Category: too much government

Categories
responsibility tax policy too much government

March to Bankruptcy

I have warned, before, about the upcoming double-​barrel crisis aimed at the U.S. financial system: The insolvency of the U.S. government itself, as entitlement debt can no longer be kept afloat by FICA withholding, and as Treasury debt can no longer be maintained on a monthly basis simply because it has grown too big.

Last week our entitlement system’s trustees said that the current recession is so undermining Medicare Part A that payments for elderly care will fail in eight years, with Social Security itself imploding in less than 28.

That is, if the economy doesn’t get worse.

Medicare Part B, covering doctors’ visits and outpatient care, and Part D, covering prescriptions, are right now insolvent, sucking money from general revenues.

This crisis rushes closer, even as our president insists on reforming health care in ways that will almost certainly add new entitlements — which will also have to be paid for. 

President Obama says that more government will do the opposite of what it’s done in the past. Until now, government involvement in medicine has increased costs and prices. Now he says what he’ll do will make for more “efficiency.”

Why do politicians believe in the magic of their new programs rather than the history of their old ones?

Why is it that, in politics, irresponsibility rises to the top? 

However you answer that, the march to bankruptcy is picking up pace.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets individual achievement too much government

I’ll Clink to That

Awards, known as the Sammies, are given annually by the Sam Adams Alliance to recognize the efforts of citizen activists fighting governmental lunacies.

This year’s winners for best video, Caleb Brown and Austin Bragg, produced a film on the anti-​competitive liquor laws of Virginia.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should report that I received a Sammy this year too — partly for fighting the Oklahoma Attorney General’s attempt to jail me for supporting Oklahoma democracy. Long story made short, we won that battle. 

The award also recognized my decades-​long work for term limits and citizen initiative rights.

Caleb and Austin’s video is entitled “The ABCs of Virginia Alcohol Law.” “ABC” is a pun on the name of the agency spewing the nonsensical edicts, the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The brief video gives you a good glimpse of the silliness, which includes violation of free speech rights.

Did you know that it is legal for a Virginia bar to sell you a beer, or a shot of liquor, or a beer and a shot of liquor, but not a shot of liquor in a glass of beer? 

Or that America’s Founding Fathers would be thrown in jail under the liquor laws of today’s Virginia? 

Watch the video. It’s slick, it’s funny. And it should make you mad.

For more on all of this year’s Sammy winners, visit samadamsalliance​.org.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Cuba Needs Freedom

A viral video is making the rounds of Latin America. You can find it on YouTube. It’s an interview with a man on the street, and another Cuban man walks up and steals the show. He points to his open mouth. In island slang he says he’s hungry, and that “what Cuba needs is food.”

A lot of people blame America for Cubans’ hunger. And our government is now considering removing the embargo we have had against Cuba since its Communist-​inspired revolution. But that should be done — or not — for reasons that have nothing to do with the motto “Cuba needs food.”

Think about it. Cuba can trade with the rest of the world. In fact, on a cash basis, even with the U.S. Plenty of opportunities to produce and purchase food. 

And hey: The resorts in Cuba are well-​stocked with food. Canadians and Europeans and Arabs and others visiting the island don’t complain about a lack of food. 

But the common folk do.

Why?

Well, Cuba suffers from a kind of apartheid. Everyday citizens get ration cards. Their food shelves are bare. They cannot visit tourist beaches, shop at tourist supermarkets, or eat at tourist restaurants. They have to make do with the meager food they’ve been rationed.

So much for the abolition of the class system by Castro!

To feed Cubans, just one thing is needed: Freedom — an end to socialistic apartheid.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Fix Health Care?

When the president of the United States tells us that we “can’t fix the economy without fixing health care,” what do you make of it?

If you’re like me, you want to unravel the health care mess. And making it better would surely help the economy. But do I agree with President Obama?

Well, no.

The president and his party want to increase government controls and establish new government programs, the usual whatnot.

That is, the usual stuff that is precisely “what not to do.” 

Instead of increasing costs by regulation, we should decrease costs by having the government stop mandating what health insurance companies must provide. Or unentangle our hyper-​expensive Food and Drug Administration, with its longest and most expensive research rules in the world.

Generally, our politicians want us to emulate various socialized systems from across the globe, while ignoring the aspects of those systems that are freer than ours.

Specifically, Obama wants to set up a tax-​funded Medicare system for everybody, in competition with regulated private insurance companies. And since Medicare is one of the main drivers of high prices, you can see where this will lead.

Funny thing is, our medical costs have not been shooting up these past few years as much as they were before, while in heavily regulated-​and-​rationed Britain, costs have skyrocketed during this same period.

I’m reminded of the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Marginal Gains in Germany?

Germany has a goal: Introduce a million electric or plug-​in hybrid cars into the transportation mix by 2020. But a recent study by the German branch of the World Wildlife Foundation projected the impact: If successful, carbon dioxide emissions would decrease 1 percent in the transportation sector, 0.1 percent in Germany, total.

That’s not much.

The trouble with switching to so many electric cars is that they rely on increasing amounts of industrially produced electricity. Which would bring additional coal-​fired plants online, thereby increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

Maybe the only way for electric cars to really impact carbon emissions is to increase nuclear power production at the same time. Nuclear power is the only practical, real-​world-​right-​now way to increase energy and reduce carbon dioxide production by an appreciable amount.

Barring such a move, switching to electric cars expending energy gained from burning coal doesn’t offset our alleged global greenhouse problems. It is true that centralized coal-​burning emissions can be scrubbed for pollutants, and we might expect progress here better than progress in auto-​emission scrubbers. But that helps with problem of dirty air, a very different issue.

Even big steps addressing complex ecological problems tend to produce small gains, at best. One should question how much wealth to sink for nearly infitesimally small gains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets too much government

Barney’s Bubble Babbling

To hear Congressman Barney Frank tell it, he was a lone voices of fiscal reason when the surge of ill-​considered mortgage debt fueled the now-​popped housing bubble.

Unfortunately for Frank, this is the age of the Internet. Bloggers have proved more than willing to collate inconvenient evidence.

Thanks to Ed Morrissey on HotAir​.com, then, we have two testimonies of Frank-​ish speechifying. Here’s Frank in 2009:

People haven’t fully understood. One of the causes of the terrible crisis we had over the last few years … it came from people being pushed into buying houses, taking out loans that they couldn’t afford. Part of that was a conservative view that rental housing was a bad thing.… People were pushing home ownership [for] people who shouldn’t have been there.

“People in power” pushed this, eh? Which people? The irresponsible conservatives. But here’s this same sir, Barney Frank, in a clip from 2005:

We have, I think, an excessive degree of concern right now about home ownership and its role in the economy.… This is not the dot-​com situation.… [Y]ou’re not going to see the collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble. And so, those of us on our committee in particular, will continue to push for home ownership.

Oh dear. Barney, just be honest already and admit you helped destroy the economy, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Black Liquor Tax Credit

Senator John Kerry is incensed. He used the word “cheat.”

Senator Jeff Bingham insists Congress was not trying to make a tax loophole.

The fracas is over a four-​year-​old tax credit given to companies that mix biofuels with diesel. Congress wanted to encourage “greener” burning.

Well, it seems that paper companies have been burning a bioproduct in their plants for years, something called “black liquor.” It doesn’t sound green, but it is made from wood product. In response to Congress’s program, paper companies have taken to mixing it with diesel to qualify for the tax credit.

It wasn’t what Congress intended. But Congressfolk should hardly be surprised. A law has to apply across the board. You can’t make a general rule and then say, “Uh, no: We meant it to apply only to those businesses over there, not these ones over here.”

The New York Times notes that the scandal surfacing, now, might prove especially inconvenient for Congress, as the public roils over business and banking bailouts. 

The congressional brain trust meant to give incompetent bankers billions. They didn’t mean to give International Paper $71 million, or Verso Paper $29.7 million. 

Despite this, Congress has to live up to its own words. Not its intentions. In this case, Congress wants to blame corporations, not themselves. We’ll see if the august body of social engineers can pull that trick off.

Obviously, like Kermit the Frog, Congress is finding that it’s not easy being green. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

Politicians Are Poor Sports

Several years ago, Washington, D.C., “won” a Major League Baseball franchise, the Nationals. City politicians, though constantly complaining about a lack of money even for essential programs,  miraculously came up with over $600 million to build a brand new stadium to lure the team.

Now that the team is playing in its new taxpayer-​subsidized stadium, the battle over funding is over. But the war over tickets for the mayor and city council members to sit in a luxury skybox and watch the games escalates.

You see, the Nationals have given a luxury skybox to the mayor and another one to the city council. (Just as an aside, doesn’t this deal strike you as sort of like a bribe? It does me.) Anyway, it seems that the Nationals front office sent the tickets for both skyboxes to Mayor Adrian Fenty. And Fenty managed to forward tickets on to only those council members with whom he isn’t feuding. The other council members were left out, causing some hard feelings.

The very same thing happened last year, too. 

There always seem to be problems when the bad guys split up the loot.

Well, one council member, Kwame Brown, offers a very simple solution: Sell both the skyboxes to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to help cover budget gaps.

Wow, a D.C. politician actually making sense. That’s a home run!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

No Exaggeration Necessary

Artful exaggeration is a part of good writing. Take this example from Yakima Valley Business Times editor Bruce Smith: “All of us who think we already pay too many taxes should bow west toward Mukilteo at least once a day.”

Smith did not figure he could set up a new religion. He was figuratively conveying the importance to the state of Washington of initiative activist Tim Eyman’s recent, successful measure requiring a two-​thirds’ vote of the Legislature to hike taxes.

Smith also went on to talk about Tim Eyman’s newest proposal, which he is petitioning to place on the 2009 ballot. The measure is called I‑1033, and officially dubbed the Lower Property Taxes Initiative. But Smith notes a feature of the proposal that stretches it, in a sense, beyond a mere property tax lowering device. “What I like most about the measure is that it reins in government growth,” writes Smith. “It limits the rate of government expansion to that of the overall economy.”

But here Smith doesn’t exaggerate at all. “Currently government grows at a level that is about 50 percent higher than that of the private sector,” he explains. 

“[B]ureaucrats and the apologists have all sorts of excuses to rationalize why those levels of growth are necessary, but here’s the bottom line: Unless things change, government will become unsustainable.”

Exactly. No hyperbole.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits too much government

Checking Specter

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is an important man. How do I know this? 

A congressman told me.

While Specter is a Republican, his congressional booster happens to be a Democrat. Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Brady credits Specter with passage of Obama’s stimulus bill. 

“[T]his bill would not have passed,” says Brady, “if not for Arlen Specter,” who was one of three Republican senators to break ranks for the presidents’ bailout extravaganza. In case you were wondering, Brady clarified his enthusiasm for the so-​called “stimulus” package. “[E]very congressman is passing out checks, all over the country … because of a man named Arlen Specter.”

Clearly, Brady likes to pass out checks … as do most other congressmen.

But one former congressman doesn’t seem so fond of the program. Pat Toomey ran for Congress back in 1998 pledging to serve just three terms. He won, spent six years fighting wasteful, overbearing government, and then stepped down as promised.

Toomey, until very recently the president of the Club for Growth — a group dedicated to market growth, not growth of government — is likely to challenge Specter next year for his Senate seat.

The difference between Toomey and Specter? Toomey, being the challenger, may ask you to write a check to his campaign, while Specter, being the incumbent, will offer to give you a check … drawn on your account.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.