Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

What Gets Lost in Washington

The current battle over “health care reform” is a great example of why representative government frustrates.

It’s not just that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ bill didn’t get their way. It’s that the proponents of socialized medicine (and that’s the real goal, here: The eventual complete government takeover of medicine) are playing a sort of obstacle-course race . . . as I argued yesterday.

Meanwhile, how the anti-Obamacare message hits Washington vexes, too.

Some partisan pundits and pollsters go so far as to say that the Democrats’ reform legislation suffers because it lacks a good name. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is not a catchy moniker. “Obamacare,” used primarily by its opponents, is super-catchy. And the Republicans repeal effort is pretty clever: “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”

Though “job-killing” may reference a hot, current topic, it is far from the most salient thing one might say against the Democrats’ rushed-through plan.

Standard politics: Even when politicians do the right thing, they push it for the wrong reason.

Media folk are now beginning to spin the popular opposition to Obamacare. Carefully worded polls “prove” that Americans aren’t overwhelmingly against the plan.

Which misses the real point: Incredulity. Democrats ballyhooed the notion that further government intervention into medicine would reduce costs. Nonsense, of course. And Americans know it.

That common-sense skepticism is precisely what gets lost in all the politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Ratchet Still Holds

Government grows by a ratchet effect.

When Democrats gained unified control over Congress and the Executive Branch in 2009 they understandably moved to increase the size and scope of government, rather than, say, swiftly follow through with President Obama’s various promises to withdraw from foreign interventions. Adding new stuff? More politic.

Thus the legislation called (by opponents) “Obamacare.”

Democrats hoped that the wide number of people who would bear the initial costs would soon forget about them (the reform is already causing substantial increases in private insurance rates) while the smaller group of people who make obvious gains in services would solidly rank behind the reforms.

A slight miscalculation. Americans reacted against Obamacare immediately, and gave control of the House back to the Republicans.

Who, yesterday, voted to repeal Obamacare.

But since Democrats control the Senate, the bill will die there. If by some miracle it passed, the president will veto.

In the ratchet they trust.

Hoping dispersed costs will eventually be lost sight of, and feeling certain that the concentrated effects will indeed nurture a voting bloc, progressive Democrats see a bright future for ever-expanding government incursion into medicine. As with most government encroachments, if it doesn’t work as advertised, more intrusiveness will be the next proposal for “reform.”

So far Democrats have plied their obvious advantage, reducing the repeal effort to symbolic action. Let’s hope Republicans can muster something more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies

Persistence, Thy Name Is Eyman

Eyman

We haven’t had enough Tim Eyman.

I try to rotate the subjects of these Common Sense efforts, moving from freedom to democracy and back again, covering local and state issues as well as national and international ones.

But certain topics make regular returns. Like Tim Eyman. In Washington State, he’s evergreen.

He’s the citizen initiative guy. He keeps plugging away, writing initiatives, working to put them on the ballot, defending them against all comers.

His recurring theme? Lower taxes.

He recently filed an initiative to require a two-thirds majority in the Evergreen State’s legislature to raise taxes.

He’s done it before. And Washington State citizens have voted this in, before. Four times.

Trouble is, the legislature can repeal any state initiative two years after enactment, by simple majority. Within the first two years, it takes a two thirds super-majority.

So Eyman is back on the horse, whip in hand, and says he’ll keep putting these initiatives before the voters. As many times as it takes.

He’s working on the current effort in case the legislature takes down the recently enacted I-1053, like they did the three previous citizen-enacted laws. If lawmakers don’t overturn this, he’ll wait until 2012 to reintroduce it. And he’ll keep this up until legislators at last understand: Citizens don’t have unlimited resources. Taxes come at a cost. Spending less is always an option.

You can’t keep a good man (or the voters) down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

A Light Bulb of an Idea

Suppose you knew that a heavily-demanded, glow-giving product, cherished for more than a century, was about to become illegal. And suppose you wished to continue being a USER (gulp) of this product and maybe even a DEALER of it (double-gulp) after the ban takes effect.

What would you do?

Stock up.

Cato Institute analyst Doug Bandow recently and publicly stated, quite bluntly, that he will “become an entrepreneur — as a black market operator.”

So why is a dignified fellow like Bandow descending to such a desperate measure?

He likes light bulbs, and, 100-watt incandescent light bulbs will be illegal in this land of the free come January 2012, with lower-wattage incandescent bulbs prohibited a year later.

Bandow prefers incandescent bulbs to fluorescent bulbs because of the softer light they offer, among other reasons. And he dislikes the market-mangling already happening because of the impending prohibition.

Never mind which form of artificial light is better for which purposes by the lights of mere consumers. Those calculations are all individual and freedom-dependent. Meanwhile, “politicians in Washington believe they know best and are determined to inconvenience the public in the name of saving energy.”

At Townhall, back in 2007, I wrote about the government-mandated switch to fluorescents. I didn’t bring up the idea of a black market in light bulbs, but I did insist that some of us would “rather fight than . . . have them tell us how to switch.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Determined To Be Free

Years ago, on a past Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I played a video of his speeches for my children. Upon hearing the words King delivered in a Selma church in 1965, I was overcome with emotion. Who wouldn’t be?

“Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for. And if a man happens to be 36-years-old, as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life – some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right.

“A man might be afraid his home will get bombed, or he’s afraid that he will lose his job, or he’s afraid that he will get shot, or beat down by state troopers, and he may go on and live until he’s 80. He’s just as dead at 36 as he would be at 80. The cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.

“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. . . .

“We’re going to stand up amid anything they can muster up, letting the world know that we are determined to be free!”

Moving. Inspiring. And common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment video

Video of the Week: John Green on a Random Act

In the wake of the horrible shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona, a week ago, not everyone jumped on the “vitriol” bandwagon:

Categories
too much government

Paying the Right Wage

Local government is hard. In rural areas, it can be like organizing an ongoing bake-sale. In metropolitan areas, it’s more like running a small country.

Today’s big metropolitan governments tend to be run by un-term-limited oligarchs, so of course corruption is endemic. When there’s little competition for power and scant oversight, then the “above-board deals” become, de facto, insider deals.

And we wind up paying more in salaries and benefits for government workers than anything else. Recently, George Will off-handedly noted that in California “80 cents of every government dollar goes for government employees’ pay and benefits.”

Is that “too much”? Had we limited government, we would still expect salaries to make up a huge chunk of government. But since transfer payments are part and parcel of so much of modern governance, the fact that employee compensation packages are actually crowding out other line items should give us more than pause.

Truth is, though, it needn’t be hard to tell who is over- or under-paid, according to economist Arnold Kling:

If you do not have enough sanitation workers because you cannot fill job openings at the current level of pay, then those government workers are underpaid.

On the other hand, if you do not have enough sanitation workers because your budget is busted by the ones you have, then those government workers are overpaid.

Take that notion to your next local government board meeting. Big or small.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy

A Chill Hits Illinois

That big bump in the night? It was the sound of a massive new tax increase dropping on the backs of Illinois citizens and businesses.

Not long after midnight, Wednesday morning, mere hours before the newly elected legislature was to be sworn into office, the state’s lame-duck legislature voted to increase the personal income tax by a whopping 67 percent and the business income tax by nearly 50 percent.

That’s lame, all right.

Governor Pat Quinn, who had campaigned in favor of a smaller increase, will sign the bigger tax hike. “Our fiscal house was burning,” he said in its defense.

Is the fire now out?

Well, there sure is a lot of smoke, and where there’s smoke, there’s . . . a lot of people making a quick exit.

Remember, people can vote with their feet. “Leaving Illinois,” a study by the Illinois Policy Institute, points out that between 1991 and 2009 Illinois lost one resident every ten minutes.

That’s $16.9 billion in lost state and local tax revenue.

So Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was quick to offer a safer haven. “In these challenging economic times while Illinois is raising taxes, we are lowering them.”

As William Brodsky, chief executive of CBOE Holdings Inc, argues, “Merely throwing tax dollars at a broken system, without overhauling the expense side of the ledger, compounds the problem. . .” Bemoaning Illinois’ lost tax advantage in attracting business, Brodsky remarked, “They don’t come here for the weather.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Omaha Recall

A Wall Street Journal story on the campaign to recall the mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, quotes the head of the U.S. Conference of Mayors saying that recall petitions should be made more difficult because “the political climate is toxic.”

Toxic to whom, betrayed citizens or out-of-touch politicians?

You know whose side I’m on. I took three weeks off my regular duties to manage the recall’s petition drive.

Such efforts aren’t easy. We needed signatures equaling 35 percent of the vote for mayor. A group called “Omaha Forward” harassed our petitioners, regularly predicted our failure in the news media and hurled charges of fraud at us. When we turned in the necessary 37,000 signatures, certified by elections officials, the group filed a lawsuit to block the recall.

Just before Christmas, I traveled back to Omaha to testify at the trial over the petition. The mayor’s attorney called me “The Music Man,” an out-of-towner out to swindle good Nebraskans. But not one single signature verified by the county was invalidated. As the judge said in his decision, “Plaintiff introduced evidence to attack the credibility of certain circulators and a Paul Jacob, the coordinator for the paid circulators. . . . This Court found Paul Jacob credible and accepted his testimony as truthful.”

The recall of Omaha’s mayor is on the ballot, January 25. Whether he is removed from office or not, voters have demonstrated that they cannot be taken for granted. A lawful democratic process prevails.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

The Nihilist as the Vilest

Yesterday I surveyed the media landscape and found the weekend’s most obnoxious theme: That Jared Lee Loughner, the apprehended suspect killer in Saturday’s Tucson massacre, was somehow spurred to commit his gruesome shooting spree by the “inflamed rhetoric” of today’s protest politics. I titled my effort “Killer Apprehended, Vitriol’s to Blame.” Hans Bader had a better title for his Washington Examiner contribution: “Shootings obscure America’s generally bland and timid political culture.”

Yes, bland, he wrote.

“My French relatives regularly denounce their country’s leaders in far more heated and pungent terms than Americans like Sarah Palin do. Founding fathers like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were attacked far more vitriolically in the media than recent presidents like Obama and Bush were. . . .” He notes that today’s left-leaners have become so timid as to become “stiflingly conformist.”

In Slate, Jack Shafer pointed out that “Any call to cool ‘inflammatory’ speech is a call to police all speech, and I can’t think of anybody in government, politics, business, or the press that I would trust with that power.” David Weigel, also in Slate, turned his gaze on a politician actually writing legislation to “shut down” uncool speech, noting that “[t]here’s no evidence — none — that violent pictures or words inspired the violence in Arizona.”

So, what motivated Loughner? A Mother Jones exclusive sketches the young man’s fixation on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and . . . meaning. But neither Loughner’s philosophical nihilism nor his will to annihilate fit well with any purely political narrative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.