Author: Redactor

Categories
education and schooling ideological culture

Pledge or No Pledge

School authorities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, decided not to require students of all ages to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They said they couldn’t find time to put it in the schedule, etc., thereby both disappointing and puzzling local veterans, who were the ones who brought the issue up.

The “time” excuse was just that, of course. What the real reasons for the decision are, I don’t know, and will let others guess.

On the bright side, there are reasons not to require recitation of the Pledge. My qualms center on how un-American it seems. Veterans today often talk up the Flag, and the Pledge, etc., but the Founding Fathers took allegiance seriously, and they didn’t secede from Great Britain to pledge their sacred honors to a symbol — a fighting banner too easily unanchored from the best part of the short declaration, “with liberty and justice for all.”

Besides, the Pledge was written in the late 19th century by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist who targeted the Pledge at those sectors of society that he most feared: immigrants, anyone prone to “radicalism.” And yet when I read his political agenda, I see the very radical ideas that corrupted American politics away from limited government.

Worse yet, Bellamy devised an ominous salute to go with his recitation. (Thankfully, that was modified to the hand-on-heart gesture in 1942, when Congress officially adopted the Pledge.)

I’d rather students learn about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Substance, not symbol; law, not fiction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Jean-Baptiste Say

Henceforward, it will be reckoned no more avaricious or immoral to take interest, than to receive rent for land, or wages for labour; it is an equitable compensation adjusted by mutual convenience; and the contract, fixing terms between borrower and lender, is of precisely the same nature, as any other contract whatsoever.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Corn Subsidies Fail Big

America has a problem: obstinate politicians, the Obstinacy in Chief, especially.

Almost any policy high-lighted at some point in the last few years could serve as an illustration of this point, but let’s choose the once-popular “green” pro-ethanol policies.

George W. Bush pushed ethanol, and Barack Obama doubled-down on the subsidy, making it a centerpiece for his low carbon-footprint notion.

It has not worked.

What it has done is create what environmentalists are now calling “an ecological disaster.”

How?

It created a land rush that swallowed vast tracts of land sporting alternate uses, including millions of acres of conservation land, including wetlands. And the huge amounts of insecticide and fertilizer used in the effort have poisoned wells and water supplies as well as rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.

All to plant more corn than the market demands.

But is it doing what the government wants, and Obama demanded — the whole reason for this goofy program after all?

“The government’s predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate,” write Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo for the Associated Press, “that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.”

Over-production, higher costs, externalized burdens — typical for a government subsidy. But what can we do about it?

In early 19th century Britain, Richard Cobden and John Bright started the Anti-Corn Law League, which successfully opposed the biggest protectionist program of the age. We could use another such vital force, this time to oppose the idiotic subsidies that raise food prices internationally as well as wreak havoc on land in the Mid-West.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

P. J. O’Rourke

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s.” The Ten Commandments are God’s basic rules about how we should live — a brief list of sacred obligations and solemn moral precepts.
The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is “Don’t envy your buddy’s cow.” How did that make the top ten? What’s it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door?
Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don’t be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have — go get your own.
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell.

Categories
Thought

President Warren G. Harding

I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!

Categories
national politics & policies

Same Ol’ Blame Game

On Fox’s The Five last night, the subject of whom to blame for the Obamacare debacle came up. Bob Beckel thought the Republicans should apologize to the Democrats: Republicans had messed up Obamacare. Greg Gutfeld was incredulous, and told Bob to shut up.

Not good form, that. There’s no point in losing one’s cool, even if on a “hot-head show.”

After all, Beckel has a plausible point. Obamacare isn’t working. And Republicans have fought against it. Did Republican obstructionism really injure the new program’s rollout?

Is it the very essence of Obamacare to fail, or did opponents hobble it from the start?

Now, before we answer, consider what kind of a question it is. It relates to the bully’s ploy of knocking someone down and then kicking them on the ground, taunting “Weakling!”

A few months ago it became all the rage amongst “liberals” to taunt advocates of laissez faire (interestingly, an old liberal doctrine) for markets never having been made fully free and unsubsidized — for remaining just an unachieved ideal, not a live policy anywhere.

Why the failure of laissez faire?

Because its enemies keep on knocking the policy into oblivion, kicking its proponents until they cry “uncle.”

So, did Republicans similarly kick Obamacare into its current mess?

Well, they were unsuccessful in stopping its passage, or unfunding it, or even postponing it.

Some Republican governors (and activist citizens) have prevented the policy from insinuating itself into their states, as was their right. That’s it.

None of these things had anything to do with 1) the website failures and low enrollment, 2) the massive losses of promised continuance of existing insurance policies, or 3) the expected rise in insurance premiums.

Nice try, Bob. But no “uncles” here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
individual achievement insider corruption

TheHealthSherpa.com

Government incompetence is no mystery. It’s very similar to government competence: throw enough money at a problem and something will happen.

It may not be what you want, or what you expected, but something will indeed happen.

The ObamaCare rollout is a grand example of governmental hubris and incompetence, as I explained this weekend at Townhall.com.

But the story has a more amusing twist. Three young professional website technicians saw the fiasco of healthcare.gov and decided to try a different approach, cooking up a website in their spare time.

They found enough information and access to information buried in the multi-million dollar contractors’ code, and reconfigured everything.

Their insight? The main ObamaCare website had it all backwards. People want to be able to start shopping immediately. So that’s what they allow visitors to do, start shopping without sign-up.

On e-commerce websites, you can sign up at almost any point.

The young men’s TheHealthSherpa.com is up and running, allowing people not served by a state-led marketplace to check out the “competition,” select the policy that’s right for them, and go directly to the company offering the service.

So how could three guys working pro bono do a better job than the inside-the-beltway “Internet” professionals who were paid millions?

The well-connected insiders were thinking as insiders do. Instead of seeing that their job was to entice customers, they tried corralling citizens, requiring people to first “sign up.”

Of course, the real and enduring problems of ObamaCare are on the “back end,” behind the websites, where the regulations and taxes and mandates (and pride and hubris and incompetence) will do the most damage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Warren G. Harding

Harding

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Can’t Buy Me Votes

“Corporations and some of the wealthiest Americans have spent more than $1 billion in the past 18 months on ballot initiatives in just 11 states,” Reid Wilson informed Washington Post readers following last week’s election. He dubbed it “an unprecedented explosion of money used to pass new laws and influence the public debate.”

He’s implying that bad ol’ corporations and “the rich” can change our laws merely by petitioning issues onto the ballot. Is that right?

Thankfully, no: we get to vote.

“Money is most effective on ballot measures when you’re trying to get a ‘no’ . . . the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t,” explained Rob Richie, the executive director of FairVote, appearing yesterday on C-Span’s Washington Journal. “It’s a lot harder, actually, to spend a lot of money and get a ‘yes.’”

He’s exactly right. Big corporations and big labor have had success in defeating measures, but not much at all in passing “new laws.”

Last Tuesday’s election bears this out. While there were 31 issues on state ballots, only three were initiatives petitioned onto the ballot by citizens, and all three were defeated.

In Washington, Initiative 517, a pro-initiative measure, and Initiative 522, a measure requiring genetically modified foods to be labeled, were both badly outspent and defeated. However, in Colorado, those supporting Amendment 66, a tax increase for education, spent over $10 million to promote the measure compared to less than $50,000 spent against it. Still, the tax hike was defeated 2-to-1.

Money helps in campaigning, no doubt. But the facts show that wealthy interests can’t buy our votes or brainwash us to gain new laws. We decide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Warren G. Harding

America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality.