Category: too much government

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

Congress Moves to Censor the Net?

The Internet is not safe. Congress wants to regulate it. The most recent idea is to sic the Federal Elections Commission on Net freedom.

Recent hearings on something called the DISCLOSE Act disclosed that the act would “extend the FEC’s control over broadcast communications to all ‘covered communications,’ including the blogosphere.” Or so say the Center for Competitive Politics’ Bradley Smith and Jeff Patch, writing on Reason.com.

It’s hard to imagine a worse idea. No groundswell of citizens demanded this. So of course Congress is considering it.

Would they really try to regulate the blogosphere?

The lead “reformers” in Congress say all they want to regulate are political ads on the Internet, not bloggers. But, as Smith and Patch note, the actual language of the current bill quite clearly leaves open the blogosphere for regulation. They also doubt the good intentions of the would-be regulators, explaining how, in the early days of McCain-Feingold advocacy, “the ‘good government’ crowd . . . denounced a deregulated Internet as a ‘loophole’ in campaign finance law, a ‘poison pill,’ ‘anti-reform’” etc.

How can respectable Americans advocate regulation of speech, as if the First Amendment did not exist? It’s as if they are baffled by plain language: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .”

How can they live with themselves?

For me, it’s a consolation to know that at least censors in Congress can still be thrown out, peacefully, with votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Economics vs. Politician-Incurred Debt

For several years now I have worried — here on Common Sense and on Townhall — about the unsustainability of politician-incurred debt.

I’ve used the word “unsustainable” quite a few times. But too often I’ve simply called it “government debt.” I think I like “politician-incurred debt” better. For it’s politicians who have been unable to keep from over-spending.

And pretending that the consequent problem of debt is “impossible to solve in the current political climate.”

They’re wrong, of course. The “current political climate” is whatever people think and speak right now. Change the way we think and speak, and suddenly the impossible becomes possible.

But what do economists say?

Economists are notoriously able at the higher maths, such as simultaneous equations, symbolic logic and regression analysis. But the number of economists unfazed by the simple calculations to figure debt load and maintenance is almost as frightening as those figures.

Luckily, those ready to do the arithmetic of public debt are on the rise.

Take economist Veronique de Rugy.

Writing in Reason magazine, de Rugy succinctly offers up the numbers. America’s trillions in debt now surpasses half of Gross Domestic Product. Politician-incurred borrowing increasingly soaks up the limited capital available, undermining market recovery. She says politicians must “reform entitlement spending, put both military and domestic spending on the chopping block, and start selling off federal assets. Better to do it now than during a fire sale later.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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local leaders political challengers too much government

Tea Party Talking Points

Amy Kremer, director of the Tea Party Express, one of the many organizations that try to steer the Tea Party movement, appeared on The View, recently. She stayed on point, talking sense, on the whole:

  • The movement is all about fiscal issues, limited government, responsibility, and free markets. No social issues, she said.
  • “We have no leader, the leaders are all across the country.” Sarah Palin is not the Tea Party’s leader.
  • The Tea Party is non-partisan, crossing “all party lines,” with independents, Democrats, Republicans and libertarians participating.
  • Tea Party folk are most angry at the GOP because “there’s no denying that the spending started under Bush.”

Ms. Kremer ably steered the conversation away from the traps that The View folk might have liked to see her fall into. Co-host Joy Behar appeared quite pleased that Kremer acknowledged Bush-era Republicans as responsible for starting this current trend in over-spending.

So, good talking points. Other Tea Party folks should emulate her. I say this in part to reiterate points I made on Townhall not long ago. To seriously tackle our massive fiscal problems, the Tea Party will have to confront spending across the board, including a Sarah Palin/John McCain-style foreign policy.

How is it that people from across the political spectrum can work together in this movement?

It’s simple: No one but a fool would flirt with government insolvency and ruin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Allergic to the First Amendment

The drug manufacturer Allergan is taking the Food and Drug Administration to court.

The FDA has ordered Allergan to violate the FDA’s own rules against disseminating information about “off-label” uses of a drug, uses that may be medically common but which, unlike “on-label” uses, were not specifically certified as safe and effective during the FDA’s approval process.

Once a drug has been approved, doctors may legally prescribe the drug for safe off-label uses.

The FDA now wants Allergan to send detailed safety information to physicians about both off-label and on-label uses of Botox®. Yet the FDA bans promoting drugs for off-label uses. A company may convey truthful information about such uses in only very restricted ways.

Companies have paid through the nose for violating these restrictions. In 2009, Pfizer had to pay $2.3 billion for promoting off-label uses of its drugs. Another $1.4 billion was looted from Eli Lilly for the same “crime.”

Allergan is understandably reluctant to obey a government agency’s edict to disobey other edicts promulgated by that same agency — especially when the price of disobedience can be so high. Better to solicit some judicial clarity.

Better, certainly, than following orders and hoping for the best.

Will the court vindicate and enforce constitutional protections for freedom of speech in the realm of pharmaceuticals? Such a ruling would unshackle drug companies from ludicrous hindrance, freeing them to speak.

And it would help doctors and patients.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Fearing Free Fall

The European Union is bailing out Greece. Fearing financial contagion, EU’s policy wizards decided to throw 100 billion euros at Greece, in tandem with demands for austerity.

New spending restrictions are tough enough to elicit the verdict of “savage” from Greece’s public employee unions. But are they “savage” enough?

The euros-to-the-rescue scheme occurred only after collapses of Portuguese and Spanish bonds. As mentioned last Friday, things aren’t good on Europe’s other southern peninsulas, either.

The “Domino Theory” remains a dominant metaphor. Once, we feared countries would fall like dominos to communism. Now, it’s like dominos into insolvency.

But propping up a tipped domino isn’t easy.

Drastic solutions, like expelling the duplicitous Greek nation-state from the EU? Not on the table. The apparent aim of the bailouts? Keep as many of the major players responsible for the fiasco in as good a shape as possible.

If, on the other hand, every politician were fired and every contract with unsustainable giveaways to public employee unions were dissolved as part of bankruptcy, might future policy makers be a little more cautious?

Meanwhile, the dominos keep falling. The day after announcing the bailout, the euro plummeted.

My question: What happens when “too big to fail” is applied not to a tiny country like Greece, but to the good ol’ US of A?

What if we’re too big to bail out?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Inglorious Mess That Is Greece

Ah, the glory that was Greece! Too bad the modern country is anything but. The nation-state of Greece is going broke, and going broke spectacularly.

And, dare I say it, instructively?

Everybody’s blaming everybody else, there. But the simple truth of the matter is that the politicians of Greece — both socialist and “conservative” — enticed citizens to go along with a sustained binge of spending, spending far beyond revenues.

And then the government lied to European Union HQ in Brussels about how much it was spending over revenues.

And, you guessed it, Greece continued to borrow even more.

Yes, public spending in Greece was more out-of-control than government spending here in America. And that’s why it’s instructive. What is happening right now to Greece is happening elsewhere in Europe — Italy, Spain, Portugal — and is on pace to happen to us, too.

Greece does have one option the good ol’ US of A doesn’t have: It can go begging to the European Union. So far, saner heads in the EU are saying “no,” but that may not last.

While we don’t have that option, Greece lacks ours: With the Euro as its standard, it’s constrained from the monetary fiddling that American leaders are tempted with. Inflation. Hyperinflation.

When things get worse here, we’ll hear talk of huge tax hikes, confiscations, and sovereign default.

But also expect a lot of what Greek politicians did: Lying.

Inglorious, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Chamber, Loaded Against the Free Market

You are familiar with the notion that businesses support the free market, while concerned citizens demand some sort of “regulatory oversight” by government.

It’s a canard.

Oh, some businessmen do indeed support free markets and decry subsidies — and lots of businesses oppose this regulation or that — but, on the whole, the major support for a regulatory regime, or for subsidies and tariffs, for almost any scheme of government control of business, is usually business itself.

Like individuals, businesses too often turn to government for special advantages — over other businesses, or over taxpayers.

That’s why the United States Chamber of Commerce gave Congressman Ron Paul such low marks. You could hardly find a more pro-free-market gentleman in Washington. But, as Timothy Carney notes in the Washington Examiner, 90 percent of Democrats got higher marks on the Chamber’s 2009 congressional scorecard than did Paul, who also got the lowest marks of any Republican.

Why?

Rep. Paul opposed the recent stimulus bill. And he opposed subsidizing the tourism industry as well as solar energy.

The Chamber is a typical business lobbying outfit, favoring an inefficient, mixed economy because some of its leading members hope to milk the taxpayers.

If you are a member of the Chamber but support the fair play of the free market, not the rigged play of government-business “partnerships,” you might want to speak up against your Chamber’s policies.

Or join another group.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
responsibility too much government

Fiasco Economics

Every time a financial fiasco hits, politicians readily expand regulations. But what’s the point of adding to the regulatory barrage if it’s all just for show?

They studiously avoid asking the right questions:

  1. What previous regulations caused (or helped cause) the fiasco?
  2. What previous regulations that could have prevented the fiasco weren’t enforced?

Economist Gerald O’Driscoll, Jr., writing in the Wall Street Journal, adds a few notes of caution to the current regulation madness. Most regulatory bodies get “captured” by the businesses they regulate. A huge amount of research shows how supposedly anti-business regulations serve the interests of some businesses at the expense of their competitors.

It’s the crony capitalist equivalent to politicians making it harder for challengers using “campaign finance” regulations. Same game, different venue.

O’Driscoll also explains which regulations weren’t enforced prior to the recent meltdown — those against fraud. This form of regulation is not like the regs politicians usually propose. It’s basic rule of law, the government’s first responsibility.

And regarding Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, and Bernie Madoff, government failed.

O’Driscoll argues that multiplying rules and regulations is not merely the wrong response, but a sorry repeat of the last century’s “great intellectual failure.” Pity, then, to see the current administration push just that.

Following this path will just lead to the same old recycling of the boom and bust cycle. Freedom and responsibility — where criminal fraud is actually fought by government, not encouraged — work better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

UNkindest Cut of All

One of the sad truths about trying to help folks in far, distant lands, is that so much of the aid gets soaked up in overhead.

But if you think it’s bad with charities, prepare to wince at the United Nation’s Haitian peacekeeping efforts. It turns out that only 4.6 percent of the $495.8 million the UN spends on salaries, hazard pay, and the like goes to “national staff” on the ground in Haiti. The rest goes to support staff at some remove from the island nation’s devastation.

So does $461.9 million out of $495.8 million seem like a good cut for overhead?

Seems steep to me.

The entire budget is well over $700 million. Nearly $200 million of that comes from U.S. taxpayers.

The Fox News story from which I harvested these figures goes on to discuss the boats used to house some personnel. $112,500 per day. One of the boats is nicknamed “The Love Boat.” I don’t think I want to know more.

This should be a big story, except that, in context of today’s typical government operations, it’s not out of the ordinary. These days, operations often get judged not by the good done but by the number of people and dollars associated with it.

People in Haiti suffer. So we naturally don’t want to complain about money spent helping them. But, like so much else in government, efficiency is out of the question.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Don’t Kill The Angels

President Obama is blasting what he calls “the furious efforts of industry lobbyists” to fend off tighter regulation of the financial industry.

Pretending that Fed credit expansion and governmental incentives to take on temporarily cheap mortgages had no part in the current crisis, officials carefully direct our attention elsewhere. Widespread moral hazard stemming from bailouts, both guaranteed and implied? Shhhh.

But the government, uninterested in regulating itself and its own excesses, is instead targeting you and me.

“Tighter regulation” means less freedom to make your own decisions about your own time and resources.

Venture Beat magazine reports on a provision of Senator Chris Dodd’s proposed reform that would make it much harder for so-called “angel” investors to fund new start-ups.

An angel investor is somebody willing to fund a new business with his own wealth, even when venture capitalists managing others people’s funds decline to invest. Dodd’s bill would force start-ups raising funds to register with the SEC and wait 120 days for the filing to be processed. It would also increase the minimum capital that “accredited investors” must have in the bank before the government will permit them to invest.

Based on nobody’s considered judgment about a particular venture but only on lawmakers’ nebulous fear of entrepreneurial risk, the proposed law would kill in the crib many pioneering and timely, must-act-now innovations.

Accidentally, I’m sure, current businesses would be spared competition from upstarts.

And this is supposed to help the economy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.