Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets tax policy

How Not To Be in Pictures

Everybody wants to be in pictures, it’s said. Michiganders, who’ve been funding moviemaking with their taxes for years, should try digital cameras and YouTube. The state’s governor, Rick Snyder, has proposed a new budget slicing and dicing the state’s generous (read: foolhardy) film subsidy and tax credit system.

This is called a “blow to Hollywood.” One nifty headline dramatizes the new situation: “Michigan to Hollywood — Get Off My Lawn,” with photo of Clint Eastwood on the porch of his Gran Torino house, wielding a shotgun. 

Over the top. 

Tax credits and tax subsidies given only to moviemakers are wrong on several grounds, as I’ve argued before (see “Knot Cannibalism” and “Cinema Without Subsidy”). Of course, the red tape and high taxes associated with setting up any business are wrong, too. You may say that the state’s gotta raise funds, but it most definitely shouldn’t kill the geese that lay the eggs, golden or Technicolor. 

Taxes should apply equally, all around. Low taxes evenly spread will entice businesses — including moviemakers — into an area, if other locales remain over-​taxed and confusing.

Some will cry “jobs!” but the word isn’t magic. Real jobs can be measured. Michigan’s subsidies created mainly temporary part-​time jobs for Michiganders. According to a commissioned study, “Michigan spent $378,240.74 per job in 2008; $586,779.18 per job in 2009.” 

No film incentive, it turns out, “has generated as much revenues as it has taken from the treasury.”

Cut. Print.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly initiative, referendum, and recall

A Modest Proposal for Madison

“Ninety percent of life is just showing up.”

Well, Woody, tell that to Democratic state senators in Wisconsin. Or, should I say, in Rockford, Illinois … hiding from the Wisconsin police.

They’re not wanted for any crime. Wisconsin state troopers would simply take them into custody and deliver them to their worksite: the state capitol in Madison.

Unemployment soars, and folks with cushy jobs go underground. I hate to be so boringly practical, but people should show up for work or let their employer(s) know that they are resigning. Not showing up is irresponsible. (Of course, these are politicians.)

And the whole biz is about responsibility. Wisconsin Democrats don’t want to vote on Republican Governor Scott Walker’s proposals to make government employees contribute 5.8 percent of their pay toward their lucrative pensions and 12.6 percent toward their medical insurance premiums, and to end collective bargaining for benefits and work rules, while keeping it for pay.

These are legitimate issues for the legislature. Democracy is about voting on them — even when you won’t win. But by lurking next door in the Land of Lincoln, Democrats can deny the quorum necessary for the legislature to do business.

Citizens have one immediate recourse: Recall.

Under Wisconsin law, no elected official can be recalled in their first year in office. But eight of the 14 shirking senators could be recalled right now. Were a mere two of them recalled, Republican senators would alone constitute a quorum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Voters Need Not Apply

Colorado politicians have hatched a scheme, Senate Concurrent Amendment 1, that may solve the awful problem of those pesky Colorado voters passing reforms like term limits and the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, the state’s quite effective spending cap.

SCR‑1 solves the alleged problem of too many constitutional amendments by — you guessed it — enacting yet another constitutional amendment. As the Senate yesterday passed SCR‑1, sending it to the House, Democratic Senator Linda Newell of Denver complained, “I am embarrassed to see how many changes are in our constitution.”

She should be. While most of the 16 amendments enacted in the last decade were proposed by legislators (ten, or 62.5 percent), the measure the snooty senator supports is designed to disrupt only the citizen initiative process. 

SCR‑1 prevents a majority of Colorado voters from passing amendments by requiring a 60 percent supermajority — that is, allowing a 40 percent minority to block any reform. This works great for big labor and big business interests who can spend big bucks running nasty 30-​second TV ads to create enough doubt to hold an initiative one vote under 60 percent.

Worse yet, if SCR‑1 passes, legislators would still be able to put term limits or the state’s spending limit on the ballot for repeal by a simple majority. An interesting principle: new reform requires a supermajority, but lower percentages may gut term limits or dump the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people too much government

Wisconsin Whitewash

NBC anchorman Brian Williams says government workers in Wisconsin are “rising up and saying no to some of the most extreme cuts in the nation.”

It’s a glorious revolution.…

Thousands have been descending on the statehouse to protest the new governor’s willingness to curtail the collective bargaining rights of public employee unions.

One demonstrator tells NBC that teachers are fighting for the “same thing” Egyptian demonstrators are fighting for — budget cuts equaling dictatorship, presumably. Others say that the proposed cuts “unfairly penalize union employees.” 

Of course, these folks aren’t about to recognize the fact that, in many states, untrammeled splurging on public union employees has long unfairly penalized taxpayers.

The protesters’ assertions get a fair amount of attention from national media. We’re hearing less about the violent rhetoric and even threats that some have engaged in. Governor Walker has been compared to Hosni Mubarak and to Hitler, and one placard shows him being targeted by a sniper’s rifle.

National Review’s Jay Nordlinger reports that the governor and members of his administration have been threatened with violence. “I have heard from people closely connected to the threatened individuals,” Nordlinger writes. “Their letters are hard to take. The last few days have made quite clear that, if you cross the public-​employee unions, you run risks: and not merely political risks.…”

Don’t the hazards of trying to reduce the extent to which taxpayers are looted deserve a few moments on the evening news?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Enslaved for Your Own Good

If government is “justified” in forcing you to buy health insurance for your own good — the fabled and perhaps fatal conceit of Obamacare — is it also justified in forcing us to keep up with “good” TV shows?

That’s the nutty notion floated at the satirical site The Onion, which drily reports: “FCC to Fine Americans Who Don’t Keep Up with TV Shows.” Seems too many office hours are spent explaining what happened on some iconic television show a co-​worker missed. So the FCC is fining anyone who falls behind.

Hyuk, hyuk, get it? The government would never actually mandate television watching! No, it just makes us pay for boring documentaries on PBS.

Nor would the government ever issue commandments about when you can smoke on private property or even in your own homes. Or … would it?

But the government would never declare what you can and can’t eat, or what foods you can and can’t dish out. Right? Unless, that is, you’re a kid in a government-​overseen cafeteria or a chef in a New York City restaurant prohibited from serving dishes containing the allegedly alarming ingredient of trans fat.

Well, the government would never require you to dutifully read even so salutary an e‑letter as Common Sense, eh? (I’m pretty sure about this one.)

Whether the policy-​makers’ notion of “the good” comports with your own doesn’t matter, of course. They’re the government, and they’re here to help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people term limits

Term Limits, Good

During the last few weeks of Egyptian unrest, a phrase got bandied about with an unusual degree of assumed support: Term limits. We heard of their importance from The Christian Science Monitor,  The New York Times, and other news sources, some of which would normally pooh-​pooh any push to establish, say, legislative term limits in America.

The writers and editors in question should find this odd. Why is it good for an executive in America to be term limited (as our Commander-​in-​Chief is), and even essential (as was often said) for commanders elsewhere, while it’s verboten for U.S. legislators?

Term limits’ rationale is clear. Journalists who wrote about the lack of term limits for Mubarak got the idea. They’re familiar with Lord Acton’s dictum: Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Term limits for executives prevent tyrannies from forming — or, if formed, from continuing till the rigors of mortis set in.

What do term limits for legislators prevent? 

Not full-​blown tyranny, exactly, but corruption. In a representative democracy, corruption can be subtle. 

Term limits are just unsubtle enough to check some of that.

Take John Dingell, the politician to serve longest exclusively in the House. He took over his district from his father, who had served there 22 years — a 78-​year dynasty!

Aristotle argued men should “rule and be ruled in turn.” Term limitation: a democratic principle to ward off both wannabe dictators and legislative dynasties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.