Author: Redactor

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

A Fraudulent Anti-​Fraud Bill

The theory behind Washington State’s Senate Bill 5297 — now worming its way through Olympia — seems to be that the people can’t be trusted to legislate, so the more hurdles thrown up at the initiative process, the better.

But the bill itself shows just the opposite, revealing its legislative supporters as careless, heedless of facts, and nastily bigoted towards some folk and against others. 

The truth? Washington State has had only one known case of signature fraud. A Service Employees International Union official repeatedly just made up names and signatures.

She’s confessed and awaits sentencing. 

So why add SB 5297’s reporting requirements for signature gatherers? To stop frauds such as this?

Well, no. SB 5297 exempts union petitioners!

Par for the course. Politicians in not a few of the 24 states that have statewide initiative rights try such things, all the while talking about the evils of fraud.

The facts? After surveying public records, Citizens in Charge Foundation reported, last year in “Is the ‘F‑word’ Overused?”, that “cases of verified fraud or forgery are not pervasive in initiative or referendum petitions. Furthermore, many of the ‘reforms’ passed by state legislatures to address fraud have shown no positive results.”

Fortunately for Washingtonians, initiative activist Tim Eyman has bashed the bill and nearly every state newspaper, usually editorializing against Eyman, has instead lambasted the legislation. Citizens are rallying. Several legislators have stood against it, and taken away much of its teeth and claws. 

Now it’s time to kill the beast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Fine-​Tuning the Shackles

Loathe handcuffs and leg irons? No problem. We’ll adjust the restraints slightly. Shave a gram off the weight. Paint them a new color. And throw away the key.

Feel liberated?

Nobody in a chain gang would be fooled.

But the Obama Administration expects phony “concessions” in the implementation of last year’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare,” for short) to be treated as a sign of generous and reasonable compromise. The president supports an amendment to the health care law that, according to the New York Times, would “allow states to opt out of its most burdensome requirements three years earlier than currently permitted.”

If you dislike the program’s taxes and mandates, which after all constitute Obamacare’s most burdensome requirements, you’d approve. Right? All we need do is move in 2014 to some state that has opted out …

Not so fast. The state programs would have to cover just as many people and be just as “comprehensive and affordable” as the federal program. How to do this except by forcing people to participate?

The amended legislation would also allow states to establish single-​payer systems in which the state government is the only insurer of health care. Compromise?

As Michael Cannon observes, “President Obama’s move is not about giving states more flexibility. It’s about moving the nation even faster toward his ideal of a Canadian- or British-​style single-​payer health-​care system.” Which is where Obama and many Democrats have been hankering to go all along.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Bleaching the Bay

In economics, it’s called an “unintended effect”; in pharmacology, a “side effect.” In plumbing, it’s one heckuva stink.

Yes, it’s time again for a perennial Common Sense subject: Government messing around in our toilets.

The push to “save water” gushed into a number of proposals over the years, the closest-​to-​consumer one being the many government edicts demanding that toilets use less water. 

Governments can make a regulation and process lawbreakers. But they can’t change the laws of liquid dynamics. Federal legislation for smaller-​reservoir toilets yielded a generation of poorly flushing toilets — demanding double flushing to get solids down. It took years for inventive engineers and entrepreneurs to redesign toilets so that they could actually do their job right.

But Congress’s intrusion into your bathroom wasn’t enough for busybodies in San Francisco. They had to go further, with low-​flow toilets that used even less water.

The consequence has now become pretty obvious: Too little water in the public sewage system, leading to slow-​moving masses of ugh, clogging pipes, and, well stench.

San Francisco has proved that “well-​intended” government regulation into our bathrooms quite literally stinks.

Frisco sewerage officials have stocked up on $14 million worth of bleach to “act as an odor eater and to disinfect the city’s water before it’s dumped into the bay.” Environmentalists are predictably and, well, understandably concerned. 

What begins as an environmental concern ends as an environmental disaster.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

A Necessary Solution?

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is playing hardball. On Meet the Press, he defended himself:

Wisconsin is “broke,” and unions use their power to block necessary cost-​saving measures, Walker said.

“It’s about time somebody stood up and told the truth in this state, and said, ‘Here’s our problem, here’s the solution,’ and acted on it,” he said.

But how sensible is his proposal to remove collective bargaining regarding benefits for most public employee unions? As everyone points out, the unions are agreeing to his other proposals, such as paying for more of their insurance than before. 

Why is he being so unreasonable, so “arrogant”?

Last Sunday, I considered the whys on Townhall. Contracts with public employees are completely out of whack because compensation is negotiated outside market competition and by politicians more afraid of the political clout of the powerful unions than their principals (the taxpayers) whose money they’re spending. So, wage rates and especially promises of future medical and pension benefits are sky high and open to abuse.

The union reps can’t be trusted, either. So honed to getting the most for union members (their principals), their monomaniacal purpose washes away every other thought. Now that the corner they’ve shoved the state into has been made apparent, they’ll concede points, sure. But taking away bargaining leverage?

No way. They want to be able to do it all over, when good times roll.

And that is why Gov. Walker’s proposal seems so sound.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense ideological culture

And the Award Goes To…

With last night’s Oscars on everybody’s noggins, I’ll hand out a few of my own awards, just to keep in the spirit of this news cycle.

Best performance by a lead actor? This last year Rep. John Boehner came out to challenge Glenn Beck as chief public weeper, and he gave a good showing. Still, the award has to go to Commander-​in-​Chief Barack Obama, for making us cry.

Best performance by a lead actress? I am tempted to award Hillary Clinton, for her work trying to make U.S. foreign policy seem plausible, but, really, it’s unraveling every day, and she seems too oblivious to reality to deserve accolades. So, the honor goes to Nancy Pelosi, for her role as outgoing House Speaker. She may not have done it all that well, but it was a pleasure to see her leave.

Best foreign language effort? This has got to be a tie, between the Tunisians and the Egyptians, kicking out their non-​term-​limited tyrants. 

Best first-​run, open-​in-​all-​venues effort? That has to be the Tea Party showing last November. Breaking a long stretch of largely united governments — legislative and executive branches united under one party, first Republican and then Democrat — the Tea Party voters sent a well-​deserved chill down politicians’ backs.

It’s worth noting that the Tea Party merited Independent Spirit Award attention, too. True independence of spirit is rare in big-​time politics. Let’s hope it continues for another major showing next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Why Such Slow Growth

Why such slow growth, after the federal government spent trillions to spark recovery?

Could it be that binges of throwing borrowed money around don’t matter? Spending money can’t be the solution if the problem is low or dark expectations of the future — and the spending of borrowed money feeds that dark view.

So what is the solution? 

Well, take a step back. According to economic historian Robert Higgs, the key to economic growth is “private domestic business net investment.” And that’s down. 

The peak occurred in 2007. The next two years saw the very opposite of growth, a precipitous fall in investments in private business. Last year, Higgs tells us, “net private investment increased smartly for three quarters, reaching an annual rate of $270 billion in the third quarter, then contracted sharply — by almost 47 percent — to $144 billion in the fourth quarter,” which is about a third of what it was at peak in 2007.

“Jobs,” which everybody’s thinking about, don’t come from spending as such. New jobs happen when people who save take their unspent money and invest it in production processes that they hope will yield goods that consumers in the future will spend money on.

So, private investment depends on positive expectations, a kind of rational hope.

What could government do? 

Provide less reason for fear by putting a halt to doing things that elicit rational fear instead of rational hope.

Saner government, more productive economy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.