Category: too much government

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Chimp-o-nomics

Government is almost defined by one kind of business it runs: The last-use-of-force business, such as police and courts and military. Since we don’t pay for these services in fees, contracts, and sales — we’re taxed, instead — we don’t usually call them “businesses.”

But governments have gotten involved in a lot of other more business-like businesses: Roads, libraries, mass transit, waterworks, garbage collection, etc. Of course, government being government, it supports most such enterprises largely with taxes, not fees for services rendered.

Yet there are exceptions.

Take Jackson, Michigan. It runs a number of swimming pools, and charges for usage. The pools lose money. Which taxpayers subsidize. Typical. But Jackson also runs a putt-putt golf course. And it makes money at that business.

All to the good? A government business that actually comes out in the black — what a deal!

Well, Bill Chrysan, proprietor of Putterz Golf & Games in nearby Ypsilanti, doesn’t think so. He notes that the government golf course doesn’t pay property taxes and has its maintenance done at taxpayer expense. With advantages like this, it’s hard to compete against — and it hardly pays its way like other businesses.

For that and other reasons, this one putt-putt course provides no model. Governments shouldn’t run businesses, says James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, for the “[s]ame reason that chimps shouldn’t drive. Just because some can do it doesn’t mean that it should be encouraged.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Perfect Safety?

Maybe the most interesting thing to come out, so far, from the “porno-scanner”/TSA-gropings controversy is this statement by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: “You can’t provide perfect safety.”

Going on, Rep. Paul denied that it is “the government’s role . . . to provide safety.”

It isn’t; it’s to protect our rights. But here we’re being told that we go to the gate, we buy a ticket, and you’ve lost your right, you’ve sacrificed your right. Where did that come from? It’s about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Rep. Paul has introduced legislation that would prohibit physical contact between TSA screeners and would-be airline passengers, and would prohibit taking images of people’s bodies using X-Rays, millimeter rays, etc..

Ron Paul sees all these new, invasive screening techniques as based on the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure airline invulnerability to terrorism, not the airlines’. He suggests putting the onus back on the airlines, who would likely be more respectful of their customers than the TSA is.

9/11/01 caught the airlines and the government with their pants down. Maybe the best solution to this security lapse isn’t to institute intrusions into our pants, or the kind of X-Ray vision scanners that boys used to be enticed with in the back of comic books.

There must be better ways.

Alas, government probably won’t find them. Which is why Ron Paul is on to something: It should be up to private enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Dare to Cut

If the Tea Party’s newly elected spokespeople really want to prove they are serious, they must dare to gore a familiar ox.

The best place to start? Pentagon budgets.

It’s not just me saying that. Just as Congress overspends domestically, it overspends militarily, primarily by what Cato Institute’s Downsizing the Federal Government website defines as “overreach”:

We would improve the nation’s security by adopting a more restrained and defensive strategy. We should cut the number of military personnel and reduce overseas deployments to save money and relieve burdens on military families.

But Cato’s a think tank. What say actual, elected Tea Party politicians?

Well, Sen. Tom Coburn recently wrote that “Taking defense spending off the table is indefensible.” Further, Senator Elect Rand Paul has called for a debate in the Senate and House over the war in Afghanistan. He started off by saying that Congress had proved lax in its duty to declare war, and then argued that the debate ten years ago on the Afghanistan intervention was not enough for the war’s continuation. He brought up a list of sensible concerns that require careful discussion.

Tea Party politicians should also see the political value of strategic disengagement from any number of worldwide hotspots. Or funding sinkholes, like Europe. Being the world’s policeman costs us dearly, in more ways than one. Were Republicans to rethink their traditional No Pentagon Budget Left Behind approach, Democrats might have less standing to oppose the domestic cuts that must be made.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

The Costs of Airport Security

John Tyner, a 31-year-old man hailing from Oceanside, California, not only declined San Diego International Airport’s kind offer of a full-body scan via privacy-invading machine, he also declined a full-body groping via privacy-invading human.

Unfortunately for TSA (who would like to make it unfortunate for Tyner as well) he happened to record his interactions with security personnel on a cell phone. Now TSA honchos are growling that they may well follow through with a threat to fine him $10,000 for not submitting to either procedure — inasmuch as it’s now a crime to care about one’s personal dignity.

The penalty has gone up, though, since TSA threatened Tyner at the airport. It’s now $11,000.

Five or ten dollars for refusing an obnoxious groping, I understand. Or a nickel. Better? A penny. But thousands of dollars?

I’m sure other aspiring passengers who initially cooperated with such intrusions also decided mid-procedure that things were getting too invasive for comfort and that retreat was the better part of valor. I doubt that TSA has sought to extract $10,000+ from each recalcitrant.

But it seems Tyner’s conduct is especially heinous. First, he balked at unreasonable search of his person; second, he blatantly exercised his First Amendment rights by shockingly sharing evidence and testimony about what happened.

If the TSA doesn’t do something, fast, more and more people might act as if their constitutional rights still apply.

Do they?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The People Speak

Mainstream media often become so fixed on the major players in Washington, DC, that journalists miss the most telling democratic action: At state and local levels, regarding initiatives.

Nicely, there are exceptions. An editorial, last week, in The Washington Times was subtitled “Ballot initiatives advance a limited government agenda in the heartland,” and explained how “voters showed their displeasure with the country’s direction with their votes” . . . on particular ballot measures.

The editorial lists numerous important initiatives around the country:

  • Oklahoma’s and Arizona’s nullification of Obamacare provisions (and Colorado’s failure to do so);
  • Nevada citizens killing “a sneaky amendment designed to undermine protections from eminent-domain seizures for private gain”;
  • Several states blocking our president’s union-vote rule revisions, known as card-check;
  • Louisiana “stopped public officials from voting themselves a salary boost until after they stand for re-election”;
  • Washington citizens overturned sales taxes on foodstuffs that left-leaning folk regard as sinful, such as soda pop and candy and the like.

Washington State sported an even weightier initiative, one famously sponsored by Bill Gates’s dad. TV ads featured Bill Sr. getting dunked. It wasn’t a baptism. He was pitching for a “soak the rich” income tax in the state. The ad didn’t make a great deal of sense, and Evergreen State voters nixed the income tax once again.

The Times editorial ends advising Democrats that they need “to listen to what the public has to say.” But, obviously, Republicans need to listen, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Hair-razing!

“Hands up! Drop the clippers! Step awayyyyyyy from the barber chair!”

That might not be exactly what the deputies and inspectors, under color of bureaucratic authority, warbled as they raided at least nine barber shops in Orange County, Florida. But armed men did invade the central-Florida shops in August and September, and without warrants.

They did arrest “criminal” thatch dispatchers for handling hair despite lack of a license.

The “authority” here was that of the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, whose inspectors were aided in their quest to protect the public from bad trim jobs by the dozen-plus deputies joining the raids. In a few cases, pot or guns were found along with maleficent lack of licensure. But the pretext was to clamp down on unauthorized peaceful means of making a living.

In one raid, the barbers of the assailed shop all did have current licenses, but had to sit around in handcuffs while that fact was confirmed.

The Orlando Sentinel notes that most of the 37 people arrested as a result of the “unprecedented” raids were charged with only the misdemeanor of “barbering without a license.” It’s not obvious why anybody would want to divert resources from real crime fighting to conduct such idiotic assaults. Nobody really thinks that barbers habitually graduate from illegal buzz cuts to home invasions and murders.

I hope the victims consider suing. That might help prevent this travesty from happening again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Divided We Stand

Politicians like to talk about “unity” and “co-operation” and “getting things done.”

This would be all well and good if, when they manage to co-operate, they could restrain themselves from going whole hog and radically increasing government spending.

But the evidence is: They can’t.

Politicians in Washington are most co-operative and least “obstructionist” when the legislative and executive branches are united by party — that is, the majority’s in Congress is the same as the president’s. But look what happens when there’s united government under one party: Government growth.

A graph compiled by Mercatus Center research fellow Matthew Mitchell makes this easy to see:

Since Eisenhower, the federal government has grown every administration, every year. But the rate of growth is highest when government is united by party. It tends to grow less when there’s divided government. The rate of growth? 2.55 percent with divided government, and nearly double that — 4.67 percent — with united government.

If you look at the graph carefully, you can see there are anomalous developments and periods. And you can see that some famous (Reagan, Clinton-era) attempts at pruning spending hasn’t amounted to a reduction in total spending, yet. But still, the graph is a bit comforting, when you realize that we have divided government now, after a period of united government and massive spending increases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Issue No. 1

It’s pretty clear that the big issue this election was spending. Not high taxes, or the lowering of taxes. Not war. Not illegal immigration. Not regulation. Not abortion. Above all these issues has emerged one supreme: high spending, over-spending.

According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.

One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.

And, as I argued last week, it’s the House that has the constitutional duty to decide money matters.

But talk by the Republican hierarchy, about returning to 2008 levels of spending, will hardly cut it.

Indeed, that idea, of just returning to 2008 spending levels, seems to be a subconscious repudiation of the best thing that Republicans said on Tuesday, that “we’ve been given a second chance.” But to go back to 2008 levels merely takes government back to “before Obama,” and reflects an attempt to let themselves off the hook for the Bush-era spending extravaganza.

There are reasons why I put so little hope in politicians as such, and more in the direct actions of citizens. Even the best politicians tend to lack real convictions.

If the GOP offers any hope, it depends entirely on continued pressure applied to them by the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture local leaders too much government

Profiles in Non-Courage

What has to happen before government officials reduce the loot they’re lobbing to special interests at the expense of the wallets and future of everybody else?

Armageddon?

The city council of Kansas City, Missouri, won’t permit even an inquiry into how the burg might save bucks.

At Show-Me Daily, David Stokes notes that a council committee has tabled (killed) a proposal “that called for SIMPLY STUDYING the idea of contracting out the management of certain city assets,” an idea proposed by Mayor Mark Funkhouser. But city unions predictably went to DEFCON 1. The resolution would have authorized the city manager to request information from firms interested in handling things like parking garages and sewer plants.

The mayor says he thought that they might have creative ideas about how to handle things more efficiently. C-r-a-a-a-zy, eh? Well, this mild, er, radical notion is off the table, at least for now.

Stokes hopes the council reconsiders while they are in a position of relative strength. If they wait until really pushed to act by “economic realities . . they won’t be [able] to get the best agreement for taxpayers.”

But aren’t the economic realities already here, for Kansas City and every other town in post-2007 America?

Single-issue voters are always going to shout louder than the general public about reforms that affect their short-term interests. Political “leaders” should do the right thing, not follow the path of least political resistance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Upcoming Game of Chicken

In Europe, populist response to government policy looks a lot different than in America. The French are rioting in the streets . . . because President Nicolas Sarkozy proposed to raise the retirement age by a mere two years. But, as The Economist notes, America’s Tea Partiers “are the opposite: they exhale fiscal probity through every pore.” The French, on the other hand, “appear to believe that public money is printed in heaven and will rain down for ever like manna.”

This appraisal, “The good, the bad, and the tea parties,” recognizes that the Tea Party is not violent, doesn’t even litter much. In sum, the Tea Party is “[n]ot French, not fabricated and not as flaky as their detractors aver: these are the positives. Another one: in how many other countries would a powerful populist movement demand less of government, rather than endlessly and expensively more?”

Interestingly, The Economist pushes the practical point, arguing that if Tea Party “Republicans capture the House, they need to move past ideology into the realm of practical policy.”

This echoes what I argued this weekend on Townhall: “[I]f Republicans in Congress are serious about restoring fiscal sanity to Washington, they will hold all the cards necessary to do so. The Obama Administration simply cannot spend money the U.S. House refuses to raise or appropriate.”

This will lead to a game of chicken with the Obama administration, threats of a government shutdown.

So, who will blink first?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.