Author: CS Admin

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Accountability government transparency nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Disneyland vs. Politicians

V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

Last week, when asked by reporters about the arguably deadly wait times that vets have endured (or not), Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald replied, “What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the VA. When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? . . . What’s important is: What’s your satisfaction with the experience?”

The national commander of the American Legion, Dale Barnett, calls the remark “an unfortunate comparison”:

“People,” after all, “don’t die while waiting to go on Space Mountain.”

The secretary also errs about Disney, as Fox News’s Neil Cavuto noted. Disney does measure the time people must wait in line. The for-profit company goes out of its way to entertain folks while they wait.

But the clowns running the Veterans Administration shouldn’t take up entertainment.

Fix the problem.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders both seek to throw more money at the VA. They seem most concerned in protecting the Veterans Administration, not veterans. And Sanders’s real beef turns out  to be with Disney.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, tweeted: “Obama’s VA Secretary just said we shouldn’t measure wait times. Hillary says VA problems are not ‘widespread.’ I will take care of our vets!”

But will he? Through the VA system?

A zillion reform efforts have failed.

Let’s demand more than a simple promise sans details.

Do congressmen wait months to get a medical appointment? No. Then why not close the VA and give veterans the same healthcare coverage as our (pardon the term) representatives?

On this Memorial Day, who comes first: the vets or the politicians?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

 

Photo credit: Xiaojun Deng on Flickr

 

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education and schooling First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

The Controversialist

DePaul University, Black Lives Matter , Social Justice Warriors, Dangerous Faggot Tour, Milo Yiannopoulis , provocative,

“Feminism is cancer.”

Milo Yiannopoulis is provocative. Apparently of violence as well as of thought.

Until very recently, best known for his Twitter presence (@nero) and his work at Breitbart, Mr. Yiannopoulis, a gay British man in his mid-30s, has undertaken what he calls his “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” — speaking to anti-left audiences in hired halls at the heart of the modern university.

He outrageously decries the regnant “Social Justice Warriors” of anti-capitalism and intersectional feminism, and defends free speech and the candidacy of Donald Trump.

But obviously he is egging on the student mobs. One stunt was to take a poll asking whether the subject would rather his or her daughter get cancer or become a feminist.

Cancer, Milo chortles, was the overwhelming result.

Most people hate modern feminism, he says. It’s only on campuses that the youngsters are unhinged enough to believe that

  • rich, pampered college students are “oppressed” just because they are women or gay or trans; that
  • white men are “systemically” their “oppressors” and thus “privileged”; and that
  • there exists an overarching Patriarchy in capitalist America, but not in the Mideast.

So he is shouted at and “protested” everywhere he goes. This week, Black Lives Matter protesters basically took over an event at DePaul University, with a young woman invading Milo’s personal space, apparently (you decide) hitting him in the face during a Q and A.

The university, which had charged organizers a huge fee for “extra security,” did nothing. Milo’s suing to get back that payment — for services plainly not rendered.

Some patriarchy. Some privilege.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DePaul University, Black Lives Matter , Social Justice Warriors, Dangerous Faggot Tour, Milo Yiannopoulis , provocative,

 

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

The Primary Lie

Unbound, Curly Haugland, Sean Parnell, Republican, convention, Trump, book, pdf, Paul Jacob

Are we being lied to?

Donald J. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president. So presumes the news media and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, because all those delegates are bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot.

But what if Republican delegates convening this July aren’t bound. That’s the compelling case made by a new book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate,* written by Curly Haugland and Sean Parnell.

How does modern America get something so wrong, when it’s written down in black-and-white? Politicians don’t read the bills they enact and, apparently, politicos don’t read their party rules.

Except crazy ol’ Curly Haugland. The Republican National Committeeman from North Dakota reads and understands: convention delegates choose the nominee. In so doing, they are free to vote their conscience, unbound by primary or caucus votes, state party rules or even state law.

This information should anger voters. Political parties have a right to their own process, certainly, but not to pretend primary voters determine the winner, when they don’t.

Why the deception?

Well, the insiders and big-time consultants, with sway at RNC headquarters, make millions on TV ad buys. Not so for a nomination determined by core activists at a state convention, who aren’t susceptible to the expensive tricks of the modern political trade.

The media has a financial interest, too — in more readers, listeners and viewers. If primaries are known as merely “beauty contests,” they fear folks will tune out, along with paying advertisers.

Instead, tune in, turn on and download Unbound. Find out what the media and the RNC won’t tell you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

=========================

* Published by Citizens in Charge Foundation, the book can be downloaded for free here.

 

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Unbound, Curly Haugland, Sean Parnell, Republican, convention, Trump, book, pdf, Paul Jacob

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Puerto Rico’s Debt, Our Problem

“We have an important choice to make,” presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders recently wrote to Congress. “[D]o we stand with the working people of Puerto Rico or do we stand with Wall Street and the Tea Party?”

The bill in question has been dubbed Paul Ryan’s “first big victory as Speaker,” but was written in tandem with the White House. The plan attempts to rescue Puerto Rico, a United States territory, from financial collapse with both bailouts and austerity — the latter including a lowered minimum wage.

I hadn’t heard any Tea Party squawk about this, so that reference must be just signaling on Bernie’s part.

Puerto Rico is $72 billion in the hole. Basically, Sanders wants to partially repudiate that debt: “The billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street cannot get a 100 percent return on their bonds while workers, senior citizens and children are punished.”

Of course our sympathies are almost entirely with the people of Puerto Rico. But it was their government that racked up the debt, and repudiating sovereign debt is a tricky and parlous thing.

What happens when the United States itself faces similar (or worse) straits? Would Bernie then, again, plan to stick it to the government’s creditors — even after he, himself, had voted to increase spending above revenues and periodically raise the debt ceiling — and think that this wouldn’t have consequences?

Meanwhile, the possible minimum wage reduction is one of the stickiest of the issues. Bernie sees it as “sticking it” to the poor.

In truth, it would help increase employment, thus help the poor get out of poverty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Puerto Rico, debt, loan, Bernie Sanders

 

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

President Johnson?

Gary Johnson, Williamn Weld, libertarian, party, president, election

An unusual year, far from over.

This week, the Libertarian Party holds its presidential nominating convention in Orlando, Florida. Next November, after all the votes are counted, the party’s likely nominee, former two-term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, and his likely vice-presidential running mate, former two-term Massachusetts Governor William Weld, may finally be going to Disney World.

To celebrate . . . before moving into the White House.

Crazy? Sure. But this is the year for crazy.

Polls show Gov. Johnson garnering 10 percent support. With both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton drowning in their own negatives, plenty more votes are winnable to the right, left and everywhere in between Crooked Hillary and the Trumpster Fire.

Okay, sure, but . . . win the presidency?

One needs 270 electoral votes to be elected president and to win states to nab those electoral votes. In 1992, Ross Perot received 19 percent of the vote nationwide, without winning a single state.

But what if Johnson won his home state of New Mexico? In 2012, he got only 3.6 percent in the Land of Enchantment. If that grew ten-fold to 36 percent in a three-way race, he could prevail.

And, as explained at A Libertarian Future, if Trump carried enough swing states (say, Colorado, Florida, and Ohio) to keep Clinton from reaching 270 electors, the whole shebang . . . would be thrown into the House of Representatives.

Who trusts Congress to choose responsibly?

Yet, with the Libertarian ticket sporting this much horse-race relevance, more Americans might contemplate greater freedom and less Big Brother government.

Think liberty, America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Gary Johnson, Williamn Weld, libertarian, party, president, election

 

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

Fatherland, Socialism and Death!

Venezuela, store, socialism, column

The fall of Venezuela is an atrocity.

The comic elements are clear enough — the further you remove yourself from the poverty, chaos, and collapse. We can wallow in a bit of Schadenfreude, taking glee as some American leftists squirm to explain why the socialist paradise they ballyhooed a mere three years ago now tail-spins to the grave.

The collapse of this socialist experiment offers an enormous level of tragedy. It’s not pretty.

The country’s leader, President Nicolas Maduro, makes his predictable desperation play. Rather than confront his own errors, and the futility of making socialism work in anything like a rigorous form, he boasts. “Venezuela Leader Says US ‘Dreams’ Of Dividing Loyal Military,” reads yesterday’s Reuters report. While no doubt true, this is one of those cases where whatever we dream to the north, our dreams are better than their current reality.

Of course the Venezuelan military should turn on Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s inheritor, protecting the right of recall, which Maduro is denying. By painting the U. S. as the bad guy, Maduro hopes to unite his people — especially his armed forces — around him. That’s what a desperate demagogic dynast does. Citizens and subjects traditionally abandon skepticism about their leaders when they feel threatened from the outside.

Which is one reason it would be a mistake for the U. S. to intervene.

Reuters poetically reports that the military is still united behind the socialist government, and resists the recall referendum, singing “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death!”

Wrong conjunction. Not “or” but “and” . . . if you insist on socialism.

The government, military pressure or no, should allow the recall vote, and soon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Venezuela, store, socialism, column

 

Categories
folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Guilt and Association?

Christianity, socialism, capitalism, Christ, poll, illustration

A few days ago, the Barna Group released the results of its latest poll, asking “Americans whether capitalism or socialism align better with the teachings of Jesus,” explains The Hollywood Reporter. The results are that “socialism won 24 percent compared to 14 percent, with the rest answering ‘neither’ or ‘not sure.’”

And what about the year’s big race?

“When asked which presidential candidate’s policies aligned closest to the teachings of Jesus, Sanders was on top with 21 percent, compared to 9 percent for Hillary Clinton and 6 percent for Donald Trump.” Ted Cruz, no longer in the race, fared better than Hillary, but below Bernie, at 11 percent.

Now, it is worth mentioning that more significant polling on issues relating religion to politics has been done by Barna. Still, the commentary over at Fox on this poll was . . . interesting.

On Bill O’Reilly’s show, Monica Crowley made the crucial distinction between Jesus’ command to give to the poor and modern socialists’ demands to take from some, through taxation and by force, to give to others.

O’Reilly himself, however, went on a bizarre and joking riff about “buying his way to heaven” by leaving his wealth to charity . . . after he dies.

Looking over these poll numbers, I can only conclude that advocates of a free society have much work to do convincing Americans of the justice and benevolence of free markets, of “capitalism.”

And Christians have their work cut out for them, too . . . at the very least to disencumber themselves from the stench of socialist states and the brutal force those states inevitably rest upon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Christianity, socialism, capitalism, Christ, poll, illustration

 

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard U.S. Constitution

Not Drafting Our Daughters?

draft, selective service, woman, women, magic trick

Sometimes politicians have trouble making up their minds. During election years — with the looming prospect of voters having a say — their decision-making process becomes even more perilous.

Take the idea of forcing young women to register for the draft. Young men must, under threat of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and the loss of government benefits — all the way down to denying a driver’s license to non-registrants in many states. So why not force women to sign up for forced military service?

For equality!

Just days ago, it seemed nearly everyone was for conscripting our daughters — or, at least, registering them for future conscription. Obama’s Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and military leaders enthusiastically endorsed the idea. So did Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In recent weeks, legislation beginning mandatory draft registration of women, ages 18-26, passed both the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Then, all the sudden — poof! — that provision was ripped out of the House bill.

“This is a dead-of-night attempt to take an important issue off the table,” complained the ranking Democrat on House Armed Services, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.

Timing is everything, in comedy and politics. Congressional leaders don’t want to take any pro-draft action now, not with an election just six short months away.

“We have a choice to make,” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) argues, “either we continue with Selective Service and have women be a part of it, or we abolish it altogether.” Coffman advocates the latter, having introduced a bipartisan bill with Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), H.R. 4523, to end draft registration and close the superfluous agency.

That’s Common Sense, especially in an election year. I’m Paul Jacob.

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draft, selective service, woman, women, magic trick

 

 

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Accountability folly incumbents meme national politics & policies term limits

Indicting Incumbency

term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

How does that old, pithy anti-term limits slogan go, again? “We already have term limits, they’re called indictments!”

Wait . . . is that it?

Must be. This election year — the year of the outsider, the year of unbridled contempt for establishment, Washington, D. C., politicians — has seen only one incumbent congressman defeated by the voters.

Just one. It came late last month in the wake of a 29-count felony indictment charging Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) with bribery, theft, bank and mail fraud, racketeering, and more.

In all the other congressional primary contests pitting incumbents against challengers across the country so far this year, a solid 100 percent were won by the incumbent — zero won by challengers.

Rep. Fattah, whose corruption trial began in federal court on Monday, has pled not guilty to all charges, proclaiming his innocence. “Chaka Fattah’s lifestyle is not on trial,” his defense attorney told jurors. “Philadelphia politics are not on trial. [Congressional] earmarks, donations, grants to nonprofits are not on trial.”

But Congressman Chaka Fattah certainly is.

The incumbent’s previous re-election had been a breeze — completely unopposed in the all-important Democratic Primary, and then garnering 88 percent of the vote against his sacrificial GOP challenger. That was in 2014, before the felony charges.

Following the indictment, the Washington Post reported that Fattah “found it difficult to raise money after the party establishment all but abandoned him.” So, even in this single instance, the FBI and the party establishment, more than voters, sent this 22-year incumbent packing.

I have a new slogan: “We don’t have term limits, and we need ’em!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

A Vapor’s Chance in Hell

vape, vaping, smoking, law, regulation, unintended consequence, illustration, photo

There is a big difference between government designed to protect our rights and a government tasked with protecting us from ourselves.

You couldn’t find a better example of this than the current Federal Drug Administration and its regulation of vaping.

Vaping is the imbibing of water vapor laced with nicotine and other ingredients. It is designed to replace the smoking of tobacco cigarettes. It is much, much less harmful than smoking. The genius of this innovation is that while it looks a lot like smoking, it involves no smoke. But it does involve inhaling, and blowing out wisps of . . . well, vapor.

It’s safer than smoking because smoking tobacco involves burning organic (and inorganic) matter, which puts tars and other chemical substances into one’s lungs.

But the competing companies that make the product are not allowed to tell us about its advantages.

New regulations of the e-cigarette industry from the FDA prohibit a lot of truth-telling in advertising. “Even if a few companies survive the shakeout caused by the FDA’s onerous regulations,” Jacob Sullum writes in Reason, “they will not be allowed to tell consumers the truth about their products.” It appears that “any intimation that noncombustible, tobacco-free e-cigarettes are safer than the conventional, tobacco-burning kind” places them under a category that simply must “be marketed only with prior approval.”

The legal judgments Sullum quotes will make you sicker . . . than your first cigarette puff.

Paternalistic government designed to save us from our vices ends up blocking us from actually lessening the bad effect of those vices.

Some help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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vape, vaping, smoking, law, regulation, unintended consequence, illustration, photo

 

Photo credit: micadew on Flickr