This is why socialism is evil. It employs evil means, coercion or taking the property of one person, to accomplish good ends, helping one’s fellow man. Helping one’s fellow man in need, by reaching into one’s own pockets, is a laudable and praiseworthy goal. Doing the same through coercion and reaching into another’s pockets has no redeeming features and is worthy of condemnation.
Over at Townhall, the weekend’s subject is, once again, guns. But it gets worse: we’re talking about fake guns, here. And they’re just as worrisome . . . if you are an “educator.”
Come back here for links, for further reading:
It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.
Politicians love to throw money around, especially to appreciative donors; and many, many businesses love favored treatment, and know how to show their appreciation.
“Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”
These two maxims of generations past sought to curb ingratitude, a sense of entitlement, or even cultivated taste amongst those dependent on the kindness of others — thus preventing the poor from making the best the enemy of the adequate.
But today beggars and gift-horse recipients have the government to look out for them.
Todd Starnes, writing for Fox News, relates the story of the Louisiana Health and Hospitals Department nixing a generous gift of sixteen hundred pounds of venison to a rescue mission:
“Deer meat is not permitted to be served in a shelter, restaurant or any other public eating establishment in Louisiana,” said a Health Dept. official in an email to Fox News. “While we applaud the good intentions of the hunters who donated this meat, we must protect the people who eat at the Rescue Mission, and we cannot allow a potentially serious health threat to endanger the public.”
Another valiant attempt to “help” those worst off in society.
Sarcasm aside, the Louisiana venison was no random benefaction. The hunters had been officially encouraged to hunt, and to donate extra meat, which then went to a processing plant.
But the government, which is here to help us (or so it is said), stepped in. The bureaucrats could have inspected the meat, but, instead, even went out of their way to throw the meat into garbage bins and douse it with Clorox.
Just so no animals would get sick, either.
A predictable result of the way Americans have chosen to “protect”* the food supply. As in so many other areas, it is always the poor (in this case, the homeless) who are hurt the most.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The full story has yet to really come out. The beneficent hunters have met with a number of government attorneys and professional backpedallers, and have been promised to be informed of the exact laws/regulations that the venerable venison donors allegedly broke. And this loose-knit diet of dignitaries plans to cook up legislation to “make sure this never happens again.”
Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.
Little things mean a lot. One, they add up. Two, they often express something big, like love between a married couple — or a bully’s determination to control your every move.
In the case of New York City’s impending ban on Big Soda, the something big is Big Brother’s claim of a right to regulate or outlaw everything that might somehow, someday harm somebody. Never mind how indirect or trivial the alleged harm may be. And never mind that such regulation inflicts far more grievous harm to the individual’s own ability to judge what is good for himself, and to act on that judgment in co-operation with others.
Mayor Bloomberg’s new nanny law prohibits restaurants, bars, and other food-serving establishments from selling sodas in containers of more than 16 ounces. That includes carafes served to tables of four, eight or ten. It includes two-liter bottles of soda that New Yorkers might want to order with their pizza. The law is stupid and tyrannical, and a vicious precedent.
Bold, fizzy action is called for. New Yorkers should defy the prohibition. Set up a test case, with the city imposing a fine on one or more businesses for continuing to sell large doses of carbonation. This would allow, then, the Institute for Justice, the ACLU or some other freedom-minded organization help fight the fine and the law in court.
And let there be protests in front of City Hall, peaceful and principled, with Big Soda served to all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Don’t mistake your purification rituals for progress….
Monday, I lamented our deeply-indebted federal government’s policy towards the states: Bribery.
It busily borrows more and more money to entice our more fiscally sound state governments into dramatically expanding Medicaid spending to ever less sustainable levels. I also noted that several Republican Governors who were long opposed to Obamacare are now taking the bribes.
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker isn’t one of them, but he appeared on Fox News Sunday to speak with host Chris Wallace, who said:
“As you well know, seven Republican governors have agreed to the expansion of [Medicaid] to 133 percent of the poverty [line] . . . And they say they’re doing it because of, if you will, free money. . . . [C]ritics say that your decision is, one, going to cost your state millions of dollars and, two, going to mean a lot of people in Wisconsin are uninsured.”
“In our case,” explained Walker, “we actually reduced the number of uninsured, we reduced the number of people on Medicaid and we actually saved a little bit of money.”
Wallace then asked if he feared Congress wasn’t going to live up to its end of the bargain.
“No doubt about it,” Walker responded. “Just for my cost to continue Medicaid in the state of Wisconsin, without any expansion, it cost me $644 million more in this budget. Thirty-nine percent of that is because the federal government under the Affordable Care Act and other provisions is pulling back on their previous commitments. That’s today. That’s without the expansion. . . . If Congress can’t fulfill the commitments they’ve made, I’m concerned about where they’re going to be in the future.”
Wallace then asked Governor Markell (D-Delaware), “why is it that he doesn’t trust Washington and you do?”
That question went unanswered.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bailouts aren’t just for big businesses any more.
Just a few years ago the “too big to fail” argument meant spending trillions on financial institutions and auto companies. Now it appears that rewarding failure — indeed, outright perverse dealing — has a new and eager beneficiary: the federal loot goes directly to unions.
Well, a union, at least. The Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International, whose brinksmanship shut down Hostess, Inc., has former Twinkie techs pulling in money earmarked in a specific way:
This week, the Labor Department decided to shower Hostess workers with Trade Adjustment Assistance, a multibillion-dollar pork barrel program that was beefed up as a bone to Democrats, who were blocking passage of three free-trade treaties in Congress in 2012.
TAA is a lavish program doled out by the Labor Department for laid-off workers who’ve lost their jobs due to “global trade.”
Of course, those 18,500 Hostess jobs were not lost to global trade. They were lost to union pig-headedness. The AFL-CIO-affiliated union was warned that without some cuts, the company would go under. The Teamsters entreated the bakers’ union to play ball. But no deal happened. And Hostess went under.
If the union’s negotiation tactic appeared as risky as a banker’s credit default swap portfolio on mortgage-backed securities, it’s now proved to be as un-risky as the same. The union may not be “too big to fail,” but it appears to be “too well-connected to fail.” The Obama administration is intent on throwing money at the group’s outrageous folly.
And so we continue to reward idiocy, well into the 21st century.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.