Category: too much government

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Marginal Gains in Germany?

Germany has a goal: Introduce a million electric or plug-​in hybrid cars into the transportation mix by 2020. But a recent study by the German branch of the World Wildlife Foundation projected the impact: If successful, carbon dioxide emissions would decrease 1 percent in the transportation sector, 0.1 percent in Germany, total.

That’s not much.

The trouble with switching to so many electric cars is that they rely on increasing amounts of industrially produced electricity. Which would bring additional coal-​fired plants online, thereby increasing carbon dioxide emissions.

Maybe the only way for electric cars to really impact carbon emissions is to increase nuclear power production at the same time. Nuclear power is the only practical, real-​world-​right-​now way to increase energy and reduce carbon dioxide production by an appreciable amount.

Barring such a move, switching to electric cars expending energy gained from burning coal doesn’t offset our alleged global greenhouse problems. It is true that centralized coal-​burning emissions can be scrubbed for pollutants, and we might expect progress here better than progress in auto-​emission scrubbers. But that helps with problem of dirty air, a very different issue.

Even big steps addressing complex ecological problems tend to produce small gains, at best. One should question how much wealth to sink for nearly infitesimally small gains.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets too much government

Barney’s Bubble Babbling

To hear Congressman Barney Frank tell it, he was a lone voices of fiscal reason when the surge of ill-​considered mortgage debt fueled the now-​popped housing bubble.

Unfortunately for Frank, this is the age of the Internet. Bloggers have proved more than willing to collate inconvenient evidence.

Thanks to Ed Morrissey on HotAir​.com, then, we have two testimonies of Frank-​ish speechifying. Here’s Frank in 2009:

People haven’t fully understood. One of the causes of the terrible crisis we had over the last few years … it came from people being pushed into buying houses, taking out loans that they couldn’t afford. Part of that was a conservative view that rental housing was a bad thing.… People were pushing home ownership [for] people who shouldn’t have been there.

“People in power” pushed this, eh? Which people? The irresponsible conservatives. But here’s this same sir, Barney Frank, in a clip from 2005:

We have, I think, an excessive degree of concern right now about home ownership and its role in the economy.… This is not the dot-​com situation.… [Y]ou’re not going to see the collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble. And so, those of us on our committee in particular, will continue to push for home ownership.

Oh dear. Barney, just be honest already and admit you helped destroy the economy, okay?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Black Liquor Tax Credit

Senator John Kerry is incensed. He used the word “cheat.”

Senator Jeff Bingham insists Congress was not trying to make a tax loophole.

The fracas is over a four-​year-​old tax credit given to companies that mix biofuels with diesel. Congress wanted to encourage “greener” burning.

Well, it seems that paper companies have been burning a bioproduct in their plants for years, something called “black liquor.” It doesn’t sound green, but it is made from wood product. In response to Congress’s program, paper companies have taken to mixing it with diesel to qualify for the tax credit.

It wasn’t what Congress intended. But Congressfolk should hardly be surprised. A law has to apply across the board. You can’t make a general rule and then say, “Uh, no: We meant it to apply only to those businesses over there, not these ones over here.”

The New York Times notes that the scandal surfacing, now, might prove especially inconvenient for Congress, as the public roils over business and banking bailouts. 

The congressional brain trust meant to give incompetent bankers billions. They didn’t mean to give International Paper $71 million, or Verso Paper $29.7 million. 

Despite this, Congress has to live up to its own words. Not its intentions. In this case, Congress wants to blame corporations, not themselves. We’ll see if the august body of social engineers can pull that trick off.

Obviously, like Kermit the Frog, Congress is finding that it’s not easy being green. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

Politicians Are Poor Sports

Several years ago, Washington, D.C., “won” a Major League Baseball franchise, the Nationals. City politicians, though constantly complaining about a lack of money even for essential programs,  miraculously came up with over $600 million to build a brand new stadium to lure the team.

Now that the team is playing in its new taxpayer-​subsidized stadium, the battle over funding is over. But the war over tickets for the mayor and city council members to sit in a luxury skybox and watch the games escalates.

You see, the Nationals have given a luxury skybox to the mayor and another one to the city council. (Just as an aside, doesn’t this deal strike you as sort of like a bribe? It does me.) Anyway, it seems that the Nationals front office sent the tickets for both skyboxes to Mayor Adrian Fenty. And Fenty managed to forward tickets on to only those council members with whom he isn’t feuding. The other council members were left out, causing some hard feelings.

The very same thing happened last year, too. 

There always seem to be problems when the bad guys split up the loot.

Well, one council member, Kwame Brown, offers a very simple solution: Sell both the skyboxes to the highest bidder and use the proceeds to help cover budget gaps.

Wow, a D.C. politician actually making sense. That’s a home run!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

No Exaggeration Necessary

Artful exaggeration is a part of good writing. Take this example from Yakima Valley Business Times editor Bruce Smith: “All of us who think we already pay too many taxes should bow west toward Mukilteo at least once a day.”

Smith did not figure he could set up a new religion. He was figuratively conveying the importance to the state of Washington of initiative activist Tim Eyman’s recent, successful measure requiring a two-​thirds’ vote of the Legislature to hike taxes.

Smith also went on to talk about Tim Eyman’s newest proposal, which he is petitioning to place on the 2009 ballot. The measure is called I‑1033, and officially dubbed the Lower Property Taxes Initiative. But Smith notes a feature of the proposal that stretches it, in a sense, beyond a mere property tax lowering device. “What I like most about the measure is that it reins in government growth,” writes Smith. “It limits the rate of government expansion to that of the overall economy.”

But here Smith doesn’t exaggerate at all. “Currently government grows at a level that is about 50 percent higher than that of the private sector,” he explains. 

“[B]ureaucrats and the apologists have all sorts of excuses to rationalize why those levels of growth are necessary, but here’s the bottom line: Unless things change, government will become unsustainable.”

Exactly. No hyperbole.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits too much government

Checking Specter

Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter is an important man. How do I know this? 

A congressman told me.

While Specter is a Republican, his congressional booster happens to be a Democrat. Pennsylvania Congressman Robert Brady credits Specter with passage of Obama’s stimulus bill. 

“[T]his bill would not have passed,” says Brady, “if not for Arlen Specter,” who was one of three Republican senators to break ranks for the presidents’ bailout extravaganza. In case you were wondering, Brady clarified his enthusiasm for the so-​called “stimulus” package. “[E]very congressman is passing out checks, all over the country … because of a man named Arlen Specter.”

Clearly, Brady likes to pass out checks … as do most other congressmen.

But one former congressman doesn’t seem so fond of the program. Pat Toomey ran for Congress back in 1998 pledging to serve just three terms. He won, spent six years fighting wasteful, overbearing government, and then stepped down as promised.

Toomey, until very recently the president of the Club for Growth — a group dedicated to market growth, not growth of government — is likely to challenge Specter next year for his Senate seat.

The difference between Toomey and Specter? Toomey, being the challenger, may ask you to write a check to his campaign, while Specter, being the incumbent, will offer to give you a check … drawn on your account.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.