Author: Redactor

Categories
Common Sense

What Would Dixon Do?

Maybe it’s just me … and all other normal people. But I’m more worried about policemen who abuse authority than those too “culturally insensitive” in their cheerful greetings.

Yes, that’s the latest crisis: Bobbies who say “Good evenin’ all” as they walk the beat.

Or so says a police manual published in the English county of Warwickshire. The manual claims that this greeting is culturally confusing. Even if the beloved Dixon of Dixon of Dock Green, Britain’s long-​running answer to The Andy Griffith Show, always opened with just those genial words.

A police spokesman explains that “‘afternoon’ and ‘evening’ are somewhat subjective in meaning.… In many cultures the term evening is linked to time of day when people have their main meal of the day.”

Someone’s gotta respond to this kind of concocted quandary, and a woman named Marie Clair of a group called the Plain English Campaign has taken on the chore. She asks: “Is anyone really going to be confused by [the word] ‘evening’? And if you can’t say what a lovely afternoon it is, what are you meant to say — what a lovely 3 PM?”

Other British agencies are targeting harmless words like “child” and “youngster.”

So, crime may be raging in the sceptered isle, but at least the bureaucratic monitors of politesse are bravely battling “insensitive” clarity and good will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom

Tough Medicine, Tough Luck

Don’t get sick in Union, Missouri. Not if you need Sudafed in a hurry.

Union is the second city in the nation to require a prescription for sales of medicine containing pseudoephedrine. This is an active ingredient in Sudafed, a drug that good-​hearted and responsible people might take to relieve nasal congestion.

However, pseudoephedrine can also be used to make methamphetamine, a very popular and very strong (and very illegal) psychoactive drug.

The reasoning seems to be that if something used in a good thing can also be used in a bad thing, you can’t trust people to use the good thing without erecting blocks to said usage. 

If applied consistently, such a regulatory principle would mean you’d have to get a prescription for 80 percent of the stuff in your home. Did you know that if you gargle with detergent, it can be injurious to your health? No wonder you need a doctor’s prescription.

Over at the Show-​Me Institute’s blog, Sarah Brodsky notes that when sufferers have no good alternative to Sudafed, they must call in sick, “find time to go to the doctor’s office … or go to work unmedicated.” She adds that unmedicated allergy sufferers aren’t exactly at their best.

But hey. The important thing is politicians pretending to do good by making it harder for us to do good for ourselves. Right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

When Your Bond Is Your Bond

Remember the Alliance for Bonded Term Limits?

I talked about the group last summer, when ABTL was little more than an idea. They were looking for candidates who would not only vow to limit their terms in office, but also agree to forfeit a big chunk of their assets if they break their word.

Sounds like a good idea — some vote-​getters are quite skilled at sounding honest and sincere and rock-​solid about principles they couldn’t care less about. Let them put their money where their mouths are if they’re truly serious about limiting their tenure in office.

And now someone has done just that: Will Breazeale, a North Carolina Republican. He’s seeking votes in next year’s election, hoping to represent the state’s seventh congressional district. In October, Mr. Breazeale formally executed a bond for $250,000 in a ceremony before the Board of Elections Office in New Hanover. If he tries to serve more than three consecutive terms, the money goes to charity.

At his website, Breazeale tells voters, “When I say that I will only serve three terms as your Congressman, I mean it; and I hope this promissory note will make my intentions clear.” 

Breazeale is the first candidate in the country to commit himself to limiting his own terms in office with a bonded pledge. Let us hope he’s the first of many.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Gross Jobs

The president says he’s creating jobs. I’m skeptical. I guess there are some things government can do to ensure that jobs get created, out there in the bill-​paying, profit-​making world. But these do not include spending trillions of borrowed money.

And neither do they include simply giving more money to state and local governments.

The truth about Obama’s much-​ballyhooed job creation is that more than half of his alleged new jobs turn out to be government jobs.

Government jobs don’t count, Mr. President. 

Remember, many things governments do actually drain us. Jobs in the marketplace, on the other hand, serve real consumer demand, make us all better off. They also help pay the taxes for those government jobs. Employing more people in government means needing more real jobs to pay for the government ones.

And how much work do politicians cause us to engage in just to unbury ourselves from their silly, wealth-​extracting regulations? I know, I know: Every time they add on some new complication to the tax code, jobs emerge in the accounting and tax-​consulting industry. But this doesn’t exactly make us better off, does it? Not on net.

This lesson applies generally. Here’s the bottom line. Government can borrow and tax to spend to create “gross jobs.” Sure. But on net, after balancing the collective books, we’re not better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies too much government

Tea Parties Still Going Strong

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a hulking health care bill bulging with burdensome new taxes and mandates. We can probably thank many well-​attended Tea Party protests around the country that the vote was as narrow as it was, 220 – 215, mostly along party lines. Now it goes, weakly, to the Senate.

The New York Times says the legislation “would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties — an approach Republicans compared to government oppression.” Gee, I hope Republicans said such laws would be an example of oppression, not merely sorta like oppression.

All but one Republican and 39 Democrats voted No to the monstrosity. Maybe a few Democrats get the message that taxpayers are mad as heck and aren’t going to take it any more.

I like how the Cincinnati Tea Party activists are delivering this message. According to a participant’s report at InstaPundit, the group recently “organized an unprecedented four-​day ‘We Surround Him’ demonstration” to show one Ohio congressman their commitment to liberty. For the first few days, the protestors strategically surrounded Congressman Steve Driehaus’s district to convey their message to voters.

Then they surrounded the congressman himself, stationing themselves around his office building. The protesters invited Driehaus to address them on the health care question, but he couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps he can be compared to a dead duck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency responsibility

What Would Confucius Say?

House Resolution 784, proposed to honor the twenty-​five-​hundred-​sixtieth anniversary of the birth of Confucius, received a No vote from Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake.

Why?

Honorable Flake say ‘He who spends time passing trivial legislation may find himself out of time to read healthcare bill.’

He has a point, and it’s worth than a fortune-​cookie presentation.

I am pretty sure Master K’ung-tzu, whom we call Confucius, would side with Flake. It is more important actually to do good deeds than honor the ancient wisdom of a foreign culture, or its chief exemplar.

It’s not bad to honor such an ancient one as Master Kung. But if everything else you do rubs against the Confucian grain, what does that say?

Take just one issue. Congress continues to obsess about executive salaries, and in effect has given the current administration the green light to fix salaries.

But as economist Arnold Kling has noticed, this is all a distraction. ‘The substantive issue is the extent to which [recent market] losses were caused by political actions and the extent to which they are concentrated at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.… Given the large role of Freddie and Fannie, it makes sense for politicians to create as large a diversion as possible. Hence, the brouhaha over bonuses at bailed-​out banks.’

Very un-​Confucian, such shifting of blame.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.