Author: Redactor

Categories
nannyism

The Skinny on Fat

Many Americans are overweight or even obese. I’m one of them.

You probably are, too. After all, the media keeps ominously hyping that nearly two-thirds of us fit these categories. Of course, being “overweight” and being “obese” are not exactly identical.

A plurality of 37 percent of us are overweight. Only 27 percent are obese. Said another way, 73 out of a hundred Americans are not obese.

Problem solved?

Not exactly. Obesity is still a very real health and well-being problem for a great many folks.

Plus, obesity provides politicians with a new reason to take and spend more tax money. The city council in Washington, DC, wants to spend $23 million additional dollars over the next four years to fight obesity. The program will be financed through a proposed one-cent per ounce soft drink tax. Funny, though, the soda tax will bring in $16 million a year, more than the $10 million needed for fighting the fat.

In the spirit of slimming down, you might think the city could have found something to cut to afford the new program. But politicians aren’t prepared to take their own advice.

I need to lose some weight. I figure I’ll exercise more, and stop allowing myself so many calories. The cost to me? Nothing. Heck, I’ll save money.

The cost to you? Not one thin dime.

Care to join me? Let’s call it the Starve-a-Politician Diet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats Give the Internet to the FTC?

Congress has all the backbone of a jellyfish. Tasked with sole power to declare war, it delegates such decision-making to the Executive Branch every chance it gets. The U.S. hasn’t declared war since World War II, but is now engaged in two land wars in Asia.

Further, for a long time, Congress has handed over law-writing tasks to various regulatory divisions of the Executive Branch. This may have gotten worse with the recent Democratic hegemony. Example? Congress is maneuvering to give the Internet over to the Federal Trade Commission.

Pelosi’s little platoons have hidden this momentous change in the recent banking regulation bill. But as Ed Morrissey of Hotair.com notes, the Internet had nothing to do with the recent financial collapse, another iteration of which the new bill is ostensibly designed to prevent

So why sneak this provision into an unrelated bill?

Maybe to come down on one side of the Net Neutrality debate without ever really confronting the issues.

People engaged in this debate about regulating Internet and bandwidth pricing may disagree about a lot of things, but surely they all agree that Congress should legislate for the Internet openly and honestly, not make its biggest decisions in obscure provisions of a measure that will be voted on only to solve utterly unrelated problems.

You may be thinking, FCC, FTC — does it matter? Well, I bet it really matters to some powerful Democrat. Hence the sneaky maneuvers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Inglorious Mess That Is Greece

Ah, the glory that was Greece! Too bad the modern country is anything but. The nation-state of Greece is going broke, and going broke spectacularly.

And, dare I say it, instructively?

Everybody’s blaming everybody else, there. But the simple truth of the matter is that the politicians of Greece — both socialist and “conservative” — enticed citizens to go along with a sustained binge of spending, spending far beyond revenues.

And then the government lied to European Union HQ in Brussels about how much it was spending over revenues.

And, you guessed it, Greece continued to borrow even more.

Yes, public spending in Greece was more out-of-control than government spending here in America. And that’s why it’s instructive. What is happening right now to Greece is happening elsewhere in Europe — Italy, Spain, Portugal — and is on pace to happen to us, too.

Greece does have one option the good ol’ US of A doesn’t have: It can go begging to the European Union. So far, saner heads in the EU are saying “no,” but that may not last.

While we don’t have that option, Greece lacks ours: With the Euro as its standard, it’s constrained from the monetary fiddling that American leaders are tempted with. Inflation. Hyperinflation.

When things get worse here, we’ll hear talk of huge tax hikes, confiscations, and sovereign default.

But also expect a lot of what Greek politicians did: Lying.

Inglorious, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The Chamber, Loaded Against the Free Market

You are familiar with the notion that businesses support the free market, while concerned citizens demand some sort of “regulatory oversight” by government.

It’s a canard.

Oh, some businessmen do indeed support free markets and decry subsidies — and lots of businesses oppose this regulation or that — but, on the whole, the major support for a regulatory regime, or for subsidies and tariffs, for almost any scheme of government control of business, is usually business itself.

Like individuals, businesses too often turn to government for special advantages — over other businesses, or over taxpayers.

That’s why the United States Chamber of Commerce gave Congressman Ron Paul such low marks. You could hardly find a more pro-free-market gentleman in Washington. But, as Timothy Carney notes in the Washington Examiner, 90 percent of Democrats got higher marks on the Chamber’s 2009 congressional scorecard than did Paul, who also got the lowest marks of any Republican.

Why?

Rep. Paul opposed the recent stimulus bill. And he opposed subsidizing the tourism industry as well as solar energy.

The Chamber is a typical business lobbying outfit, favoring an inefficient, mixed economy because some of its leading members hope to milk the taxpayers.

If you are a member of the Chamber but support the fair play of the free market, not the rigged play of government-business “partnerships,” you might want to speak up against your Chamber’s policies.

Or join another group.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility too much government

Fiasco Economics

Every time a financial fiasco hits, politicians readily expand regulations. But what’s the point of adding to the regulatory barrage if it’s all just for show?

They studiously avoid asking the right questions:

  1. What previous regulations caused (or helped cause) the fiasco?
  2. What previous regulations that could have prevented the fiasco weren’t enforced?

Economist Gerald O’Driscoll, Jr., writing in the Wall Street Journal, adds a few notes of caution to the current regulation madness. Most regulatory bodies get “captured” by the businesses they regulate. A huge amount of research shows how supposedly anti-business regulations serve the interests of some businesses at the expense of their competitors.

It’s the crony capitalist equivalent to politicians making it harder for challengers using “campaign finance” regulations. Same game, different venue.

O’Driscoll also explains which regulations weren’t enforced prior to the recent meltdown — those against fraud. This form of regulation is not like the regs politicians usually propose. It’s basic rule of law, the government’s first responsibility.

And regarding Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Bernie Madoff, government failed.

O’Driscoll argues that multiplying rules and regulations is not merely the wrong response, but a sorry repeat of the last century’s “great intellectual failure.” Pity, then, to see the current administration push just that.

Following this path will just lead to the same old recycling of the boom and bust cycle. Freedom and responsibility — where criminal fraud is actually fought by government, not encouraged — work better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

The Right Stuff Needs No Subsidy

When the president, in a rare fit of fiscal sanity, proposed cutting back on NASA, the subsidized sector of the high tech industry — the military-industrial complex — felt a shiver.

The first, I hope, of many.

NASA has long had a special, high-toned place in that hierarchy of government-funded industries. It’s the civilian wing of the military’s industrial juggernaut. As if to prove that government can accomplish things, NASA actually landed men on the moon. And it kept an ungainly shuttle program going long after its rightful expiration date.

But it’s time for private enterprise to take over in the space industry.

High time.

Still, questions remain — at least in the public mind. As a fascinating MSNBC article put it, “Can private companies build and operate space vehicles safe enough to carry astronauts?” The article’s author, James Oberg, focuses on the emerging market of space taxis, but does ponder the possibility of putting real astronauts out in space, privately. He consulted skeptical NASA engineers, who wondered how unsubsidized, for-profit businesses could mimic NASA’s record.

Where’s their collective experience?

Answer: Let most of NASA go, and that experience would be up for hire.

Our hopes for the future conquest of space depend, in part, on ceasing to subsidize it. Congress and the president should embrace that future, and realize that it is time to relinquish their control over another whole industry.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

UNkindest Cut of All

One of the sad truths about trying to help folks in far, distant lands, is that so much of the aid gets soaked up in overhead.

But if you think it’s bad with charities, prepare to wince at the United Nation’s Haitian peacekeeping efforts. It turns out that only 4.6 percent of the $495.8 million the UN spends on salaries, hazard pay, and the like goes to “national staff” on the ground in Haiti. The rest goes to support staff at some remove from the island nation’s devastation.

So does $461.9 million out of $495.8 million seem like a good cut for overhead?

Seems steep to me.

The entire budget is well over $700 million. Nearly $200 million of that comes from U.S. taxpayers.

The Fox News story from which I harvested these figures goes on to discuss the boats used to house some personnel. $112,500 per day. One of the boats is nicknamed “The Love Boat.” I don’t think I want to know more.

This should be a big story, except that, in context of today’s typical government operations, it’s not out of the ordinary. These days, operations often get judged not by the good done but by the number of people and dollars associated with it.

People in Haiti suffer. So we naturally don’t want to complain about money spent helping them. But, like so much else in government, efficiency is out of the question.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Don’t Kill The Angels

President Obama is blasting what he calls “the furious efforts of industry lobbyists” to fend off tighter regulation of the financial industry.

Pretending that Fed credit expansion and governmental incentives to take on temporarily cheap mortgages had no part in the current crisis, officials carefully direct our attention elsewhere. Widespread moral hazard stemming from bailouts, both guaranteed and implied? Shhhh.

But the government, uninterested in regulating itself and its own excesses, is instead targeting you and me.

“Tighter regulation” means less freedom to make your own decisions about your own time and resources.

Venture Beat magazine reports on a provision of Senator Chris Dodd’s proposed reform that would make it much harder for so-called “angel” investors to fund new start-ups.

An angel investor is somebody willing to fund a new business with his own wealth, even when venture capitalists managing others people’s funds decline to invest. Dodd’s bill would force start-ups raising funds to register with the SEC and wait 120 days for the filing to be processed. It would also increase the minimum capital that “accredited investors” must have in the bank before the government will permit them to invest.

Based on nobody’s considered judgment about a particular venture but only on lawmakers’ nebulous fear of entrepreneurial risk, the proposed law would kill in the crib many pioneering and timely, must-act-now innovations.

Accidentally, I’m sure, current businesses would be spared competition from upstarts.

And this is supposed to help the economy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly

The Finger of Terror

One of the most chilling spectacles ever to confront a Houston middle school functionary recently turned the legs of Taylor Trostle’s math teacher to jelly.

And her heart to stone.

According to the unnamed teacher’s write-up of the incident, Taylor was caught “putting her hand in the shape of a gun, making the firing noise with her mouth and pointing it in my direction.”

Could the teacher honestly have perceived the gesture as a “terroristic threat”? Index fingers rarely fire; clipped fingernails contain no ammo clips.

Turns out, Taylor and a few classmates had been fooling around a few minutes before the bell, pretending to be police. Taylor says, “I was shooting the markers at the front of the board. . . . I was like ‘pow pow’ and then she just turned around.”

Others playing the game escaped penalty because they were facing another direction. But the school suspended Taylor for three days. Thus, even the unpremeditated restlessness endemic among those navigating their awkward years can get you labeled a terrorist, courtesy of the deliberately dumb “zero tolerance” policies of many schools.

Had this been an actual “terroristic threat,” more would presumably have been done to secure the premises, like calling in SWAT teams and violence consultants. But the school wasn’t countering a genuine threat. Just “following the rules.”

Maybe a spate of lawsuits against schools that mindlessly harass students would encourage educrats fearful of litigation to make a few concessions to common sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

A Representative

Missouri State Senator Jim Lembke is a hero . . . just for listening.

Senator Lembke helped protect his state’s initiative and referendum process by defeating legislation passed by the House with several restrictive provisions, some already ruled unconstitutional in other states. One provision aims to restrict citizens from petitioning for more than one initiative at a time, which would effectively block eminent domain reformers working on two separate measures.

That same unconstitutional legislation just passed the House again. And again, citizens need the help of Lembke and the Senate.

But the senator has also introduced Bill 818, which would do three simple things. First, it protects voters from having their petition signatures discounted for minor technical errors. Second, it makes it unlawful to purposely mislead signers or to harass or intimidate those signing or circulating a petition. Third, it provides judicial deadlines so that opponents could no longer challenge an initiative’s ballot title and hold it up in court so long that the time to gather signatures is exhausted.

On Monday, a Columbia, Missouri, radio station interviewed Sen. Lembke. The host asked him why he introduced his bill. He said people had talked to him about their experiences with the petition process, and he listened.

Sounds simple, really. More legislators should try it.

We at Citizens in Charge Foundation gave Lembke the April 2010 Lilburne Award. We hope it encourages Lembke and his colleagues to continue to fight for initiative rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.