Politics, Government & Public Policy: January 2013 Archives
Glenn Reynolds expands on his idea to reduce corruption by taxing it.
In short, I propose putting a 50% surtax -- or maybe it should be 75%, I'm open to discussion -- on the post-government earnings of government officials. So if you work at a cabinet level job and make $196,700 a year, and you leave for a job that pays a million a year, you'll pay 50% of the difference -- just over $400,000 -- to the Treasury right off the top. So as not to be greedy, we'll limit it to your first five years of post-government earnings; after that, you'll just pay whatever standard income tax applies.This seems fair. After all, when it comes to your value as an ex-government official, it really is a case of "you didn't build that." Your value to a future employer comes from having held a taxpayer-funded position and from having wielded taxpayer-conferred power. Why shouldn't the taxpayers get a cut?
Sounds like a fine idea to me. While we're at it, maybe we should pay high-level government officials a lot more.
President Obama has decided to put women into primary combat roles in the US military. He says:
Today, every American can be proud that our military will grow even stronger with our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters playing a greater role in protecting this country we love.
The hacking group known as Anonymous is upset over the abuse of prosecutorial discretion and rightly point out that when the law makes us all criminals then it's the prosecutors who rule the world by deciding which charges to bring against whom. The group recently posted this statement on the hacked website for the US Sentencing Commission:
Anonymous has observed for some time now the trajectory of justice in the United States with growing concern. We have marked the departure of this system from the noble ideals in which it was born and enshrined. We have seen the erosion of due process, the dilution of constitutional rights, the usurpation of the rightful authority of courts by the "discretion" of prosecutors. We have seen how the law is wielded less and less to uphold justice, and more and more to exercise control, authority and power in the interests of oppression or personal gain.
Fortunately for Anonymous (and contra their actions to date) they don't need to perform any illegal activities to hold prosecutors accountable for their decisions! It is pretty easy to obtain court records via legal means and then publicize the names and activities of prosecutors who abuse their power, position and discretion. This monitoring would be a valuable public service, and it's a shame that the traditional media has been unable to perform it due to their pre-occupation with covering pop culture and cheerleading for Obama.
