Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets U.S. Constitution

Fighting for a Fair Shake

Ben Vargas wasn’t trying to be the odd man out when he chose to fight for what was right. That’s just how it happened. And he got clobbered for it.

Several years ago, Lieutenant Vargas was the only Hispanic among eighteen mostly white plaintiffs in a reverse discrimination case, Ricci v. DeStefano, just decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2003, 56 members of a New Haven, Connecticut, fire department passed a test for promotion. Fifteen of them were black or Hispanic. When city officials learned that only two of the 15 would be immediately eligible for promotion based on those scores, they threw out the results.

New Haven officials didn’t initially claim the test was unfair. They admitted fearing a lawsuit. But one should think twice — thrice, a thousand times — about acting unjustly in hopes of heading off injustice by others.

After Vargas — one of the two minority test-​takers who scored very well — joined a lawsuit against the city, he was shunned by many colleagues. Once even got punched in the face. But he tells the New York Times he has no regrets, considering the kind of world he wants his children to grow up in.

Ben Vargas says, “I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota.”

Funny, isn’t that what good parents, of all races and ethnicities, want for their children?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Thou Shalt Not Mess Up Health Care

Last year, in Arizona, a narrow defeat for Proposition 101, the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Initiative, didn’t leave its core ideas dead, or even zombie-like.

The measure’s defeat by a mere 8,111 votes didn’t seem insurmountable. After all, opponents of the measure had made hysterical claims against it, and the thinking among supporters quickly became: A little more education.

A few weeks ago, the Arizona legislature repackaged the measure’s basic ideas as the Arizona Health Insurance Reform Amendment and set it for a vote of the people next November.

The new measure accommodates some worries and criticism of the previous measure. But the core message remains. The first plank states that “a law or rule shall not compel, directly or indirectly, any person, employer or health care provider to participate in any health care system.” 

The second plank says that no one shall be fined for paying — or accepting payments — for otherwise lawful health care services.

There are a lot of politicians out there, right now, who insist that “fixing health care” means “increasing government,” including pushing and shoving people into plans, or regulating the manner of payments so to encourage the use of government plans.

If this Arizona measure passes, or similar measures in other states do, a new idea will enter the national health care debate: Freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption local leaders

As Corrupt as the Feds

We are so shocked by the skyrocketing spending and taxes at the federal level — and by mammoth expansion of government control of our lives being attempted at the federal level — and by the nonstop huffing hubris of federally fumbling politicians eager to solve problems caused by past policy errors by repeating and multiplying and magnifying those errors.

So flummoxed by the insanity in DC, that, well, I fear we give short shrift to state- and local-​level insanity.

Yet there is more than enough lunacy to go around. And not just in the Northeast or California. For example, also in Wisconsin.

Just like the national players, Wisconsin lawmakers doubtless wish that their maleficent missteps could be perpetrated under cover of fog. Too bad for them that the MacIver Institute for Public Policy is on the case, providing detailed and often instant updates on every sordid twist and turn of the state’s budget process.

Bad-​faith secret dealing, back-​room scheming. Hectic hikes in income, capital gains, property, cigarette and phone taxes — just to make sure bad economic times grow worse. Huge new government debt, despite Wisconsin’s balanced budget requirement. And on and on.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of the John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy, though, Wisconsin politicians are getting the credit they deserve. Their conduct is just as crummy as that of the big boys in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Banana Republic of New York

On June 8, New York state senate Republicans and two renegade Democrats acted to regain GOP control of the chamber.

Democrats tried various maneuvers to undo the coup. One was to lock the doors of the senate building.

Governor David Paterson bravely called the GOP’s re-​ascendancy an “unnecessary distraction to government dressed up in the cloak, falsely, of reform.” One supposedly bogus reform would have imposed an eight-​year term limit on committee chairman, a six-​year term limit on leadership.

Anyway, then one of the Democrats who had jumped ship to the elephant caucus decided to canter back to the donkey side of the aisle. So now there’s a 31-​to-​31 split in the senate, with no lieutenant governor in place to break any deadlocks. Paterson used to be the lieutenant governor but became governor when the previous governor resigned in disgrace after scandalizing the republic across state lines.

So, now, whenever the lawmakers bother to show up for work, the Democrats hold their own legislative session independently of the independent legislative sessions of the Republicans. No quorums there. Believe it or not, all this is an improvement over how things are normally run in Albany.

Meanwhile, recent polls say two thirds of New York voters think the state is headed in the wrong direction. And 80 percent want term limits. Huh? How can this be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption term limits

Seven Hundred Terms in a Row?

Ya gotta love Lou Lang. Any public servant who can manage to exude vast indifference to the public’s disgust with endless political corruption has something going for him. 

As a state representative in Illinois, he has had a front-​row seat to the constant corruption sordidly and melodramatically symbolized by former Governor Rod Blagojevich’s taped attempt to sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat.

Like the disgraced governor, Lang favors brazen cynicism in the face of criticism.

After Blago got the boot, the new governor, Pat Quinn, set up an Illinois Reform Commission to study the corruption problem. The reform proposals ranged from the dubious to the … modest.

For example, the commission proposed term limits to combat political monopoly. But it proposed term limits not for all lawmakers, only for legislative leaders. And the cap? A rather generous 14 years. 

Illinois voters won’t get even that, let alone a better deal, until they have the right of citizen initiative and can impose term limits themselves.

Yet even a 14-​year maximum is way too stringent for the likes of Mr. Lang. After the commission issued its report, Lang rushed to assure the beleaguered populace of Illinois that if House members “want to elect Mike Madigan for 700 terms in a row, that’s our business.” Yeah! Get lost, citizens! Mind your own business!

Gotta love him.

Okay, maybe not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Treason and Terrorism and You

All tyrants love unlimited government. But do all advocates of unlimited government love tyranny? Well, recently major fans of big government sure have been blurting out their hysterical hatred for normal democratic disagreement.

Take Paul Krugman, New York Times rah-​rah boy for humungoid government. He recently referred to opposition to the cap-​and-​trade bill as “treason against the planet.” 

Treason, really?

Since the consequences of that policy for the food supply will almost certainly further raise worldwide prices, economist David D. Friedman asked whether Krugman himself isn’t committing some kind of murder: Because of policies Krugman pushes, thousands more will likely starve to death.

But if you think Krugman’s rhetoric is overblown, get a load of California Assembly Speaker Karen Bass. In an interview in late June, she objected to Californians who influenced their Republican representatives to vote against “revenue” — her word for tax increases. She said, and I quote: “I don’t know why we allow that kind of terrorism to exist. I guess it’s about free speech, but it’s extremely unfair.”

Yes, the Democrats’ leader in the California Assembly referred to that special feature of representative democracy commonly known as “free speech” as “terrorism.”

Krugman and Bass need an education on basic terms. I guess it’s up to us to provide it.

If this be treason — or terrorism — make the most of it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.