Author: Redactor

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Smash Hack Attacks

Add one more news story to all the others about how your private data is not secure in any database.

In May, a gang of hackers demanded $10 million ransom in exchange for not posting the personal information of millions of Virginia residents on the Internet.

Yikes, I’m from Virginia!

The Virginia Department of Health Professions confirms that there was indeed a recent breach of its servers.

If marauders get your name, birthday, and social security number, they can make life a living hell for you. Some of these jokers commit crimes in the name of the identity they stole. Guess who ends up getting arrested.

No, the databases are not secure. Still, Big Brother keeps trying to compel us to stick all our private data in one huge database to be tethered to a national ID card. The latest approach is to require all state ID cards to follow federal data and biometric protocols. And then link every state database together until it’s all one big database. The fate of this federal project is uncertain, since — thank goodness — some state governments are refusing to play along. But the feds will keep trying.

If the government succeeds, cyber terrorists would need to pull off only one big hack attack to jeopardize the privacy and security of every card-carrying American.

I’m against being forced to be a sitting duck. How about you?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility tax policy too much government

March to Bankruptcy

I have warned, before, about the upcoming double-barrel crisis aimed at the U.S. financial system: The insolvency of the U.S. government itself, as entitlement debt can no longer be kept afloat by FICA withholding, and as Treasury debt can no longer be maintained on a monthly basis simply because it has grown too big.

Last week our entitlement system’s trustees said that the current recession is so undermining Medicare Part A that payments for elderly care will fail in eight years, with Social Security itself imploding in less than 28.

That is, if the economy doesn’t get worse.

Medicare Part B, covering doctors’ visits and outpatient care, and Part D, covering prescriptions, are right now insolvent, sucking money from general revenues.

This crisis rushes closer, even as our president insists on reforming health care in ways that will almost certainly add new entitlements — which will also have to be paid for.

President Obama says that more government will do the opposite of what it’s done in the past. Until now, government involvement in medicine has increased costs and prices. Now he says what he’ll do will make for more “efficiency.”

Why do politicians believe in the magic of their new programs rather than the history of their old ones?

Why is it that, in politics, irresponsibility rises to the top?

However you answer that, the march to bankruptcy is picking up pace.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits U.S. Constitution

Replacing Souter

Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. Apparently, Washington life doesn’t suit Souter, and, frankly, that’s the best thing I’ve heard in his favor.

A lot of people now speculate on whom our president will nominate, and how it will impact our country’s future. What will Congress do with the candidate? Will the ugly maw of politics sully the whole process . . . again?

One insight to glean from the second-guessing, speculation, and rumination is how sad it is that so much power rests on one selection.

When our leaders select a Supreme Court justice, they are selecting someone for life, really. Very few justices do as Souter has done, retire early, before their grasp on law and philosophy and politics might have dimmed a bit.

And that means that the job — already strategically important — becomes the Pearl of Great Price around which a lot of ugly politics scrambles.

How much better it would be were the Constitution amended to set terms for the justices, and limits to those terms!

Why not set terms to something like, say, eight years, and limit them to two? Sixteen years is plenty enough time in this office, way too much in most others.

Such a limit would make the position a little less crucial, and the turnover in the Court more evenly rotating.

And, thus, the appointment process a little less hysterical and ugly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Golden State Voters

California voters are said to be in big trouble. You see, they didn’t vote the way their newspapers and politicians told them to vote on the six ballot measures on the May 19th ballot.

The first five measures — a combination of tax-raising and spending shifts to cover a $21 billion budget hole — were defeated by voters by a whopping two-to-one margin.

Only the sixth proposition passed — and it cuts the salaries of legislators and state officials.

The lessons are obvious, but not likely to be learned by the political elite, who now argue that the ballot initiative process should be restricted if not abolished altogether because the people didn’t vote according to their wishes.

Lesson One: Raising taxes isn’t terribly popular even in a blue state. Voters seem to think legislators should find ways to cut back spending without gutting essential services. In every county, and even in very liberal Los Angeles and San Francisco, these ballot measures went down hard.

Lesson Two: It’s good when politicians have to ask us before raising taxes. While some bemoan that voters aren’t minding their governors, I’m of the school that believes that those who govern are supposed to mind the voters.

Golden state voters are fortunate that politicians had to seek their approval to raise taxes — and smart not to have given it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets individual achievement too much government

I’ll Clink to That

Awards, known as the Sammies, are given annually by the Sam Adams Alliance to recognize the efforts of citizen activists fighting governmental lunacies.

This year’s winners for best video, Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg, produced a film on the anti-competitive liquor laws of Virginia.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should report that I received a Sammy this year too — partly for fighting the Oklahoma Attorney General’s attempt to jail me for supporting Oklahoma democracy. Long story made short, we won that battle.

The award also recognized my decades-long work for term limits and citizen initiative rights.

Caleb and Austin’s video is entitled “The ABCs of Virginia Alcohol Law.” “ABC” is a pun on the name of the agency spewing the nonsensical edicts, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The brief video gives you a good glimpse of the silliness, which includes violation of free speech rights.

Did you know that it is legal for a Virginia bar to sell you a beer, or a shot of liquor, or a beer and a shot of liquor, but not a shot of liquor in a glass of beer?

Or that America’s Founding Fathers would be thrown in jail under the liquor laws of today’s Virginia?

Watch the video. It’s slick, it’s funny. And it should make you mad.

For more on all of this year’s Sammy winners, visit samadamsalliance.org.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Cuba Needs Freedom

A viral video is making the rounds of Latin America. You can find it on YouTube. It’s an interview with a man on the street, and another Cuban man walks up and steals the show. He points to his open mouth. In island slang he says he’s hungry, and that “what Cuba needs is food.”

A lot of people blame America for Cubans’ hunger. And our government is now considering removing the embargo we have had against Cuba since its Communist-inspired revolution. But that should be done — or not — for reasons that have nothing to do with the motto “Cuba needs food.”

Think about it. Cuba can trade with the rest of the world. In fact, on a cash basis, even with the U.S. Plenty of opportunities to produce and purchase food.

And hey: The resorts in Cuba are well-stocked with food. Canadians and Europeans and Arabs and others visiting the island don’t complain about a lack of food.

But the common folk do.

Why?

Well, Cuba suffers from a kind of apartheid. Everyday citizens get ration cards. Their food shelves are bare. They cannot visit tourist beaches, shop at tourist supermarkets, or eat at tourist restaurants. They have to make do with the meager food they’ve been rationed.

So much for the abolition of the class system by Castro!

To feed Cubans, just one thing is needed: Freedom — an end to socialistic apartheid.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Fix Health Care?

When the president of the United States tells us that we “can’t fix the economy without fixing health care,” what do you make of it?

If you’re like me, you want to unravel the health care mess. And making it better would surely help the economy. But do I agree with President Obama?

Well, no.

The president and his party want to increase government controls and establish new government programs, the usual whatnot.

That is, the usual stuff that is precisely “what not to do.”

Instead of increasing costs by regulation, we should decrease costs by having the government stop mandating what health insurance companies must provide. Or unentangle our hyper-expensive Food and Drug Administration, with its longest and most expensive research rules in the world.

Generally, our politicians want us to emulate various socialized systems from across the globe, while ignoring the aspects of those systems that are freer than ours.

Specifically, Obama wants to set up a tax-funded Medicare system for everybody, in competition with regulated private insurance companies. And since Medicare is one of the main drivers of high prices, you can see where this will lead.

Funny thing is, our medical costs have not been shooting up these past few years as much as they were before, while in heavily regulated-and-rationed Britain, costs have skyrocketed during this same period.

I’m reminded of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Change, Sweeping Down the Plains

Change is funny. Sometimes it seems like change will never come. Then, all of the sudden, it’s here.

For years, I’ve been hoping for some changes in Oklahoma politics. That’s because the state’s voter initiative process was blocked. It’s also because, as regular readers know, the state’s Attorney General Drew Edmondson launched a politically-motivated prosecution against myself and two others, threatening us with prison for working on a petition.

Those ridiculous charges have now been dropped. A friend recently said, “Well, I guess you’re glad not to be thinking about Oklahoma anymore.”

But I am thinking about Oklahoma. Quite fondly.

These days some wonderful Okies are winning important victories. Oklahomans for Responsible Government has made initiative reform one of its top issues. Oklahomans for Initiative Rights is touring the state pulling a giant 10-foot tall, 18-foot long float to draw attention to initiative reform.

Already a constitutional amendment to lower the state’s petition requirement has passed the legislature and is headed to a vote of the people.

And two other bills to improve the initiative have made it through both Houses, through a conference committee and now must be re-approved by both chambers before going to the governor for his signature.

These bills will clean up the process and give the people of Oklahoma more time to gather signatures to put issues on the ballot.

Change is coming — sweeping down the plains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Small, Dull, Solvent

You didn’t have to be a small community bank to steer clear of the helter-skelter investments favored by the likes of Bank of America and AIG. But apparently it helped.

New York Times reporter David Segal writes that spending time with solvent bankers in places like Indiana was like stepping into an “alternate universe,” a place “where everything sounds a little strange because it makes perfect sense.”

Weird that it’s strange, eh? Sensible should be normal.

Turns out, the secret is to be boring. Clay Ewing, a banker in Jasper, says, “If banking gets exciting, there is something wrong with it.” So, no maniacal juggling of hyper-complicated subprime debt instruments just for the thrill of it.

Boring bankers also tell Segal: “If you don’t understand the risk you’re taking, don’t take it.” Also: “We want to be around for decades, so we’re not focused on the next quarter.”

Today, banks that abided by such common sense are solvent. And declining government bailout money.

Profligate bankers propelled by visions of infinite if inexplicable returns were not the only culprits in the housing bust. The Federal Reserve stoked the buildup of demented debt. As did many politicians.

But bankers who made bad decisions also deserve blame for surging blindly ahead. They could have done otherwise. They could have been, well, boring.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
individual achievement

Watch Susan Boyle

I dislike “reality” TV shows, including American Idol and others that seem to specialize in degrading people.

But I have cast my aversion aside after being urged to watch a YouTube clip of one Susan Boyle, a 47-year-old, unemployed Scot and aspiring singer.

What a performance. What a story! If you’re not on the bandwagon yet, hop on. Go to YouTube, search for “Susan Boyle,” watch the seven minute clip of her appearance on Britain’s Got Talent, the clip that snagged over 50 million hits in just a few weeks.

When Susan walked on stage, the three judges of Britain’s Got Talent — including sardonic Simon Cowell of American Idol fame — were not impressed. The audience tittered when she said she was “trying to be a professional singer.”

Susan was nervous at first, awkward, a bit silly, a bit dowdy-looking. Apparently everyone thought she’d be hooted off the stage after five seconds of song.

Nope. Within maybe three seconds, her rendition of “I Dreamed the Dream” from Les Miserables turned it all around. The audience was on its feet. Shocked. Ecstatic.

Susan Boyle was shocked too. She has been struggling for decades. For whatever reasons, her dreams had “turned to shame,” to quote from the song. But now, whether or not she wins top prize on Britain’s Got Talent, she’ll not only dream the dream, she will live it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.