Author: Redactor

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

Over 50 and for Freedom

Say you’re a senior citizen. You’re concerned about the rising costs of medical services, but are not ready to surrender your care to well-​meaning but naive advocates of ever-​greater government. What to do?

Many seniors belong to AARP, a kind of combination consumer group and political lobbyist association for people age 50 and over. Fifty seems kind of youngish to me to be a senior citi — ow! crick in my back! — but okay.

Members get discounts and also get AARP spokesmen pretending to represent them on political questions. AARP supports a big-​government overhaul of medical services. However, they’ve discovered that the issue is touchy. So they have taken pains to dispute President Obama’s recent claim that AARP endorses any particular bill.

Some AARP members fear that Medicare benefits are at risk. Other AARP members and former members just like their freedom.

Thank goodness AARP has competition. There’s a group called 60 Plus, and now a new outfit, the American Seniors Association, is offering a special deal to all seniors who submits a torn-​up AARP card with their application. 

ASA’s president, Stuart Barton, is blunt: “President Obama must think the American people are idiots.…” if he thinks they’ll buy “the idea that health care rationing, restrictions and regulations being debated in Congress will save money and result in better preventative medicine.”

You know what? I’m not even going to wait until I turn fifty. Sign me up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
tax policy

Re-​Kill the Death Tax

Next year, the federal death tax — otherwise known as the estate tax — will be phased out entirely. It will be gone. But it won’t stay gone.

This phase-​out was part of tax cuts Congress passed in 2001. The death of death taxes should have been permanent. After all, meeting the Grim Reaper is tough enough as it is. As you’re about to expire, do you really want to ponder how 55 percent of what should go to your heirs will be confiscated as soon as your coffin goes into the ground? It’s enough to make you want to skip dying altogether.

Unless Congress acts, come 2012 the death tax will pop back into life, as ravenous as it ever was at a full 55 percent. What will happen as the previous year draws to a close? In a Newsweek column archly entitled “Death, Republican Style,” Jacob Weisberg notes that rich elderly people will have an incentive to die by December 31, 2011. Their kids will have an incentive to “turn off respirators in time for the deadline.” Though morbid and sorta sordid, he has a point.

So what’s the solution? I mean, aside from vilifying the GOP for the political compromise leading to this end game? Weisberg is mute. But if his concern for the elderly is genuine, he could start by urging Congress’s Democratic majority to kill the death tax for good. Then we’d all want to live!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Stop Us Before We Kill Free Speech Again

The Supreme Court has yet another chance to refer to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. And follow it.

The case before the court, Citizens United versus FEC, has to do with how federal campaign finance laws and the regulations issued by the Federal Election Commission are violating freedom of speech.

Citizens United is a conservative non-​profit organization that produced a documentary critical of Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign last year. A D.C. court ruled that producing it with the help of corporate funding was a violation campaign finance law, specifically the McCain-​Feingold Act.

Eight former FEC commissioners have now filed an amicus brief in the case. They argue that the lower court’s decision violates the First Amendment — you know, the part about not making any law to abridge freedom of speech. One of the former commissioners, Hans von Spakovsky, explains in the Wall Street Journal that it is virtually impossible to know under the convoluted regulations exactly when one is allowed to engage in political speech and when one must shut up. Why not just let everyone exercise his First Amendment rights?

Spakovsky concludes that friends of campaign finance restrictions on speech have “lost sight of a basic truth: The answer to speech they disagree with is not to restrict that speech, but to answer it with more speech.”

That’s just — and this is — Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability government transparency

Cuz You Constituents Work for Me!

This summer, many congressmen held town-​hall meetings about health care and other hot political topics.

Sometimes they were not entirely statesmanlike. Clips of their more embarrassing moments now reside on YouTube. For instance, you can watch Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee chat on a cellphone while a constituent is asking her a question — taking rudeness to congressional levels.

Congressman Baron Hill was determined to avoid this sort of thing. He wasn’t going to be on YouTube in any “compromising position,” not him. So he actually tried to ban any videotaping of his event. I kid you not. The evidence is on, uh, YouTube:

Constituent: “ — why can’t I film this? Isn’t this my right?”

Hill: “Well, this is my town-​hall meeting, and I set the rules, and I’ve had these rules— 

“Let me repeat that one more time! This is my town-​hall meeting for you. And you’re not going to tell me how to run my congressional office! Now, the reasons why I don’t allow filming is because usually the films that are done end up on YouTube in a compromising position.”

Oh, those pesky constituents!

Anyway, sir, too late. The technology is out there. The genie won’t go back in the bottle. Every audience you ever face will include folks who can record your words. With that in mind, you might want to, uh, watch your words from here on out. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

If the President Says It

Is President Barack Obama trying to echo the paranoid days of the Clintons’ famous “vast right-​wing conspiracy” complaint? Obama says that those who oppose the Democrats’ medical reforms are “those who are profiting from the status quo.” Further, he says the opposition is “well-​financed.”

Great story, if true.

But the president won’t name names. When asked by Washington Examiner columnist Timothy Carney, the White House declined to name any individual, any group, any organization profiting in the industry now and actively supporting the opposition. Same for Obama’s revamped campaign outfit, Organizing for America. It’s now run by the Democratic National Committee. Carney asked folks there which nefarious profiteer funds against Obama, but they wouldn’t clarify a thing.

Carney went looking in the medical care industry, looking at the companies and organizations with the deepest pockets. Which ones are now spending millions to oppose Obama’s reforms? He found zip. Nada. Bubkes.

The big pharmaceuticals are on board with the Democrats, it turns out. So are the biggest insurance companies.

The president is just blowing smoke. The opponents of his medical industry reforms are not well-​financed. They are grassroots and widespread.

The big companies hope that the reforms will consolidate their market-​leading positions, protect them from competition. Most big government programs do just that.

The people, on the other hand, have the most to lose from more government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Privatize the Post Office!

Weeks ago, in the debate over whether to euthanize what’s left of freedom in American medicine, President Obama made a stunning concession about the so-​called “public option” being proposed. Hoping to assure attendees of a townhall meeting that private insurers would not be threatened by the public option, he said, “if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? … It’s the post office that’s always having problems.”

Yes. The post office. The “public option” in mail delivery: chronically in financial trouble; chronically over budget; chronically being bailed out by taxpayers. 

So, don’t worry, everybody! Government expansion into our medical delivery system will be just as lumbering and inefficient as the post office is in our mail and package delivery system. 

Er, good point, Mr. President.

Some might argue that under the proposed public option, direct private competition will in fact be allowed, whereas direct competition with stamped-​envelope postal delivery is not allowed. But, as many supporters have conceded in unguarded moments, the Democrats’ reform is intended to be a transition to a single-​payer system. Moreover, the medical reform bills pending in Congress are bulging with new mandates and price controls for private insurers that will hamper their ability to compete — something UPS and FedEx don’t have to contend with.

The president has done us a favor. He’s reminded us why we should privatize postal delivery.

Health care too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.