Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.
The federal government still grows. But much of it is outsourced, according to Andrew Ferguson:
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee recommends that Attorney General Eric Holder be held in contempt of Congress for his refusal to turn over thousands of subpoenaed documents.
Motivations may be hard to decipher, but Democrats charge Republicans with evil partisanship. But then, the president’s claim of executive privilege in “Fast and Furious”-gate is surely every bit as partisan. As was the same plot that played out (several times) when Bush was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress.
It takes a partisan to know a partisan.
There is no disputing that the ATF botched the effort to trace illegal gun trafficking, handing over thousands of guns to criminals who used the weapons to murder lots of people, including Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.
That seems worth an investigation.
Holder’s congressional testimony regarding when he first heard of the program has since been proved “inaccurate.” He followed this by refusing to hand over documents. Then, when the contempt vote was at hand, President Obama claimed executive privilege to shield Holder.
Obama once promised the “most transparent and accountable administration in history.” Give that promise a funeral.
Mr. Obama and Mr. Holder work for you and me. The documents — those shedding light on the disastrous gun-walking program and any that illuminate a cover-up — belong to us.
So, why do so many media mavens excuse, rather than accuse, the administration? MSNBC’s Chris Matthews suggested that the whole investigation is racist. But Chris, why don’t you want to see the documents?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom — that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
In 2010, Newark, New Jersey, collected more than $3 million in fines based on the watchful (and programmed) work of red-light/amber-light intersection cameras. The next year there were even more violations.
Politicians love these Orwellian devices, while citizens remain extremely suspicious.
New Jersey recently suspended ticketing based on the results from 63 of the state’s 85 intersection cameras. It seems that these specific cameras (including all those in Newark) had not been properly configured according to the specifications set by the enabling legislation.
A Star-Ledger report neatly explains the calibration method, which requires intersection speed studies to set the proper duration of the amber lights. Figuring caution-light duration based on actual intersection speeds, not on posted speed limits — that is, the average actual speed of 85 percent of drivers — would seem to have something to do with safety. The 85 percent rule is an old highway safety engineering standard, and safety is allegedly why governments are involved in this at all.
A problem, though: This compliance procedure is great for setting speed limits, but in this case, wouldn’t it punish slower, legal drivers on streets where people tend to drive faster than the limit? Were the overwhelming majority of folks to speed through intersections, that would correspondingly lower the duration of the amber lights. Consequence? The folks most likely to receive tickets would be those who drove slowly through the intersections.
Hardly a good idea. As one driver commented, “Virtually from green it turns into red.”
More telling against the cameras is the increase in infractions, suggesting that the robotic cameras do not have a net instructional effect.
That is, they don’t make intersections safer.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Walmart is still taking kicks, especially in New York City. But as local politicians, union activists, and business bigots (people who develop hatreds for other people’s wage and consumer choices) continue to harass the company, it’s worth taking a step back and appreciating what it does right.
Indeed, it is so successful that it’s worth exporting. Or so suggests economist Tyler Cowen in an interesting interview on the Arabic Knowledge@Wharton website, where he says that companies like Walmart are exactly what the “poor people of Africa” need. Why? These big corporations make food
more accessible and more reliable. It’s not just the pricing at any one point and time. It’s what happens in the very worst periods. Companies like Walmart are very, very good at keeping up supply and being regular.
Anti-Walmarters in first-world countries tend to forget how bad everyday life is in poor countries, except when they are trying to find ways to increase foreign aid or pitch a Live Aid concert. They take for granted not only our vast markets, but the Industrial Revolution and our several agricultural revolutions.
And there’s the rub, for the Third World. The “Green Revolution” that staved off mass starvation in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, has “somewhat slowed down,” says Cowen.
This is an unreported story. Crop yields are stagnant. It isn’t a problem we can solve overnight but it’s really one of the biggest problems in the world. It hardly gets any publicity. But for poor people in India, the Middle East and parts of Africa, it really matters.
So Walmart could really help.
But then, so would an end to Third World kleptocracy and its replacement by a rule of law.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
You have no doubt heard about Obama’s recent “gaffe” about “the private sector’s doing fine.”
The private sector, of course, is not doing well, not at all — and it’s suffering from a public sector gone mad: Bailouts, increased spending, increased debt, increased regulation.
But our beleaguered and benighted president was trying to make the point that it’s our public sector that’s doing badly.
And there is something to be said — carefully, with much caution — about public sector jobs. In many states and locales, government jobs are not increasing in number. Well, at least not increasing as fast as bailout mania might lead you to think.
And Josh Barro knows why. Public sector jobs are in decline because public sector compensation has been skyrocketing, depleting resources from state and municipal governments, preventing job increases.
San Jose, for instance, used to have 7.5 employees per 1,000 residents. Now the city’s down to 5.6 employees per thou, “with further cuts expected next year.” Why?
[C]osts for a full-time equivalent employee are astronomical and skyrocketing. San Jose spends $142,000 per FTE on wages and benefits, up 85 percent from 10 years ago. As a result, the city shed 28 percent of its workforce over that period, even as its population was rising.
Blame it on pensions, grossly over-promised.
It’s a problem politicians have: They like to dole out favors. And pensions are something they can promise without funding fully, making “future politicians” (uh, taxpayers) pay (like, uh, now). It’s the scandal of the age.
But I wonder if Obama would ever ’fess up to the real nature of the problem
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
We must say openly that the present economic system of the EU is a system of a suppressed market, a system of a permanently strengthening centrally controlled economy. Although history has more than clearly proven that this is a dead end, we find ourselves walking the same path once again. This results in a constant rise in both the extent of government masterminding and constraining of spontaneity of the market processes. In recent months, this trend has been further reinforced by incorrect interpretation of the causes of the present economic and financial crisis, as if it was caused by free market, while in reality it is just the contrary – caused by political manipulation of the market. It is again necessary to point out to the historical experience of our part of Europe and to the lessons we learned from it.