Category: too much government

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subsidy too much government

Throwing Big Bucks at the Rich

John Stossel, welfare, subsidy

John Stossel’s latest YouTube video focuses on the many ways “your tax dollars end up in millionaires’ pockets.” 

In an interview with Lisa Conyers, co-author of Welfare for the Rich, they deplore how recent COVID Relief funds went to state governments already flush with surpluses and, disproportionately, to wealthier local communities.

“Politicians also give your money to companies that promise jobs,” explains Stossel, using as an example the Ohio case wherein General Motors closed its Lordstown plant . . . after receiving tens of millions of tax dollars to keep it open. 

Regarding Wisconsin’s Foxconn subsidy, Conyers notes that it came to a million bucks per job. Actually, Stossel corrects, the cost of each Foxconn job was $1.42 million.

Soon the subject shifts to the spectacular subsidies billionaire sports team owners receive for their lavish stadiums. Some folks apparently still think this welfare is an investment that pays off by stimulating greater economic activity. But Stossel points out the stark math: $188 billion in welfare to the wealthy sports moguls and $40 billion back in benefits. 

“The Vikings stadium is so nice,” Bob Fastner deadpans in a comment left at YouTube, “that I can’t afford to go inside.”

“20 years ago, our small town almost subsidized a sports stadium for all the reasons your program described,” offers Friendly One in another comment. “A small independent radio station brought the true financial history of such projects to public awareness, stopped it. It became a thriving business center instead.”

“The politicians don’t call each other out on this and just continue stealing from us,” observes Kiki The Great. “Something all of us can agree on,” comments Mr. Beat. “End corporate welfare!”

Left or right, we don’t support corporate welfare — so why is there so much of it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The Audacity of the Swamp

swamp, corruption, Washington DC, politics

A crony anti-infrastructure plan.

That, writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, is “the best description of the Biden administration’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.”

Democrats are the masters of favoring a select few at the expense of the electorate and calling it the Public Good. Their woke moralism, egalitarianism, and other pieties effectively mask their party’s accomplished crony scheming.

Right now, though, the heady audacity of spending trillions of dollars we do not (yet) possess is all the mask the Democrats appear to need. 

Does anyone talk about the Swamp anymore?

Never drained, it is back with a vengeance:

  • “A large share of the plan . . . is a massive handout to private companies. The proposal includes $300 billion to promote advanced manufacturing, $174 billion for electric vehicles, $100 billion for broadband, $100 billion for electric utility industry, and more.”
  • “Biden’s plan also includes hundreds of billions that have nothing even remotely to do with infrastructure.”
  • “To the extent that Democrats are trying to pay for this spending with taxes, they’re doing it in a way that belies their claim that this plan will result in a boost in quality infrastructure.”

The tax increase in the plan is to eliminate established tax “preferences” for fossil fuel companies. This would be politically popular with Democratic Party supporters, feeding their enviro-lust to lash out at what are commonly perceived as destroyers of the planet. But tax something more, get less. And a huge part of our infrastructure relies upon — indeed, consists in — the fossil fuel industry. So there will be less infrastructure investment in that realm.

But that doesn’t hurt the cronies. It hurts other folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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responsibility too much government

Vaccines Without Passports

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott

The coronavirus vaccination passport idea, in place in New York, attempted elsewhere, in development in Britain, and all the rage among policy pushers like Bill Gates, has been nipped in the bud in Florida and Texas. 

On Monday, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order prohibiting “government-issued vaccine ‘passports’ statewide.” The order prevents state agencies from establishing any requirement for vaccination on the populace. “The ban also extends to any organizations that receive public funds,” according to The Daily Signal, “forbidding those organizations from requiring Texans to prove they received the vaccine.”

After giving a pro-vaccine statement, Abbott went on to reiterate his basic position, that “these vaccines are always [to be] voluntary and never forced. Government should not require any Texan to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives.”

He also stated that the state will continue to supply vaccines to citizens that want the shot(s).

Abbott followed a similar decree by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis by just a few days. At the beginning of the month, Abbott had lifted statewide mask mandates. Florida, as you have no doubt heard, has been a free state (as opposed to a quarantine state) for several months, to a major media pile-on (and a lot of inaccurate reporting, including from 60 Minutes).

The World Health Organization does not support vaccination passports. Now. But WHO is a feather in the wind, like the Vichy-blown government in the movie Casablanca, so strong opposition to the practice by public officers in the United States is most welcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom international affairs too much government

From Socialism to Fascism

Venezuela, socialism, fascism

Democratic socialism might seem all fun and games . . . right up until one is forced to choose between democracy and socialism. Those countries that choose the latter, like Venezuela, lose both prosperity and democracy, and then things get really bad.

But what happens when such a society’s dictator wises up?

“Bankrupted by Socialism, Venezuela Cedes Control of Companies,” Fabiola Zerba reports for Bloomberg. “Saddled with hundreds of failed state companies in an economy barreling over a cliff, the Venezuelan government is abandoning socialist doctrine by offloading key enterprises to private investors, offering profit in exchange for a share of revenue or products.” 

If that last sounds like less than full privatization, and unnecessarily cumbersome, it is. “Dozens of chemical plants, coffee processors, grain silos and hotels confiscated over the past two decades have been transferred — but not sold — to private operators in so-called strategic alliances. . . .”

“Strategic alliances” sounds ominously . . . fascistic.

This is not gratuitous, for, as Peter Drucker explained, “Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion.” And it is definitely not directly towards “free markets” that Venezuela now moves. Dictators and ruling juntas don’t like free markets. It makes them less integral to the wealth extraction process. 

And wealth, in their view, needs to be extracted!

It gives meaning to their lives.

Jon Miltimore, in an article at FEE, also uses the f-word, and quotes my friend Sheldon Richman’s definition: fascism, noun : “socialism with a capitalist veneer.”

Really moving beyond 20th century mistakes would entail reviving actual free markets. Not “so-called strategic alliances.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tenth Amendment federalism too much government

Not Nitpicky

Austin, Mayor, Steve Adler

Austin, woke capital of Texas, may have some difficulty keeping its mask mandates going in the face of Governor Abbott’s lifting of the statewide mask orders. 

Abbott formulated this new policy last week, to nationwide controversy. Officials in Austin and Travis County responded by announcing their intent to keep the old orders in full effect until April 15. 

At least.

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Wednesday that his office will take Austin officials to court,” explains The Epoch Times, “if they continue to refuse to comply with an order lifting mask mandates across the state.” 

Austin officials may think that the pandemic gives them a special license.

It doesn’t.

In these United States, the primary governmental entities are the states.

The federal government is built on top of the union of states, supreme only regarding the limited number of explicitly defined powers given to it in the Constitution. But beneath that, government entities are creatures of the states. Cities, counties, and metro governments are incorporated by their respective states, which retain overriding authority.*

Yet, perhaps as a sign of the general lawlessness of trendy tyranny, a spokesperson for Austin Mayor Steve Adler told Forbes yesterday that the city does not intend to rescind the order and that officials “will continue to do everything within our power, using every tool available to us to reduce the spread of the virus.”

Is it nitpicky to demand that our public servants not do “everything in their power” — but only things within their authority?

No, it is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Under Abbott’s new policy, Texas businesses and individuals remain free to determine mask policies on their property. 

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education and schooling too much government

Where the Rubber Room Meets the Road

school, education, Covid, government, teacher's union

The “rubber room” neatly symbolizes, I think, the institution of the American public school. That is a room where New York’s bad teachers are sent to keep them away from students . . . all the while still receiving full paychecks. 

You see, unions have made it mighty hard to fire a teacher.

But rubber rooms sadly have competition in the category of outstanding tax-dollar waste and bureaucratic madness. 

Welcome to the roads of Fairfax, Virginia.

“Fairfax County, Va., wants to keep paying its school-bus drivers even though its schools are operating online. The solution?  Send the drivers out to drive anyway,” wrote Kyle Smith at National Review. “Food-service workers in schools are also not needed as long as the online-only schooling model continues. So what has happened to them? Zero layoffs. Not even any furloughs. Everybody is still getting their regular paycheck.”

But that was from last Fall. Now, teachers in Fairfax have moved to the front of the line in receiving the coronavirus vaccine, but still refuse to teach until all kids are vaccinated. Since kids have proven not to be a vector for the disease’s transmission, and are themselves the least at risk age group from the advanced respiratory illness associated with it, this seems a tad rubber-roomy.

It gets weirder. Virginia’s House Bill 2118 would replace diesel buses with electric buses. 

Quite an “investment.” Especially while no students are riding school buses.

The much-vaunted “new normal” is apparently to spend more on so-called legacy services that are no longer being used at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights too much government

I See a Bill

surveillance, internet, web, censorship

“See something, say something.” Reasonable enough advice, most times. But what if the scary thing you are supposed to report is someone’s heated political opinion?

A bill called the “See Something, Say Something Online Act of 2020” — just reintroduced last week — would require websites and interactive service providers to report “suspicious” activity that may later be connected with “terrorism, serious drug offenses, and violent crimes.”

If a provider fails to exercise “due care” in reporting major crimes and “suspicious transmission activity,” the company’s liability protections would be at risk.

Suspicious transmissions would have to be reported to the Justice Department within 30 days. Though, reporting at the end of that window wouldn’t do much to stop an imminent crime committed, say, five days after a dubious text message.

What the legislation would do, notes Reason magazine’s Elizabeth Brown, is “set up a massive new system of intense user monitoring and reporting that would lead to more perfectly innocent people getting booted from internet platforms” and give government another way to clobber “disfavored tech companies.”

Of course, neither hyperbolic opinions nor gleeful snitching are rarities on the Internet. So if such legislation leads to instituting easy and anonymous ways to complain to the government about somebody’s online opining, we can expect false positives to skyrocket. Time and energy wasted harassing innocent people would not be used to catch actual thugs and terrorists.

And we’d have yet another chilling effect on our freedom of expression.

Back to the drawing board, Senators Manchin and Cornyn. On second thought, please step away from that drawing board.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom too much government

Diners’ Rebellion

Italy, liberta, freedom

Italy was hit hard by COVID-19, and harder by the lockdowns. 

The lockdown idea — with which we are more than familiar in America — rests upon the notion that the best way to fight a new contagion is to rob it of hosts, and the best way to do that is to enforce anti-social edicts, forbidding normal human interaction thereby (the rationale goes) limiting spread of the disease. 

But Italians are not, say, Scandinavians. While folks up north (and in much of America) tend to maintain a more extensive baseline social distance, by custom enforcing a fairly wide personal space, in Italy folks tend to be much more hands-on, requiring close human contact for everyday happiness. So even had lockdowns worked, they would have been traumatic. But lockdown results have been dubious at best.

So Italians are rebelling.

Specifically, restaurateurs.

And their patrons.

“Thousands of restaurants have opened in Italy in defiance of the country’s strict Chinese coronavirus lockdown regulations,” we read at Breitbart. “The mass civil disobedience campaign —  launched under the hashtag #IoApro (#IOpen) — has seen as many as 50,000 restaurants opening despite evening curfew restrictions.”

My favorite video has diners in Bologna shouting police out of an illegally open restaurant with chants of “Libertà!”

News outfits in America do not appear to be giving much attention to the anti-lockdown movement in Italy — or elsewhere in Europe. It is almost as if the story does not fit The Narrative, which (do I have this right?) has Europeans more accepting of government paternalism, leaving Americans as the more uncooperative, unruly individualists to be controlled by a browbeating press.

But lockdown protests here are nothing like that in Europe.

Makes me a bit sad for America, actually.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom too much government

The $165,000 Question

How far will the enemies of liberty go?

Well, almost all the way to armed robbery, for the latest outrage by foes of individual rights looks an awful lot like just that, plain armed robbery. 

The victims? 

The owners and staff of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey.

On January 13, at the behest of Governor Phil Murphy, state officials seized the assets of the gym. These assets included $165,000 in the business’s bank account, all of which, says co-owner Ian Smith, had come from donations and online sales of T-shirts and other apparel.

For months, the owners of Atilis have been involved in a pitched battle with the state of New Jersey over orders to shut down the gym, which they have kept open despite those orders (for which disobedience they were arrested in July). Atilis has been pursuing litigation to overturn the order, revocation of its license, and fines ($15,000+ per day) that the state has imposed to punish the defiance.

Smith is asking for our help as he and his business partner confront Leviathan.

“This was never about protection, it was always about control,” he says. “Please continue to support us in any way possible. Please share as much as you possibly can this story and help us continue our fight.”

Visit the Atilis Gym website to buy merchandise, and visit the gym’s GoFundMe page to “support the efforts to reopen and stay open” and to help staff and members cope with the financial hardships imposed by the shutdown order.

And subsequent armed robbery.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Distill This

hammer, hand sanitizer

This story started out lousy and then swerved into neutral. But there are still problems under the hood.

At the very end of 2020 (good riddance, 2020!), U.S. distilleries were suddenly faced with a ludicrous FDA tax of $14,000 for using their facilities to make alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

These adaptive distilleries — about 835 of them — have long used alcohol to make booze, of course. But early last year, lockdowns began to massively reduce demand for alcoholic beverages in certain venues. It made sense to begin producing hand sanitizer in order to meet the massively new pandemic-induced demand for sanitizer.

Win-win, until, in the last days of 2020, FDA decided that such flexible pivoting deserved what amounts to a penalty. Bureaucrats decided that producing hand sanitizer changed how the 835 distilleries should be classified. Entities so classified — as “over-the-counter drug monograph facilities” — are supposed to pay the $14,000 fee.

Media coverage and the outcry by already-walloped distilleries has, however, led the Department of Health and Human Services to rescind the penalty. HHS has told FDA to stand down. The fee has been cancelled.

So everybody is happy now, the way you’re happy when the sledgehammer swinging down doesn’t bash you in the head after all.

Aaron Bergh of Calwise Spirits wonders whether distilleries will still get hit with such a fee in 2021. What the government giveth, it can taketh. For now, though, like everyone else, he’s just darn relieved.

Happy New Year, folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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