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

Commerce, Compulsion and the Constitution

Every once in a while a judge attends to the Constitution, and freedom lovers cheer wildly as if this were very strange, even wondrous. I guess it is, considered in light of the sweep of human history.

Should the Democrats’ “health care reform” package kick in fully, it would compel people to purchase medical insurance by punishing abstainers with a steep, extra tax. So hurray for Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond, according to whose recent decision the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to point a gun to our heads and force us to buy health insurance.

If the Constitution could be honestly read that way, it would mean that the Founding Fathers had fought to replace British tyranny with an even worse home-​grown one. But no, no Founder thought that giving the federal government power to smooth trade relations among the states equaled authorization for universal, compulsory purchase of books, booze, bobby pins — or whatever Congress-​Approved “health care” delivery system some future central planners might concoct. Nor does it.

We’re not out of danger yet, obviously. There are many more battles to come, many other provisions of “Obamacare” that have yet to be challenged and quashed in courts or in Congress. But in any tough job, you need to accomplish the first step. 

Judge Hudson’s common-​sense conclusion sounds like a great first step to me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly too much government video

Video of the Week: California PERS Aristocracy

In vignette after vignette, this mash-​up provides a helpful (and amusing) take on California’s pension fiasco:

It’s not easy thinking about government-​enacted pensions, I guess. Everyone wants to retire young and well-​off, and no one wants to appear stingy. But there has to be responsibility in how these things are set up.

I touched upon the subject earlier this week, in “Pension Declension.” Two of my commenters — Charles Sainte Claire and SkipppingDog — strike me as perhaps not quite getting why pension reform is necessary.

What Charles and Skipping aren’t saying is that a defined benefit plan guarantees a certain return whether or not the money has been invested to produce such a return. So, where does the money to pay the defined benefit come from?

Yep, you guessed it: The taxpayers. Future taxpayers who can’t even be blamed for having elected the dishonest pols who cut these fraudulent deals with the politically active and powerful public employee unions.

In the public sector, the pressure will then be off the workers and politicians to actually fund today what will be spent tomorrow. Which means embracing the sort of chaos now destroying states and municipalities in California and across these United States.

What about in the private sector? Did someone say “private” sector? Well, even in the private sector, it will be the taxpayers who get stuck with the bill.

To suggest that defined benefit plans are the way to go is to suggest that workers can have whatever they desire and some magic person named The Taxpayer will always be there to pay for it. It is to embrace fleecing future generations.

Of course, we’ll be told that it “worked well in the past.” In a manner of speaking. After all, Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent scam worked well “in the past.” Most rip-​offs “work well” … that is, until the very moment when honest, hard-​working people realize they’ve been had.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Where Democrats Go Wrong

When we find ourselves in a pickle, it’s a good idea to ask: Where did we go wrong? 

I’ve often probed how America got itself into the present mess. I’ve noted how easy it is for politicians to lose touch with the common sense of the American people — so much so that they cannot even imagine balancing a budget while they are in office. 

Further, I’ve often castigated Republicans for betraying their promises to cut spending.

But what of Democrats? Where’s the common sense?

When President Obama proposed a non-​military pay freeze on federal workers, the Democratic National Committee’s “Organizing for America” (OFA) QUANGO asked its supporters for help. Fine. But what happened? The Democratic base went ape. Bananas. Noodles-​out nuts.

Example? David Dayen of the FDL News Desk. “We’ve officially gone around the bend,” he wrote, thereby going ’round the bend. He characterized the carefully worded letter sent out by OFA with a “this is what we’ve been reduced to” snipe.

Dayen and too many other Democrats think their ideology means always increasing government worker pay. Even if government workers prove almost impossible to fire, have great benefits, and comparatively high pay, they must not be asked to make a tiny sacrifice. Not even while others suffer.

If these partisans’ core concern were really helping Americans, including the poor, they wouldn’t be so fixed on keeping federal pay as high as it is.

But, priorities, you know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Gore’s Gas-​Based Admission

Al Gore gives the impression of someone never willing to acknowledge error if said error happens to be self-serving.

This impression is wrong. 

If I have ever suggested that Gore never admits self-​serving mistakes, I hereby rescind and repudiate that suggestion. He appears more than willing to retire a dishonest assertion … so long as he has another dishonest assertion to replace it with.

Ed Morrissey tells the tale at Hot Air, opining that Al Gore’s revised opinion about the virtue of government subsidies for corn-​based ethanol seems just a little too convenient.

Gore now acknowledges that the energy-​conversion ratios of first-​generation ethanol “are at best very small,” and that corn subsidies probably bid up food prices. He even admits that he pushed for the funding to help farmers in states like Tennessee and Iowa. So it came to pass that taxpayers paid billions, in part to help Gore run for president.

Wait, there’s more. 

Having recanted his support for “first-​generation” ethanol, Gore now wants to use wood and grass to make ethanol. A new and better way, n’est-ce pas? No. There’s this small detail: Grass etc.-based ethanol is even more inefficient than corn-​based ethanol.

Why top a bad blunder at taxpayer expense with an even worse blunder at taxpayer expense? Could this have anything to do with Al Gore’s investment in Abengoa Bioenergy, a firm begging for government subsidies for second-​generation ethanol?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Citizen’s Stop Sign

What an election year. It’s not just the drubbing dealt to many statist incumbents that warrants a little triumphalism. We can also cheer about ballot measures whose passage means the defeat of very specific attacks on the citizenry.

Several local referendums targeted all those ticket-​triggering red-​light cameras that have been popping up. The main purpose of the gotcha-​gizmos seems to be lunging for the wallets of hapless motorists, not enhancing anybody’s safety.

Voters are rejecting this fancy tax on driving. In Houston, a group called Citizens Against Red Light Cameras pushed for a ballot question to chuck the cameras. Voters passed it, despite the apoplectic opposition of the city council and the company operating the cameras, American Traffic Solutions. Camera ordinances were also felled in two Ohio towns, Chillicothe and Heath, and in College Station, Texas. In Anaheim, California, 73 percent said Yes to banning red-​light cameras.

It was a tougher battle in Mukilteo, Washington, where ATS tried to stop voters from deciding on the cameras. Citizen activist Tim Eyman, who also has a slew of successful tax-​limitation initiatives under his belt, led the effort to combat that obstructionism, and the state supreme court ordered ATS to back off. The kill-​the-​cameras measure went on to pass by 70 percent.

It’s great whenever voters call a halt to political predation. By no method can they do so more directly and effectively than via the right of initiative and referendum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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.