Author: Redactor

Categories
education and schooling free trade & free markets individual achievement

High Marks for Marko

I wish 9‑year-​old Marko Calasan had the office next to mine. Then when something goes wrong with my computer — through no fault of my own, I assure you — I could yell “Hey Marko, come fix this!” Alas, he lives in Macedonia.

The CNET website has a nice profile of this genius. We learn that Marko is “perhaps” the youngest system engineer Microsoft has ever certified. He snagged his first credential as a systems administrator when just six.

Marko works for a living. He remotely manages a computer network for a nonprofit organization. The employees tell him they are “very glad that that there is a good administrator.” But he seems a little unsure of it, saying, “I think that’s true, but who knows.”

Marko also teaches computing to other kids at his school. When I heard this my spidey sense tingled ferociously. What? Has he put in his years at a teaching college? Mastered the latest labyrinthine educational theories? Where’s his teaching certificate? The kid’s an outlaw!! At least, he would be stateside.

Marko works when he works and plays when he plays. He doesn’t indulge in computer games because, as he puts it, “there is nothing serious about playing games on computers.… If you want to play, go outside and play with your friends.”

Yes sir! I will do that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers

Listening to the Voters

After Scott Brown captured the U.S. Senate seat Ted Kennedy had occupied for decades, we heard two different views of the event.

One said the surprise victory of an obscure state senator over the anointed Democrat in such a Democrat-​leaning state had much to do with growing antagonism to runaway federal spending and spastic efforts to expand federal control over our lives. That Scott Brown promised to vote against Obamacare supports this view. So do exit polls showing that 41 percent of participants “strongly oppose” the health care legislation, only 25 percent “strongly favor” it.

The other notion is that Brown won only because people are frustrated. President Obama declared that “the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept [him] into office.” People are “angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.”

See, it’s all Bush-​legacy stuff, not anything Obama and the Democrats have been doing. 

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

Not everyone’s wearing blinders. Soon after Brown won, Democratic Senator Jim Webb said the election had been a referendum on both health care legislation and “the integrity of the government process.” He urged fellow Democrats not to try ramming Obamacare through before Brown could be seated. 

Hmmm. Listening to the voters. Good idea, Jim. 

And it’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Disaster Economics 101

Could House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have spilled the beans, laid bare her party’s vision of economic growth in one offhand utterance?

A terrible tragedy in impoverished Haiti. An earthquake. The scope of the damage staggers the imagination … and spurs outpourings of charitable aid from America, and across the globe.

And this is where Mrs. Pelosi chimes in. As if she had never heard of the Broken Window Fallacy, she just blurted it out, hazarding that Haiti “can leap-​frog over its past challenges, economically, politically, and demographically in terms of the rich and the poor and the rest there, and have a new — just a new, fresh start.”

Over 70,000 dead, Haiti in ruins, and she’s talking about hope for a “real boom economy.” 

Now, I know, politicians like to spend money. They think it does a lot of good — though in Haiti’s case, the billions spent, previously, have sure fizzled. But Pelosi isn’t just arguing that the aid is going to remake an impoverished country. She thinks that scurrying about rebuilding is a net positive. 

If you wonder why politicians so like economic booms, even the most artificial ones, look no further. They cannot distinguish between real progress and the frenzy of making up for disaster.

Perhaps that’s why they are so nonchalant about the disasters their own taxes and regulations so often cause. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

No More Speech Rationing

Advocates of campaign finance regulation, what George Will calls “speech rationing,” say letting corporations — including non-​profit corporations — spend unlimited money on political speech corrupts democracy.

Actually, muzzling speech is what corrupts democracy and the point of it: i.e., to protect our freedoms, including freedom of speech.

Protecting these freedoms is a vital political good, even if some speech is deplorable. 

The recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. FEC, dramatically strikes down unconstitutional limits on electioneering by businesses and non-​profits. But it leaves intact unconstitutional limits on their direct contributions to campaigns.

It also doesn’t touch requirements forcing campaign donors to disclose personal information. In his partial dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas pointed to how California donors giving more than $100 must reveal their names and addresses, info then publicized on the Internet. Supporters of a recent controversial ballot proposition were subjected to intimidation and property damage as a result.

The disclosure laws have spawned what Justice Thomas calls “a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-​empt citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights.” 

Thomas is right. And campaign finance regulation should be tossed out root and branch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

Greater Eloquence

Last week, two major speeches caught our attention.

Barack Obama wagged his finger at the Supreme Court and orated in front of Congress. He said the state of the union is sound.

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave the other big speech, presenting the new iPad, a portable device that accesses the Web, allows users niftily to buy and read e‑books, and much more. 

Which speech will usher in real change? 

Both have their critics. Many people no longer trust Obama, whether he’s pushing more government or a freeze. And many folks second-​guess Apple’s newest project, despite Jobs’s spectacular success record. 

For my part, I don’t buy Obama’s agenda. But I probably won’t buy an iPad, either. I tend to regard even the best new tech breakthroughs as just more vacuum cleaners. They really do suck … one’s time, anyway.

But to succeed, Apple doesn’t need my excitement. Just enough from others. 

Early in each of Apple’s revolutions, it was hard to prophesy success, with certainty. 

The neat thing about a possible neo-​Gutenberg Age of tablets, e‑books and virtual libraries is that I will still be able to read a normal book. One the other hand, if Obama gets his way, his policies will, willy nilly, crowd out better ones.

Still, it’s heartening to realize that to most of us the eloquence of a revolutionary thing means more, now, than the eloquence of any politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Who Killed Disco?

The age of the glittery mirror ball and loud, simple dance music is over. 

According to Ian Schrager, as recorded in Vanity Fair’s recent oral history of disco, it “wasn’t AIDS that made the nightclub business difficult. Government regulations did it in.”

Schrager and his partner set up their first nightclub, in Queens, for $27,000. The more famous Studio 54 — or is that “infamous”? — went up for $400,000.

“Now,” says Schrager, a major real estate developer, “with all the regulations, fire codes, sprinkler requirements, neighborhood issues, community planning boards … before you even put on the first coat of paint, you’re into it for over a million dollars. What it’s done is disenfranchise young people.”

And it’s not just disco that’s suffered. It’s worth remembering one sad side effect of all the red tape cities and states put up to new enterprises. It leaves the private sector desperate to focus on the surest forms of wealth generation, less able to serve niche markets. Like discos.

Nowadays, to establish and run non-​school,  non-​work activities for young people, volunteers organize community events, write grant applications and hold out their hats. This crowds out funding for needier, worthier charities, and litters our towns with poorly run government-​funded efforts. 

Personally, I don’t like disco — but could it be that things were better when entrepreneurs like Schrager set the stage? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.