Author: Redactor

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links

Townhall: Some Courage Required

Click on over to Townhall for what the next Congress — the country’s 114th — really needs. Hint: it isn’t cowardice.

Then come back here for more reading.

And hey: buck up. Courage isn’t just required for Congress.

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video

Video: A Wooden Horse in Arkansas

The most dishonest ballot measure in America is one from my former home state of Arkansas. Watch this short video featuring Bob Porto, co-chair of Arkansas Term Limits, explaining why this 22-page-long amendment to the state constitution is a “Trojan Horse.” His group has been touring the state with a rather large symbolic horse to dramatize the danger of Issue 3.

http://youtu.be/KcoN9rA8t44

The mobile horse symbol was donated to Arkansas Term Limits by Liberty Initiative Fund. I warn about Issue 3 in more detail here.

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Today

November 1, Burke’s Reflections

On November 1, 1790, Edmund Burke published his “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” predicting that the French Revolution would end in disaster. Though many have disputed his premises, few dispute his prophecy, which proved spot on.

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Today

Halloween OCT 31

Ireland, Canada, United Kingdom, United States and other nations celebrate Halloween on October 31. The word Halloween or Hallowe’en dates to about 1745 and is of Christian origin, meaning “hallowed evening” or “holy evening.” It comes from a Scottish term for All Hallows’ Eve (the evening before All Hallows’ Day). In Scots, the word “eve” is “even,” and this is contracted to “e’en” or “een.” Over time, (All) Hallow(s) E(v)en evolved into Halloween.

It is one of those darker-themed celebrations, often conjuring up images of death and horror. As if in keeping with this theme, Stalin’s body was removed from Lenin’s Tomb on October 31, 1961.

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too much government

The Creeping Horror

Which came first, the dead chicken or the rotten egg?

A bit gruesome. Sure. But it’s Halloween, no? Trick or Treat time.

Anyway, the subject for today’s exploration into contemporary horror is the modern city, so expensive it frightens middle-income earners away.

But wait. It’s not all cities. Only some are horror shows.

Particularly, I’m referring to those in “blue” states, the ones run by “liberal” Democrats.

It’s been pretty obvious for some time — especially as we witness hordes of everyday folks moving to parts South, particularly to Texas’s sprawling cities. But if you needed some statistics and graphs and the like, Derek Thompson provides them over at The Atlantic. His title addresses his basic question: “Why Middle-Class Americans Can’t Afford to Live in Liberal Cities.” Citing economist Jed Kolko, he notes the most astounding thing about housing in modern cities: “Liberal cities seem to have the worst affordability crises.”

Or, as Kolko puts it, “[e]ven after adjusting for differences of income, liberal markets tend to have higher income inequality and worse affordability.”

Why? Thompson contemplates the chicken-and-eggness of it all. Do liberal progressives congregate in coastal cities with limited land availability, and just happen to find themselves crunching out home growth, thus raising prices and reducing affordability? Or do they cause it?

Considering the nature of their favored policies, they almost certainly (if inadvertently) cause it.

Big government inevitably yields big bad effects. Support big government? Expect more inequality, not less. Then demand more government to “solve” the problem. Which causes yet more bad effects.

This trick-and-treat trap should horrify big government advocates.

It certainly horrifies me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Grover Cleveland

What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?

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Today

October 30, Sol Tax

On October 30, 1907, Sol Tax was born. Tax, an important anthropologist at the University of Chicago, organized a four-day conference on military conscription, which was the start of an intellectual movement that led to the end of the draft less than seven years later. Tax’s most famous work was probably his study of a Guatemalen Indian economy, “Penny Capitalism.”

Categories
free trade & free markets

We Need iPads

Every once in a while somebody explains that “we” don’t need this or that product, however great it may be and however great the demand for it. For example, a tech reviewer dubs Apple’s latest iPad models “largely unnecessary,” given last-year models almost as capable.

The charge of unnecessariness is surely false when we’re talking about customers who do want the most cutting-edge technology and can put it to good use. But it’s false in a broader perspective too — unless we suppose that all advances in human civilization beyond the level of the hut and the bearskin are “largely unnecessary” to human survival and well-being.

If technological progress is necessary, so are key aspects of how that progress happens, including the fact that it so often happens by “largely unnecessary” increments. Any given marginal advance in computer or PC tech may have been dispensable. But the same can’t be said of the process of cumulative improvement as a whole. Consider, for example, that some ninety percent of what we now do on our PCs would have been impossible to do with the 1980 PC. Our 2014 laptops could not have been crafted without myriad intermediate advances.

As striving human beings, our needs evolve as our means improve and enable us to pursue ends that we could not have pursued with less powerful means. Ergo, I welcome every little improvement we can get. And I can hardly wait for my 2025 iPad.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Grover Cleveland

When more of the people’s sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

President Stephen Grover Cleveland, Second Annual Message (December 1886).
Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

A Congressman’s Job

A few weeks ago, The Washingtonian published a best of/worst of list about Congress. It stands out amongst other “tops” lists because the voting is done by White House staffers. This is what the employees think about their prima donnas. I mean bosses.

The most interesting winner appeared near the end, “Lobbyists’ Worst Enemy.”

The “Lobbyists’ Best Friend” category was topped by John Boehner and Eric Cantor. The “Worst Enemy”— which has to be the highest badge of honor on this list — is Justin Amash.

And if you are wondering why lobbyists might not take a shine to this Republican Representative from Michigan’s Third Congressional District, consider the calumnies his detractors directed against him.

Mike Rogers, also a Michigan House Republican, accused Amash of being “Al Qaeda’s best friend in the Congress” because of Amash’s well-known anti-NSA stance. Devin Nunes, from California’s Republican delegation, insisted that Amash “votes more with the Democrats than with the Republicans,” was not serious, and just liked siding with the GOP’s opponents.

A debunking in Rare (“America’s News Feed”), published in June, beat down all these charges. Not only has Amash voted with his party over 80 percent of the time, he’s voted against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi more than any other Representative.

But there’s something more impressive about Amash, as Rare points out. He has voted every chance he got. He has the longest tardy-free voting record in Congress. And, furthermore, Amash explains, via social media, every vote he makes.

That is, he does his job.

No wonder lobbyists don’t like him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.