Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets responsibility too much government

Massive Failures

How many times, in the last year, have I heard praise for FDR’s banking reforms, even down to the specifics of federal deposit insurance?

The funny thing is, this factoid is false. Roosevelt opposed deposit insurance. Everyone did who at that time knew the history of the states that had experimented with this form of subsidy. Only logrolling pushed deposit insurance into law as a known special favor to small banks in rural areas — not to cure the nation’s ills.

The actual history and lessons of bank failures is explored by Charles Calomiris in a recent paper provocatively titled “Banking Crises Yesterday and Today.” According to this Columbia Business School professor, bank panics were not uncommon in the U.S., prior to the Federal Reserve in 1913. And the Fed pretty much stopped them. Massive bank failures, on the other hand, are different. Not unheard of elsewhere, massive failures had not been a problem in America leading up to that time. However, such failures became a problem a few decades later in the Great Depression.

Calomiris explains that such massive crises are brought on, chiefly, by institutional risk factors, like deposit insurance, government manipulation of the housing market to increase ownership through loosening of financial standards, and the “too big to fail” doctrine.

It turns out that honest standards, and not mammoth government subsidies and guarantees, prove the best way to prevent catastrophe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

A Deadly Law

Suppose I donated bone marrow to help save someone’s life . . . and you, to encourage people like me to step forward, offered college scholarships for such donations.

Most folks would applaud us. But not the federal government. It would charge us with a felony and send us to prison for up to five years.

The fear that people might sell their non-renewable organs — such as kidneys — for money, led Congress to pass The National Organ Transplant Act in 1984. The act also makes it illegal to compensate someone for donating bone marrow — which is renewable.

Thousands of Americans have rare and potentially fatal blood diseases requiring bone marrow transplants, often from a stranger. Every year thousands die because they can’t find donors.

The folks at MoreMarrowDonors.org want to recruit more donors through scholarships and financial incentives. Makes sense. But by law they can’t.

Doreen Flynn has three daughters with a blood disease. To fight their deadly disease, she is stepping forward to fight this deadly law that blocks their treatment.

Flynn and MoreMarrowDonors.org, represented by the Institute for Justice, have sued the U.S. Attorney General to overturn the ban on compensating bone marrow donors. The case is Flynn v. Holder.

Attorney Jeff Rowes put it plainly: “The bottom line is that throwing people in prison for trying to save lives isn’t just wrong; it’s unconstitutional.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Unliberating Bondage

Two big lies have been making the rounds about the proposed return of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. This is the rule that forced broadcasters to air “both sides” of controversial issues until the agency scuttled it in 1987.

One big lie is that critics of the doctrine shouldn’t worry because nobody is really thinking about reviving it. The other big lie, which sort of cancels out the first, is that the Fairness Doctrine should be re-imposed because it won’t restrict freedom of speech.

Writer Steve Almond argues the latter in a Boston Globe op-ed. He calls Fairness Doctrine foes “desperate and deluded” liars for saying it would assail their First Amendment rights.

But compulsion really is compulsion. Almond himself admits as much when he notes that conservative radio hosts worry that the Doctrine would “spell the end” of what he calls “their ongoing cultural flim-flam.” They would be forced half the time to turn their microphones over to the likes of Steve Almond. In this way, he says, Americans would be compelled to confront their biases.

Not that Almond is exactly an exemplar himself when it comes to pondering or tolerating alternative views. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto recalls that in 2006, Almond noisily resigned a teaching position at Boston College . . . because he disliked one of the speakers the college had invited to campus.

So much for hearing all sides.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Give Liberty a Chance

Give a golf club to Tiger Woods, and you know what to expect: Great golf.

Give the same club to Mr. Woods’s wife, and, well, you get something else again.

Give our politicians both a huge allowance and unlimited credit, and you get a batch of people unable to control their spending.

Expected, or unexpected?

Expected. Of course. We’ve come to expect this for a very long time. That’s why both the Federalists who wrote the Constitution, and the anti-Federalists who amended it, were obsessively concerned with checks and balances, with limitations on government.

Unfortunately, too often we speak of BIG government these days. But it’s not the size, as such, that is the problem. It’s the unlimited nature of it.

So when you have a chance to check government at the ballot box — say, in a state or local initiative or referendum — ask whether the measure limits government or unlimits it.

And, when considering a candidate, look for his or her promises about limits. If the candidate won’t limit spending in some very sure way, or the candidate’s own terms in office, then reject the candidate. Vote against. Go to the polls and write someone else’s name in, if that’s the only pro-limit, pro-liberty thing you can do.

We’ve got to put “limits” back into the conversation. Think constitutions. Think rule of law. Think liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Wait a Minaret!

In a national referendum, the Swiss just voted to ban the construction of any new minarets in the country.

Minarets are the onion-shaped crowned spires of Islamic mosques, from which Muslims are called to prayer five times each day.

At MarginalRevolution.com, economist Tyler Cowen’s first thought on the Swiss vote was, “Sooner or later an open referendum process will get even a very smart, well-educated country into trouble.”

Cowen doesn’t elaborate on what he means by “open.” But he does raise an important distinction between freedom and democracy.

I’m a huge fan of voter initiative and referendum, but a bigger fan of freedom of religion. Freedom for the individual must come first — no dictator has a right to deny it.

Nor does a revolutionary tribunal.

Neither does the Congress or a state legislature or city council. Or even a solid majority of voters in a referendum.

But Cowen misses something, too. The problem in Switzerland isn’t really their initiative and referendum. Legislators make mistakes, too . . . as do, of course, authoritarian regimes. We generally have far less to fear from government under such voter control.

In fact, though I deplore this vote, the ability of Swiss citizens to directly check the power of their government has helped make it one of the best places in the world to live. That is, one of the freest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Senator DeMint for Term Limits

Yes, we can term-limit the Congress.

I’m not saying it will be easy. It won’t be easy. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

That’s why I applaud U.S. Senator Jim DeMint for introducing a constitutional amendment to term limit Congress. Three two-year terms maximum for House members, two six-year terms for senators. Says DeMint, “term limits are not enough, of course. . . . But term limits are a good start. Because if we really want reform, we all know it’s not enough just to change the congressmen — we have to change Congress itself.”

DeMint knows that most congressmen are not eager to restrict their own power. But he’s not giving up.

Should he? In his Best of the Web e-letter, James Taranto asks whether DeMint’s proposed amendment will “include a provision stipulating that any senator who reaches the limit automatically becomes president? Because that’s the only way that two thirds of them would ever vote for it.”

Maybe, James. It is easy to be negative about the prospects for implementing major political reforms. One will be right most of the time. But I say it’s better to be an optimistic warrior pushing for the hard-to-accomplish but important-to-accomplish reform. Someday we’ll find the tipping point; someday we’ll see our “representatives” realize they have no choice but to accept term limits.

DeMint’s amendment moves us closer to that day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy too much government

Words and Definitions

As a candidate, Barack Obama promised that he would not raise taxes on any but the wealthiest Americans. Make less than $250,000 a year? You’re home free under his administration.

I mean, not counting current federal levies.

But President Obama has all the ambitions of a big-spending liberal. And “big-spending” translates pretty quickly into “big-taxing.”

One of these projects is a massive new federal takeover of the health care industry, in the name of “universal coverage.” New taxes would be imposed. For example, anyone who refuses to sign up for health insurance in the new regime would be slammed with a hefty tax.

Obama denies that such taxes would in fact be taxes. He even rebuked George Stephanopoulos for citing a dictionary definition of the word. Leaping to the president’s defense, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer agreed that the new taxes would not be taxes. “[W]hat we are saying,” Hoyer said, “is everybody will contribute . . . to making sure that health care options are available to all of our citizens.”

Try dispute that. It’s like arguing with fog. Columnist Jacob Sullum quotes Hoyer and observes, “So we’re talking about a legally required contribution that will be used to provide a government-arranged benefit. If only there were a shorter way of expressing that concept.”

Well, in searching for le mot juste, don’t tax yourself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy too much government

Legislative Dreamin’

California voters love their state’s process for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot.

Legislators? Most take a much dimmer view. This year they’ve been blaming voters for spending the state into bankruptcy through the initiative. Additionally —  and please hold your laughter — they claim that initiatives have tied the hands of legislators who would otherwise have better managed the state’s finances.

Enter Bob Stern of the Center for Governmental Studies. At a recent public hearing of the Senate and Assembly Select Committees on Improving State Government, Stern told legislators, “Most of the ballot-box budgeting has come from you.”

Stern was referring to a Center study that looked at all ballot measures over the last 20 years that required additional spending. Stern found that three out of four measures costing money were put on the ballot by legislators, not through the citizen initiative. He also found that the legislature’s own ballot measures cost the state $10 billion, while citizen initiatives cost only $2 billion.

Of course, an even bigger issue is the wild spending spree by California politicians with no ballot box input from voters at all. While state tax revenues have increased a whopping 167 percent over the last two decades, government spending shot up 181 percent.

Voters aren’t perfect, but anyone with a lick of common sense knows the answer to controlling government spending isn’t to free the politicians from voter restraint.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

Look for the Union Babble

I have a very controversial position today. Sorry if you disagree, but I feel I must speak out.

Here goes: In my view, it is okay for boy scouts to do good deeds.

There, I said it. Sorry if you find my view repugnant. Eh? What’s that? You agree with me? Great! I always prefer it when you and I are on the same page.

Sadly, though, the president of a Pennsylvania chapter of the Service Employees International Union does not agree. Nick Balzano is upset that 17-year-old Kevin Anderson cleared a path so people could better enjoy a river. Kevin is pursuing an Eagle Scout badge and did the work voluntarily.

Balzano threatened the city of Allentown because it had recently laid off some union workers. He thinks it’s a sin to not only reduce labor costs but also get some work done for free. I think Balzano should try for a couple merit badges of his own. Maybe a logic badge and a common sense badge, for starters.

Turns out a lot of people agree with me. Balzano has resigned in the wake of a firestorm of protest . . . without learning a thing, apparently. He insists he’s got nothing against boy scouts. He’s just “trying to protect my jobs.”

Let’s hope his union never gets a city contract to help little old ladies cross the street.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Global Warming Conspiracy?

In politics, we’re used to being lied to. But in science?

Revelations coming out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit spark such questions, and more.

Hackers have released onto the Internet confidential emails of the CRU climatologists largely responsible for the “global warming” conclusions in the famous report by the International Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC.

The emails include ugly stuff, like researchers’ fantasies about beating up catastrophe skeptics. They also include the tricks catastrophists used to cook up their numbers.

In particular, scientists reported temperatures in the Medieval Warming Period as cooler than they were, and more recent cooling trends as warmer. Anthropogenic global warming catastrophists have engaged in a massive public fraud.

Now, you might not bat an eye were you to learn that economists associated with, say, our recent bailouts, had been fudging numbers. Trillions of dollars to spend!

But when climate scientists get caught lying — as well as conspiring to keep their basic data secret, and hijacking the peer review process — it’s hard not to feel a bit abused. Natural scientists are supposed to be above this.

Public, open criticism is the hallmark of science. Climate researchers who stonewalled to keep their actual data hidden from critics were scuttling science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.