Author: Redactor

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Keep Firing

Now that the Supreme Court agrees that there’s a Second Amendment, the one about how the right to keep and bear arms shan’t be infringed, lower courts are feeling free to load this constitutional ammo as well.

Ohio’s Supreme Court just ruled 5-2 against Cleveland’s requirement for registering handguns and against a ban on assault weapons, upholding a state law banning onerous gun control.

The losing side argues that the Ohio law violates the home rule rights of municipalities. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson says, “Our inability to enforce laws that are right for our city flies in the face of home rule and takes power away from the people at the local level.”

If some mugger with a gun is lurching at you in a dark alley, and you’ve got no gun — or if some armed lunatic is shooting into a crowd, and you’ve got no gun — you may wish you had one. And probably would not find consoling the thought, “Well, at least these local victim-disarmament laws are ‘right for the town.’”

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled that Ohio’s anti-victim-disarmament law “does not unconstitutionally infringe on municipal home rule authority.”

Yes. If constitutional protections of individual rights could be countermanded at will, not only the 2nd and 14th Amendments but also all other explicit and implicit constitutional protections of our rights would be dead letters whenever any burg says so.

But there can’t be a constitutional right to ignore constitutional rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Pay the Boatman

Attack the outsider — the first resort of the unarmed arguer.

My Townhall column praising Washington State anti-tax activist Tim Eyman raised the ire of Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat. He insinuates that it’s easy for me to like Eyman, for I never need to “catch the late boat after a Mariners game,” since I live in Virginia and Eyman’s initiatives affect the Evergreen State’s ferries.

Westneat complains that a voter-approved Eyman measure reducing car taxes took away the main source of subsidy (he doesn’t use that word) for Puget Sound’s ferry system. Turning common-sense responsibility on its head, he writes, “instead of levying a tax across a broad group (all car owners), as we did pre-Eyman to help pay for ferries, the costs now are increasingly heaped on a narrow group — the ferry riders themselves.”

Horrors! People paying for what they use!

Westneat seems to be into financial irresponsibility. “Yes, [the system] wastes money sometimes. What big organization doesn’t?” Nice dismissal of the incompetence and corruption in a state-run biz that cannot even account for its cash.

When the ferries were taken over from private business by the state, it was, he says, because of the previous owners’ “usurious 30-percent fare hikes.” Not mentioned? This followed the cessation of Seattle’s wartime shipworks, and a huge decrease in demand.

Some folks sure apply basic economic insights selectively. Dispersing costs, concentrating benefits? That they idolize. Economies of scale? Their arguments run aground.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Reading Comprehension

Never has the Constitution been read on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. And, boy, does our political situation show it.

When the 112th Congress convenes this week, the law of the land — the limited, enumerated powers granted to the federal government by “We the People” in this 223-year old document — will for the first time be spoken aloud for all honorables to hear. It’s a quick read, less than 5,000 words, and presumably cameras will be rolling, so we’ll know if any elected representative sticks finger into ear during the recitation.

A hat-tip to the Tea Party movement, this reading of the Constitution is a great way to remind our legislators that such a document actually exists.

Even better, a new rule will be proposed requiring every piece of legislation to have affixed a citation “where in the Constitution Congress is empowered to enact such legislation.”

Sure, Washington pundits have mocked this newborn constitutionalism, crying “gimmick!” One history professor called it “entirely cosmetic.” Tea Party activists are skeptical, too. As they should be.

Neither reading the Constitution nor declaring the constitutional authority for legislation amounts to magic. But, with a political process in which politicians rarely recognize any limits to their wizardry, a requirement that Congress specifically pay attention to whether its actions are permitted by the Constitution is, well, really good.

Will it lead to Congress actually abiding by the limits of our Constitution? It certainly couldn’t hurt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Study War Some More?

Some people love spending so much they’d kill to do it.

A while back, Paul Krugman, today’s leading Keynesian shill, trotted out the old chestnut that World War II brought America out of the Great Depression. In The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, Steve Horwitz provides a concise, reasoned response:

Wealth increases when people are able to engage in exchanges they believe will be mutually beneficial. The production of new goods that consumers wish to purchase is the beginning of this process.

And borrowing from future generations to spend on goods not connected “to the desires of consumers, but rather to the desire of the politically powerful” doesn’t work.

Krugman talks war not because he wants one, but because he thinks government spending is so important that he’ll take what he can get, “even if the spending isn’t particularly wise.”

He misses the point.

The malaise that holds back recovery after a shock like the Implosion of 2008 isn’t lack of spending as such — it’s lack of confidence. Capitalism depends on trillions of separate plans and desires working together. When investors are wary of investing and consumers — fearing the future — don’t know what they can really afford to buy, no amount of “jump start” splurging will repair the engine.

At the end of World War II conscripts were freed, wage and price controls were abandoned, and a sense of victory permeated everything — and the Great Depression ended. Finally.

The lesson? End wars. Curtail regulations. Free up the system.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Housing Boom’s Inflated “Wisdom”

Watch how the received wisdom gets worded: “A sustained rebound in home prices is considered critical to getting the economy back on track.”

That’s from a Washington Post business report on falling home prices. Its passive voice construction covers up who holds the opinion.

The sentence could have been written differently: “Many politicians, policy wonks, and industry shills believe that only a sustained rebound in housing prices can put the economy get back on track.” But that would have helped the reader see the special interests behind the statement.

We need housing prices high and rising again . . . to fulfill the plans of the very people who set up the house of cards that just came down.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron’s reaction is worth quoting in full: “No, no, a thousand times no!

Housing prices are falling because they soared to ridiculous levels during the bubble. Any policy that attempts to keep prices high — or, equivalently, that attempts to prevent foreclosures or juice housing construction — is fighting a crucial market adjustment to past distortions.

The housing boom mania — fed by multiple government subsidies and massive financial intervention coupled with cheap money from the Federal Reserve — served some people at the expense of the public at large. Progress doesn’t depend on it. Real progress depends on rejecting such nonsense.

By the way, other things equal, inexpensive housing is good for us. The whole “rising prices” mania defeats the alleged rationale for mortgage subsidies in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
jury rights and duties

The New Nullifiers

It’s happened before: The people are speaking up. In court. As jurors. As citizens.

A Missoula District Court could not impanel a jury in a marijuana possession case. Potential jurors refused to say that they would follow the law in convicting a person for possessing a sixteenth of an ounce of the popular weed. One juror wondered why the county was “wasting time and money prosecuting the case at all.” The flummoxed Deputy Missoula County Attorney Andrew Paul called it “a mutiny.”

The judge said he’d never seen anything like it.

Too bad.

Jury nullification is an old idea, a democratic idea. I wrote about it a few years ago, in reference to the growing movement to recognize it as a principle of law. Voting isn’t the only check citizens have against bad laws. Juries have a right to judge the law as well as the facts in the case, no matter what usurping judges tell them.

The most spectacular instances of jury nullification in American history regarded slavery. Many northern juries revolted against enforcing the Fugitive Slave laws, to the consternation of slave-owners.

The current case didn’t quite get to full nullification, in legal terms. Instead, it approached nullification practically, forcing prosecutors to bargain the case down.

This citizens’ revolt against some of the absurdities in our War on Drugs indicates that we can expect bigger changes in the future.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Latest Mixed-Economy Mix

Mix special interests, politicians-on-the-make, and expanding bureaucracies and what do you get? E15 gasohol.

Matthew Wald of the New York Times’s “green” blog reports that government ethanol mandates and subsidies make it harder to sell gas efficiently. Converting gas tanks to accommodate the new 15 percent ethyl alcohol/gas blend, E15, could mean shortages of gas for customers with cars that can’t use it. Moreover, ethanol can damage some engines and gas pumps.

A slew of engine manufacturer associations have sued the EPA to block approval of E15. On the other side of the special-interest coin, it’s worth noting that it was the ethanol industry that pushed for E15 approval in the first place.

The approval by itself wouldn’t mean much if buyers and sellers weren’t being forced to use ethanol. New fuel products have been introduced by market participants in the past; with E15, producers and resellers could offer — and consumers buy — the fuel that makes the most economic and technological sense. Instead, the current innovation is an artifact of government policy. You can be sure that the problems caused by imposing ethanol will trigger other political “solutions” that worsen market disruptions, triggering even worse “solutions,” and so forth.

Our “mixed economy” isn’t generally efficient, like free markets tend to be. In a mixed economy, the political winners win big; the rest of us lose.

It’s a mixed bag. The headier mix resulting from freedom? Far better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly too much government

Our Limited Abilities Require Other Limits

Last week I asked, in effect, Who regulates the regulators?

It does no good to say “the people,” because — as much as I want government to be ultimately controlled by the people — if you’re like me, you don’t know enough to micro-regulate high finance.

But there’s something I didn’t mention last Wednesday: The regulators don’t have that knowledge, either.

Even keeping eyeballs on simple fraud turns out to be difficult. Trying to micromanage high finance? Much harder.

But the congenital inability of regulators properly to regulate doesn’t mean that we must consign ourselves to a never-ending, Sisyphean cycle of boom and bust.

Many of the instruments of the modern federal government try to do too much. These very institutions, because they hubristically attempt to regulate away boom bust deliver just the opposite. They make sure booms go bust in messy ways.

Here’s a fresh example: “Lack of regulation” wasn’t the main reason for this latest bust. More important? The “too big to fail” subsidy. By giving Wall Street, big bankers, and financial intermediaries the impression that they would be bailed out in case of implosion, those very same folks behaved in such a way to risk said implosion, and thus needing the bailouts.

Which happened.

Which started the cycle all over.

Only by going back to basics can we improve our long-term economic outlook — not by government micromanaging the economy.

Nicely, citizens like you and me can understand these “basics.”

And defend them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

It’s the Season

Ho, Ho, Ho. It’s that time of year again. Shopping. Selecting the right gift. Thinking of those special someones.

Yes, it’s Omnibus Spending Bill time, the Satan Clause time of year, when politicians fill up the stockings of their naughty friends in the lobbying business, and give generously.

With our money.

This year, Harry Reid went all out. He pushed an omnibus spending package that included so many earmarks that Congress had to use its whole box of Crayons just to keep some order to the bill’s marked corners. Yes, there were over six thousand “special holiday gifts” for special interests.

As I said, “Ho, Ho, Ho.”

That’s not an elfin chuckle, that’s a popular euphemism for what the politicians are who cooked up this list without checking it twice.

But an unseasonable gust took the wind out of Reid’s sails. Pressured by folks back home, the bill was soundly defeated. As Daniel Mitchell put it, it was the American people — not the special interests — who got the Christmas present:

[F]iscal conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers have won an important battle, but this is just one skirmish in a long war. If we want to save America from becoming another Greece, we better make sure that we redouble our efforts next year.

At last, special interests get a lump of coal. It’s something to celebrate. And repeat. Ho, Ho, Ho! Like that ol’ elfin chuckle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
folly

The Candy-Cane Killers

Tragic holiday horror! Diabolical kids with bad sweaters, scheming with Grinch-like dastardliness to stab at the heart of the season! Openly distributing thinly disguised blades . . .

Openly! Well, the school administrators were on the case in a jiffy.

The ten culpable kids at the Haymarket, Virginia, high school — called, by a cruel joke of destiny, Battlefield High — belonged to the secret commando unit “Christmas Sweater Club,” so-called because they wear “the craziest sweaters they can find.”

Just the kind of loosely-knit cover story you’d expect from such warped-and-woofed yarn spinners.

On the fateful morning, before classes began, club members ruthlessly tossed two-inch candy canes to arriving schoolmates. These student instigators told Channel 9 that school officials charged them with trying to “maliciously maim” their fellow students. “They said the candy canes are weapons because you can sharpen them with your mouth and stab people with them.”

By the time disciplinary notices were issued, however, the complaint had lapsed into something about “creating a disturbance.” Mom Kathleen Flannery related an administrator’s earnest appraisal: “Not everyone wants Christmas cheer.”

Lesson? Obviously, tiny candy canes in the wrong hands are dangerous, especially if converted by frenetic licking into ferocious little shivs that could turn a playground into a killing field!

Also, tiny brains in the wrong school officials’ heads can be dangerous, too . . . especially when they can’t be sharpened at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.