Author: CS Admin

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders moral hazard Regulating Protest responsibility

Less Bullying, S’il Vous Plaît

union, labor, France, brick, busting, scab, President Emmanuel Macron,

I oppose unions. Or, to speak more precisely, I oppose those tactics too often used by unions intended to render societies hostage to their demands — as we’re seeing in France.

For the last few months, a series of strikes has been conducted by various unionized workers in protest of reforms proposed by President Emmanuel Macron. Rail workers are a major focus of the fracas.

Ultimately SNCF, France’s state-​owned railway company, should be privatized. But reducing too-​generous pay and benefits, including automatic annual pay raises, is a step in the right direction. The Macron administration hopes to begin opening up the state railways to competition by 2023. The unions and their allies are willing to cripple the French economy to prevent any reforms.

It’s fine for employees to voluntarily get together to ask for better working conditions, or even to go on strike to protest terms of employment they regard as unfair. It’s fine, that is, if they also understand that employers have an equal right to replace them if willing and able to do so. 

Workers should only peacefully petition employers. Nobody has an inalienable right to a particular job or to a particular wage higher than they can voluntarily negotiate.

According to the BBC, “Just over 11% of the French workforce is unionised,” one of the lowest levels in the EU. May the decline there and everywhere accelerate until unions cease bullying the entire French society, or any society.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

That Something You Do

Congress, Facebook, hearings, control, regulations, Mark Zuckerberg, censorship, censor, regulate

Congress grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, last week, and as usual ended up roasting itself. 

“Zuckerberg has already experienced the worst punishment of all,” quipped comedian Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. “He had to spend four hours explaining Facebook to senior citizens.”

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, retiring after his 42nd consecutive year in Washington, asked, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

“Senator,” Zuckerberg incredulously replied, “we run ads.”

Inc. magazine reported the obvious: “several of our elected leaders asked questions that were highly uninformed, or in some cases just plain weird.”

Uninformed. Weird. That’s them, alright.* 

Still, the Washington establishment seems to seriously think these same congressmen ought to be re-​writing privacy rules. 

“Elected officials know the public wants them to do something to protect their privacy,” announced Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. “The question now turns to what is that something?”

“Americans are largely together on this issue,” Todd said, citing a recent poll where a similar “66 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans say they want more control over the information companies have about them.”

But Democrats and Republicans are together on something else: Only 21 percent of Democrats and a tiny 14 percent of Republicans “trust the federal government” to act on the issue.

The senators, though obviously “confused about basic topics,” Emily Stewart wrote at Vox,  “seem to agree they want to fix something about Facebook. They just have no idea what.”

Please Congress: DON’T “do something.” Don’t do that thing you do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Reason TV has a very funny video on the Zuckerberg hearing.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

While the Clock Ticks

national debt, debt clock, Mercatus Center, economics, economy, folly,

Pushing annual federal spending over a trillion bucks into the red?

It has consequences. 

“Our debt is growing, and it’s growing fast,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason. “Though it’s a shame that lawmakers passed tax cuts without cutting spending to offset short-​term losses in revenue, there’s no doubt that Social Security and Medicare deficits are almost entirely to blame for our impending debt crisis.”

Ms. de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, has a typo in the version of her article that I read (it has probably since been corrected): “Based on current trends, the debt held by the public is set to reach $15.7 trillion by the end of this year and continue rising to $28.7 trillion by 2028.” She surely meant “$25.7 trillion,” since the current debt clock figure shows the U.S. public debt at over $21 trillion. Still, $25.7 seems a bit high … but at this point we can leave the exact numbers to the professionals.

We just know that the debt’s too damn high.

As de Rugy explains, it has present as well as future cost. And, yes, entitlements are the biggest problem — but even more than Ms. de Rugy suggests. Congress owes the Social Security “trust fund” (in Al Gore’s infamous and non-​existent “lock box”) nearly $3 trillion.

Our solons would have to (painfully) switch from revenue deficits to revenue surpluses just to pay off its debt to a much-​relied upon institution.

What will happen, though, is surely this: Congress will borrow more from elsewhere to pay what Social Security needs — which all too soon will be a lot more than $3 trillion. 

That’s not Common Sense. (But I am Paul Jacob.)

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ballot access education and schooling folly ideological culture media and media people Popular responsibility

Fiddling with the Franchise

voting age, democracy, elections, adult, maturity

In 2013, Tacoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the U.S. to allow 16-​year-​olds to vote in local elections.* Now, Washington, D.C., Councilman Charles Allen, “inspired by the high-​schoolers who are campaigning for gun control and filled D.C. streets last month in a massive protest that mesmerized the country,” reports the Washington Post, wants to follow suit.

“It’s pretty hard for anyone to watch the events of the last couple of months,” claims Councilman Allen, “and not understand the pure power and maturity of incredibly young voices.”

Well, they do use adult words.

One has to wonder: would the “maturity” of these young adults equally amaze this politician, were they advocating opinions** with which he disagreed?

But wait a second … wasn’t one of the demands of the “March for Our Lives” to raise, not lower, the age when a person would be deemed mature enough to legally purchase a scary-​looking rifle?

Lowering the voting age seems odd, at best, with society lurching in the other direction — raising the age of adulthood for everything else. Decades ago, the legal age to purchase alcohol was 18 in some places; today it is 21 everywhere. In Virginia, one may still drive at 16, as I could back in the day … but now there are limits on other young people riding in the car unless the driver is 18.

More ominously, facilitation by many public schools of the recent student walkouts and marches present the strongest argument against lowering the voting age: So long as government schools act in a partisan manner, indoctrination and intimidation would be rampant. 

Who wants a captive audience of would-​be voters most? 

Unscrupulous ideologues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Greenbelt and Hyattsville, Maryland, as well as Berkeley, California, have since joined Tacoma Park in allowing 16- and 17-​year-​olds to vote in local elections.

** Term limits, say. Or school vouchers. Or the rights of gestating humans.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Wag the Wolf

Syria, Donald Trump, Trump, war, wag the dog, diversion, antiwar, gas, gassing, chemical, chlorine, false flag

Once upon a time, President Donald Trump was against attacking Syria merely on grounds that its dictator is a murderously bad guy — despite numerous chemical attacks on civilians in opposition-​occupied and ‑contested areas that had been blamed on Syrian dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

Almost exactly a year ago, a sarin gas attack spurred President Trump to order a cruise missile strike on the Syrian airstrip where it was alleged the Assad regime sent those planes to drop weaponized chemicals on innocent populations. The strike was widely characterized as “Donald Trump’s most dramatic military order since becoming president.” 

Since then, after another reported gassing — this time “chlorine”; this time a hospital as target — the drumbeat for war has gotten louder, despite Russia’s stern warning that there would be “grave repercussions” were the U.S. to attack its ally again.

Whoops and war cries even from the anti-​Trump media. 

But as Tucker Carlson argues, there are still legitimate disputes about previous gas attacks — about who really perpetrated them, and the uncertainty of proclaiming Assad the malefactor in the most recent one.*

Meanwhile, the FBI raided Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen’s offices. The rationale? Apparently unrelated to the “Russia investigation.” Instead, it is about “campaign finance law” — that is, the paid-​off pornstar issue.

In the 1990s, we called Bill Clinton’s bombing of a “chemical weapons” factory in Africa — on the very same day that Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury about her affair with the president — “wag the dog.” 

Trump cries “witch hunt!” but I wonder if the Deep State may not be trying to wag the wolf this time around.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* News stories about atrocities have been faked before in the Middle East — remember the hospital baby-​murder story in Kuwait? “Both” sides in Syria are known to possess chemical weapons.

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Accountability free trade & free markets local leaders porkbarrel politics tax policy too much government

Selling Us Out

Maryland legislature, pork, Amazon, tax break, Jeff Bezos, Senator Roger Manno

Last week, Maryland’s Legislature enacted an $8.5 billion package of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to lure Amazon into building its second corporate headquarters in Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C.

State Senator Roger Manno, the only legislator from the county to vote against the subsidy, dubbed it “a $5 billion tax break for the richest man in the world.…”*

Today, the Montgomery County Council will consider a further proposal to streamline its zoning process, cutting in half the time the county takes to review a proposed development.

“We are trying to make sure our processes are consistent with everybody else,” County Executive Ike Leggett explained, adding that the county now “sometimes takes 100 to 120 days, while many other jurisdictions are much less than that.”

Did Leggett say “consistent with everybody else”? Well, the new zoning rules won’t apply to every business, just those planning to hire 25,000 workers. Or more. 

“It’s neutral to the employer,” County Council President Hans Riemer slyly suggested. “It’s a proposal that would allow any really large employer to come in and build under certain terms.”

But only Amazon would be large enough.

“Really what it does is it creates predictability, reliability,” offered Riemer. But wouldn’t every other business also benefit from “predictability” and “reliability”?

“I think the Amazon proposal made the county realize … that it needed to look at some of its practices and where it has been criticized,” noted Bob Buchanan, chairman of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. “We were more process versus results.”

And the county intends to remain that way … for “every” current business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He was referring, of course, to Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.

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