This is, in its own way, quite charming, don’t you think?
What we wish a newly elected president would say.
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Author: Redactor
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December 20, Arthur Lee
On December 20, 1740, Arthur Lee — Revolutionary Era diplomat, spy, and Virginia delegate to the Continental Congress — was born. He practiced law in London from 1770 to 1776, where he wrote polemics against slavery and in defense of the American colonies’ resistance to the Townshend acts and other tyrannical British policies. He was brother to Richard Henry Lee and Francis Lightfoot Lee.
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Rent Too High?
Remember Jimmy McMillan? He’s “the rent is too damn high!” shouting, six-time New York City mayoral candidate with the, er — Rent is Too Damn High Party.
McMillan is at least partly right. It’s no mystery that rents are so high. Government policies are aimed at just that result.
In New York City, rent control discourages new supply as well as maintaining existing supplies — causing shortages leading to higher prices. In many cities, particularly in Blue political metropolises, zoning has pretty much the same effect.
Meanwhile, pumping subsidies into the demand side of the rental housing market doesn’t exactly decrease prices.
Last weekend, the Tyler Morning Telegraph offered up “Housing Choice Voucher program helps families,” reporting on 65-year-old Brinda Meier’s effort to land one of 500 “popular” Housing Choice Vouchers offered with grants of federal tax dollars distributed through Tyler’s Neighborhood Services Department. The voucher goes to help pay the rent.
That’s nice, of course, and no doubt why the program is popular. But the landlord actually cashes the voucher check. Moreover, to the extent these rent subsidies allow folks to afford higher rents, they in turn keep those rents higher — including for folks whose voucher numbers won’t come up in the “please Uncle Sam help pay my rent” lottery.
We discover that Meier, who lives on Social Security and food stamps, is preparing to move across town. She’s found a new place to rent, $200 cheaper than her current place — and in a better neighborhood. She tells the reporter that she’ll move without regard to whether she wins the rent subsidy.
So taxpayers may subsidize someone who doesn’t need it, serving only to keep rents too darn high.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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J. H. Levy
The ethical basis of Individualism is . . . the necessity of such coercion in order that freedom may be at the maximum — in order that personal rights, and the proprietary rights which arise out of them, may be, so far as practicable, sustained.
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December 19, Paine’s American Crisis
On December 19, 1776, Tom Paine published one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis. Exactly one year later, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
On December 19, 1828, Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828, a key moment in what became known as the Nullification Crisis.
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J. H. Levy
The flowing tide is with Socialism. But tides ebb as well as flow.
Earlier this week, Jeb Bush, former governor of the State of Florida, announced on Facebook that he is “exploring” a 2016 run for the Republican nomination for the presidency. I have mixed feelings, to say the least.
There’s the whole dynastic problem. Another Bush? Or, is Jeb the cost of finding a candidate to beat Hillary . . . who has her own dynastic baggage?
But the big story, here, is to watch the insiders scramble to keep out the outsiders.
The trouble with both Hillary and Jeb is that they are insiders. They represent where the leadership of both parties wants its representatives and front-men (and -women) to go: to the putative “center.”
By which they really mean: don’t disturb the bailout system in American finance or the Pentagon procurement system for the military-industrial complex.
While it might be fun to contemplate Bill Clinton as the First Gentleman, or pick at the two issues over which Gov. Bush seems not very conservative at all, the truth is that both have access to a lot of entrenched power and loose money. Both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton enjoy incumbent-like advantages.
If the near future does sport a Clinton-Bush battle for the presidency, we can be sure of only one thing: status quo vs. status quo.
Leaving the real work of reform to those of us at the grassroots, with state and local issues our preoccupation. As long as insiders occupy the White House, our choices will be limited.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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J. H. Levy
[H]ow impossible is democracy save when the sphere of government is very limited.
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December 18, Thanksgiving
On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.
Give New York Times reporter Robert Pear, or perhaps an editor, credit for a provocative headline: “In Final Spending Bill, Salty Food and Belching Cows Are Winners.” This to explain a $1.1 trillion dollar spending bill.
Where’s the money going?
Not to salty food or belching cows. The Times explains that, “like many of its predecessors,” the bill bulges with provisions “to satisfy special interests.” For example?
Pear quickly highlights how “ranchers were spared [from] having to report on pollution from manure,” schools from having to reduce salt or increase whole grain in their lunches, insurance companies from relinquishing tax breaks. These provisions, which incur no new spending, are lumped with one that does involve spending at taxpayer expense, a subsidy for promoting Nevada.
There’s something odd about this sampling of budgetary ingredients. Isn’t there a difference between being left alone and receiving a subsidy or other favor at the expense of others? Because that’s the kind of fundamental distinction blurred or obliterated when all budgetary things applying to particular groups are treated as “stuff to satisfy special interests.”
Politicians concoct zillions of ways to burden and bully people; proposed targets are, sure, “special interests” who may then beg for reprieves. But unlike the beneficiaries of specific subsidies or competitor-stomping regulations, we’ve all got a stake in not being harassed.
Protecting our lives and freedom is what government is properly for. And minding our own business is the opposite of interfering with somebody else’s.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.