Author: Redactor

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Sometimes a Great Prediction

Five years ago, I compared Social Security to the Titanic. Insolvency played the part of fatal iceberg. On Monday I noted that the first stage of insolvency —  projected back then to take place in 2017 — has been refigured to arrive early. This year.

So much for our leaders’ plan of “not putting off till tomorrow what can be put off a decade.” Decades sure aren’t what they used to be.

Neither are the budget numbers politicians throw around. Take the Democrats’ just-passed medical reform package. Do you really believe it will save us money?

Who’s right depends on the reliability of the reform package’s cost projections. And, from what I can tell, those projections are filled with trickery.

A typical sleight of hand is to project ten years in advance, and extoll how that decade’s first years don’t add much burden to the taxpayer. But that’s only because chunks of the programs stagger into effect over the first half of the decade.

But before you go poring over the bill’s two thousand and more pages, checking the  numbers, ask yourself: When have government economists correctly predicted costs of a major new entitlement?

Never.

Take Medicare. Initial projections for catastrophic coverage were half of the real amount; Medicare as a whole grew nine times over its promised size; and the costs of Medicare’s Disproportionate Share Hospital Adjustment program proved 17 times higher than originally predicted.

Congress is in the business of making bad law, not good prophecy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

The One-Man Petition Drive

Hurray for John Smelser!

After five months of unfailing footwork, in late February, the 67-year-old celebrated his 5,500th signature for a petition to limit the terms of council members in Menifee, California. That’s over 2,000 more than the 3,382 he needed to qualify the measure for the ballot. But he didn’t rest on his laurels. He kept working right up until the March 12 deadline, submitting nearly 6,000 signatures.

Smelser believes every elected official’s tenure in office should be limited. If his term limit measure passes in November, Menifee council members would be able to serve only two four-year terms consecutively. They would be able to run for office again after two years out of office. Smelser believes it’ll pass with an 80 percent majority.

He may be right. He’s certainly taken the pulse of the town on this issue.

Incumbent Menifee Mayor Wallace Edgerton insists that regular elections are all you need to bring new blood into government. But he admits that Smelser has a point: Two terms should be enough to achieve what you ran for office to achieve.

Smelser’s one-man show is obviously not a feat you could replicate in Los Angeles or New York City. But it’s still pretty impressive. It shows not only the dedication and conviction of Mr. Smelser, but also the enthusiasm for term limits of so many voters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The $2.5 Trillion Tip of the Iceberg

This year, Social Security goes into the red, unable to pay out all that’s been promised . . . without somehow finding new funds. Five years ago, the estimated date for this was 2017. An economic downturn later and seven years disappear. Just like that.

It’s obviously time for a major overhaul. But Congress and the President had other priorities. Don’t fix the old entitlement program — add a new one to bankrupt the country, “health care reform.”

What to do? Well, Associated Press’s Stephen Ohlemacher writes that it is time to cash in the IOUs that Congress owes the Social Security Administration. Congress has been siphoning off the system’s revenue surplus since the ’80s.

Congress, that august body of spendthrifts and thieves, actually accounted for these funds by printing up non-negotiable bonds, rather than leaving them as electronic IOUs. They are stored in a folder in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Fat lot of good that does us, though. To pay the bonds, Congress would have to raise taxes or borrow even more money.

Or it could auction off some property. Selling vast tracts of BLM land might make sense, but you won’t see that brought up. Instead, Congress will be sorely tempted to debase our money further.

Congress’s IOUs to Social Security add up, to $2.5 trillion. Of course, the money promised Americans in basic retirement is far more than that. The two-and-a-half trillion is just the tip of a very large iceberg . . . heading this way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Willamantic Refuseniks

Thirty-five years ago, the people of Willimantic, Connecticut, confirmed my belief in the value of citizen initiative rights. And they did it without using the initiative!

In 1974, Willimantic citizens rejected the city budget three times in a row, finally compelling a 9 percent tax cut. Willimantic had been hard hit by a recession. Property taxes were high, per capita income low. The town’s biggest employer, the American Thread Company, had just laid off a lot of people. (A decade later, the company would leave the area.) The citizenry was in a rebellious mood. They demanded budget and tax cuts.

They didn’t do it via citizen initiative. Willimantic was following an old town meeting model of governance, under which any citizen who shows up can vote on the city budget. And they did.

Most places aren’t run on this model. But it has distinct similarities to citizen initiatives, whereby voters can directly curb taxes and spending. Which is why politicians attack initiative rights where citizens have them, and try to stop citizens from gaining initiative rights where they don’t yet have them.

You and me, working together, we have to do something about this. We must protect and use a process whereby the people can make laws the politicians must obey.

Fittingly, I first read about Willimantic in economist Murray Rothbard’s introduction to Étienne de La Boétie’s classic essay on “The Politics of Obedience,” usually translated as The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

In Case You Were Worried

It’s magic. Not only does the recently passed health care reform cover more people, it cuts deficits too.

Ha! You know it, I know, we all know it: Major government entitlement programs always end up costing far, far more than their original advocates claim.

Or should we just trust trust the reform’s advocates no matter what past experience and rational accounting say?

Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn turned to MSNBC to explain all about how Obamacare would slash the deficit. “We’re extending the life of Medicare by nine years, and if you’re taking the waste, fraud and abuse out of this, the savings that you get there will come as things grow. Savings will grow.”

Ah, waste! Fraud! Abuse! Politicians love such talk, at least until the waste and fraud gets renamed “stimulus spending.”

Then Clyburn said: “You look at the community health centers. Savings will grow more in out years than in the first few years. So I believe — well, that’s my assessment, and that’s the way I’m explaining it to members. I hope I’m right.”

So there is hope.

Also, 32 million people will be coming into insurance plans and out of emergency rooms. (Unless there’s an emergency.) Also, Clyburn’s wife had bypass surgery and the bill included $15 for an aspirin. What we must understand is that the new command-and-control regime will “build savings into the system.”

Could what this third-ranking House Democrat really be trying to say is that he has no idea what he’s talking about?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders political challengers

The Accidental Citizen Legislator

Humor writer. Mom. And politician?

That third item wasn’t in Susan Konig’s life plan. But six years ago, her fellow residents of Westchester County, New York, were having trouble with a local waste company. Susan wondered what she could do about it. Someone suggested she run for office.

But she wasn’t a politician, just a writer — and not even a political writer. And where was she going to find the time?

Still, Susan agreed to give it some thought. Then she got pregnant with her fourth child and stopped giving it thought. Then sewage backed up into her house. Twice. So she ran for the board of trustees as a Republican in a dominantly Democratic town, and won. She worked to curb taxes and spending. She got rid of the irresponsible waste company.

She narrowly lost re-election. After agreeing to run at the country level, she narrowly lost to a Democratic incumbent who had won by a large margin in his previous race.

Susan Konig doesn’t see either electoral loss as a tragedy, given the cage-rattling she accomplished. She learned that a great many people in both parties are sick of runaway taxes and spending. She also learned that even where political establishments are corrupt and calcified, opportunities remain for citizen legislators to do something about it.

Of course, she learned that lesson by proving it, herself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy

IRS Wants Your Four Cents

On the one hand, we’ve got trillion-dollar federal deficits and no sign of any austerity measure on the congressional horizon. On the other hand, we’ve got dark-suited IRS agents bullying small businessmen for allegedly being four cents behind in taxes.

The letter that the two IRS suits hand-delivered to the owner of Harv’s Metro Car Wash in Sacramento claims that with penalties piling up since 2006, Aaron Zeff now owes over $200. Zeff reports that the agents “were deadly serious, very aggressive, very condescending.”

The incident is bad press for the Internal Revenue Service. But maybe the taxmen relish this kind of bad press once in a while. After all, they need the rest of us to worry what might happen to us if we step out of line even four cents worth, even if it’s only in the fevered imagination of some bored IRS accountant.

Was the hounding of Mr. Zeff a deliberate plan or just zealous overreaching by a couple of goons who forgot to read the manual on being nice to taxpayers? Who knows. Either way, though, do we want the IRS in charge of slapping us with a big tax penalty if we don’t sign up for a government-approved health plan? After all, that’s a big part of the so-called health care “reform” that Congress is in process of imposing on us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Idaho’s Healthy “No”

By hook and by crook — ignoring the constitution and twisting parliamentary rules — the president and his congressional allies are succeeding in imposing command-and-control health care on all Americans.

If the new law is allowed to stand, the scraps of freedom we still enjoy in matters of health care will dwindle as provisions of the bill kick in. And that’s only the prequel. Pelosi and other Democrats promise to introduce even more constrictive legislation once Obamacare Round One has been rammed through.

Friends of freedom aren’t giving up. There’s an election in 2010, for one thing. But many state governments aren’t waiting for that. The Idaho legislature just passed the Idaho Health Care Freedom Act, which states, in part, that “every person within the state of Idaho is and shall be free to choose or decline to choose any mode of securing health care services without penalty or threat of penalty.” Governor Otter is signing the Act because, in his view, health care laws should treat people as individuals “rather than as an amorphous mass whose only purpose in this world is to obey federal mandates.”

Idaho is the first state to pass such a measure, but similar legislation has been proposed in 22 others. Such declarations will most likely have only symbolic significance if Obamacare remains in effect and other legal challenges on the grounds of federalism get beaten down. But those are two big ifs. Americans aren’t ready to surrender to the health care commissars just yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy Tenth Amendment federalism

We Told You So

Say it with me: We told you so.

Over the years, I’ve tried to help citizens regain control over their prodigal representatives. Sometimes I got called a radical for these activities. An extremist. But I think of myself as a moderate, as someone promoting moderation.

In government spending, for example.

Among the most moderate of these many statewide initiatives have been what are sometimes called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, or TABOR, initiatives. These proposals are designed to limit spending increases to a formula of population growth-plus-inflation.

Sometimes we succeeded. Too often we failed.

The consequence of our failures, of each defeat at the hands and promotional budgets of groups that called us, of all people, extremists?

Now, state after state has become what Reason magazine dubs “Failed States.” They did what politicians demanded, spent at rates far greater than moderation would allow. And now that we’ve hit hard times, and state revenues have drastically fallen, how the politicians whine! Indeed, they demand bailouts.

Say it with me, you who’ve voted for TABOR in the past: “We told you so. Lacking our measures, the states have become part of the out-of-control federal deficits and ballooning debt.”

And remember, you who opposed our moderate measures to limit state spending: You are the radicals. You are the ones who helped set our country on its current, self-destructive course.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Keystone Cops in Philly Folly

This March, armed Pennsylvania State Police bravely raided three popular bars in Philadelphia.

They confiscated liquors that allegedly had not been properly registered with the state Liquor Control Board. Brewers and importers must pay a $75 registration for each separate potable they sell in the state.

Some unnamed concerned citizen had complained. The three bars were affiliated, so maybe a resentful competitor had something to do with it.

According to the owners, many of the confiscated ales had been duly registered. But when the state police couldn’t instantly confirm this, they just grabbed cases and kegs and towed them away.

Even in the case of unlicensed ales, what is the virtue of raiding a bar to sloppily “check” their status and then steal supplies? Especially when it’s not the bar owners who are legally obligated to register the brands?

Some clerk could have just dropped by, inspected the booze, asked a few questions. Or just called the brewery and said, “Hey, you forgot to register such-and-such.”

Of course, the whole idea of requiring separate registrations of each separate beverage is silly to begin with.

Further, the state police could have, and should have, simply declined this wrongheaded mission.

Apparently we can’t count on better lawmaking and better, more sensible regulations. But we do count on our police.

This is Common Sense. (Let’s practice it.) I’m Paul Jacob.