Author: Redactor

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Enough at Tea Time

On April 15, more than 2,000 Tea Parties were held across the country, many with thousands in attendance. These weren’t dainty luncheon ceremonies. They were protests, named after our revolutionary Boston Tea Party. 

In Washington, D.C., it rained like the dickens, but people still came out to say “Enough.” Regular folks sounded off. They work hard, and they’ve had enough of paying the bills for politicians and favored political interests.

Some big media personalities and major political figures showed up. Governor Rick Perry of Texas spoke at the Austin, Texas event. He’s called the federal government “oppressive.” In South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford told folks that “Real change begins in the hearts and minds of people who are willing to stand … against an ever-​encroaching government.”

Meanwhile, much of television news media behaved badly, trying to marginalize or even demonize the protests as “anti-​government.” CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen was particularly argumentative, suggesting to one guy that he should be grateful for the $50 billion President Obama was sending to his state.

When a woman protester accused Roesgen of slanted coverage, she asked the woman why she was there. “We’re here,” the woman responded, “because we are sick and tired of the government taking our money and spending it in ways that we have no say in. We have no say whatsoever.”

And that’s what has to change. The people must be heard. Not just on one day, but every day.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Banker of the Year

It takes guts and self-​confidence to buck a trend, especially to buck a boom. So most contrarians keep a low profile.

Meet Plano, Texas, banker Andy Beal. I read about him in the pages of Forbes magazine, which profiled this master contrarian in early April.

Beal has been buying toxic assets and broken-​down banks in big huge gulps. And he’s been doing it without the help of government. Forbes says that he “has purchased $800 million of loans from failed banks, probably more than anyone else.”

How? Well, back in 2004 he stopped making loans. He almost stopped banking. He cut back his hours. He had to lay off a lot of employees.

Why? He didn’t trust the market. He thought the binge of borrowing and lending utterly foolish.

Forbes relates that his behavior puzzled regulators, who were worried that he was over-capitalized! How could he resist the huge profits?

Well, Beal sure showed the regulators. And his competition. Today he’s buying assets for pennies on the dollar.

Beal believes the current crisis was caused, in huge honking part, by government. Now that government is giving failed bankers huge hunks of money, his reaction is twofold: 

1. He calls all the bailouts “crazy.”

2. He is taking the opportunity to make a fortune … without government help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

Rubbing Salt Into the Wound

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg finagled a way around the city’s two-​term limit on mayoral service, and is now running for a third term. 

As if to rub it in, he’s attacking our use of salt.

Bloomberg has simply declared that the city is starting a “nationwide” effort to pressure the food industry to decrease salt use.

Which is more audacious, making New Yorkers’ salt shakers the city’s business, or foisting this intrusion onto the rest of the country?

This would have been a strawman example — a reductio ad absurdum — a generation ago. Back then, when some of us objected to, say, regulation of cigarettes, arguing that next government would be regulating the salt on our French Fries, earnest nanny-​state proponents would sniff. No. They wouldn’t do anything that absurd. 

Today, Thomas R. Friedman, Bloomberg’s man at the city health department, claims that if restaurants followed the New York City government prescription, they would in effect “lower health care costs and prevent 150,000 premature deaths every year.”

Is he right? John Tierney, writing in The New York Times, asserts that this “prediction is based on an estimate based on extrapolations based on assumptions that have yet to be demonstrated despite a half-​century of efforts.”

Healthy or not, my salt intake is my business. And maybe my wife’s. Not New York City supreme ruler Michael Bloomberg’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
U.S. Constitution

Politics or the Constitution?

Americans living in the District of Columbia are taxed by the federal government, but not really represented. To address this, a bill now in Congress would grant DC’s single delegate the right to cast a vote. The Senate has approved the bill, but attached a provision on gun regulation to which many in the House object. So House leadership is still mulling over what to do.

Both chambers miss the bigger problem: DC is a territory and our Constitution clearly states that only states shall have full represention in Congress.

There are a number of ways around this. The residential areas of the District could become part of Maryland or Virginia, for instance. Or the Constitution could be amended.

But our current leaders prefer ignoring the Constitution entirely.

For example, Attorney General Eric Holder recently ignored and even refused to release a report from his own Office of Legal Counsel that found the legislation to be unconstitutional.

Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s non-​voting delegate, also pooh-​poohs the constitutional issue. “I don’t think members [of Congress] are in the least bit affected in their votes on the question of its constitutionality,” she says. “People vote their politics in the House and in the Senate.”

Sad but true. Our representatives take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but their real allegiance is to their own petty politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Exploring Recall in Wisconsin

You’ve heard of a campaign exploratory committee? 

Well, at recalldoyle​.com you can see a recall exploratory effort in full bloom. Not a candidate campaign exploration, but an effort to recall a sitting official.

The site is titled the “Doyle Recall Exploratory Portal,” and organizers of the  effort are serious about doing something about Wisconsin’s governor. The core of their argument is at the center of the page:

WHY RECALL DOYLE? Jim Doyle is the de facto CEO of a $30 billion dollar corporation we call the State of Wisconsin that is being rapidly run into the ground. The buck stops at the top.…

  • Record Deficits — 4th Largest in the USA
  • Massive Tax Increases Threaten Prosperity
  • Radical Agenda Drives Away Business, Kills Jobs

… An unprecedented fiscal crisis demands bold and immediate action to save Wisconsin from certain financial ruin. The longer we wait, the more damage will be done. The clock is ticking!

If you support the idea of citizens taking control, when politicians go out of control, you can’t help but admire the intent here. And I, for one, wish the effort luck.

I confess, I don’t know everything about Governor Doyle. But knowing, as I do, the general run of the political mill, I’d bet money that the folks at Recall Doyle are doing their state a great service. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Stevens, Justice, and Corruption

When Ted Stevens, former senator from Alaska, was convicted on seven felony counts of corruption, I stressed that what I knew about Stevens’s corruption was not what was debated in court but what happened, quite openly, in the U.S. Senate. 

Do you remember my verdict? Here’s what I said: “[I]f as many as five or six — or even all seven — of the counts against him are not upheld, his name will still appear dirty in my book, dirty from all the porkbarelling. Senator Ted Stevens is a horrifying example of much that is wrong in government.”

Stevens has always been proud of his porkmeistering, his attempts to transform independent-​minded Alaskans into our union’s biggest pork recipients.

Further, Stevens insisted upon his innocence of illegal corruption all through his trial. And in his appeal his lawyers made much of a whistle blower’s leaked information from the prosecution that the office did not fully disclose all the information from a chief witness. At that point, there was almost no possible recourse but to overturn the convictions. 

According to Eric Holder, top banana at the Department of Justice, there will be no second prosecution.

I still have no certainty about the DOJ’s case against Stevens. But I do have certainty about my case against Stevens’s politics of pork. 

One additional bit of certainty: Corruption is in plentiful supply among prosecutors, including in the U.S. Department of Justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.