Category: too much government

Plunger Politics

plunger, flag, regulations, laws, Trump, flush,

President Donald Trump may win re-election because he dares speak the truth about toilets.

A Washington Post tweet presents the president talking about the insanity of American plumbing: “People are flushing toilets ten times, 15 times, as opposed to once. They end up using more water.”

Jeffrey Tucker, in a terrific piece for the American Institute for Economic Research, focuses on our national disgrace: “I know a man — a proxy for tens of millions — who came from a foreign country, threw down $500 per night at a New York hotel, and was astonished to find himself plunging the toilet within the hour of checking in.

“Not surprising,” Tucker writes. “Not unusual. American toilets don’t work right. This is why there are plungers next to every toilet.”

And Tucker suggests that Trump may beat whoever ends up as his Democratic challenger for no better reason than because, every now and then, Trump sides with common sense against bureaucrats, regulators, and politicians. And, in this case, seeks to do something about it.

Would any Democrat dare mention that it is Congress that ruined our commodes?

Of course, Republicans let it happen.

Our toilets, I have long insisted, provide a perfect object lesson for what is wrong with government today. Early in the history of this Common Sense commentary, I explored the theme: it has been over 20 years ago since I wrote of “A Congressman in Your Bowl”; a few years later, when I started writing columns for Townhall.com, I offered “Flush Congress.”

I don’t know precisely what Trump can do regarding either the plumbing issue or the clogged-up Congress issue, but I — plunger in hand — salute him for trying to do something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags flag, flush, laws, plunger, regulations, Trump

international affairs national politics & policies too much government

The New Arms Race

We who grew up in the time of the Apollo missions are more than aware of the arms-race angle to the Soviet and American forays into Earth orbit and beyond.

Now, we must recognize that the space race is no longer mere ornamentation over earthly military competition.

“The United States and China are rapidly building space warfare capabilities,” writes Bill Gertz in the Washington Examiner, “as part of a race to dominate the zone outside Earth’s atmosphere.”

Of course, much of this remains ground support. WHNT News 19 in Alabama quotes the Commander of the U.S. Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal — a Lieutenant General who “will soon become Deputy Commander of the U.S. Space Command in Colorado” — explaining that current space resources must be ever-ready in support of “the war fighter, the soldier on the ground.”

But the “satellites in space” he refers to, the ones with “very unique capabilities,” are not just about ground support. For when Donald Trump proposed a new Space Force military division last year, he wasn’t blowing smoke.

Billions of future dollars, maybe, but not smoke.

In the works?

“AI for space war to stop anti-satellite weapons”;
Capabilities to treat “Space [a]s a warfighting domain similar to air, land and sea”;
Space planes, such as the in-dev X-37B;

and much more.

The Chinese are looking for “space superiority,” says American intelligence, and of course “you know what this means,” as Bugs Bunny liked to say.

War?

At least war profits.

Even France is talking about militarizing space.

Brave new world? Or more of the same, just higher up?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags foreign policy, Space Force, war

media and media people meme Popular responsibility too much government

Overkill . . . for Your Health

Post author By Redactor
Post date November 18, 2019
No Comments on Overkill . . . for Your Health

vape, vaping, law, asset forfeiture, politicians,

News stories about death- and illness-by-vaping keep hitting us. But in most of these stories it is what is left out that is most alarming.

From Washington State’s King County we learn of another case of severe lung disease “associated with vaping.” But the reportage doesn’t mention how the maladies relate to vaping. “KING-TV reports there have been 15 cases of severe lung disease associated with vaping in Washington state since April 2019. . . .” Interesting as far as that goes, but. . . .

In addition to no discussion of causality, the most obvious thing not mentioned in this and similar reports? The numbers diagnosed with severe lung disease caused by smoking — which is the relevant vaping alternative.

The U.S. Government’s agency devoted to diagnosing potentially widespread pathogens and practices is, thankfully, a bit more useful. In a recently published study, scientists have narrowed down the real culprit: “Vitamin E acetate was detected in all 29 patient” samples taken from those under study.

Most had been vaping THC.

There are organizations worse than sloppy news outlets, however. In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives has passed a bill not merely to ban flavored e-cigarettes, but also to levy 75 percent tax on all e-liquids and vaping devices.

Typical government overkill.

But not overkill enough, for the bill doesn’t stop there. Whopping fines against those caught with unlicensed vaping products are also in the bill, as is — aaargh! — civil asset forfeiture.

The “representatives” of Massachusetts’ citizens want to take away their automobiles, boats and airplanes if they cannot prove, on the spot, their vaping products’ legality.

Politicians are far more dangerous than vaping.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Vaping360

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Tags asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, law, politicians, vape, vaping

national politics & policies too much government

NowhereCare

Even people who get their information only from major network news know that, in their mad rush to promise free health care, Democratic presidential hopefuls would raise taxes for nearly everybody including the “hard-working middle class.”

How do they know?

Because at least one of the eager promisers won’t give a straight answer.

Her name is Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Like Bernie Sanders (but not Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden) she is offering “Medicare for All,” which Fox’s Tucker Carlson calls straight-up socialism.*

George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews, and “other strident Democratic partisans” have been pressing her on the tax hike issue, and at the recent, fourth national primary debate, Warren continued to evade. Even Sleepy Joe knows that universal single-payer health care spending would require more taxes than can be squeezed out of the very rich and the big corporations (which Warren, Sanders, and other Democrats incessantly push). But Warren just will not say the words: yes, your taxes will go up. She continually feints to her follow-up argument, that since overall health care costs would [according to plan] go down, we would all come out ahead.

Tucker Carlson, citing an Urban Institute study, gives the answer the democratic socialists won’t: their promise would require spending 3.4 trillion tax dollars per year — $10 grand per person per year, including every child, retiree, and prison inmate.** Warren expects us to repress our common sense and believe that cramming all health care spending through the federal government will increase efficiency.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has the right word for Medicare for All: utopian.

Noting that Obamacare failed to live up to its promises, Azar predicts the ultimate result, “Medicare for None.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* And not altogether implausibly, since medicine is a fifth of the American economy and (presumably) since socialism is an economy run by government.

** Tucker’s list.

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Illustration from a photo by Gage Skidmore

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Tags Elizabeth Warren, healthcare, Medicare, tax policy

insider corruption international affairs national politics & policies too much government

Mrs. Clinton’s Fevered Nightmare

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 22, 2019
1 Comment on Mrs. Clinton’s Fevered Nightmare

Hillary Clinton, Tulsi Gabbard, Russia, conspiracy,

Hillary Clinton’s recent statements linking Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) to the Russians — Mrs. Clinton’s current favorite enemy — provided Rep. Gabbard with an opportunity for a return volley, dubbing Mrs. Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

But what was shocking was Clinton’s confidence in making such a charge sans evidence.

Or not, considering her long history of “vast rightwing conspiracy”-mongering.

Should we wonder about projection, here? Could Clinton see conspiracies everywhere because she is herself at base a conspirator?

Ask Julian Assange.

His Wikileaks site provided evidence of Clinton campaign malfeasance and sheer creepy weirdness before the 2016 election, and also, more famously, evidence of U.S. military war crimes. No wonder he earned the ire of Clinton and the superstate within which she has worked.

Assange is now in a British court, trying to resist extradition, a wounded man. “I can’t think,” he lamented. “I can’t research anything, I can’t access any of my writing. It’s very difficult where I am.”

What his barrister said is even more chill-inducing: “This is part of an avowed war on whistleblowers to include investigative journalists and publishers. The American state has been actively engaged in intruding on privileged discussions between Mr. Assange and his lawyer.”

Though we know little for certain, between a “sunlight” publisher and the dark, secretive Deep State, I trust the journalist at least a bit more. After all, the Deep State has Hillary Clinton on its side, along with known liars like James Clapper — who just had the temerity to call Trump’s lies “Orwellian”!

And no wonder Mrs. Clinton hates Rep. Gabbard, for the Hawaii congresswoman would halt the prosecution of Assange.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Hillary Clinton, James Clapper, julian assange, Russia, Tulsi Gabbard

free trade & free markets too much government

Location, Location, Dislocation

Post author By Redactor
Post date October 15, 2019
No Comments on Location, Location, Dislocation

“While Lower Manhattan is desperately in need of affordable housing,” writes Yuh-Line Niou in an official statement of her re-election campaign for New York State Assembly, “we cannot pit the need for housing against the need for green space, especially when so many good alternatives are available. . . .”

Assemblywoman Niou (D-Lower Manhattan) is making the case against a housing project in her district. What she is really trying to do is save the Elizabeth Street Garden, a one-acre sculpture garden.

Uh, OK.

I have nothing against sculptures or gardens, but it seems like a strange sort of public space to exist in a high-demand real estate locale like Manhattan.

But you know what is stranger?

Ms. Niou also supports the notion that “housing is a right.”

Christian Britschgi, of Reason, notes her pickle, drawing our attention to the similar predicament of a socialist city councilwoman on the other side of the continent, in Seattle. “Now, one can reasonably argue that open space is a precious commodity in a city, one that needs to be balanced against the need for shelter,” Britschgi writes. “But it’s hard to argue that while also asserting that housing is also a right that needs to be guaranteed by the government.”

Niou insists that “both need to be protected and expanded,” and somehow thinks the “best way to achieve this is by engaging the community from the start so decisions are made with a full knowledge of community sentiment and impact.”

Not mentioned? Rent control.

It is almost as if pols have no idea that goals they promote might be exacerbated by existing policies they dare not criticize.

Or even bring up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags housing, regulations, Yuh-Line Niou

national politics & policies Popular too much government

E-Panic

One of the better arguments for government relies upon sobriety: we want rational, measured responses to threats, not panicky, hot-headed reactions. We have a rule of law to prevent revenge and vendetta, replacing them with justice and civil order.

But when we expand the concept of “threat” far beyond interpersonal violence and to dangers from our own foolish or merely misguided behavior, “sobriety” too often doesn’t even seem an option.

Take drugs.

Specifically, take “vaping.”

That is the innovative technology of “e-cigarettes” that can be used to replace the smoking of tobacco and other drugs with inhaling drug-laced water vapor.

Vaping is far less dangerous than tobacco, at least for emphysema and lung cancer, but it is not harmless. Several hundred people across several of these United States have become very ill and a few have died of a mysterious lung disease.

So of course the Surgeon General calls it an epidemic, and the White House and Congress take up the cause to regulate and even prohibit vaping. And India just “became the latest country to ban electronic cigarettes,” according to Bloomberg.

Whoa, the subject has barely been studied, and what we know so far is that it was not major-brand nicotine e-liquid, but, instead, boutique product that has caused most of the casualties.

The leap to legislation has been too quick for consumers to alter their own behavior with new information.

Besides, prohibition and regulation haven’t worked to prevent the current opiate overdose crisis.

The rush to “do something very, very strong,” as President Trump puts it, is the very opposite of why we say we want government.

Its lack of sobriety is . . . sobering.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags ban, drugs, freedom, law, prohibition, vape, vaping

education and schooling national politics & policies Popular too much government

Biden Under the Bed

Joe Biden, bed, monsters, record player, black child,

Former Vice-President Joe Biden was put on the spot, again, about race. During last Thursday’s presidential candidates’ debate, ABC newscaster Lindsey Davis asked what responsibility Americans should “take to repair the legacy of slavery in our country?”

Triple, Biden said, “the amount of money we spend. . . .”

On “very poor schools, the Title I schools.”

From $15 to $45 billion a year.

Dodging the reparations question, he offered a four-part plan for educating poor children that was very . . . educational.

Biden’s second solution is “make sure that we . . . help the teachers deal with the problems that come from home.”

Send in more psychologists!

Step three is to “make sure that . . . 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds go to school. School. Not daycare. School.”

Sounds like forcing every parent to put their 3-year-old into school. Or just “poor” 3-year-olds? Neither sounds good.

If my elementary school math still holds, next comes policy objective No. 4.

And it’s a doozy.

“We bring social workers in to homes and parents to help them deal with how to raise their children,” Sleepy Joe declared. Because as he explained “they”— wealth-challenged parents — “don’t know quite what to do.”

But Biden does. “Play the radio, make sure the television — excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night, make sure that kids hear words.”

The former VEEP explained that children from “a very poor background will hear four million words fewer spoken by the time they get [to school].”

Language skills matter. But do we really want the next president to station a social worker under every kid’s bed to make sure the record player isn’t skipping?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration adapted from an image by Rusty Clark

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Tags education, Joe Biden, nanny state, reparations, slavery

ideological culture Popular too much government

Slaves All?

A bizarre argument is gaining popularity: the United States of America not merely allowed slavery in its first hundred years, it depended upon it, grew rich by it . . . and, “therefore,” not only the federal government but also its constitutional principles and even capitalism are all tainted . . . and . . . “therefore” . . . we must have socialism!

Why long-dead chattel slavery requires political slavery now is hard to figure.

And no, you should not need to read George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All! or Sociology for the South to see that socialism is slavery.*

But these days it is more common to link slavery with . . . freedom (this is hard even to type) in the form of free markets.

Leftists who make this linkage are helped by some popular historians who argue that since the antebellum South (1) grew faster, economically, than the North, (2) slavery was profitable for slaveholders, and (3) slaves became more productive in picking cotton, the “peculiar institution” was key to American success. Vincent Geloso, a visiting assistant professor of economics at Bates College, writing for the American Institute for Economic Research, ably shows that not one of these three theses hold up to scrutiny.

Most importantly, though, Geloso demonstrates that the slavery system was like all other interventionist systems, with some people (slavers) benefiting at the expense of others (slaves, of course, but also free people . . . through a variety of subsidies).

Geloso uses the term “deadweight loss” to make his case that slavery made America poorer.

He is certainly not wrong. But once you understand why freedom and prosperity are linked, not much economic jargon is necessary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This pro-slavery southerner did argue against the very idea of liberty and free labor on the grounds that freedom is bad and socialism is good. Indeed, “Fitzhugh disliked ‘political economy’ (as economics was then called), which he saw as ‘the science of free society,’” economist Pierre Lemeiux explains, “as opposed to socialism, which is ‘the science of slavery.’” That forthright appraisal is about all that’s good in Fitzhugh.

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Photo by Jun on flickr

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Tags capitalism, free trade, freedom, slave, slavery, socialism

political challengers too much government

Recognizing a Problem

Andrew Yang, zoning, land use, visionary, presidential, election,

Democratic Presidential candidate Andrew Yang has at least one good policy preference: he opposes tough land use and zoning regimes.

And he is not alone.

“Yang’s criticism of zoning is pretty close to what other Democratic primary candidates have said on the subject,” writes Chistian Britschgi at Reason. “Sens. Cory Booker (D–N.J.), Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.), and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro have all targeted restrictive local land use regulations as a cause of high housing costs.”

Mr. Yang’s website clarifies the problem: “Those who already own homes have made it significantly harder for those who don’t to recognize that dream. Through NIMBY (not in my backyard) and zoning laws, the ability of new housing to be built in certain areas has been impeded to the point where the vast majority of Americans can’t afford to live in the largest cities.”

But while Yang recognizes that zoning is best dealt with on a local and state level, his more famous competitors offer fixes, Britschgi notes, that “require the federal government to either spend more money or attach more regulations to the money it already spends.”

Here’s the bottom line: Several Democrats competing for the highest office in the land recognize government interference as the leading cause of the housing crunch and its high prices.

Yet, instead of fighting bad policies at the state and local source, they advocate more federal spending. And they most decidedly do not apply their housing regulation realism to other problems we face.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.