“What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.”
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Author: Redactor
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Vietnamese topple Pol Pot
On Jan. 7, 1979, invading Vietnamese troops captured the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, toppling the brutal regime of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot had attempted to establish an agrarian utopia, evacuating the cities and closing schools and factories. He abolished private property and created collective farms. Intellectuals and skilled workers were killed and modern technology outlawed. An estimated two million Cambodians died by execution, forced labor, and starvation.
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Want, Fear and Freedom
On this day in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered a State of the Union address in which he proclaimed, “In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.”
Two of those four freedoms — of speech and worship — are enshrined in our First Amendment. But the other two were new: “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear.”
No one desires people to go wanting or folks to be afraid, of course, though sometimes fear can usefully spur us to take corrective action. But while government can capably protect freedom of speech and religion, it cannot magically wipe out want or fear.
Wants are unlimited; fears can be, too.
When a child wakes up crying from a nightmare, do we need a government program? When a fellow member of the “Me Generation” fervently desires a new iPad, should Uncle Sam provide it?
FDR wasn’t talking about iPads or bad dreams, but his new notions were so loose and fuzzy that they changed the conception of government from a limited association protecting our individual ability to pursue happiness into an unlimited institution powerful enough to create a society without want or fear.
Government has a role in protecting us from invasion or attack, from crime, but it cannot provide freedom from fear. Government has a role in protecting our economic freedom to produce and trade, to engage in commerce, but it cannot fulfill our every want.
We lose what we can achieve when we demand what cannot be given to us.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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President Gerald Ford
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”
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Joan of Arc born
On Jan. 6, 1412, Joan of Arc, the French military figure and Roman Catholic Saint, was born.
On Jan. 6, 1929, Mother Teresa arrived in Calcutta, India, and began begin her work among India’s poor and sick.
On Jan. 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” speech in the State of the Union address.
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Illinois: Ill and Annoyed
Yesterday, I talked about pension rip-offs in Illinois and the particularly outrageous case of a lobbyist who spiked his pension benefits by perhaps a million dollars over the course of his lifetime by working as a substitute teacher for . . . one . . . single . . . day.
Steven Preckwinkle, the political director of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, earned only $93 in actual pay for that day’s work, but was able to snag a more lucrative lifetime teacher’s pension, yet based on his pay as a lobbyist, which would make it twice as generous as the average teacher’s take.
All this through a luxurious loophole in legislation Preckwinkle lobbied the legislature to enact.
Come to find out that Preckwinkle’s pension play isn’t the only way he’s cashed in on state taxpayers. Illinois has a controversial program whereby legislators get to personally hand out a couple of college scholarships to constituents each year.
You guessed it. Two of Preckwinkle’s children — and a nephew — were awarded money to cover their college cost.
Perhaps it’s all a coincidence, eh?
Surely State Rep. Mike Curran (D-Springfield) didn’t allow the contributions he received from Preckwinkle and his union, the Illinois Federation of Teachers, to influence his decision. When Curran left the legislature, he went to work for the Preckwinkle’s union as a consultant.
Can’t friends help friends? On the taxpayers’ tab?
They can in the Land of Larceny.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Prague Spring
On Jan. 5, 1968, the “Prague Spring” began as Alexander Dubcek became ruler of Czechoslovakia and instituted political and economic reforms, including increased freedom of speech and the rehabilitation of political dissidents. In August, the Soviet Union ended Dubcek’s reforms by marching 600,000 Warsaw Pact troops into Czechoslovakia.
On Jan. 5, 1970, the bodies of dissident union leader Jock Yablonski, his wife, and daughter were discovered, murdered by killers hired by the United Mine Workers (UMW) union leadership. Jock Yablonski had run against UMW President Tony Boyle in the 1969 union leadership election and, after losing to Boyle, Yablonski asked the Labor Department to investigate for fraud. The murder investigation ended in nine convictions, including union leader Tony Boyle.
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P.J. O’Rourke
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
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Thomas Jefferson, 1785
“My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.”
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One Day of Work
Unfunded public employee pensions threaten the financial future of governments across the country. In some states and localities, the crisis chickens have already come home to roost, spurring bankruptcies; in others, the clucking is getting much louder.
The State of Illinois may have the worst problem, having funded only 51 percent of its pension liabilities, the lowest level of any state in the nation. Every household in the Land of Lincoln owes $34,000 for this unfunded liability. For those living in Chicago, add the unfunded municipal pension liability and the burden more than doubles to $76,000 per household.
The underlying problem is the distorted political calculus of public pensions, which are negotiated by politicians who want the political support of the powerful unions, which they might win by promising future benefits they won’t be around to pay for.
This generalized political manipulation is so systemic that it reaches more specific absurdity. Consider the case of Steven Preckwinkle, political director of the Illinois Federation of Teachers. He was able to use a loophole in legislation, for which he lobbied, to snag a huge increase in his pension.
Preckwinkle had never taught in a classroom. Yet, by substitute teaching for just one day, he qualified for the much more generous pension given to Illinois teachers. Moreover, Preckwinkle’s pension benefits are calculated on his whopping $245,000 annual salary as a union lobbyist, not on a teacher’s pay.
Is this Lincoln’s government of, by and for the people? Or just for political insiders like Preckwinkle?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.