Author: Redactor

Categories
national politics & policies

A Halloween Sermon

It’s amazing how often my online critics assume that I am a Republican. Hey, I’m not a member of either major party.

Still, I reserve the right to hold Republican feet to the fire — using their own principles. Democrats, likewise. I have to: Politicians in both parties control too much of our lives and ignore too many of their principles.

I was driving the other day and caught businesses putting up their Halloween-themed promotions. I almost drove off the road: Halloween is almost here?

Of course, the holiday is several weeks away, but as I wrapped my mind around the idea of a “Halloween Season,” it hit me: So it is with politics.

Christmas is a notoriously imperialistic holiday. The season keeps starting earlier and earlier — gobbling up more of the calendar.

The Democratic Party is like Christmas. It has its Santa figures and its lore about sleighs full of goodies and a lot of activity in chimneys, being swept clean, etc.

The Republican Party is like Halloween: A bit scary sometimes — sometimes too eager to throw out the Bill of Rights . . . and its own Santa-ish treat giveaways.

But the chief function of Halloween is to put an early, pre-Thanksgiving stop to the imperialist creep of the big-spending Christmas Season.

And maybe the real meaning of a Democrat Christmas is to stop the foolery of the Republican’s Halloween.

As an independent, of course my favorite holiday is Independence Day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Will Politicians Ever Learn?

We don’t have time to research everything. That’s why, in theory, citizens have political representatives. They are supposed to research the issues for us, learn from past mistakes, and make improvements. Better laws. Better programs.

Welcome to reality. Instead of doing their job, politicians tempt us over and over with the same old, disproven get-rich-quick, get-healthy-quick schemes.

Peter Suderman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, looked at “The Lessons of State Health-Care Reforms.” He did what our federal politicians should have. “Like participants in a national science fair,” Suderman writes, “state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results…?” Suderman puts it bluntly: “[D]ramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-care costs, and reduced access to care.… The reforms have failed.”

He discusses Maine’s public plan, “Dirigo Choice,” which I’ve talked about before. He traces the cause of Massachusetts’s individual mandate to its horrible effects: higher prices pushing businesses and individuals to bankruptcy. Tennessee’s 1990 reforms proved even more destructive.

One of the reasons we’re even talking about reform, now, is because of past reform failures. By our careless representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Wait Until Next Year

Enjoy the Major League Baseball playoffs. Me? I’ll be crying in my beer. Except that I don’t even drink beer . . . it messes with my sinuses.

I had very high hopes that the Detroit Tigers would make it to the playoffs, perchance to the World Series. In first place in the Central Division throughout June, July, August and September, the Tigers tied for first at season’s end with the Minnesota Twins. So after 162 games, it took one more to anoint the division champion. That 163rd game went back and forth for twelve innings. But we lost.

Boo and hoo. Not everyone can be a winner. Except, maybe, in another sense.

The corporate-government complex that has taken over baseball and most of professional sports has milked billions from taxpayers. Everyone pays for stadiums even as players and owners rake in extraordinary rewards.

We could all win if this subsidy system were stopped. The fans, especially, could rejoice, savoring in good conscience the game’s important lessons: The ethic of always working your very hardest, doing your best, never giving up.

It’s entertainment and solid lessons about life that I can share, even now, with my kids. This summer we had the opportunity to travel to Detroit to see one game. And then, sitting on our couch, we watched on TV until the final pitch, hooping and hollering enough to make my wife shake her head.

After the game, we complained about missed calls and blind umpires, reminding ourselves that there’s always next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Pension Tsunami

A humungous national debt. Growing state federal government budget deficits. Social Security and Medicare, running out of funds. All very frightening. But look out: The costs of public employee pensions are walloping city and state budgets — pushing a number of California cities into bankruptcy.

Though the stock market tumble hasn’t helped, the basic problem lies squarely with politicians. They like to increase future benefits to gain political support from public employee unions; they then underfund their lavish promises, the better to hide the fiscal reality from today’s taxpayers.

Politicians keep running from the problem, but a website called PensionTsunami.com won’t let them hide. The site, run by Californian Jack Dean, offers a steady stream of horror stories:

  • A new report calls the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System “bankrupt.”
  • A Rye, New York, city manager makes $198,000 a year while still collecting a pension for the same job.
  • The chief actuary for the California Public Employees Retirement System admits that current pension costs are “unsustainable.”

All across the country, politicians consistently fail to act. Californians are lucky: They have the voter initiative. The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a group whose board includes Mr. Dean, is planning a statewide initiative to prevent their approaching tsunami.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Expensive Solutions

I’m skeptical of the notion that climate change is being driven by human activity . . . and thoroughly unconvinced that the planet will continue to warm causing catastrophic results.

But what if? If the globe is warming, what to do about it?

For starters, sell your beach house in Florida. Global warming means ice sheets melting, oceans rising, shoreline lost.

But for those of us without the beach house, what is the cost of global warming compared to the cost of fixing the problem?

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, looked at this question and concluded that solving the problem of climate change is not cost-effective.

Lomborg is indeed concerned about warming and says that in an ideal world we’d “solve it.” But he says we have to set priorities, and that “[w]hat we can do about [global warming] is very little at a very high cost.”

In a Washington Post column, Lomborg warned that the damage done — especially to the world’s poor — by cutting carbon emissions will far outweigh the benefits. The estimated cost from projected climate damage is $1.1 trillion dollars. The projected expense of cutting enough emissions to avoid that damage is $46 trillion.

I’m skeptical about global warming. But spending $46 for every buck saved takes me well beyond skepticism. I’m against any such idiotic plan. If we must have catastrophe, I prefer the cheaper one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Canadian Treatment

While President Obama flew to foreign lands to lobby for Chicago’s Olympic bid, a group of Americans trekked to Canada to find out about government-run health care.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute in Colorado, visited Vancouver, British Columbia, to host a conference that explored Canada’s medical system. Caldara’s foray north was written about in the Washington Times, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed some of the same Canadians.

Caldara’s interest in the subject is personal as well as civic-minded. He has a 5-year-old son who has undergone eight operations, including heart surgery. From what Caldara can tell, his son would have received little or none of this treatment in Canada. There, instead, he would have been put on waiting lists.

Caldara heard stories from Canadians who had been shuffled from one specialist to another, each requiring long waits before even being seen. Actual treatment? More waiting.

Outside the system, entrepreneurs have sprung up to broker deals with private physicians to the south, in the U.S., and even with growing quasi-illegal clinics in Canada.

Meanwhile, in our little haven for sick Canadians, American politicians still talk about reforms that would ruin it for the Canadians — as well as for us. Some even prefer the Canadian system to what we have now.

Jon Caldara doesn’t think this makes sense. Neither do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Petition Police

It’s a dangerous world. You never know when someone may be out there . . . petitioning their government?

In the past few months, citizens circulating petitions for an anti-tax referendum have hit Oregon streets. And with those citizens trailed a team of investigators. The Secretary of State had hired them, paying with funds provided courtesy of state legislators — the same politicians who passed the tax increases petitioners are seeking to block.

The surveillance proved almost as amusing as it is frightening. For four-fifths of the time investigators put in — at $40 to $70 an hour — they couldn’t even locate petition circulators to commence their stakeouts.

One government agent secretly infiltrated a training seminar held by Americans for Prosperity. The covert op filed this shocking report: “The training was very thorough and was consistent with the training provided by the Elections Division.”

In the end, investigators found no serious wrongdoing — none of the fraudulent activity that might justify secretive investigations of citizens who just happen to oppose the legislators’ policies.

Oregon politicians claim such tactics are necessary to “to protect the integrity of our electoral system.” But they’ve completely lost touch with basic democratic principles. Without any evidence a crime has been committed, citizens petitioning their government or engaging in other political pursuits should not be subjected to secret witch-hunts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Moonlighting as President?

The presidency of the United States isn’t easy.  So, what does it say when a president takes a second job?

Our federal union’s chief executive, Barack Obama, has gone and done just that: He now serves as public relations flak for the city of Chicago. The Windy City wants to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, so he flew off to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee.

Now, I wasn’t rooting for Chicago to get the Olympics. I have friends there, folks I’d rather not see fleeced with higher taxes to pay for it — nor forced to suffer the many inconveniences of such an event.

But here’s my real problem with Obama’s moonlighting: It shows that his priorities are way out of whack. Why is he being side-tracked with something so insignificant as where an athletic event will be held?

Oh, we’ve been told he can zoom there and back on Air Force One in no time, not to worry. But don’t be fooled. Time and focus on this Olympic bid business costs both Obama and his staff. Cost is opportunity foregone. The executive branch has enough to do without adding on the Olympics.

Could it be that Obama shares that ol’ special-interest class obsession with using a public position for the benefit of one’s own — as well as one’s buddies’ — private interests?

Next thing he’ll be running GM in his spare time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

A Regulatory Assault Taxis Into Law

When the politicians in our nation’s capital aren’t the butt of jokes for, say, not paying their taxes or behaving scandalously, well, they’re causing even more trouble.

One of their favorite areas of official mischief-making is assaulting — er, regulating — the city’s taxicabs. Last week a number of cabbies went on strike, protesting a proposed system, not dissimilar to New York’s taxi regime. The new scheme would require cab owners to buy a very expensive medallion to operate each cab.

Larry Frankel, one of the strikers quoted in the Washington Post, said, “We are here to protect our rights as owners and operators.”

The protesting cabbies object that this is not just another expensive regulation. This one threatens their very livelihoods. It’s almost designed to favor large companies over driver-owned cabs.

Which seems almost universally the case with regulations: They protect big interests from competition.

District Council member Jim Graham, who introduced the bill to “medallionize” taxicabs, said he feared the city would be “overrun” with taxis. There are 8,000 already, with 300 adding on every month.

Why, some day there could be more cabs than politicians and lobbyists combined! Imagine the disaster: Folks getting across town too easily or, worse yet, too inexpensively.

Just another bit of ill-thought-out regulation. It is par for the course in our nation’s capital. It makes you proud to . . . live somewhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

News Flash: After this commentary was recorded, the FBI arrested a top aide to DC City Councilman Jim Graham on charges of accepting cash bribes and free trips in exchange for pushing the taxicab legislation discussed here. (See this news coverage and this article in the Washington Post.)

Categories
term limits

The Revenge of the Mantra

“We have term limits; they’re called elections.” That’s the beloved mantra of term limits’ opponents.

For all their professed love of elections, though, these politicians don’t care much for the elections in which voters have enacted term limits. They regularly try any and every trick in the book to overturn such votes — anything to stay longer in office.

Take New York City. Voters passed term limits in one election; years later they smashed a term-limit weakening measure put on the ballot by the city council. But then Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the city council found a legal loophole, allowing themselves an extra term.

And they refused to permit the people any vote on their power grab.

But just weeks ago there was an election. Seventeen council members who had voted to weaken their own term limits faced primary opponents. Three were defeated. Two more are in races too close to call — with re-counts now underway. Another six won in very, very close contests.

The New York Times called the results “the greatest repudiation of incumbents in a generation.”

According to David Birdsell, dean of Baruch College’s School of Public Affairs, “Public frustration with what seems to be self-serving government officials is at a fever pitch right now.”

Call it “the revenge of the mantra”: Take away term limits, and voters will take away future terms the old-fashioned way . . . with elections.

This is . . . wonderful! This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.