Author: Redactor

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.

Categories
political challengers

If This Be . . .

Joe Klein, author of Primary Colors and contributor to Time magazine, is very defensive about criticism of the current administration and Congress.

Of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, he says the two talk “borderline sedition.”

Nice hedge, that word “borderline.”

But he’s merely repeating something he wrote last year about Senator Tom Coburn. The Oklahoma senator, responding to the Democrats’ extremely unpopular (and later successful) machinations to enact a form of national medical insurance, said that he understood why some would give up on their government. For this, Klein dubbed Coburn’s comments “borderline sedition” as well as “hate speech.”

How do I see it? Well, to note that Congress is unresponsive to Americans (and thus a cause for hopelessness) is not even close to sedition. It’s to recognize the obvious.

I’m not saying it doesn’t incite a kind of rebellion. But remember: In America, rebellion against those in charge is not just allowed, it’s been institutionalized.

The institution is called “elections.”

The current unrest in America — exemplified, at present, by the “Tea Party” protests — seems to be very much a patriotic thing. If the bulk of Democrats and Republicans get targeted as deserving to go, then the means to their removal is obvious. It comes next November, and in November 2012.

And it does not mean that restive American critics of unconstitutional government and habitual over-spending are not “loyal to the most important American ideals.” It means they understand these ideals better than does Joe Klein.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Quick! Stop the Rescue!

If there’s anything worse than running a state into the ground, it’s turning that state around.

Such seems to be the attitude behind yet another “bailout” program being mulled over by our congressional overlords in Washington, DC.

Over at National Review Online, Daniel Foster calls the Democrats’ proposed $23 billion fund for preventing teacher layoffs a “putting off hard decisions” fund. Pitched in the direction of Foster’s own state, New Jersey, the giveaways would sabotage efforts by the new governor, Chris Christie, to close a looming budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 of more than $10 billion.

The Garden State’s budget for fiscal year 2010 was about $30 billion. Christie is trying to cut funding to school districts. He has pledged to restore the funds in districts where teachers agree to a one-year pay freeze and to contribute a small bit of their salary (1.5 percent) to help pay for their own health insurance. Currently, most pay nothing.

But if the federal government flings borrowed largesse that makes the state’s budget cuts irrelevant, teachers will have much less incentive to cooperate with even marginally more responsible policies.

Perhaps that’s the goal for Washington’s big spenders. After all, if folks could get their fiscal houses in order without handouts from the spendaholics in DC, there’d be no need for such handouts.

And then just how “important” would those politicians be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Merging or Diverging?

We live in interesting times. Strapped for cash, local and state governments are cutting spending and raising taxes. The federal government, with its chummy relationship with the Federal Reserve and our money supply, along with a shopaholic’s addiction to debt, continues to spend at record rates.

In this context, perhaps it is not so shocking that Congressman Ron Paul, known for being tight-fisted on spending, and for his push to audit the Fed, is basically even in a head-to-head match-up with President Obama. A Rasmussen Poll ticked Obama at 42 percent against Paul at 41 percent.

Interestingly, only 66 percent of Republicans chose Paul. It’s independent voters who are nearly 2-to-1 for Paul over the President.

Why do Republicans hesitate? Paul is a severe critic of the Republican Establishment, especially the GOP’s recent fondness for undeclared wars.

Meanwhile, the Tea Party movement is being courted by Alaska’s Sarah Palin and Minnesota’s Michele Bachmann. Representative Bachmann went so far to say that the GOP and the Tea Parties are merging.

I hope not. The main unifying feature of Tea Party protests remains out-of-control federal spending and borrowing. The GOP did nothing to curb this problem when it was in charge.

Both parties created the problem, as Rep. Paul points out. That’s why the Tea Party will be more effective as an independent political force, rallying Americans to hold both parties and all public officials accountable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Commiserations on Tax Day

It’s April 15, my eldest daughter’s birthday. I used to tell her she wouldn’t have to pay taxes like everyone else, because IRS folks wouldn’t dare make her file on her birthday, would they?

Seriously, when it comes to family and taxes, I’m just glad that my wife does all the work.

My job is getting the birthday cake.

You can understand why I’d shirk the tax work. There are 40,000 sections to the tax code, and no one understands it all.

This complexity has costs. And not just to my sanity. A whole industry has risen to ease the burden of figuring out our taxes. One hates to begrudge anyone an honest living, but really, most of today’s tax accountants would better serve humanity in some other job.

Simplifying taxes should be as important as tax reduction. Instead, because our representatives and our president just cannot stop themselves from spending more and more of our money, they are raising taxes. It’ll be on the proverbial rich, in the immediate future, but they won’t stop there.

They can’t stop there.

Why? Because if you took all the wealth — not just the income, but all the wealth — from every millionaire in the country, you still couldn’t pay all the future obligations of the federal government.

My darling daughter aside, April 15 is no day to celebrate. It’s tax day, and it marks the degradation of our nation at the hands of our politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.