Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Can You Cut It?

Let me call to your attention a noble and popular (if perhaps slightly under-​baked) political initiative launched by Congressman Eric Cantor and the House Republican Economy Recovery Working Group. It’s called YouCut. The goal is to let people vote for spending cuts they’d like to see Congress enact.

The response has been enthusiastic. Cantor reports that the first week YouCut was up and running, visitors cast an average of more than 3,000 votes an hour. People are also mailing in ideas of their own — tens of thousands of ideas.

Yet so far there have been only two “winners” of the YouCut budget-​cut sweepstakes. One winning idea was to cut a redundant welfare program. The other was to drop the latest pay raise for nonmilitary federal employees. These cuts would save several billion in the short run and many more billions down the line.

Great … but why have only two spending-​cut ideas passed muster so far? We’ve got trillions in expenditures to eliminate. And it’s really not that hard to find greasy marbled slabs in the federal budget to hack away at. YouCut’s contest rules are way too “conservative.”

Therefore, by the power vested in me as a fellow downtrodden taxpayer, I hereby authorize any and all spending cut ideas vetted by YouCut visitors that earn more than a dozen votes be judged victorious and worthy of immediate implementation.

Congratulations to all you winners.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Prophet of Loss

What if Karl Marx was …  half right?

Marx’s theory of history elaborated that, with each bust of the boom-​and-​bust cycle, the rich would nab ever more property — capital — until impoverished workers united to take all that capital for “themselves” (as a collective) and run it for the common good.

That’s dialectical materialism. It didn’t predict what happened even in Communist countries. But something vaguely Marxian is going on now.

Today, when there’s a bust, government bails out the failed rich guys — even buying companies.

Further, governments keep hiring more people to “stimulate” the economy. Government workers increase as a percentage of the workforce, with higher-​than-​average wages and benefits.

This used to be called “creeping socialism.” Politicians move us closer to total government — measure by measure, tax by tax, law by law. No revolution necessary.

Except … well, as politicians put more of our eggs into the collectivist basket, each down-​swoop of the business cycle makes the whole system less stable — and (with increasing taxes and debt) more burdensome to sustain.

It could all lead to revolt — a taxpayer revolt.

Taxpayers, who’ve had to put up with a lot of nonsense over the years, aren’t even a tad bit interested in the foolishness of communism — or a corporate, fascist super-state.

That’s where Marx and his followers had it all wrong. Only the build-​up of instability seems Marxian. Americans’ response is to seek limits on government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom too much government

How Dare You Say We Waste Our Time?

Businessmen tend to be extremely concerned about efficiency, even to the point of talking incessantly about things like “performance metrics.”

Bureaucrats? Not so much.

Indeed, the merest suggestion that a program isn’t cutting the mustard can bring on protests of outrage. John Payne, writing on The Lesson Applied, caught my attention to one such instance. Quoting from the Associated Press, he reveals the passion and “logic” of former “drug czar” John Walters:

“To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven’t made any difference is ridiculous,” Walters said. “It destroys everything we’ve done. It’s saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time.”

Payne’s no-​nonsense response? “Yes, that is exactly what critics of the drug war are saying.”

Why did Walters take such umbrage? Could it be to intimidate us into not thinking about the evidence that drug-​war critics present? Or questioning the logic of the whole program?

And the logic is a tad shaky: Allegedly to prevent some people from ruining their lives, we ruin those lives and many, many others. 

Hundreds of thousands of people in prison. Billions in property confiscated without due process. Innocents shot in no-​knock raids — including dogs, little girls … and the police themselves from innocent Americans defending themselves from seemingly anonymous attackers in the night. 

Drug abuse can be very bad. I know. But Constitution-​abuse can be worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies tax policy too much government

A Plague Upon Small Business

Those who like Big Government tend to dislike Big Business. So it must be just an unintended effect that shiny, new government programs invariably harm small businesses, aiding big ones. 

There are many examples of this. Today’s comes from the biggest new kid on the block, the new health care reform.

Who wins with it? Sure isn’t small business.

The increased paperwork and added regulations especially burden smaller operations. Big corporations can more easily eat the additional costs. Small businesses, on the other hand, have to expend a greater percentage of their gross incomes to meet new requirements, and this drain on their resources means that they can’t compete as well against the big guys, toe-​to-​toe in the marketplace.

Worse yet, even the special tax credits tossed in small businesses’ direction serve up a thorny mess of complexity and arcane paperwork. And while the credits are scheduled to evaporate, there appears no end to soaring costs.

Finally, the new IRS 1099 reporting requirements on business-​to-​business transactions of $600 or more will hit small businesses hard. These new required forms are in effect a tax themselves, because the extra paperwork will cost real money.

Is this any way to improve health care? No. It’s got nothing to do with health care. It’s just a way to increase the tax take and another way Big Government helps Big Business at the expense of the little guys.

And that’s sick.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Let the Bedbugs Bite

Whenever governments interfere in the basic operation of markets, trying to “help” in some way, pretty soon an unintended effect emerges, and government must step in, again, to correct for that. And that second, corrective intervention then causes another problem, requiring yet another intervention. And so on.

This process of intervention-​upon-​intervention was detailed by economist Ludwig von Mises, and explained with elaborate reasoning. Since Mises’ day, the history of economic interventionism is littered with examples that reinforce Mises’ point.

Take bedbugs.

In 2008, I noted that bedbug infestations were on the rise. And that Congress was working to combat the problem with a special program.

I suggested that Congress should stay out of it.

What I didn’t know was that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was hard at work … in effect defending bedbugs. The EPA regulates pesticides. The cheapest and most effective anti-​bedbug pesticide had come up for re-​registration for home use. But the company that makes it decided not to re-​register. The cumbersome, bureaucratic re-​testing process cost too much, taking away the company’s incentive to sell the chemical. 

So now in Ohio — an apparently bedbug-​conscious state — the State Senate is petitioning the EPA to get a special exemption for this one product. No word from the EPA yet.

So, if a bedbug infestation breaks out big time, don’t blame Congress for not spending enough. Blame the EPA. Or blame the body responsible for the EPA. Yup, Congress. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

Congress Moves to Censor the Net?

The Internet is not safe. Congress wants to regulate it. The most recent idea is to sic the Federal Elections Commission on Net freedom.

Recent hearings on something called the DISCLOSE Act disclosed that the act would “extend the FEC’s control over broadcast communications to all ‘covered communications,’ including the blogosphere.” Or so say the Center for Competitive Politics’ Bradley Smith and Jeff Patch, writing on Reason​.com.

It’s hard to imagine a worse idea. No groundswell of citizens demanded this. So of course Congress is considering it.

Would they really try to regulate the blogosphere? 

The lead “reformers” in Congress say all they want to regulate are political ads on the Internet, not bloggers. But, as Smith and Patch note, the actual language of the current bill quite clearly leaves open the blogosphere for regulation. They also doubt the good intentions of the would-​be regulators, explaining how, in the early days of McCain-​Feingold advocacy, “the ‘good government’ crowd … denounced a deregulated Internet as a ‘loophole’ in campaign finance law, a ‘poison pill,’ ‘anti-​reform’” etc.

How can respectable Americans advocate regulation of speech, as if the First Amendment did not exist? It’s as if they are baffled by plain language: “Congress shall make no law … abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.…”

How can they live with themselves? 

For me, it’s a consolation to know that at least censors in Congress can still be thrown out, peacefully, with votes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.