Author: Redactor

We want to know what our government is up to.

If officials do bad things or just extremely clumsy money-​wasting things, we need to know. Then we can try to do something about it. It’s called oversight.

Oversight requires transparency. If officials hide their activities it gets difficult to learn what they’re up to. I don’t say we should be told secrets the public unveiling of which would compromise our national security. But almost everything else is fair game.

Okay, I hear everybody nodding furiously. But government officials themselves aren’t always so agreeable. An example is Diane Oberquell, a commissioner in Thurston County in Washington. Last fall, Washington state auditors conducted a government performance audit to see how responsive local officials are to requests for public records.

According to the newspaper The Olympian, this Commissioner Oberquell — I guess it’s a coincidence that her name sorta rhymes with “overkill” — this Oberquell person went “ballistic” when she found out about the audit. Claimed it was an uncalled for “sting” operation.

Hey, if that’s what it was, so be it. Let’s have more of these sting operations.

The irony is that a draft report of the audit has just been released, and it seems Thurston County got an okay assessment. Not the best, not the worst. Middling. So why all the defensiveness?

Hmmm … seems mighty suspicious to me. Time for another audit?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Cato Institute has announced the recipient of the 2008 Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty. The $500,000 prize is awarded every other year “to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom.”

This year’s winner is a 23-​year-​old Venezuelan law student named Yon Goicoechea. Yon leads the pro-​democracy student movement that played a crucial role in stopping strong man Hugo Chavez from expanding his dictatorial control through a December 2007 plebiscite.

Earlier, in May of that year, the Venezuelan government had ordered the shutdown of the country’s oldest private television station. Since then, and despite death threats and other intimidation, Yon has organized dozens of mass protests against Chavez’s assault on individual liberties.

Most observers thought Chavez would succeed in dealing the final death blows to the rule of law. Just before the plebiscite, Yon was able to appear on national television to cheer on the troops. After the question was defeated, he declared that the result was a “victory of the Venezuelan people that today defended their freedoms.…”

The Milton Friedman Prize has been awarded to intellectuals and even a country president. This is the first time it has been awarded to a political activist, and to someone so young. Cato President Ed Crane says he hopes the prize will further Yon’s “non-​violent advocacy for basic freedoms in an increasingly militaristic and anti-​democratic Venezuela.” Amen to that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Is the fire gone?

Let me quote the first sentence of an article from South Dakota, the Argus Leader: “An effort to end term limits on state lawmakers in South Dakota fits with a trend nationwide that suggests the fire might have left the movement.”

Okay, so … there was passion, once, for term limits. The fire raged. Now the fire has perhaps sputtered out. Slipped out the back, Jack … maybe. Taken the 3:10 to Yuma … possibly.

It’s okay for a journalist to be uncertain of a conclusion — even a lead-​sentence conclusion — if he can report at least some evidence for it. So what evidence was offered in the article?

The first bit, obviously, is this “effort to end term limits” in South Dakota. So, what’s the deal? Spontaneous uprising by the people? Naw, just the same old rearguard action by incumbent politicians and special-​interest allies. There’s still widespread popular support in South Dakota for term limits. Nothing new on either count.

The reporter also says fewer states are enacting legislative term limits these days. True. But that’s got more to do with institutional blockages than any slump in popular support. In 26 states, voters have no power to pass statewide initiatives. And where they have it, politicians are trying to hobble that process.

Meanwhile, voters continue to support term limits whenever they can, and to rebuff efforts to scuttle them.

So the fire isn’t gone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

What’s the right metaphor for the endlessly complicated assemblage of porkbarrel stuffed into federal spending bills?

Is it a Rubik’s cube, something to be finally and fully revealed when you figure out how to untangle all the interlocking layers? Or more of a matryoshka doll, the nested Russian figurine that reveals yet another copy of itself every time you open it up and think you’ve finally reached the last?

A new book by Winslow Wheeler details an approach to national defense many voters may not know about. Nor even students of porkbarrel. It’s called The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security. And it’s all about how congressmen scrub defense-​related budget items to make room for pork.

Wheeler spent thirty years as a congressional staffer working on national security issues, on both sides of the aisle. He learned that lawmakers are not simply using the opportunity of a spending bill to lard it with unrelated spending. They’re actually cutting defense expenditures on training and equipment and the like. A kind of sausage-​making that’s simple in essence, complicated in ugly political detail. In one chapter, Wheeler recounts how $2.4 billion in actual defense-​related items was chopped from a bill while $4 billion in pork was added.

Military spending can also be ill-​conceived. But obviously, it should be advocated or opposed on the merits. Not arbitrarily funneled into wasteful favor-trading.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Honest people with income and bills know that it’s possible to cut spending.

We don’t always do it when we should. Sometimes we’re undisciplined. But we suffer costs for that lack of discipline. We suffer them directly—as individuals and as families.

In the world of government expenditure, however, it’s always other people’s money being spent or misspent. And the people willing to pick our pockets don’t suffer any direct costs from squandering the funds.

From this lack of incentive or scruple they derive a theory —  that there’s no way to cut government spending. They’d prefer not to, it’s a bother. So it’s mission impossible.

California lawmakers love this theory. Seems tax revenues are declining of late. Something about a weak economy. State Senator Denise Ducheny advises voters that the state’s budget deficit has now climbed to $14 billion. Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez says: “The problem is so severe that we don’t have a choice but to raise taxes.”

Right. No choice but to weaken the economy even further. Make it even harder for people to pay their bills.

We’re hearing similar assertions in response to any tax-​cut proposals being made in the presidential campaign. Impossible to shave more than a buck or two from federal spending. So how can we cut taxes? What a quandary.

According to my own theory, it’s easy to cut government spending. Use scissors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NBC News recently reported what Rush Limbaugh and many others have been saying for some time now: The push for biofuels — in particular, ethanol — is a major factor in higher food prices. These high prices hurt not only Americans, but consumers worldwide.

This year roughly one-​forth of the U.S. corn crop will go to make biofuels. Next year? As much as one-​third will go for fuel, not food.

The impact is huge. Corn, in part because of other government subsidy and regulation, has become an ever-​bigger part of the food supply. When prices go up, it’s trouble — especially for the poor.

But it’s worse than that. Ethanol is a big scam. Tough talk? No, just the facts, ma’am. Ethanol has been sold as a way to energy independence, as environmentally friendly, and as good for our economy. Three strikes.

Ethanol doesn’t have much effect on foreign oil because it initially substitutes for more expensive domestic oil. Moreover, most environmentalists now insist that producing ethanol is worse, not better for the environment.

And ethanol is not good for the economy. If it provided real economic benefits, its use wouldn’t have to be mandated, nor its production subsidized to the tune of $1 a gallon.

Soaking the taxpayers to wreck the environment and to increase hunger — with no gain in energy independence — well that just doesn’t make any sense.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.