Author: Redactor

Categories
folly media and media people

A Brief Against Weiner

Congressman Anthony Weiner: Insert joke here.

Perhaps because I pronounced his name as “whiner” rather than “wiener,” I didn’t titter as much as the rest of America did upon the Twitter release of his notorious underpants photo.

Weiner stonewalled for as long as he could. Was the photo in question of his own dear, downstairs corporality? He couldn’t “say with certitude.”

Yesterday’s overdue confession that he’d fouled up a direct message on Twitter, sending it publicly, instead — and then lied about it — confirmed nearly everybody’s suspicions. (Everyone it seems except too many slanted lame-​stream media folks, who instead attacked the now magnificently vindicated Andrew Breitbart.) Weiner admits to having sent inappropriate messages and photos to attractive, younger women.

But, alas, Weiner’s mea culpa was accompanied by his insistence that he would not resign.

For lying about his accounts being “hacked” — and thus cry-​wolfishly raising national security issues — and for proving himself an utter idiot at a simple messaging system, he should. That is, he should resign for falsely reporting a crime (and it is a crime to hack someone else’s online accounts), and for utter, bumbling incompetence.

Demonstrating humiliating incompetence at Twitter should remain a prerogative of private citizens, not politicians.

And it’s not as if he couldn’t land on his, er, feet. He could join one of the newer news comment shows, become Eliot Spitzer’s new partner on, perhaps, Weiner/​Spitzer.

It has a ring to it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Hewitt-​Romney Rationalization

Those who insist that RomneyCare isn’t as bad as ObamaCare need a reality check.

Both impose new price controls; both impose new taxpayer-​funded subsidies; both force people to buy health insurance; both massively expand government interference in our lives.

Former Governor Mitt Romney seemed to acknowledge the similarities when he suggested, shortly after Obamacare had passed, that he’d “be happy to take credit” for the president’s accomplishment. Now, though, with the glaring parallels so politically inconvenient, he pretends that parsecs of distance separate the two plans.

RomneyCare apologist Hugh Hewitt says that RomneyCare’s mandate forcing people to buy health insurance offends only “a handful of libertarian purists.” (Which I’d submit is far better than being a pure socialist or even a half-​and-​half socialist.) According to Hewitt, if we have no great objection to, say, smog-​emission mandates, what’s the big deal about being compelled to buy a product?! Anyway, he adds, states have the right to impose such mandates, whereas the federal government is constitutionally barred from doing so.

Regardless of how we assess particular attempts to combat pollution, pollution at least conceivably violates the rights of others. Your not buying something does not violate anybody else’s rights; being compelled to buy something does violate somebody’s rights — yours. 

Sure, RomneyCare affects “only” 6.5 million people, whereas ObamaCare affects some 300 million. But expanding governmental interference in the medical industry and into the lives of everyone is, either way, destructive and immoral.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people too much government

Show Me the Way to the Next Hookah Bar

I could never emulate the economist Irving Fisher — and not just his use of index numbers. He was a perfervid purist. He didn’t just defend “the success” of Prohibition, he looked forward to the day when coffee, tea and bleached flour would be outlawed, too.

Hey, I love my coffee. You’ll have to pry my cup from my cold, dead fingers.

Of course, many forms of purism are obviously hygienic. But take purity beyond persuasion, into force, that’s not safe for anybody. And fraud? Weasel-​wordy purists aren’t against lying for the cause, either.

Take the hookah.

Hookahs are to tobacco-​smoking what bongs are to marijuana-​smoking: A water-​filtration-​based, easy-​to-​share drug delivery system. In “Putting a Crimp on the Hookah,” the New York Times quotes one hookah smoker as saying he’s unconcerned about the health effects, since he only smokes it about once a month. The author then states “But in fact, hookahs are far from safe.” As Jacob Sullum of Reason magazine points out, both can be true. Tobacco smoking isn’t exactly healthy. But occasional imbibing of water-​filtered smoke is almost certainly better for you than regular cigarette use.

The New York Times focuses on the next leg of the “ever-​shifting war on tobacco,” the prohibition of “hookah bars.” Though there’s some talk of protecting second-​hand smoke victims, it’s pretty obvious that this war is really about squelching a “vice” by force.

Which is itself worse than vice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture individual achievement

Commemorating Alan Bock

Journalist Alan Bock died in May after a long struggle with cancer. 

In addition to many articles penned as an editorial writer for the Orange County Register as well as for various magazines, Bock also wrote four books: Ecology Action Guide, The Gospel Life of Hank Williams, Ambush at Ruby Ridge: How Government Agents Set Randy Weaver Up and Took His Family Down, and Waiting to Inhale: The Politics of Medical Marijuana. The last two deal trenchantly with government assaults on our liberty — assaults as foolish as they are destructive.

In his obituary for the Orange County Register, Greg Hardesty reports that Bock “cultivated a loyal following as a passionate defender of individual liberty and freedom.” He “cut a figure as a bookish intellect — yet one whose friendly, easygoing nature endeared him to family, friends and colleagues.”

Representative Dana Rohrabacher recalls that Bock “smiled every time he made a point that furthered his basic beliefs in freedom.”

His 25-​year-​old son Stephen Bock says that his father always had a smile on his face. 

Decades ago, Alan met with me when I was facing prosecution for draft resistance, and subsequently wrote a great editorial defending me. We kept in touch in the years since. My own acquaintance confirms the consensus that he was a very learned, effective and happy warrior for freedom. 

We talked politics many times, but I wish we’d found the time to talk about Hank Williams.

Alan Bock will be missed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

In the Money

The economy is down, but some businesses are still bustling. Take the business of running local government in Washington, D.C. Money must be rolling in. The mayor just asked the city council to raise the highest compensation level he is permitted to pay employees by $100,000.

No, not to $100,000. Mayor Vincent Gray wants to raise the top salary by $100,000 — from $179,000 to $279,000.

One council member called the new mayor “tone deaf”; another said the idea is DOA. “These [salaries] are in excess of federal Cabinet officials,” a third pointed out.

Sounds like the council is putting its collective feet down. It just isn’t going to overpay for manpower, right?

Well, not really.

The mayor stuck the new pay levels into a bill already asking the council to okay salaries for the police, fire and school system heads, all of which exceed the current legal limit. News reports say the council is “likely” to approve those.

That how DC “works.” Pay limits are set in law, and then, when the mayor wants to overpay, he has to get the council to approve the higher pay.

While allowing higher pay in some cases, the council is unlikely to make it easier for the mayor to overpay without their deliberated say-​so. Why? To provide fiscal accountability? Or, more cynically, to give the council more political leverage to get more political spoils?

Did I mention that I’m pretty cynical about the motivations of politicians?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Eleven Fiftieths

Eleven states have “bottle bills,” legislation requiring vendors to collect a deposit on each container they sell of soda pop, iced tea, energy drinks, etc. It basically mimics the old, voluntary system of recycling, where bottling companies would pay people to return glass bottles, for reuse.

When I was a kid, cheaper materials (aluminum, plastic) made the old system uneconomical. So environmentalists pushed through legislation in Oregon, and then elsewhere, to create government-​mandated recycling systems.

Oregon’s legislature just passed a “sweeping revision” of the bill, upping the deposit amount from five cents to ten and expanding the program. John Charles of the Cascade Policy Institute testified at a legislative hearing against the revision. According to Charles, bottle deposit recycling conflicts with curbside recycling, which Charles argues is far more efficient — or at least easier to use than lugging containers back to return centers, which are usually sticky, smelly, and.…

Well, Charles didn’t talk about the stink. One of my Washington State informers did.

You see, Washington not only lacks a bottle bill, such efforts fail with larger percentages each time one hits the state’s ballot. But the beverage containers sold in Washington have the same deposit/​return guarantees as in Oregon. So some Washingtonians transport their in-​state purchases — sans five-​cent deposit — across the border for unearned returns.

You might think that fighting such cheating would be of more concern to Oregon lawmakers than making it even more lucrative to out-​of-​state profiteers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.