Category: too much government

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.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Washington to Regulate
Your Bake Sale

Informal production and distribution, from small farms and homes, were once not only common, but the backbone of everyday life.

Today, there’s a revival of much of this, as people begin to realize that corporate practices have increasingly relied upon putting additives in foods and plastics in other products.

I have sad news for locavores and other health food fans hoping to buck the trend of corporate practice: H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. This new bill, now worming its way through the corridors of Capitol Hill, would require anyone who stores or sells any food products to any third party to register with the federal government and keep extensive records about every product bought, produced, modified, or sold.

How far will the law reach? I suspect it will have no limit, which one section clarifies: “In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist.”

In other words, the federal government will, if this bill is passed and “successfully” administered, regulate everything, including (and down to) your local organic truck farm, festival, or bake sale.

This bit of food totalitarianism thus takes its place in a long line of federal government regulations that, in the name of safety, regulates small operations out of existence.

It makes no sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Enough at Tea Time

On April 15, more than 2,000 Tea Parties were held across the country, many with thousands in attendance. These weren’t dainty luncheon ceremonies. They were protests, named after our revolutionary Boston Tea Party.

In Washington, D.C., it rained like the dickens, but people still came out to say “Enough.” Regular folks sounded off. They work hard, and they’ve had enough of paying the bills for politicians and favored political interests.

Some big media personalities and major political figures showed up. Governor Rick Perry of Texas spoke at the Austin, Texas event. He’s called the federal government “oppressive.” In South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford told folks that “Real change begins in the hearts and minds of people who are willing to stand . . . against an ever-encroaching government.”

Meanwhile, much of television news media behaved badly, trying to marginalize or even demonize the protests as “anti-government.” CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen was particularly argumentative, suggesting to one guy that he should be grateful for the $50 billion President Obama was sending to his state.

When a woman protester accused Roesgen of slanted coverage, she asked the woman why she was there. “We’re here,” the woman responded, “because we are sick and tired of the government taking our money and spending it in ways that we have no say in. We have no say whatsoever.”

And that’s what has to change. The people must be heard. Not just on one day, but every day.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Controlling the Message

In Portland, Oregon, the difference between Constitutional takings and just plain theft by government can be seen in bright neon.

The “Made In Oregon” sign on what used to be called the Bickel Building, on Burnside Street, is something of a landmark. It’s huge. It used to say “White Stag Sportswear.” It still features a white stag atop the sign. To much hullabaloo, every Christmas season the white stag’s nose gets lit, red.

Over the years, the sign’s ownership has changed. Now there are political rumblings to condemn the sign and make it public property, so to “control its message.” That’s city councilor Randy Leonard’s notion. Mayor Sam Adams (certainly not my favorite Sam Adams) and Commissioner Nick Fish have batted around the idea to buy the sign.

Jeff Alan, of the Cascade Policy Institute, makes the obvious point: If the city has a half million dollars to buy the sign, why not spend that money on real needs — like road repair or something — rather than on a neon sign?

How different were things back in 1925, when a portion of the Bickel Building, upon which the sign stands, was condemned to make room for the Burnside Bridge.

That displayed a commonsensical notion of public use.

Buying — or, worse, forcing the sale of — a sign to signal an official message? That’s Orwellian . . . if it even makes that much sense.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability too much government

Deep, Deep Waters

Are you surprised? I’m not surprised.

Turns out Congresswoman Maxine Waters had “family financial ties” to a bank for which she personally helped solicit bailout money. Without regard to its relative need or value to the economy.

Shocker.

Trillions in stimulus money, bailout money. And we expect politicians will allocate it according to some impersonal calculus that has nothing to do with who their chums are?

Nor can we expect the politicians and bureaucrats to sit back and let the market, or what’s left of it, function unhampered once bailout money has been forked over.

Many banks seemed to think they would simply be allowed to spend the subsidies according to their own judgment about how best to promote the health of their enterprises. But once the bailouts failed to work the instant magic they were supposed to, politicians began attaching strings. So that voters angry about the bailouts could see that there’s “accountability.”

It’s not just about trimming fat executive bonuses. The banks are also supposed to obey orders to cancel employee training, reduce dividends to shareholders, stop hiring employees from overseas, etc. This is about social engineering, not economic efficiency.

So, many banks now say they’ll give the money back. Good idea; great idea. But it would really surprise me if it found its way all the way back to taxpayers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

What Not to Blame

You’ve heard the calumny: The current economic debacle is the result of free markets.

This charge — often made with lip-smacking glee — makes no sense.

I’ve discussed some specifics, before. Here are three more points:

1. We haven’t had a free market. We live in a heavily regulated, subsidized, coddled-and-attacked, over-taxed society. If the current debacle proves any system unfeasible, then the one proven wrong is the one we have. It’s the mixed economy that has proven to have worse than mixed results.

2. Many on the left as well as on the right like to pretend that Republican talk of free markets has been effective. Both sides lie. The alleged party of “small-government” and “free markets” pigged out at the government trough, increasing the size and scope of government. To not see growth of regulation and spending and government debt under Republican governance is to not see the corpulent elephant in the room.

3. Blaming free markets is especially galling to actual proponents of free markets for a historical reason, too: Our idea grew up in reaction not to socialism, but to a system of government interference much like what we have today. Adam Smith called it “mercantilism.” Thomas Jefferson called it “Parasite Institutions.”

And it’s the parasite institutions that caused the current mess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Homeless Red Ink

I have a prediction.

Even though President Obama insists that all of the trillions in so-called “stimulus” spending will be expertly managed and masterfully allocated — of course, to only the most deserving and stimulating beneficiaries — lots of the hastily cobbled new spending will end up being wasted.

I’m afraid I cheated with this prediction. I already have an example in hand. The town of Union, New York, is slated to receive almost $600,000 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Why? To combat homelessness.

Problem? There isn’t one — that is, there isn’t a homeless problem in Union. Which is why the town does not have any programs for dealing with the homeless and it has no means of administering the money that’s been flung at it. Nor did the town request the funds. Town supervisor John Bernardo says, “We were surprised. We’ve never been a recipient before.”

A less honest man would have trucked in some homeless guys and warbled, “Thank goodness we’re finally getting these funds.” But what Union lacks, Washington provides: A HUD spokesman says the new grant recipients should employ “creative strategies” in figuring out how to spend the money.

So that more than half-million dollars will find a home somewhere — anywhere but the wallets it came from.

You see why I shake my head and say, “I could have predicted this.” This isn’t change. It’s more — way more — of the same.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Doctoring on the Installment Plan

How does a successful doctor deal with patients lacking insurance? Dr. John Muney decided to offer a deal. For $79 each month he would service patients with unlimited office visits, some tests, and even in-office surgeries — at all his AMG Medical Group centers.

Now, the deal’s not for me. I have insurance through work, and I also have a family, so that $79 would have to be multiplied by four. Real money. But for some people, I bet, this makes perfect sense.

Yet, if government gets its way, no patient of New York’s five boroughs — where Muney’s clinics are located — need ever consider the good doctor’s innovation. Why? Because the state Insurance Department has declared his service a form of insurance and says it requires a license from the state.

What were you thinking, Dr. Muney? This is a free country, and . . . you can’t just do what you want, you know.

Dr. Muney is fighting back. The application form for this contract has THIS IS NOT INSURANCE emblazoned on every page. He is challenging the bureaucracy’s ruling.

Once upon a time, doctors regularly engaged in this kind of pricing. Many doctors — perhaps most — engaged in pro bono work for the poor. Other had special rates, etc. But the American Medical Association pressured politicians to put an end to such competitive practices.

Thanks, AMA.

As for Dr. Muney, my thanks to you is not sarcastic. Hang in there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.