Category: too much government

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies too much government

Tea Parties Still Going Strong

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a hulking health care bill bulging with burdensome new taxes and mandates. We can probably thank many well-​attended Tea Party protests around the country that the vote was as narrow as it was, 220 – 215, mostly along party lines. Now it goes, weakly, to the Senate.

The New York Times says the legislation “would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties — an approach Republicans compared to government oppression.” Gee, I hope Republicans said such laws would be an example of oppression, not merely sorta like oppression.

All but one Republican and 39 Democrats voted No to the monstrosity. Maybe a few Democrats get the message that taxpayers are mad as heck and aren’t going to take it any more.

I like how the Cincinnati Tea Party activists are delivering this message. According to a participant’s report at InstaPundit, the group recently “organized an unprecedented four-​day ‘We Surround Him’ demonstration” to show one Ohio congressman their commitment to liberty. For the first few days, the protestors strategically surrounded Congressman Steve Driehaus’s district to convey their message to voters.

Then they surrounded the congressman himself, stationing themselves around his office building. The protesters invited Driehaus to address them on the health care question, but he couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps he can be compared to a dead duck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Derailed

You gotta love trains. You gotta, you might say, since we all pay for them.

In taxes, subsidies.

The federal government’s Amtrak system loses $32 for every passenger — averaging all the routes. According to a recent Pew study, most lines of the system ran at a loss last year, many at a huge loss.

The Acela line, in the Washington, DC/​Boston corridor, makes a profit of $40.50 per passenger, when depreciation costs are figured in. But most lines aren’t so solvent.

On the other end of the country, the Cascades line loses over $32 per passenger and the Coast Starlight squanders $100 more.

But these losses pale besides the Sunset Limited, from L.A. to New Orleans, which loses a whopping $462.11 per passenger.

Many of these routes should just be closed. People pay the full costs of car rides and plane rides, in droves, right now. There’s no reason to throw more money on “the problem” of routes that already suck up big bucks.

Were all routes sold off, line by line, private enterprise would abandon some — and make the rest profitable. Or go broke trying. But it wouldn’t be your dime going for the losses, unless you choose to invest in a post-​Amtrak rail line.

Instead of this, the Obama administration threw a dozen billion bucks at high-​speed rail.

That way we can go faster — go broke faster.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Bernanke’s Pseudo-​Semi-​Solution

I’m not convinced. I’m not persuaded by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s recent comments about how we must start trimming the nose hairs of the federal government’s runaway deficit spending.

Bernanke has been a great enabler of economic disaster. By pumping so much easy credit into the economy after the Great Internet Bubble popped early in the decade, Bernanke and his predecessor made it easy as pie to pile up all the bad housing loans that produced the Great Housing Bubble late in the decade.

His new solution? Massive new multi-​billion bailouts of bad economic actors. More and faster pumping of the money supply. More and faster enabling of bad investments and bad debt by working to keep federal-​fund interest rates vanishingly low.

Now Bernanke wants America to reduce its sky-​high deficits — $1.42 trillion for fiscal year 2009. He says we need a “clear commitment to reduce federal deficits over time.” Sure Ben, sure. I don’t disagree. But talk is cheap. Especially vague, general talk that your own actions persistently belie.

Bernanke seems to have some inkling that the fantasy economy can’t persist forever. He has, alas, no real idea of how to return to reality. He’s the guy who blows up a dam and then wants to lay down some twigs to stop the flood.

Stop blowing up the economy, Ben.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Will Politicians Ever Learn?

We don’t have time to research everything. That’s why, in theory, citizens have political representatives. They are supposed to research the issues for us, learn from past mistakes, and make improvements. Better laws. Better programs.

Welcome to reality. Instead of doing their job, politicians tempt us over and over with the same old, disproven get-​rich-​quick, get-​healthy-​quick schemes.

Peter Suderman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, looked at “The Lessons of State Health-​Care Reforms.” He did what our federal politicians should have. “Like participants in a national science fair,” Suderman writes, “state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-​care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results…?” Suderman puts it bluntly: “[D]ramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-​care costs, and reduced access to care.… The reforms have failed.”

He discusses Maine’s public plan, “Dirigo Choice,” which I’ve talked about before. He traces the cause of Massachusetts’s individual mandate to its horrible effects: higher prices pushing businesses and individuals to bankruptcy. Tennessee’s 1990 reforms proved even more destructive.

One of the reasons we’re even talking about reform, now, is because of past reform failures. By our careless representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Wait Until Next Year

Enjoy the Major League Baseball playoffs. Me? I’ll be crying in my beer. Except that I don’t even drink beer … it messes with my sinuses.

I had very high hopes that the Detroit Tigers would make it to the playoffs, perchance to the World Series. In first place in the Central Division throughout June, July, August and September, the Tigers tied for first at season’s end with the Minnesota Twins. So after 162 games, it took one more to anoint the division champion. That 163rd game went back and forth for twelve innings. But we lost.

Boo and hoo. Not everyone can be a winner. Except, maybe, in another sense.

The corporate-​government complex that has taken over baseball and most of professional sports has milked billions from taxpayers. Everyone pays for stadiums even as players and owners rake in extraordinary rewards.

We could all win if this subsidy system were stopped. The fans, especially, could rejoice, savoring in good conscience the game’s important lessons: The ethic of always working your very hardest, doing your best, never giving up.

It’s entertainment and solid lessons about life that I can share, even now, with my kids. This summer we had the opportunity to travel to Detroit to see one game. And then, sitting on our couch, we watched on TV until the final pitch, hooping and hollering enough to make my wife shake her head.

After the game, we complained about missed calls and blind umpires, reminding ourselves that there’s always next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Pension Tsunami

A humungous national debt. Growing state federal government budget deficits. Social Security and Medicare, running out of funds. All very frightening. But look out: The costs of public employee pensions are walloping city and state budgets — pushing a number of California cities into bankruptcy.

Though the stock market tumble hasn’t helped, the basic problem lies squarely with politicians. They like to increase future benefits to gain political support from public employee unions; they then underfund their lavish promises, the better to hide the fiscal reality from today’s taxpayers.

Politicians keep running from the problem, but a website called PensionTsunami​.com won’t let them hide. The site, run by Californian Jack Dean, offers a steady stream of horror stories:

  • A new report calls the Kansas Public Employee Retirement System “bankrupt.”
  • A Rye, New York, city manager makes $198,000 a year while still collecting a pension for the same job.
  • The chief actuary for the California Public Employees Retirement System admits that current pension costs are “unsustainable.”

All across the country, politicians consistently fail to act. Californians are lucky: They have the voter initiative. The California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, a group whose board includes Mr. Dean, is planning a statewide initiative to prevent their approaching tsunami.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.