at James)

VO #3: This wasn’t the first time Jim Letten has thrown the book at me. On January 25th, 2010, I was arrested with three colleagues by the FBI and
charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the intent of committing a felony. A charge that was well beyond the facts of the case.

Mike Madigan: It seemed to be an enormous overreaction to what happened. And relatively soon within the first couple of days, the prosecutors knew that this was not any terrorist activity and they knew that it was a politically related mater having to do with Senator Landrieu.

O’Keefe: We actually showed our real drivers licenses, each and every one of us./// I walked up to Senator Landrieu’s door, it was open, anyone could walk in, it was business hours. And I sat down on the couch. And then I said, and this was in the original FBI affidavit, I said to the secretary, I said, “I’m waiting for somebody.”

Letten: I didn’t prosecute your case asshole. I recused. I recused from your case…

VO #4: Letten did recuse himself but left the prosecution of the case to his number two Jan Mann. Mann’s personal connections to Mary Landrieu were well known, going back to when the two went to school together. My attorney, Mike Madigan believed that Letten’s entire office should have recused itself, primarily because of relationships and personal connections with Senator Landrieu.

Madigan: We looked at what remained as the leadership at that point in time and we learned quickly on that Senator Landrieu’s brother, who I believe the name was Maurice, was part of the leadership of that office with Jan Mann.

VO #5: Madigan wrote a strong letter to the Justice Department asking for the case to be moved to another jurisdiction but that didn’t happen. Jan Mann continued to press the case, in spite of the outrageousness of the charges.

Madigan: We thought it was a very large overreach to be using that statute in the first place particularly in light of the fact that it was obviously designed for terrorist activity and I think the prosecutors knew pretty soon on that that was not the case.

VO #6: The facts of the case were pretty straightforward if slightly ridiculous. In January of 2010, Senator Landrieu’s support of Obamacare led Louisiana voters to flood her office with complaints. The plan was to make an undercover video.

O’Keefe: United States Senator Mary Landrieu had said her phones were jammed. We thought it would be revelatory and ironic and funny and youtube worthy if we caught her staffers on tape making derogatory comments about the tea party. “Oh, let’s just shut those phones down so those tea party people can’t get through to us.”

VO #7: Two of the participants were wearing hard hats and reflective vests purchased that morning at a hardware store.

O’Keefe: We looked absurd, we looked like the Village People. In fact, they were dressed so absurdly that one of the secretaries laughed and said they obviously aren’t telephone repair people.

VO #8: No one was fooled and someone called the FBI. All four of those arrested faced felony charges…that Mike Madigan says, made no sense at all.
Mike Madigan: There was no criminal intent, there was no effort to commit a felony, no evidence whatsoever.

VO #9: But Assistant U. S. Attorney Jan Mann’s prosecution was relentless. And perhaps even unethical. Privileged…client-attorney emails were somehow released to the press just weeks after the arrest.

Madigan: The only place that that could have happened from was from the seizure of James computer by the government./// Well we thought it was extremely unprofessional, inappropriate if not criminal action.

VO #10: Madigan asked Mann to investigate the leaks but his letter went unanswered. It now seems pretty evident that there were a lot of unethical activities going on in the U.S Attorney’s office. Last year, five New Orleans police officers who had been convicted for a deadly shooting had their convictions overturned.

MSNBC News: In a 129 page ruling a federal judge overturned the convictions citing witness coercion, inconsistent testimony and a scandal in which at least three government attorneys were revealed to have posted comments about the case on line.

VO #11: They had anonymously posted prejudicial comments condemning the cops before and during the trial. The government attorneys were Jan Mann, Karla Dobinski and Salvatore Perricone.

O’Keefe: It also turns out that one of those U.S. Attorney’s was blogging about me.

VO #12: Salvatore Perricone used the screen name legacy U.S.A when commenting about my case. The day after my arrest he anonymously blogged, “sure they should be punished. Throw the book at them.”

legacyusa Jan 27, 2010 Of all the idiots we have in the Senate, why did they pick Mary. Besides, she’s hardly ever in that office, anyway. So why? Sure they should be punished. Throw the book at them. But why that office?

VO #13: On May 25th, 2010 the Mary Landrieu case ended.

O’Keefe: The government gave me three years of probation for a class b misdemeanor. It was very unusual. The case was handled unusually. Days before I was sentenced, a federal judge who usually doesn’t get involved in misdemeanor cases, made reference of an extremely serious crime I committed. He talked about acts of violence being committed.

Madigan: I have to say that in forty years of practice I’ve never seen a probation like that. It was extremely onerous, with regard to James. It made his life miserable basically requiring all kinds of things that I thought were totally unnecessary and that I have never seen before or since.

O’Keefe: I want people to know about this. I want them to know what happened here./// All of these people need to be brought to justice.

VO #14: Now, some five years on…it is time to set the record straight. Senator Landrieu needs to address these questions. And the prosecutors who handled my case, must answer for their possibly criminal or at least unethical actions.

Regulation of Lodging by the Market Process by Howard Baetjer Jr.

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Does the lodging industry need government regulation? I don’t think so, and I’m more convinced than before after listening to a fascinating EconTalk conversation between host Russ Roberts and Nathan Blecharczyk, a founder of the lodging service Airbnb.

Blecharczyk explains that every Airbnb customer rates every property in which she stays for cleanliness, value, and the accuracy of its description on the website, and every property owner rates every customer who stays with him. Roberts then responds as follows (the emphasis is mine):

To a large extent, your trust system and the reviews that you generate on both sides of the transaction are the regulators. Right? So, the guest that came before me is the person who inspected the property for me. So in some sense the technology and the way it brings people together is a substitute for regulation.

I think Roberts is almost exactly correct here. The regulator of housing quality in today’s world is best understood not as a person or agency but as a process. First, the customers rate the properties; then, Airbnb posts the customers’ ratings; and then, both Airbnb’s prospective customers and other property owners react to that information. Property owners who would like to rent their properties via Airbnb are effectively forced to meet the standards upheld by the other properties offered, in order to win customers. That process of judgment, communication, and reaction is not “a substitute for regulation,” as Roberts says; it is a substitute for government regulation. It is a superior kind of regulation, provided by the market process.

Here are some of the ways in which it is superior:

  • Instead of being inspected every year or so, each property is inspected every time it is rented.
  • Instead of getting a cursory look-over by a government employee just doing his job, the property gets a thorough examination by someone with her own comfort and money involved.
  • Instead of being enforced by authorities’ restrictions on the choices of renters and property owners, standards of quality are enforced by those choices.
  • Instead of being subject to “capture” by the regulated insiders of the industry—hotels and motels eager to use regulation to suffocate these new competitors—this regulatory process is itself regulated (kept fair) by outsiders’ freedom to participate in the industry.
  • Instead of staying on the books for years after they stop making sense—if they ever did—the standards generated by this regulatory process are constantly being reevaluated, and they’re cast off as soon as they don’t make sense.

Airbnb’s collection and publication of customer ratings is something that every other hotel, motel, and lodging house is free to imitate. This freedom eliminates the rationale for government regulation of lodging services.

That rationale is based on “market failure” due to imperfect information. In the standard story, we need government regulation because lodging is not a repeat-purchase item, so the market fails to give consumers information on which to judge its quality before using it. Hence consumers might be taken advantage of, so they need government to regulate quality. Maybe that argument had some merit in days past—I’m doubtful—but it surely has no merit now. The quality of Airbnb offerings is as closely regulated as I can imagine it being.

Now that real-time customer ratings over the Internet are easy, governments should stop regulating hotels. The market process does that better than governments can.

ABOUT HOWARD BAETJER JR.

Howard Baetjer Jr. is a lecturer in the department of economics at Towson University and a faculty member for seminars of the Institute for Humane Studies. This article is based on ideas from his book, Free Our Markets: A Citizens’ Guide to Essential Economics.

Florida Mayor takes bold stand against Terrorism!

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kguinn

Mayor Kent Guinn, Ocala, Florida.

Mayor Kent Guinn took a bold stand against terrorism on Tuesday, when he and the City Council rejected attempts by terrorist sympathizer Manal Fakhoury (pictured above) to marry the city of Ocala, Florida to Ramallah, Palestine via  Sister Cities International, a United Nations driven initiative.

A request to formally align the City of Ocala, which is affectionately known as horse country and the city of Ramallah which is better known for anti-Semitism and  terrorism was submitted by Manal Fakhoury, a Palestinian herself, as well as Karin Dean, Cindy Grimes, and Lola Gonzales in the official capacity of Fakhoury Leadership International.

Ramallah, is the Capitol city of the Palestinian Authority.  The P.A. was birthed out of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO),  a federally designated Terrorist Organization which by all appearances changed its name in an effort to distance itself from its violent nature.

The  application which was meet with strong opposition and dated 10/16/2014 was heard by the City Council, on Tuesday 11/18/2014.  Some in support of the initiative to twining the cities of Ocala and Ramallah, showed up wearing Fakhoury Leadership International T-Shirts.  Those who spoke in favor of a formal agreement via Sister Cities International, framed the initiative as an attempt to to promote peace and mutual understanding.

Suggesting Ramallah as a stalwart city in any effort to promote peace and mutual understanding in light its long history of terrorism is a stretch to say the least.  Recent Jihadist attacks on Jewish citizens, attacks the Israeli Prime Minister attributes directly to PLO leader Mamoud Abbas who is headquartered in Ramallah add additional skepticism to Fakhourys’ stated mission.   Comments by Israeli leadership regarding recent attacks give a glimpse at the kind of influence Ocala could expect from such an alliance:

Prime Minister Netanyahu said incitement by Hamas and Abbas motivated attacks on Jews. “This is a direct result of the incitement lead by Hamas and Abu Mazen (Abbas), incitement that the international community irresponsibly ignores. We will respond with a firm hand to this brutal murder of Jews who went to pray and were scathed by despicable murder.”   

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett (Habayit Hayehudi) said that “Abbas, one of the biggest terrorists to have arisen from the Palestinian people, bears direct responsibility for the Jewish blood spilt on tallit and tefillin while we were busy with delusions about the [peace] process.”   (Haaretz.com, 18 November 2014)

Manal palestine yasser arafat2

Manal Fakhoury posing with life size picture of Yasser Arafat, PLO terrorist.

Manal Fakhoury, is a tireless activist whose long history ties her to individuals and groups whose stated mission is to impose Sharia Law around the world, to include the United States.

In addition to membership in several Ocala organizations, Fakhoury is board member of United Voices for America (UVA) a spin-off of CAIR, as well as the Capitol Leadership Academy (CLA).  Co-founder Ahmed  Bedier launched UVA after jumping ship just prior to Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) being designated a Co-conspirator in the largest successfully prosecuted terrorism finance trial in U.S. history.  Members of CAIR have been convicted of terrorism, material support for terrorism, and it’s leadership has openly expressed their desire to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia law.   This is not a freedom of speech or 1st Amendment issue, but is in fact a direct challenge to Article VI of the U.S. Constitution and its supremacy.

Ironically, CAIR was designated a TERRORIST ORGANIZATION by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) just this past week along with the Muslim American Society (MAS), both Muslim Brotherhood entities, while at the same time both organizations enjoy unprecedented influence in local, state, and federal politics.

Capitol Leadership and similar Academies have sprung up in over 25 states, following the model set by Manal Fakhoury and Ahmed Bedier.  These Academies were designed to train 12-18 year old “minorities” almost exclusively Muslim to learn the ins and out of legislation, lobbying, and running for political office.

According to “student(s)” we placed inside two of these week long classes.  Ahmed Bedier said “I want clean Muslims in office in the next two years”.  In light of this information, it might be worth considering the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood used similar operations to gain legitimacy, influence, and eventually the Presidency in Egypt during the so called “Arab Spring”.

The Gainville Sun, reported that Mayor Guinn displayed an article detailing these connections titled “Manal Fakhoury: Possibly the Most Dangerous and Influential Woman in Florida Politics“, as well as other pictures of her beaming in front of pictures of Mamoud Abbas and Yasser Arafat.  Mayor Guinn stated:

“These are things I am concerned about, are the ties of Ramallah, Manal, and this group of people like pictured there,” Guinn said.

He added, “I am not going to pursue having a sister cities, twinning relationship, whatever you want to call it, for a lot of reasons, this being one of them.”

Sister Cities International, is a U.N. entity which facilitates the twinning of cities worldwide, providing guidance, formal agreements, and liaison between twinning cites and federal and international bodies.

One of the stated goals; is for the twinning to be mutually beneficial partnerships between peer communities to include exchanges in the fields of culture, arts, education, trade, municipal management, health agriculture and industry to name a few.  In addition, Cities may provide Sister City Organizations with financial support.

Historically, the Palestinian people have been a “refugee” people who have had little to offer in the way of agriculture and industry on a global basis.  Almost certainly any support would be directed towards Ramallah and not the City of Ocala or its residents.  Other than art and culture not much is left in the way of a mutually beneficial partnership.

Manal Fakoury PDF FB GAZA Photo enlarged hate jewsEven CULTURE is suspect when you consider the following point(s):

Islam is a complete way of life for Muslims; meaning it is all encompassing and there is virtually no separation between the culture, religion, or the personal life of a Muslim.

Shabbir Mansori, founder of the Council on Islamic Education which is responsible for virtually all Islamic content in America’s public school textbooks succinctly illustrates the Islamic inseparability between culture and goals of Islam in regard to his statement regarding  his work America’s Public School system.

“I am waging a “bloodless” revolution, promoting world cultures and faiths in America’s classrooms”.

Gainesville Sister Cities Director Steve Kalishman said 20 percent of Palestinians are Christian and there is no fighting going on in Ramallah. He said Gainesville has a “great Sister City.” as reported in Gainsville Sun.   

This is a standard Muslim Brotherhood talking point which flies in the face of the fact that thousands of Christians have had to flee areas under P.A. control with a steady rise in attacks since the Oslo Peace Accords.  Christian population has dropped from 15% down to only 2% since just the 1960’s.

In her arrogance, Fakhoury said  “I don’t think he knows what he is talking about,” Fakhoury said of the mayor. “If he really had any concern, why wouldn’t he speak to me?” in regard to Mayor Guinn.

She said the Sister Cities program is a positive one and that if any city needed a sister city, Ocala did. she went onto say “I really thought our city was better than this. I think people know me”.

She said she has worked hard for the city of Ocala, a clear reference to her relentless outreach and involvement in dozens of groups.  Statements which on the surface suggest that the backward, redneck City of Ocala obligated to oblige her based on she had done for the community.

 She went on to affirm her commitment to terrorism, saying “There’s a ton of support in the city of Ocala. I just didn’t bother doing it that way. But we will continue our work (with Ramallah) without a relationship,” she said.

Fakhoury called commissioners’ lack of interest “disheartening” and “sad.” She said there is a blog online by ACT Jacksonville that is smearing her reputation.

By now it should be clear to those seriously considering the information provided in this article and links, that Manal Fakhoury is a passionate and driven woman.  Whose drive and support comes with certain expectations which may be diametrically opposed to the health and well being of our local, state, and ultimately national body politic.

Riayd and Manal Fakhoury’s, impact on Florida Politics has been significant on both sides of the isle.  They regularly fund and host fundraiser in their home for various Governors, Senators, House Members and Attorney Generals with Hamas Operative Ahmed Bedier frequently in tow.

It is very refreshing to see elected officials who have the discernment to recognize a clear and present danger, as well as the courage to act in the best interest of the community despite the risk of being labeled a racist?, hatemonger, bigot, or Islamaphobe.

Hat Tip to the City of Ocala, Mayor Kent Guinn, Council President John McLeod, James P. Hilty Sr., Brent Malver, Jay Musley, and Councilwoman Mary S. Rich.

The New Frontier: Peer technologies are enabling self-government in the cloud by Max Borders

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Today there is no territory left to settle, but human freedom is about to enjoy a renaissance.

Imagine we’re standing on a ridge. We look out on a valley awash in sunlight — surveyors contemplating a new city. We squint and ask: What will it look like? Will it have its own rules, culture, and commercial life? Will it be a bustling metropolis or a constellation of villages?

The Internet has only been with us for about 20 years. If the Northwest Ordinance and the Homestead Acts were legal sanction for expansion across the American continent, networking technologies are invitations for people both to spread out and to connect with others in novel ways. This opportunity has important implications.

For much of history, we have thought of the law and the land as being inseparable, particularly as the conquerors were so often the lawgivers. Not anymore. For the first time, jurisdiction and territory can be separated to a great degree thanks to innovation.

So many of the administrative functions of jurisdiction can increasingly be found in the cloud. It’s early, yes. The network is fragile. But we will soon be able to pass in and out of legal systems, selecting those that benefit us, employing true self-government. It is time to follow Thoreau, who in Civil Disobedience asked, “Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government?”

Already, we can buy and sell using cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. We can take Lyft downtown, bypassing obsolete local ordinances on the way. Google and Apple are selling us privacy again. These are just the first brushfires of a new form of social coordination in which technology itself makes it possible to upgrade our social operating systems.

Peer-to-peer interaction means we’re a nation of joiners again — on steroids. It seemed for a while we had lost the republic to special interests. But the hopeless calculus of cronyism — concentrated benefits and dispersed costs — is being flipped on its head. Internetworking makes it so we’re enjoying the fruits of the sharing economy — quite rapidly, in fact. Cronies and officials are finding it hard to play catch up.

New constituencies are forming around these new benefits. Special interests that once squeaked to get oil are confronted by battalions bearing smart phones. Citizens are voting more with their dollars and their devices, fed up with leaving prayers in the voting booth. Free association is now ensured by design, not by statute.

Technology that changes the incentives can change the institutions. The rules and regulations we currently live under came out of our democratic operating system (DOS). It used to be that these institutions shaped our incentives to a great degree. Now we have ways of coordinating our activities that go right around state intermediaries, corporate parasites, and moribund laws.

The incentives for social change are strong, so strong that the gales of creative destruction can finally blow apart much of the state apparatus, which seemed impervious to reform. And that’s a good thing for a self-governing people.

That celebrated old historian Frederick Jackson Turner summed up his famous treatise on the American West, agreeing — perhaps despite himself — that the people of the frontier had been moving away from hierarchy:

In spite of environment, and in spite of custom, each frontier did indeed furnish a new field of opportunity, a gate of escape from the bondage of the past; and freshness, and confidence, and scorn of older society, impatience of its restraints and its ideas, and indifference to its lessons, have accompanied the frontier.

But in 1893, as Turner wrote that passage, the frontier had already closed.

Today, the seekers and strivers have reopened the frontier, no longer a peculiarly American terrain. It’s a space beyond nation or territory — without end and without the need for Caesar’s imprimatur. As people start to gather there, there will be every form of vice, as in the past. But there will also be rapid advance and innovative wonders. Everything will be subject to continuous trial, error, and revision. And paradoxically, that infinite space in which we can spread out and try new things allows us to be closer than ever before.

We’re becoming cultural cosmopolitans, radical communitarians, and standard bearers for a right of exit. Most importantly, we’re freer than ever before. As my colleague Jeffrey Tucker writes on the workers’ revolution, “This whole approach might be considered a very advanced stage of capitalism in which third parties exercise ever less power over who can and cannot participate.”

In this infinite space, there will be little room for political progressives with big plans. They’ll find it difficult to impose hierarchy on the new frontier folk who will run among network nodes. The progressive program, as such, will dwindle down to what Steven B. Johnson calls “peer progressivism.”

Rejecting the dirigisme of today’s progressives, Johnson writes:

We don’t think that everything in modern life should be re-engineered to follow the “logic of the Internet.” We just think that society has long benefited from non-market forms of open collaboration, and that there aren’t enough voices in the current political conversation reminding us of those benefits.

Tocqueville couldn’t have said it any better. If such becomes the sum of tomorrow’s progressivism, we might all be headed for a great convergence, where once we were as stark and separate as red and blue.

MaxBordersVEsmlABOUT MAX BORDERS

Max Borders is the editor of The Freeman and director of content for FEE. He is also co-founder of the event experience Voice & Exit and author of Superwealth: Why we should stop worrying about the gap between rich and poor.