Category: too much government

The Hilarity of a Serious Threat

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 4, 2019
6 Comments on The Hilarity of a Serious Threat

socialism, comedy, tragedy, Bernie Sanders, democratic socialism

Is today’s politics tragic or comic?

Take the current Democratic Party obsession with socialism. There is nothing more tragic than full-blown socialism: mind-control and the snitch society; purges and mass starvation, with millions upon millions dead. But give them credit: the trendy new Democrats say they’re only for the Nordic Model of … well, the European term for it is social democracy.*

But they sure seem to push for evermore government.

Worse yet, they too often defend actual Communist countries — as Bernie Sanders (BS) has done.

This suggests an unfunny ending to their mad rush to power.

So the proud proclamations of the s‑label from BS and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) should concern us, as should the eagerness with which the majority of Democratic presidential candidates have signed onto AOC’s over-the-top proposed takeover of the economy in her “Green New Deal.”

And yet … these politicians are absurd, on the face of it as well as when we drill down.

It’s hard not to regard absurdity as comic.

The b.s. doesn’t end with BS.

Sure, our current president is a comic figure, too. And the pathetic nature of most GOP movers and shakers on Capitol Hill make them worthy of satire.

But it is also the case that Trump is funny in a way no one else is: he is playing a role and making many chortle. On purpose.

Too bad we couldn’t move him from the Presidency to a new Constitutional role, like Troll-in-Chief. There he could ensure, through mockery alone, what he promised in his State of the Union Address: America will never become a socialist country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Denmark, Sweden, etc., support extensive markets and a surprisingly hands-off approach to business — comparable to that of the U.S., and in some ways more lax — combined with extremely high taxes and vast transfers of wealth. You could call this “democratic socialism,” but … why?

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Bernie Sanders, comedy, socialism, tragedy

ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Warren’s No Socialist

Elizabeth Warren, housing bubble, crash, regulations, finance

Senator Elizabeth Warren knows that when people trade, both sides gain. She made that clear last year, in a fascinating interview in The Atlantic. But then she went blithely on, saying that she could fix markets by creating a “level playing field.”

Markets create value, but Mrs. Warren asserts that “when the markets are not level playing fields, all that wealth is scraped in one direction.”

How? People are still trading, even in bumpy playing fields.

She turns to the crisis of 2008, when many people discovered that they had entered into unsustainable mortgages. She explains how her shiny new regulatory program leveled that playing field.

But her scheme did not even out the bumps in the mortgage industry that existed before the crash:

the moral hazard of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
the previous congressional “fix” that pushed banks to accept poor people as good loan risks when they were not (in the name of racial justice, of course),
the regulatory rule that created ratings agencies sans competitive market incentives, and
the Federal Reserve policies that fed the whole housing bubble mania.

She just added another burdensome layer of government.

Politicans sure love to pile on.

Now she offers a new scheme, a child-care program that Reihan Salam, this week again in The Atlantic, says “risks increasing the federal deficit, driving up the cost of child care, and squeezing stay-at-home parents.”

And Mr. Salam says that last risk is one Warren should understand particularly well, since she had “made her reputation as a public intellectual by warning against it.”

Warren’s no socialist — she wants to “save capitalism”! Yet by only adding to government kludge, she might as well be one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags crash, Elizabeth Warren, housing bubble, markets, regulations

general freedom too much government

New York, Pre Scission

New York, Five Boroughs, split, division,

What might be the pluses and minuses to splitting New York State in two?

“Let’s look at it, get definitive figures,” says a first-term state senator, Daphne Jordan.

Sen. Jordan serves a region in the eastern part of the state. Her proposal for an official study, as yet unsponsored in the Assembly, focuses on splitting the downstate region (all five New York City boroughs, Long Island, and Westchester and Rockland counties) from the 53 upstate counties.

The U.S. Congress would have to approve the creation of a new state, of course, and a split would almost certainly be tricky, requiring the geographically larger portion to reconfigure governance completely.

Which is the point.

Downstate politicians and voters have placed a lot of alien and debilitating rules, taxes and (worse yet) subsidies upon the increasingly malfunctional upstate, rural region. Sen. Jordan responded to a charge from a spokesman for Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo that her proposal is “the Godzilla of Pandering” in horror-movie form: the governor’s policies are, she says, “the curse of Dr. Cuomostein.”

In Cities and the Wealth of Nations, New York urban analyst Jane Jacobs noted a historical pattern: cities together with their regions constitute the salient macro-economic entities, not “nations.” Trouble is, big cities like New York no longer treat their rural areas as partners — in today’s globalist environment, the whole world serves as a major city’s “region.”

Rural areas have become mere playthings, whipping boys and dumping grounds for out-of-control urban nightmare politics.

Hence the divorce talk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags division, Five Boroughs, New York, split

general freedom national politics & policies The Draft too much government

Green New Conscript?

selective service, draft, slavery, submissive dog, freedom, involuntary servitude

It can happen here. Congress could simply identify a group of citizens and pass a law forcing them into servitude.

At least, Congress thinks it has this incredibly abusive power … even though the 13th Amendment specifically prohibits it.*

In fact, the idea of conscription — not merely for military service, but also for performing the most routine civilian government functions — is this very day being debated in Washington by a congressionally-empowered body: The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service. The commission is charged with advising Congress on whether to expand draft registration to women or end it for men, as well as whether or not to create a mandatory “national service” program for young people.**

“Should Service be Mandatory?” is the title of the afternoon hearing at American University.

The Brookings Institution’s William Galston and author Ted Hollander will advocate for drafting all young Americans and sentencing each to a year of compulsory service to the federal government. Thank goodness, my friend Doug Bandow, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, will speak against mandatory national service, as will soon-to-be-friend Lucy Steigerwald, a contributing editor at Antiwar.com.

The public can comment for up to two minutes, and I certainly will demand the commission abandon any contemplation of assaulting the freedom of young people under the false claim of “national service.”

True public service is not involuntary servitude to the government. And vice-versa. Americans, even young Americans, have rights.

Tell the Commission to tell Congress: No forced service.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

TELL THE COMMISSION: NO

MY STATEMENT: Leave Those Kids Alone

* Regarding the military draft, the U.S. Supreme Court has somehow sidestepped the Amendment’s very clear language.

** No surprise that politicians and “experts” are targeting the politically least established adult age group.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags draft, freedom, selective service, slavery, submissive dog

general freedom The Draft too much government

Old Codger Draft

Dan Glickman, draft, selective service, slavery, freedom

Stay calm. Dan Glickman has discovered serious problems.

“Washington is a divided town in a very politically divided nation,” Glickman wrote in The Hill last year. “From the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, to the extreme rhetoric on social media, to the bombs mailed to public officials, to the mass shooting in Pittsburgh, to the inability of our elected leaders to reach consensus on nearly all major issues facing the country, it is not easy to see a way out of this mess.”

Nonetheless, he’s found one: less freedom.

Specifically, he wants to take away young people’s freedom.

For how long? Say a year or so, he argues, right after high school or college, when they don’t have a hold yet in society and are less able to fight back; force them to join the military or some non-military federal conscript workforce. It’ll be good for the little buggers. And very egalitarian.

Always-adult-acting Washington knows best.

“Not only does this benefit the individual,” asserts this current Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Congressional Program and former Cabinet Secretary,* “but helps our national community move away from division and towards a more cohesive society.”

Wait a second. The exceptionally well-connected Glickman and friends screwed up our world. So, make young people pay for their mistakes?

And where does Congress conjure up such power?

This Thursday, a congressional commission debates mandatory “national service” for young people.**

It would make more sense to draft 74-year-old Glickman, who actually helped cause the problems … or even 58-year-old me, who couldn’t stop him.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Glickman’s career path, prior to his current position, has been illustrious: a former nine-term congressman; Secretary of Agriculture under President Clinton; Director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government; and Motion Picture Association of America Chairman.

** Please go here to submit your own comments on forcing young people to give up a year of their life to the federal government.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Tags Dan Glickman, draft, selective service, slavery

ideological culture national politics & policies Popular too much government

Greenlighting Socialism

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New Green Deal, socialism

Can we blame U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑NY), really?

A decade of quantitative easing, along with trillion-dollar annual deficits run up recently by congressional Republicans, have paved a debt-ridden road upon which she hopes her massive Green New Deal (GND) might glide.

We can derisively point to the now-withdrawn FAQ, which the congresswoman’s staff “accidentally” posted on the Web and sent out to reporters. It was “unfinished,” and “erroneously” said the GND would be “guaranteeing … Economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.“

But of course, read the actual totalitarian-esque House Resolution — calling for “a new national, social, industrial, and economic mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II and the New Deal era” and labeling it “a historic opportunity” — and tell me the silly FAQ isn’t accurate.

The GND promises to “create millions of good, high-wage jobs … provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic security for all people … and … counteract systemic injustices.” It must, of course, after wiping out tens of millions of jobs in private health insurance (2.6 million) and fossil fuels (10 million).

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has been so kind as to announce he will bring the GND to a vote in the Senate. Put Senators on record. And more than 100 Democrats in Congress, including four declared presidential candidates — Sens. Cory Booker (D‑N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D‑N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D‑Calif.), and Elizabeth Warren (D‑Mass.) — have endorsed the Green New Deal resolution.

Give AOC her due. She has brought fresh young energy to old-fashioned socialism.

And leading Democrats out of the shadows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing