Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets

Hardship

Regulation. It’s a tough job.

Just as regulators think they’ve got it figured out — i.e., this is what folks must do in such-and-such circumstance, and this is what they mustn’t do in such-and-such other circumstance — somebody invents something that makes things way too easy for buyer and seller alike . . . despite all the alternative-strangling regulations.

It’s so frustrating!

This can get out of hand pretty quickly when one industry (say, computer hardware and software and networking) is by historical quirk much freer than another industry (say, New York City taxicabs). You guessed it, this isn’t a hypothetical: A company called Uber has created a smartphone app that lets cabbies and customers find each other more easily. Now Uber is testing its service in New York City.

But — uh oh! — rotten Big Apple taxi regulations prohibit yellow cabs from pre-arranging rides, that is, by methods other than hailing a cab on the street. Cabbies may not use electronic devices, for example. And cabbies usually aren’t allowed to refuse a fare unless another passenger is already sitting pretty and watching the running meter.

Officials say they are “looking at” Uber’s app, and the New York Times reports that both sides are working to “resolve regulatory concerns.” Well, there are only three ways to resolve them:

  1. Prohibit Uber.
  2. Pretend that the regulations don’t mean what they say. Or
  3. get rid of the stupid regulations.

Solving regulatory problems is so hard!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

September 9

On September 9, 1739, the largest slave uprising in Britain’s mainland North American colonies prior to the American Revolution erupted near Charleston, South Carolina. Jemmy, a literate slave — also called “Cato” — led 20 other enslaved Kongolese men to the Stono River, for which the event is named, the Stono Rebellion. (It is also sometimes called Cato’s Rebellion and Cato’s Conspiracy.) Several confrontations occurred, with less than a hundred deaths all told, before the rebellion was quelled.

The South Carolina legislature passed, as a response, the Negro Act of 1740, which restricted slave assembly, education and movement. It also enacted a 10-year moratorium against importing African slaves, and established penalties against slaveholders’ harsh treatment of slaves. The legislature also began regulating manumission.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall links

Townhall: Top Ten Ballot Measures

It’s the silly season in politics, that special time when politicians pretend they like us better than the special interests that fund their campaigns. They bombard us with bold and expansive promises of their incredible abilities; they pledge their future fidelity to principle. From bitter experience, oft repeated, we know those promises tend to evaporate faster than warm spit on an August sidewalk.

Regardless of what happens in the presidential race or in the pitched battle for control of the U.S. Senate (and possibly even the U.S. House of Representatives), voters will also be deciding 157 ballot issues in 34 states this November. As Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, once quipped, “One big difference between initiatives and elected representatives is that initiatives do not change their minds once you vote them in.”

Here are this year’s top ten ballot measures most critical to … [read the rest of the column on Townhall]

NOTE: For a run-down off all 157 ballot issues in 34 states, consult Ballotpedia.

Categories
Thought

Herbert Spencer

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

Categories
Today

September 8

On September 8, 1883, former U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant drove in the final “golden spike” completing the Northern Pacific Railway in a ceremony at Gold Creek, Montana.

Categories
video

Video: That Sense of Belonging

Democrats have it — do you?

Credits: h/t Krys Walker … Thanks, Krys!

Categories
national politics & policies

Lies You Can Believe In

“Folks, whether the American people believe what I just said or not may be the whole election,” former President Bill Clinton intoned at the Democratic National Convention this week. “I just want you to know that I believe it. With all my heart, I believe it.”

Don’t believe it.

Also not worth believing? Clinton’s television ad, for which, you can be sure, every word was chosen carefully, not just ad-libbed (as some of the gray-haired Lothario’s lines from the convention were said to be):

This election, to me, is about which candidate is more likely to return us to full employment. This is a clear choice. The Republican plan is to cut more taxes on upper-income people and go back to deregulation. That’s what got us in trouble in the first place.

President Obama has a plan to rebuild America from the ground-up — investing in innovation, education and job training. It only works if there is a strong middle class, That’s what happened when I was president. We need to keep going with his plan.

Very persuasive . . . until examined.

Is the current economic depression the result of tax cuts and deregulation? No.

The original implosion was in the mortgage bundle markets, and that was fed by Clintonian homeownership policy and the Federal Reserve’s cheap credit. Regulation had increased dramatically under Bush, and the only bit of deregulation worth talking about was the repeal of Glass-Steagall . . . which Clinton himself signed.

The idea that the prosperity of the Clinton years was caused by his “investment” and “education” and “job training” plans is a howler. Clinton’s era was blessed, instead, with

  1. a mostly stable Fed policy;
  2. Republican opposition in the House that forced him to make his most famous policy moves; and
  3. low gas prices.

This latter was the result of the two most astounding policy moves in the years prior to his administration:

  1. The Carter-Reagan deregulation of the oil industry; and
  2. George Herbert Walker Bush’s sending Saudi Arabia and Kuwait the bill for the Persian Gulf War.

Politics, we must remember, is often dominated by expert liars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Tom Woods

Blaming “greedy lenders” or even foolish borrowers begs the question. What institutional factors gave rise to all the foolish lending and borrowing in the first place? Why did the banks have so much money available to lend in the mortgage market — so much indeed that they could throw it even at applicants who lacked jobs, income, down payment money, and good credit?

Categories
Thought

Dixy Lee Ray

Beware of averages. The average person has one breast and one testicle.

Categories
government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Great & Powerful Teleprompter

There’s a man behind a curtain somewhere doing whatever one does to a teleprompter.

Load? Arm? Detonate?

Last week, in Tampa, a Republican teleprompter put words into the mouth of Speaker of the House John Boehner, then chairing the convention, specifically these words: “In the opinion of the chair, the ‘ayes’ have it and the resolution is adopted.”

The resolution concerned whether a number of Ron Paul delegates would be seated. The vote was awfully close. How the actual voice vote turned out was supposed to be for Boehner to judge, not an anonymous guy (or gal) behind the curtain, ghost-writing democracy.

Yesterday, while the Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, were busy tucking God and Jerusalem back into their platform, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa held the gavel. But not control of his own teleprompter.

The resolution restoring those elements to the party’s platform, coming after the platform committee had already completed its work, required a two-thirds vote. When the votes were heard . . .  well, Mayor Villaraigosa wasn’t sure. He had the convention vote again. And then again.

Finally, perhaps after seeing the teleprompter, which read, “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds having voted in the affirmative . . .” he decided, to loud booing, that the resolution had received two-thirds.

As the country prepares (cringes) for the fall campaign, we’ll hear plenty from President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and about both men. But who cares? The real power in our system of governance, as these conventions make clear, are the guys running the teleprompters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.