Author: Redactor

It takes a network of restaurants to feed the Senate, badly.

In 44 years, the dining hall and mini-​chain of cafeterias and coffee shops have been profitable only seven. This year the operation will run in the red to the tune of $2 million.

And come lunchtime, folks working in the Senate regularly run over to the House to eat. One critic says Senate victuals are “so bad that the … House ‘Taco Salad Wednesday’ trumps any type of entree they have to offer.”

In the House, though, the cafeterias have been privately run for decades. House staffers never flee to the Senate at lunchtime.

Solution? Privatize the Senate restaurants as well. Senator Dianne Feinstein just pushed through legislation to do that. She doesn’t think “taxpayers should be subsidizing something that doesn’t need to be.” She notes that current restaurant management never even bothers trying to break even, knowing their deficits will be covered.

Feinstein has opponents. Another Democrat, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, says it’s hypocritical for his colleagues to condemn privatization of workers generally, but then “privatize the workers here in the Senate and leave them out on their own.”

So, what should we do, Senator? Communize the whole economy so no responsible adult is ever “out on his own”?

Menendez is right about the contradiction, but not about how to resolve it. Amtrak? The post office? Both should be out on their own. Along with Senate food service.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Unemployment went up in May. Why?

Well, note the two sectors where unemployment went up the most: teens and African-Americans.

Teenagers, as schools let out for summer, tend to change jobs and seek new ones, en masse. But that’s seasonal, and the figures for unemployment rates already adjust for that.

So why did teen unemployment increase by 3.3 percent, and for blacks unemployment go up 1.1 percent?

Steve Horwitz, a St Lawrence University economist, points out that last summer politicians in Washington pounded their chests about how good they were and raised the national minimum wage. Trouble is, minimum wage laws don’t increase skills. Or productivity. All they do is prohibit employers from paying below a certain rate, currently $5.85 an hour. In late July that shoots higher.

So employers become pickier. Increase the amount they must pay and they will naturally try to find every way they can to increase the productivity of those employees affected by the new minimum.

They tend to fire (or not hire) inexperienced workers, like teenagers, and those who have invested the least in their own skillset — historically, in America, that amounts to a statistically large percentage of African Americans.

“With a sluggish economy,” Horwitz writes, “it certainly seems possible that the higher minimum wage is discouraging employers from hiring lower-​skill workers …”

Which suggests our politicians are also, if not low-​skilled, low-wisdomed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Democrats thump their chests. Congress just passed a budget … in an election year. For the previous four election cycles, that hasn’t happened.

But, since the budget crossed the $3 trillion mark for the first time ever, let’s choke our huzzahs. The federal government is spending us — and especially our children — into ruin.

The Iraq War is incredibly expensive, but spending for other items has shot up, too. Senator Obama says he’ll withdraw our troops, but doesn’t say he’ll do it in his first term. Budget-​wise that doesn’t even matter. Obama has already said he’ll simply spend the money now spent on the war on other federal programs.

It gets worse. Sheila Weinberg, head of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, tells USA Today that “We’re running deficits in the trillions of dollars, not the hundreds of billions we’re being told.”

The official deficit last year was $162 billion. But government accounting is, well, crooked. It ignores huge liabilities like Social Security, Medicare, pensions for government workers, VA benefits. Use proper accounting standards and the deficit comes to a whopping $2.5 trillion.

Our national debt is already $57.3 trillion, when federal entitlements are factored in. With local and state government liabilities, the total is nearly $62 trillion, more than half a million per household.

Still, the Democrats running Congress say they’ll have a budget surplus by 2012. How? Well, through massive tax increases … which, speaking to other crowds, they promise won’t happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

I received an announcement from Governor Sanford of South Carolina. The odd thing is that I could read the whole document verbatim and you couldn’t tell the governor’s thoughts from mine. I’m in complete agreement.

With what?

Well, the new bill he signed, H.3803. It removes the legal requirement for shampooers to receive the same state-​mandated 1,500 hours of training that cosmetologists receive.

Unfortunately, the bill does nothing to address the fact that state law requires 1,500 hours of training to be a cosmetologist — almost four times the amount of state-​required training to become a police officer — and just one of a number of examples of overregulation by state government that Governor Sanford highlighted during the news conference.

There. I’ve just cribbed more than a paragraph from Governor Sanford.

And no, governor, your check is not in the mail.

The truth about South Carolina is that it is an amazingly over-​regulated state. It makes no sense to demand cosmetologists be more schooled in their art than police. The worst that could happen from a bad cosmetologist? A bad hair-​do. Lice. The worst from a police officer? You could be shot in the head.

Sanford said such regulation “is more about protecting the profits of people in a particular industry rather than protecting the consumer.”

In most cases, he said. The other cases?

Those regulations are “Just plain silly.”

Bingo.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

As fuel prices rise, a few things become obvious:

• We begin to conserve more;
• Many industrious folks look for energy alternatives;
• And many politically-​minded folk hector us about using less of some type of fuels, more of another.

How useful is this third category? Well, they are the ones driving laws and subsidies and such. And you’d think those of this type, those in power who praise conservation would also encourage it.

But regulators are often a lot more worried about, you know, regulating things.

An example came to light recently out in California. It seems that instead of or in addition to gasoline, a mechanic out there has been using a fuel made from used restaurant vegetable oil for his vehicles. When the government found out, did they slap him with a medal for his clever conservation? Nah. Slapped him with fines. And taxes. License requirements. Reporting requirements.

So here you have a guy who has reduced his reliance on foreign oil, who has reduced waste by recycling, of all things, grease. And the response of environmentally concerned bureaucrats is to slap him silly. Fling a regulatory net at him. Make his life harder.

So please, people. If you’ve figured out a new way to save money and energy, do it in the dark, okay? And swear others to secrecy when you spread the word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.