Author: Redactor

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Thought

Herbert Spencer

[T]here lie before the legislator several open secrets, which yet are so open that they ought not to remain secrets to one who undertakes the vast and terrible responsibility of dealing with millions upon millions of human beings by measures which, if they do not conduce to their happiness, will increase their miseries and accelerate their deaths?

There is first of all the undeniable truth, conspicuous and yet absolutely ignored, that there are no phenomena which a society presents but what have their origins in the phenomena of individual human life, which again have their roots in vital phenomena at large. And there is the inevitable implication that unless these vital phenomena, bodily and mental, are chaotic in their relations (a supposition excluded by the very maintenance of life) the resulting phenomena cannot be wholly chaotic: there must be some kind of order in the phenomena which grow out of them when associated human beings have to cooperate. Evidently, then, when one who has not studied such resulting phenomena of social order, undertakes to regulate society, he is pretty certain to work mischiefs.

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links

Townhall: 33 Billion Balloons in a Strange Land

So, what country are we living in, today? Well, it’s explicable, if absurd — explicable in terms of the old “Cui bono” idea, of incentives and disincentives; absurd because of . . . well, click on over to Townhall.com, read this weekend’s Common Sense column, and see. Then come back here for further limning of the absurdist status quo.:

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video

Video: Odds Against

How safe from terrorism are we? Well, look at the odds….

Some very basic truths are not very popular. So, folks, let’s start with those very basic truths. The ones most politicians, for example, don’t dare say.

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Thought

Herbert Spencer

The great political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. The great political superstition of the present is the divine right of parliaments. The oil of anointing seems unawares to have dripped from the head of the one on to the heads of the many, and given sacredness to them also and to their decrees.

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national politics & policies too much government

Four Percent Off the Top

Suppose you get a 4 percent pay cut.

Suppose you can’t borrow; you can only reduce your spending. Your household budget includes rent, videos, food, saving for a rainy day, and a front-door lock to replace the one destroyed when your home was broken into yesterday. What’s the first thing that pops into your head?

“Well! Better forget that lock!”? No.

Now suppose you head the executive branch of the federal government and want to entrench disastrously high spending. So you want to “prove” that even trivial budget cuts must produce blatant, instant pain. Then, for example, school kids en route to DC find that White House tours have been canceled. Then, for another example, airline passengers find that security delays at the airport drag on longer than ever.

Congress has tasked the Federal Aviation Administration with safely and efficiently directing airplanes on and off the tarmac. The sequester reduces the FAA’s budget by some 4 percent. What to do? What else but furlough controllers for one working day out of ten, inflicting delays in an estimated four of ten flights?

That’s what the Obama administration has done, even though many less destructive budgetary changes are not only possible, but far more preferable.

Much more than 4 percent must be cut from government spending. It won’t be painless. But the Obama administration, consulting a very old, very nasty “insider’s” playbook, seeks to “prove” that the only feasible way to even begin to reform is the least sensible way. False.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Herbert Spencer

[E]very law which serves to alter men’s modes of action — compelling, or restraining, or aiding, in new ways — so affects them as to cause, in course of time, fresh adjustments of their natures. Beyond any immediate effect wrought, there is the remote effect, wholly ignored by most — a re-moulding of the average character: a re-moulding which may be of a desirable kind or of an undesirable kind, but which in any case is the most important of the results to be considered.

Herbert Spencer, “The Sins of Legislators,” in The Man versus the State (1884).
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Thought

Herbert Spencer

How is it that Liberalism, getting more and more into power, has grown more and more coercive in its legislation? How is it that, either directly through its own majorities or indirectly through aid given in such cases to the majorities of its opponents, Liberalism has to an increasing extent adopted the policy of dictating the actions of citizens, and, by consequence, diminishing the range throughout which their actions remain free? How are we to explain this spreading confusion of thought which has led it, in pursuit of what appears to be public good, to invert the method by which in earlier days it achieved public good?

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national politics & policies too much government

Unions versus Obamacare

Former friends of Obamacare keep discovering that the law treats them as enemies.

Three years after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Kinsey Robinson, president of United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International, says that many provisions “were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences . . . inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could keep it.”

Robinson worries that members who now enjoy multi-employer health plans through the union will lose both benefits and employment as Obamacare goes into effect. Small contractors not required to offer insurance coverage under the law will enjoy an unfair bidding advantage. So he now calls for “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare. (Let’s do the repeal, then restart with the right reforms.)

I’m no fan of unions, which have too often acted to quash competition in the labor market. But as long as unions exist, if they’re going to oppose something, let Obamacare top the list until it is gone.

No doubt many more expressions of shock and dismay await us as people discover the consequences of the law. In 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the health care bill had to be passed so we could learn what was in it; after which, free of the fog of partisan debate, we’d all come to understand at last that lumbering Big Brother is indeed our very best friend.

We’re finding out alright, we’re discovering that with friends like BB, and Pelosi, who needs fiends?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

The Natural State of Politicians

Republicans took over both chambers of the Arkansas Legislature, last November, and now have control for the first time since Reconstruction — that’s the century before the century before this century.

Not long after their installation ceremony, the Republican majority — apparently eager to make new reforms — introduced Senate Bill 821, creating a new state program to regulate people circulating initiative petitions. Arkansas activists, the Advance Arkansas Institute and Citizens in Charge were effective in getting legislators to dramatically pare back and remove several harmful and unconstitutional provisions of SB 821, but the legislation designed “to make the referendum process prohibitively difficult in Arkansas,” still passed.

Even more underhanded was passage of House Joint Resolution 1009, “The Arkansas Elected Officials Ethics, Transparency and Financial Reform Act of 2014.” It’s a doozy:

  • With claims of preventing legislators from giving themselves a pay raise, the measure actually removes the current constitutional requirement that voters approve any pay increase and creates a commission of citizens (appointed by legislators and other politicians) to give those same politicians a pay raise.
  • While claiming to enact a gift ban and other ethics reforms, the measure actually provides, Arkansas Times’ Max Brantley wrote, “constitutional protection extended to special interest banquets and travel junkets for legislators.”
  • Completely unannounced by the title, the measure also changes the state’s term limits by allowing legislators to hang around for 16 years in the House or the Senate.

Still, I look on the bright side. The people of Arkansas, having meet their new boss, will petition and vote and sue to protect their rights.

Plus, yesterday, the legislature adjourned. It’s safe again in Arkansas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Herbert Spencer

Every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberties by every other man.