Author: CS Admin

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Accountability incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The Junk Bond State

Nick Tomboulides, U.S. Term Limits, Young Americans for Liberty National Convention, experience, proof

What a pleasure — comparing notes with Nick Tomboulides, executive director of U.S. Term Limits, my old job.

Speaking on a panel last week at the Young Americans for Liberty National Convention,* Illinois came up. Nick agreed that if the Land of Lincoln had a term-limited legislature, we would never have heard the end of it: “Term limits are a failure!”

Illinois, you see, is a failed state, confessing the lowest credit rating in history.

Only a notch above junk bond status.

The media would have incessantly blamed “inexperience” for the fiscal implosion.

In reality, though, Illinois is a career politician’s paradise. Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) has spent the last 45 years in the legislature and all but two of the last 34 years as the chamber’s top banana.

Oh, it’s been a great ride for this longest-serving House Speaker in modern history. He’s grown wealthy while “serving” in office — and provided himself with a lucrative (and curiously gamable) state pension.

On the panel, Mr. Tomboulides highlighted “Ranking the States by Fiscal Condition,” a recent study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Though only 15 of the 50 states have term-limited legislatures, those term-limited states represent a majority, eight of the top 15 ranked states. Among the states ranked at the very bottom, none have term limits.

“For years they’ve warned that term limits would lead to inexperience which would produce fiscal ruin,” Tomboulides wrote at the U.S. Term Limits blog. “This report proves the opposite is true — that term limits states do better than those run by prehistoric politicians.”

And yet, somehow, not once have Nick or I seen the state’s financial woes blamed on careerism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Feel good about the future: Very smart group of young folks at this YAL event.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies

Reactionary America

Anthony Scaramucci, reactionary, Trump, partisan, ideologue, ideology, "The Mooch", politics,

With the meteoric transit of Anthony Scaramucci — into the Trump Administration and then, in an eye-blink, out of it — I have never been more convinced of the vital importance of state and local activism.

Yes, it’s been a chaotic week in Trumptown. The new White House Director of Communications vulgarly communicated himself into administrative excommunication. So to speak.

Everybody’s heard the vulgarisms; we’ve all processed the insanity. It looks like Mr. Scaramucci is one of those professionals who think everybody else is an idiot, and in so thinking it, proves himself to be what he himself despises. @#$%&?!

The man nicknamed “The Mooch” screwed the pooch, as we now say, and we can all shake our heads and . . .

what?

What is the lesson?

We have long known the worst: our national politics is broken. It has been for a very long time. Is it possible we never recovered from the LBJ and Tricky Dick fiascos of my childhood? The parties have become more ideological and less regional, while the regions have become . . . less rational. The only word seems to be . . .

reactionary.

The press reacts to the president’s tweets, and the president tweets in response to media reaction.

Progressives hate progress; conservatives conserve nothing.

“Reactionary” is the apt word, despite all the term’s past Marxist associations, because no one seems able to think forward, independent of partisan oppositionalism.

Don’t drive yourself crazy with this. Look homeward; think locally, act locally, and let’s build on a solid foundation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

ObamaCare’s Casualties

healthcare, Obamacare, TrumpCare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform, government, socialism

We all know the truth: Partisan “warfare” yields the usual war casualty, truth itself. Now, because of the increasing weight of federal government presence in healthcare markets, partisan untruth incurs medical costs.

Take the goofy Republican plan(s) to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare — pushed with so many half-truths and downright lies that one wonders where to begin. But before die-hard Republicans get too incensed about this judgment, let’s note that the supporters of the mis-named “Affordable Care Act” are no better.

Probably worse.

“Fact-checking,” writes David Harsanyi on the media mishandling of ObamaCare, “has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion.” Journalists now seem more like spin doctors.

And their patient? The reputation of ObamaCare’s namesake.

One journalist, for example, insists that “Obama didn’t lie or ‘mangle facts’ or mislead anyone,” Harsanyi writes.

What does this journalist claim Obama did in repeatedly promising “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”?

Well, “he gave a ‘misguided . . . pledge.’ The word ‘misguided’ intimates that Obama wasn’t misleading anyone on purpose.”

It helps the former president save face if he accidentally got us in this fix. He had the best intentions, you know.

Worse yet, as both sides snipe about these little untruths, they lose sight of the biggest truth, which I wrote about this weekend: that “government-run” means “government-decided,” and that, in turn, means

government deciding matters of your life and your death.

It would be helpful if our leaders took this all a bit more seriously, daring to speak truth . . . to us . . . as well as to themselves and each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Minimal Use of a Finger

Seattle, distracted driving, texting, overreach, government, freedom, eating, drinking, liberty

Drivers in Washington State have a new law to . . . swerve from?

“New distracted driving law starts Sunday, July 23,” the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) tweeted last week. “The law forbids,” Washingtonians were told,  “virtually all use of handheld gadgets such as phones, tablets, laptop computers and gaming devices while driving.”

The idea is to prevent accidents. Though distracted driving’s danger has been contested, texting while driving certainly seems a kind of crazy.  

Thankfully, it’s possible to talk “hands free.”

Which, it turns out, the new law does allow. Drivers may activate and de-activate hands-free devices (and apps) with the “minimal use of a finger.”

Eating and drinking while driving are also disallowed, but those are “secondary offenses,” which police are not allowed to pull you over for.

At this point, another meaning of “minimal use of a finger” may occur to some readers. What starts out as secondary offenses have been known to be upgraded, legally and practically, to primary offense status.

Does a shiver runs down your back?

Yet another rule! More fines!

More interactions with police.

And if all this doesn’t feel “police state-y” enough for you, there is argument in Seattle about whether pedestrians should be prohibited from “distracted walking.”

Yes, some are actually considering that.

I’m reminded of an argument against socialism: government-run enterprises tend to be run “ruthlessly and with special attention to prosecution (and overburdening) of the poor.” Why would anyone want such techniques writ society-wide, in every sector?

Meanwhile, we apparently must live and drive with more rules and more fines and more harassment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling folly responsibility

Only Make Believe

schools, education, students, standards, suspension, punishment, discipline

Problems can be solved. But for those lacking the merest clue how to solve a given problem . . . alternatives exist.

Books can be cooked to pretend the problem no longer exists. And perhaps to fool others.

A series of articles in the Washington Post highlights the effort to reduce the rate by which city schools suspend students for misbehavior. The good news? “D.C. Public Schools has reported a dramatic decline in suspensions at a time when school systems around the country have been under pressure to take a less punitive approach to discipline.”

Results? A whopping 40-percent decline.

The bad news?

A Post investigation found that “at least seven of the city’s 18 high schools have kicked students out of school for misbehaving without calling it a suspension and in some cases even marked them present.” In those schools, “most suspensions were not reported.”*

The Post further uncovered documentation showing that “DCPS officials knew students were being sent home without documentation at least as early as 2010.”

It brings to mind the recent scandal in Prince George’s County (Maryland) Public Schools, where a dramatic announcement that the county increased its student graduation rate faster than any other county . . . was followed by an investigation into grade tampering by school administration officials, which numerous teachers have alleged.

It is also reminscent of the systematic cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta — and across the nation.

Hiding the truth, cheating on tests, lying about results . . . not the actions of a system teaching kids a love of truth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Seven schools’ emails show that students spent a total of 406 days in suspension in January 2016. Officially recorded? Only 15 percent.

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Illustration based on a photo by Tod Baker

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Big Libertarian Questions

Charlie Gard, Nigel Farage, National Health Service, government, control

“This raises some very big libertarian questions,” said Nigel Farage yesterday.

About what?

The “rights of parents against the state.”

The outspoken Brexit supporter and former leader of the UK Independence Party was referring to Charlie Gard, the sick, dying 11-month old British baby, whose parents sought to take to the United States for an experimental medical treatment. But the hospital and the British government pooh-poohed any likelihood of success and said, “No.”

That’s when Charlie’s parents went to court, fighting for seven months for the right to simply try to save their child’s life. Now, after those months of delay, even that remote medical hope has faded away.

“Even today,” explained Farage, “the hospital and the state are saying to these poor parents, ‘Oh, no, no, Charlie can’t die at home. He’ll have to die in our hospital.’”

The judge in the case called it “absurd” to suggest that little Charlie was a “prisoner of the National Health Service.” But not free to leave the country or even the hospital, that’s precisely what this poor child has become.

“There was a case four years ago of a little kid, Ashya King, who had a brain cancer,” Farage noted. “His parents wanted him to go to Prague for a revolutionary new treatment that the doctors here said wouldn’t work. The boy went. It worked. He’s now cancer free.”

Those parents were briefly imprisoned . . . for saving their child’s life.

It appears that single-payer makes the government the single-decider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Syria & Sanity

TulsiGabbard, Democrat, Syria, arms, rebels, war, Obama, Trump, Russia

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert* program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad,” the Washington Post first reported last week, immediately adding that it was “a move long sought by Russia.”

This insinuation that the policy change was simply a concession to Russia belies the recent history of U.S. involvement — and failure — in Syria.

President Barack Obama had intervened.

Very ineffectively.

“Calling” for regime change.

In 2012, Reuters disclosed that the president had signed “a secret* order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government.” In 2013, after accusing the Assad regime of using chemical weapons, Obama announced the U.S. would provide direct military aid to rebel groups.

But Obama’s execution seemed more designed to make it look like the U.S. was trying really hard than actually toppling Mr. Assad.**

This may have been a good thing, though, seeing that some of the best-organized rebel groups in Syria are aligned with al-Qaeda and ISIS.

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) has introduced “The Stop Arming Terrorists Act”*** to prevent American weaponry and material from being handed to terrorists. She cheered Trump’s move, explaining to Tucker Carlson on Fox News that “providing direct and indirect” aid to the “very same terrorist group that attacked us on 9/11” made no sense.

Also lacking in sense is the Obama Administrations claim that the congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which specifically authorizes action against al-Qaeda, also covered the attack upon Assad’s regime. Surely arming rebel groups aligned with al-Qaeda couldn’t be justified under such an AUMF.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was not very covert. And not secret.

** In 2015, the Administration abandoned a separate $500 million program to put together a moderate rebel force opposed to both ISIS and the Syrian Government of Basher al-Assad after training only 4 or 5 soldiers. The BBC suggested much of the problem was indecisiveness, observing that, “US President Barack Obama never seemed to want a train-and-equip programme for Syrian rebels.”

*** The Senate bill is SB 532, introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky).

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Pardon Him, Mr. President

Samuel Girod, Kentucky, crime, Amish, FDA, drug,

Presidents tend to issue pardons as their tenures draw to a close. But many victims of our government should be pardoned right now. Until the culpable agencies can be dismantled and/or sundry bad laws repealed, a steady flow of presidential pardons would provide the swiftest justice.

An Amish man in Kentucky, Samuel Girod, has been convicted of selling herbal remedies and such crimes as “failing to appear.” It doesn’t add up to one day in prison, let alone the six years of his sentence.

Girod created a salve from natural ingredients for treating skin disorders. After the state health department demanded that he stopped making certain claims for the product, he changed its name to Healing Chickweed. Told that the word “healing” was prohibited, he changed the name to Original Chickweed. The Food and Drug Administration also hounded him for selling various herbal remedies, which they called “drugs” because of his medical claims.

The man’s worst sin in all this seems to be failure to cooperate with the harassment. When FDA agents tried to examine his “manufacturing process,” he refused entry to his home. When Girod missed a hearing about his case, the government dubbed him a “fugitive.” The local sheriff can’t understand why the government is “victimizing such peaceful and law-abiding citizens.”

Yes, it’s a puzzle. Many historical, political, institutional, ideological and psychological factors would help explain it. More than answers, though, Samuel Girod needs his freedom.

How about it, Mr. President?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Economics

Tom Woods, Contra Krugman, podcast, healthcare, welfare,

“Everywhere you look, economics is despised,” writes Tom Woods in his Tuesday email letter.

You know what isn’t despised? A daily email letter.*

But I digress; back to economics.

“The gimme-free-stuff people hate it because they don’t like being told that there might be undesirable side effects from seizing other people’s things.”

Well, true enough. But turn it around: many people demand free stuff at least in part because they do not understand the bigger picture . . . which Mr. Woods ably provides in his daily podcast and on his weekly Contra Krugman podcast with economist Bob Murphy.

“Politicians hate it, because it imposes logical constraints on what political activity can accomplish.”

True, but, like many in the general public (from whence they come), politicians’ prior lack of economic knowledge also leads, in part, to their hubris.

“Even some folks in the business world hate it, because (1) they’d rather agitate for special privileges than hear the case for free markets, and (2) they’d rather have low interest rates than be warned about the causes of the business cycle.”

Yes, too true. But, again, business people are generally just people, most of whom haven’t even been exposed to something beyond boring and misleading textbook econ, if that. Mr. Woods knows that, since that’s what his mission is, exposing more folks to ideas beyond what he calls “the index card of allowable opinion.”

Well, I’m all about allowing the unallowable — if it’s right!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Historian Woods is now doing what I’ve been doing since 1999, providing a daily common-sense thought that is short and easy-to-read and dropped into your email box every weekday. Mine goes up online at ThisIsCommonSense.com; I don’t see his on his website . . . but I do see a lot of books and podcasts!

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Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

According to Logic

healthcare, Obamacare, Trumpcare, Affordable Care Act, pre-existing condition

“Polling on every possible option confounds all logic,” or so writes Tiana Lowe about ObamaCare and its repeal, at National Review.

“Americans overwhelmingly dislike the individual mandate and prioritize lowering the cost of health care over all other health problems in the country,” Ms. Lowe elaborates, “but a majority of Americans do not want to roll back Obamacare’s guaranteed coverage of pre-existing conditions. Just a quarter of Americans are happy with Obamacare as-is, but a mere 12 percent favor the now-dead Senate health-care bill.”

Perceptively, she notes that the situation is as bad or worse for politicians, who want to “have their cake and eat it too.” The problem with politicians is pretty obvious: they lie because they are afraid of confronting the truth.

But it seems to me, on the evidence Lowe herself provides, Americans mostly have it right.

We want to lower costs of health care. Well, that should be the first priority. It should’ve been government’s highest priority, since government caused our predicament.

A huge supermajority is unhappy with ObamaCare, which makes sense. The Affordable Care Act is not affordable. But the Senate health-care bill was worse than ObamaCare, so folks were right to oppose it.

The only real issue? Many Americans don’t seem to understand that the “pre-existing coverage” mandate necessarily raises costs. Forcing insurance companies to pay for non-eventualities* requires them to pass those extras onto customers in general. Here is where leadership would be of help.

And where it has failed, our President most of all.

Lowe criticizes Trump for not pushing the Senate’s bill more effectively. I’m thankful for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Insurers wager against unpredictable future illness or accident, not the sucker’s bet of paying for an existing predicament.

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