Author: Redactor

Categories
too much government

Microcosm Out West

The Wahkiakum County Eagle covers one of the smallest counties in Washington state. Last issue’s big story was about the county’s finances.

The large picture on the front page shows county officials conferring how to lay off employees. A smaller picture features a note pinned to a wall. The note says “By October 7th the County Debt is $1.4 million.” Then, in bigger letters, it says “Do Something” with the Treasurer’s signature below.

For a county with less than 4,000 citizens to rack up a multi-million dollar debt is no small thing.

The commissioners gave notice to discontinue the county extension agreement with the state’s cow college. A bitter pill for many, since this was the first county west of the Mississippi to institute such an office.

Weirdly, the commissioners saw this coming. Revenues have been falling for some time. Yet a few years ago they bought the failing local medical clinic. A picture lower on the front page welcomes a new physician’s assistant. The hidden story here is that since the county has owned the clinic it has been costing the county at least a quarter a million per year.

Can you say “microcosm”? The microcosm — small universe — is this little county, faltering because it took over a medical delivery system.

The lesson for America, our macrocosm: Don’t take over health care. We can’t afford another huge expense on the books.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Florida Anti-Speech Tyranny

The Broward Coalition of Condominiums, Homeowners Associations and Community Organizations, Inc., regularly puts out newsletters. No surprise. Lots of organizations do.

This Florida organization, though, does something more. Its newsletters regularly feature political subjects. Nothing shocking about that, either. This is America, right?

Well, yes. But the First Amendment has been abridged. In Florida, especially, there exist onerous “electioneering communications” laws that squelch the kind of speech that the Broward Coalition engages in.

Florida law requires any group of people to register with the government if the group mentions a candidate or ballot issue in any media — electronic, paper, or plastic — and to report all of its spending and funding sources, too.

That kind of oppressive control is what started the American Revolution. Fortunately, we have a less violent way of opposing speech tyranny today.

The Broward Coalition has joined with the National Taxpayers Union and the University of Florida College Libertarians to file suit. Represented by the Institute for Justice, they charge that the law regulating their speech goes against the First Amendment.

Bert Gall, IJ senior attorney, puts it exactly right when he insists that “Florida’s law is part of a growing trend of shutting up and shutting out anyone but political pros from politics.”

And that trend must be stopped.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

When Good Economists Go Bad

It is weird to watch respected economists leap so far off the beam that you question their sanity.

The number who supported the federal bailout made me shake my head. I guess economists can panic, too, get all doe-eyed in the face of a power grab.

My confidence in sanity returned when I read Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith’s amazingly insightful article in the Wall Street Journal. He argued that the Treasury Department has now committed itself to a kind of auction with which it has no demonstrated competence. Smith’s practical take on the bailout folly reminds me of another Smith, Adam, way back in 1776, explaining why markets work better than governments to create the wealth of nations.

Then, a few days later, Paul Krugman received the Nobel Prize for Economics.

I had read Krugman years ago, and was impresssed with his good sense. But then he began writing op-eds for the New York Times, and, uh, I began questioning his sanity. On so many issues he seems to believe that the best government governs most. And he’s a very pro-Democratic Party partisan.

It is worth remembering, though, that Krugman is a left-winger who supports free trade, attributes Europe’s high unemployment to wage regulations, and regards anti-globalization activists as enemies of the world’s poor.

Maybe his new prize will remind him of his good sense. He might even rethink his allegiance to Party.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Fear of Falling

The fear of falling is innate. Newborns have it.

The fear of falling prices is different.

What? Who fears falling prices?

Politicians and investors and the big boys in big business, that’s who. When all sorts of prices fall, it means that their plans for ever-upward growth hit the hard rocks of economic reality. And these downturns sure can hurt. A lot.

Yet there’s an awful lot of evidence that you just have to weather these periods. You shouldn’t panic. And you definitely should not try to “prop things up.”

But that is exactly what politicians generally try to do in an economic downturn — they try to prevent some set of prices from falling.

Post-Great War depression in Britain, and America’s own beginning of the Great Depression . . . in both downturns there were huge political forces at work, trying to prevent a sector of prices from hitting their natural floors. In those cases, it was mainly wages that got propped up.

The effect? Massive unemployment.

I’m no economic historian, so I hate to tread these waters. But I’m not going to play Santayana’s fool, forgetting history and then forced to repeat it like Sisyphus’s rock-and-roll classic on permanent skip-repeat/skip-repeat.

So remember: Propping up prices in the past didn’t work. They won’t work now with housing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

ACORN Falls Far From the Tree

Far left groups like the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center cry “fraud” whenever conservative groups make any mistakes in petition or voter registration drives. In fact, they scream “fraud” even when there aren’t mistakes made.

Funny, then, that I haven’t heard a peep from these creeps concerning the serious fraud allegations leveled at ACORN.

ACORN — that’s the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now — has deluged election officials all across the country with hundreds of thousands of fictitious voter registrations. In one state, the group knowingly hired convicts to register new voters.

The FBI is now looking into the group.

Even before these fraud allegations hit the national news, several outfits were highlighting ACORN’s conduct.

Just recently, Americans for Limited Government began a nationwide campaign, StopAcorn.org, to demand investigation into the group’s wrongdoing.

Ballotpedia.org has launched the Voter Integrity Project, which chronicles voter fraud, including ACORN’s activities.

Of course, ACORN isn’t limited to election-related shenanigans. The group also has a long track record of helping politicians bully banks into handing out high-risk, so-called “affirmative action” mortgage loans. Which, thanks a lot, helped bring us the housing crisis.

You might also be interested to learn that ACORN does it all on your nickel. About 40 percent of ACORN’s funding comes from taxpayers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Up and Down and Up and . . .

The stock market won’t serve as a crystal ball. How about a Magic 8-Ball?

I’ve never asked “the stock market” for advice. But millions of people trade stocks. Their actions are presumably reflective of their judgments . . . some sober and rational, others panicky and irrational.

Often there’s no way to tell. But note how, in the push for ever-more government intervention in the economy, traders are said to be dull-witted if they don’t respond with exuberant glee to bailout news. They are thought smart only if they buy, buy, buy when government repeats the same mistakes that got us into this easy-credit-slathered mess to begin with.

Banks fail. Stocks decline. More banks fail. Stocks decline. Government announces a trillion-dollar bailout. Stocks rise.

Then there’s trouble passing the bailout in Congress. The stock market dives hundreds of points!

Oh no! Obviously, we “need” the bailout! So there’s arm-twisting, pork-larding, another hundred billion in taxpayer dollars added to the biggest one-day mortgaging of children’s future ever. Finally, the bailout passes.

And stocks dive even harder! Huh? The capitalists were supposed to be ecstatic about the feast of a free lunch. Therefore, the market must have fallen “despite” — not “because of” — the giant hit taxpayers are taking.

Some science, where 20/20 hindsight imputes particular reasons to a process filled with conflicting reasons.

Me, I’m going to take up tea leaves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The More They Speak of Change

The more the presidential candidates promise change, the more it seems things are likely to stay just the way they are.

And I’m not the only one to notice. Washington Post columnist David Broder recently called it “the strangest of all presidential contests.” He argued, “The longer it goes on, the less we know about what either of these men would do if he were in the Oval Office next year.”

Both candidates are slinging promises of billions for this and billions for that, claiming to be everyone’s Mr. Everything. In the second presidential debate, Senator John McCain declared that if he were president, he “would order the Secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and . . . let people be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.”

No matter how much more house I buy than I can afford, the government will pay my mortgage?

Obama promises even more: “But most importantly, we’re going to have to help ordinary families be able to stay in their homes, make sure that they can pay their bills, deal with critical issues like health care and energy. . . .”

Obama’s administration is covering all my bills. Wow.

Both men seem oblivious to the reality that the next president will be handed a country badly in debt and unable to pay for the massive commitments it has already taken on. He won’t be handed a magic wand.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense free trade & free markets

Why Plant Crops?

With the financial crisis and bailout bill, our energy problems have been pushed off the front page. But they’re not gone. We still need energy to run our cars, homes, businesses, you name it.

So, I wanted to address a goofy argument that has been made a lot about drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, way up north in Alaska. Some say that we shouldn’t drill because it won’t do anything at all to help lower the price of gas now.

We’re continually told that it will take seven to ten years for the oil found there to be pumped out, processed and pumped into our cars as gasoline.

Not shocking. It’s true. Most things do take some length of time to fully accomplish.

Say you order an appliance. It’s days before delivery. Have an idea for a book? It takes time to write, edit, and publish it. You’ll have to wait to get your first copy.

You know, the price of food is up, too, in part because of America’s stupid ethanol policy, which we’ve talked about before. Apply the logic of anti-drilling advocates and we won’t plant crops anymore because, after all, no food pops into existence ex nihilo, instantaneously. It takes months before harvest. Even longer for the food to trundle off to market.

So, why plant? Why drill? Why buy that book, knowing that you can’t read it until you get home?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights insider corruption

Shocker: Criminal Web Links!

Aliens take over government! Soviets control U.S. weather! Ancient Mayan temple has Sandisk flash drive!

If you’ve ever been to a supermarket, you’ve seen these and other ludicrous mile-high headlines blaring from the newsstands.

Here’s another impossible headline that might issue from the pen of any zany, unscrupulous tabloid fabulist: BLOGGER TREATED AS CRIMINAL FOR POSTING WEB LINK TO CITY AGENCY!

Not a concoction, I’m afraid. The city of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, did indeed harass a blogger named Jennifer Reisinger for linking to the website of the city police department. No alleged libel, alleged copyright violation, or other alleged crime. Ms. Reisinger and her lawyer believe the threat was retaliation for her role in trying to recall the Sheboygan mayor, Juan Perez.

Intimidated by the unprecedented cease-and-desist order she received from the city attorney, Reisinger at first removed the link. But then, after being threatened with a criminal investigation for her dastardly providing of information, she hired a lawyer. The lawyer advised her to restore the Web link, which she did. The mayor’s office dropped its threat, but Reisinger is suing anyway.

Mayor Perez and his henchmen deserve to be stomped in court — if only to pre-empt similar stupidity and contempt for First Amendment rights by other vindictive politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

The Crime of Being Robbed

Here’s one way to reduce your crime statistics: jail victims who report crime.

That’s the latest method of crime-stopping in Shreveport, Louisiana. Starting October 15, gas station owners and even attendees will be culpable if a thief gases up and drives away without paying. Owners and employees will face fines and even jail time. The reasoning is that they are partly “responsible” for the crime by not requiring all customers to pre-pay.

I can’t say it’s the dumbest law out there because, well, there are so many dumb laws. It’s a very competitive field.

Councilman Monty Walford, who voted against the new ordinance, wonders whether the city will now require that grocery customers give a deposit before entering the store.

Police Chief Henry Whitehorn came up with the idea of penalizing Shreveport gas stations when drivers rob them. Whitehorn babbles that it’s a crime prevention measure. Station owners protest that it’s more customer-friendly to let customers pay after gassing up. In any case, how they conduct business is, obviously, their own business.

All kinds of mandatory restrictions on ways of doing business might “prevent crime.” How about forcing shop owners to force customers to crawl through a concrete maze before reaching the shelves . . . then submit to strip searches as they leave? Sure, such a law would be costly, but it would “prevent crime.”

Except for the crime of the law itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.