Category: too much government

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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.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Beggar-​All Promises

The essence of politics-​as-​usual is to promise the moon and bury any mention of costs. 

This beggar-​all promising has calcified into government policy. And we all get trapped in the web of promises that become law and then bureaucracy with “benefits” … as folks come to rely on those benefits. Damn the costs.

Example? Medicare.

It’s politically untouchable. Though deeply insolvent, politicians and partisan activists of both parties whip voters into a frenzy each time the program gets targeted for the slightest cost-​constraining reform.

How out of control is it?

According to a report by David Naither, for The Center for Public Integrity, “Medicare is a significant part of the reason the national debt is soaring.…” Millions rely on it as a “safety net” that protects them “from bankrupting medical bills. But since it’s an open-​ended program — with no upper limit — the nation has no similar protection to keep Medicare from bankrupting the country.”

Naither is not just fear-​mongering. The trends are clear. The program itself raises medical costs, Naither notes, and, as the Baby Boomers retire, it will have “more seniors to cover.” No wonder the program now outpaces Social Security growth; it could very well bulge past Social Security within 25 years.

If the country survives the added burden, that is.

There are reasons we need to reform the structure of politics. For politics-​as-​usual is throwing us into a deep, downward spiral.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Tyranny Waiver

Democrats filled their 2000-​page healthcare bill — rammed into law despite growing and vehement public opposition — with obscure but costly mandates. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi confessed, Congress would have to pass the bill before we could learn what they were. After all, who, including congressmen, had time to actually read and assimilate the monstrosity?

Choke down first, chew later. That was the ordained (if unhealthy) order of things. 

Now we suffer the consequences — at least insofar as we can’t wheedle special exemptions, loopholes, workarounds.

One provision of the new law boosts the minimum annual benefit that companies must include in low-​cost medical insurance plans given to low-​wage employees. Many large employers contend that the new costs would force them to drop many employees from their insurance rolls. (So much for the Obama lie that “if you like the insurance coverage you have now,” you’d be able to keep it under Obamacare.)

Federal officials have blinked on this issue. The Department of Health and Human Services and Disservices is now granting waivers to many organizations so that their workers can retain coverage. McDonald’s and a New York teachers union are among the employers receiving the waivers.

This is such a great idea, let’s expand it! Give waivers to everybody for all the tyrannical provisions of the new law. 

What the heck, distribute waivers for every single tyrannical mandate that governments have ever imposed on us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Brains in Crisis

The Atlantic offers a fascinating portrait of the Honorable Ron Paul in “The Tea Party’s Brain.” Its blurb neatly explains the subject’s significance: “One way to measure the surprising … rise of the Tea Party is to chart the relative position of Ron Paul, who has never flinched from his beliefs. He’s not alone anymore.” 

But I want to focus not on writer Joshua Green’s take on Ron Paul but on Austrian economics — which Rep. Paul, almost alone in Washington, supports — and economic policy regarding crises:

The Austrian school … had fallen away after the Great Depression, which it claimed was caused by an expansion of the money supply and could be met only with chastened submission as the market corrected itself. Herbert Hoover’s Treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, offered similar counsel, famously urging Hoover to “liquidate” and “purge the rottenness out of the system.” But this failed to stop the catastrophe. 

From Green’s statement you would think that President Hoover had accepted Mellon’s advice. He had not. Hoover often took pride in the fact that he did all sorts of things to prevent prices from coming down — from “liquidating” — after 1929. 

Green followed the above-​quoted passage with a plug for strong, activist government to pry the economy out of crisis. In light of the facts? Not so persuasive. 

A truth for Tea Party brains: The Great Depression featured a spendthrift, meddling Republican prez followed by an even more spendthrift, more meddlesome Democrat. 

A pattern history now repeats.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Going After the Gold

What does gold have to do with medical care? Ingested, it’s a poison. It’s not often used in treatment.

So why did the Obama administration place a provision further regulating the buying and selling of gold into the Democrats’ medical reform legislation? 

Economist Thomas Sowell explains, in a recent column, why politicians are obsessed with the yellow metal. Before FDR, gold provided a check against politicians’ desire to spend the money government could “just print.” Because, in those long-​ago days, paper dollars were backed by gold, Americans would cash the paper in for gold when it looked like the Treasury had gone on a printing spree. So inflation (the increase of the supply of money, and the consequent diminishing of its value, leading to increasing prices) was checked.

In 1933, FDR confiscated most of America’s circulating (and hoarded) gold, and Nixon took us off the gold standard completely in the ’70s, morphing our monetary system into a pure fiat (inflationary) standard. 

Also in Nixon’s time, it became legal, again, for Americans to own gold.

So why make it harder, now, to trade in gold — when gold is not money?

Because investors, in times of inflation and crisis, turn to gold as a hedge. Against politicians, basically. And, says Sowell, “the Obama administration sees people’s freedom to buy and sell gold as something that can limit what the government can do.” 

Gold, like freedom, “cramps the government’s style.”

That speaks volumes about gold … and “Obamacare.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.