Author: Redactor

Categories
property rights

Apologies to Ms. Kelo

The sad story of Kelo v. The City of New London keeps dragging on, adding coda to epilogue, epilogue to coda.

Recently, Jeff Benedict, the author of Little Pink House, gave a talk attended by both Connecticut Supreme Court Justice Richard N. Palmer and Suzette Kelo. Afterwards, chatting with Ms. Kelo, Benedict was approached by Justice Palmer, who shocked the journalist with an admission: “Had I known all of what you just told us, I would have voted differently.”

The judge then turned to Ms. Kelo to say how sorry he was.

The judge, who had voted in the majority against the New London homeowner, was not recanting the decision, as such, but instead merely admitting that the facts as they developed in the case put the New London redevelopment project in a different light. And his apology? Not for the decision, but simply for Ms. Kelo’s suffering.

It’s something.

The real something in the case is what happened to New London’s Fort Trumbull site after Pfizer pulled out of the development. Most recently it has been turned into a dumping ground for branches, hedge clippings, broken limbs from storms, and the like. As one property rights watchdog put it:

Connecticut taxpayers have thus been soaked tens of millions of dollars, not just for nothing, but for making things worse. . . .

Much worse. Property rights were undermined. Judges felt compelled by practice and precedent to defend whimsical, frivolous takings powers against the just property rights of citizens.

We’re all sorry, now. But protecting property rights against abuse by government would mean never having to say we’re sorry, later.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy too much government

Excise Excitement Exorcizes E-Biz

Retail sales taxation became vogue among the states of the union during the Great Depression. When other revenue sources dried up, many states decided to nab potential taxpayers at each transaction.

We’re in a depression again, and numerous legislatures are looking to expand their retail sales tax base by targeting out-of-state Internet purchases.

California has made the biggest stink about this, and its fight with Amazon.com has been in the headlines for some time. Though the issue has been put “on hold” for a year, the Assembly’s rapacity has produced at least one effect. It has driven many online businesses out of the state, and severely curtailed the online sales of many California brick-and-mortar concerns.

Take Shopobot, a new online business. One of this San Francisco company’s biggest revenue streams was Amazon. And Amazon dropped it like a hot rock.

So what did Shopobot do? It fled California for the cooler Seattle, Washington.

Why skip Oregon — which lacks a retail sales tax? My guess is that Oregon’s political environment struck the Shopobot folks as nearly as crazy as California’s, so heading further north made more sense, to sit beside Amazon itself, and across Lake Union from Adobe’s compound, er, “campus.”

The online sales tax question is widely perceived as a problem. The only solution, I guess, is to let Congress do its constitutional duty and “regulate interstate commerce.”

Amazon sure wants that.

But why am I not optimistic about a good solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

A Compact Solution

“We shouldn’t have to leave our country to have a reasonable health care system,” says Eric O’Keefe, chair of the Health Care Compact Alliance.

I agree, but what to do with Obamacare, at present secure from repeal?

O’Keefe points out that Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution permits states to enter into compacts with one another provided they get congressional approval. States have done so since colonial times; there are currently 200 state compacts in force dealing with issues from driver’s licensing to wildlife.

The Health Care Compact would allow states to “get rid of all of Obamacare,” and to tell the federal government, as O’Keefe puts it, “You keep your regulations; send us back our money.”

“It’s not just a way to block Obamacare,” O’Keefe explains. “It includes Medicare and Medicaid, creates a block grant of all the money and it goes into the compacting states for them to manage as they see fit. So the citizens and the legislature will work it out in their state.”

States that join the compact could set up their own health care system with the money they currently receive from the federal government, sans regulations and mandates. While some states might experiment with single-payer systems, others could expand medical savings accounts and other market-oriented reforms.

Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas have already passed the Health Care Compact, and will likely apply for congressional approval once a dozen or more states join.

Who’s next?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Decline and Fall?

Widespread unemployment, fear, and consternation: Why now?

Three answers:

  1. Imperial over-reach. No nation can police the world forever. Empires once existed for loot. But on net the U.S. doesn’t take wealth from others. Instead, we spend our own wealth “protecting” others, often confusing our “national interest” for the interests of well-connected businesses. Hardly sustainable. Flag-waving about how good the U.S. is won’t stop the decline.
  2. Churning. We pretend to live in a “welfare state,” but wealth does not consistently go from rich to poor, to compensate for disadvantages. Wealth churns from one group to another, with each power shift. Trying to live at the expense of everyone else is not just a game for the poor. Government, without constitutional limits, inevitably shifts wealth haphazardly from the politically powerless (the least organized) to the politically powerful (the best organized) — with always a cut for the bureaucracy and political insiders. Of course such a system must decline, at some point.
  3. Sub-standard standards. In too many domains of life, we’ve almost given up. Certainly folks in high places act quite low. And the people who control our money, for example, don’t even pretend to keep a stable supply, a “standard”; instead, they pride themselves on “keeping bubbles going” . . . making unsustainability our standard policy.

But Americans do have an advantage over our Old World friends and foes. We have a history of dedication to better principles. Our best bet for recovery? Return to them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Hating Cathedrals

According to Adam Gopnik, at the New Yorker, many of my readers and I hate cathedrals.

Well, he alleges that we oppose “beautiful new airports and efficient bullet trains” (not cathedrals, exactly) for the same reason that “seventeenth-century Protestants hated the beautiful Baroque churches of Rome” — as “luxurious symbols of an earthly power they despised.”

Hmmm. Disagreeing with Gopnik is a hate crime?

Americans have more than enough cause to oppose big, intrusive government. We know how it works (often not very well), we know how unfair it is (often quite unjust), and we have a traditional alternative ready at hand (Constitutional liberty).

Cluelessly, Gopnik just sees a pig-headed hatred of government that leads to a hatred of some really nifty things.

He should reconsider. Perhaps what we have is a love of liberty and justice. And that precludes some nifty things from being conjured up in certain ways.

I bet Gopnik agrees. Go back to something like a cathedral. Take Teotihuacan. The Aztecs sure made some impressive buildings. Big public works projects. But for the purposes of blood sacrifice? At the cost of constant imperial warfare and imperial rule?

No.

Same with some dream projects. No doubt taking a billion-dollar train to a trillion-dollar airport would be cool. But I’d rather spend my money in other ways. And is it really right to tax somebody else for my luxuriant transports?

No more than robbing Peter to pay Paul . . . even to build a cathedral.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Saab Stories

Saab Automobile appears to be going down. The Swedish automaker was abandoned by its beleaguered parent company, General Motors, prompting the Swedish managers to petition the Swedish government for a bailout. In 2009, the Scandinavian government said “No.” GM then sold Saab to a Dutch manufacturer, which hit a cash crunch in this year’s first quarter.

Lots of people with fond memories of the pre-GM Saab thought that the Dutch outfit had a great idea: Revive Saab by reintroducing a 1940s look, the famous Saab 92.

But the financing fell through, sending Saab begging, again, to the Swedish government, with promises of radical restructuring.

A western Swedish district court again ruled, “No.”

This is not good for the people of Trollhattan, where Saab’s main plants reside. They will be hard hit, as in any disaster.

What is interesting is that, though many folks of Trollhattan have repeated the old social democrat line about how they are “people” who somehow deserve their incomes and such, the government refused to go along with the old bailout model.

One could argue that the oft-idolized Swedish nationalization/capitalization/marketing solution was the model for America’s 2008 and 2009 bailouts. The method looks less popular, these days, in its home country.

We’re living in tough times, getting tougher. Still, at some point we’ve got to bite the bullet and resist trying to “fix” failed businesses by government.

Governments fail often enough, themselves, without moonlighting this extra job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Golden State Standards

In their just completed session, California legislators expressed deep concern about transparency, democracy and good government.

Sen. Mark DeSaulnier authored Senate Bill 448 to mandate “a little transparency” in the initiative petition process. The legislation would have forced citizens paid to circulate petitions to wear a sign on their chests reading: “Paid Signature Gatherer.”

But Governor Jerry Brown vetoed the bill, stating, “I choose not to go down this slippery slope where the state decides what citizens must wear when petitioning their government.”

On the very last day of the session, Sen. Loni Hancock became concerned about democracy. “Low turnout elections do not represent the needs, priorities and desires of the larger electorate,” she decried.

So she stuffed new wording into one of her languishing bills, SB 202, to force all citizen initiatives to the November ballot. (Measures referred by legislators would, under SB 202, continue to go onto any ballot legislators desire.) In less than 24 hours, the bill was introduced, hearings were announced and held only minutes later, and the bill was rammed through both chambers.

Sen. Hancock pronounced this “good government.”

Legislators shouldn’t “gerrymander” which election citizen-initiated measures are voted upon for their own political purposes and those of their preferred special interests — in this case, public employee unions. Nor should new legislation be introduced and passed in a single day, without the public having time to communicate with their representatives.

That’s not transparency. It’s not democracy. And it’s not good government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

A Million for Each Congressperson

A business filed for bankruptcy last week.

These have been tough times, so that’s not a shock. What makes the story juicy is that the FBI raided the company’s headquarters two days later.

The company? Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer. A few months earlier, it had been boasting a profitable return on investment. And, as President Obama had proclaimed the previous year in a visit to the California outfit, Solyndra was precisely the kind of company that deserved federal government assistance. It was so cutting edge, so innovative, that it deserved a huge loan guarantee, to the tune of $535 million.

The raid occurred on the same day as the president’s “jobs” speech last week. Yet, Mr. Obama neglected to include an update on his administration’s previously self-praised policy of industrial subsidy pertaining to that very company.

Republicans are making much of this. They are themselves not immune to (indeed, during the Bush years they excelled at) just this sort of corruption.

And it is corruption. The Solyndra deal went down after major investors in the company gave millions in support of the Obama presidential campaign. It was fast-tracked as part of the federal government’s Keynesian “stimulus” spending.

This is how the politics of modern mercantilism — of systematic “business-government partnerships” — works. The moneymen support the politicians who support the moneymen.

It’s one way to get rich.

And gain (and maintain) power.

But it’s not good for the country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense general freedom national politics & policies

The Same America

This episode was written immediately after the events of 9/11/01.

This is war. And on our shores. Thousands of American citizens murdered in cold blood. But despite our pain and suffering as a people, we are still strong. Not only militarily, but also in our love of freedom and our commitment to defend it come what may.

Some have argued that America will never be the same. In a sense that’s true: we’ll certainly never forget this savage and senseless attack. And we have much work to do to make certain it doesn’t happen again. But it’s important to be careful how we go about it.

In the wake of this unprecedented brutality, two out of three Americans say they would be willing to trade some civil liberties to get more security. But this is isn’t our real choice. Nothing about increasing our security requires abridging our civil rights. We don’t have to let the terrorists win, not in any respect. For these terrorists would like nothing better than to knock America off our foundation, our principles, the things that make us truly the greatest country the world has ever known. They hate our freedom. Let’s sustain that freedom. Let’s show the whole world: we are the same America.

The same America whose rifle shot for freedom was heard ’round the world in 1776, and is still being heard today. The same America that freed Europe from the Nazis and Asia from imperial Japan. Let it be known in the face of this terror today that we are indeed the same America, the land of the free and the home of the brave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability ideological culture

A Membership Group vs. Its Members

What is the American Medical Association for? The group claims, in public-relations-ese, that its function is “to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.”

But ask a doctor. You are apt to get a very different diagnosis.

The September 2011 survey of “Physicians Opinions About the American Medical Association,” published by Jackson & Coker, a physician recruitment firm, makes that very clear. Here are a few highlights:

  • “The AMA’s Stance and Actions Represent My Views”: 77 percent of doctors disagree.
  • “I agree with the AMA’s Position on Health Reform”: 70 percent disagree.
  • . . . effectively supports “physician practice autonomy”: 69 percent disagree.
  • . . . effectively insulates “physicians from intrusive government regulations”: 78 percent disagree.
  • . . . “protects physicians from insurance company abuses”: 75 percent disagree.

Those percentages include non-member and non-practicing doctors. Understandably, members of the AMA are more positive than non-members. But even among member doctors, a majority disapproves of the AMA’s insurance protection (the last bullet point, above).

The AMA carries a lot of weight in public policy debate. Unfortunately, its history of lobbying government has been very . . . “progressive,” paternalistic, and heavy-handed.

For example, before the AMA dominated American national medical policy, doctors routinely engaged in extensive pro bono work for the poor. The AMA worked mightily to stop that.

The result of this prescription? Medicare, Medicaid . . . and an insolvent entitlement system.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.