Government failure checklist. . .
Reference:
The Government Poisoned Flint’s Water—
So Stop Blaming Everyone Else
Flint’s water crisis isn’t a failure of austerity. It’s a failure of government.
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People who spend other people’s money in Indiana are applauding their amazing ability to write big checks and hand them out.
The Regional Cities initiative — enacted by the Republican legislature and heralded by the Republican governor — just awarded grants of $42 million of taxpayer dough to three of seven county consortia in the Hoosier State.
“This is big. This is a big deal in Indiana,” Gov. Mike Pence told reporters, “and I believe it’s part of a third century strategy for growth that will pay dividends for generations.”
Really? Government redistribution will fuel “growth” . . . and “pay dividends”?
The more-spending “strategy” is “geared toward quality of life projects ranging from economic development and job creation, to improved recreational and arts opportunities,” according to WNDU-TV in South Bend, adding that, “The Regional Cities Initiative is aimed at the younger generation and giving those people more reasons to love — than leave the state.”
Love it or leave it, eh?
“The public has been told that we have some sort of $42-million jackpot to spend on wonderful things,” explains Fort Wayne City Councilman Jason Arp in his Indiana Policy Review. “What hasn’t been made clear is that with the award comes [an] obligation not only to match that $42 million with taxpayer and private money but a separate eight-year commitment to a portfolio of $1.4 billion in projects. . . .”
In other words, it’s a classic government-spends-our-money-better-than-we-can program.
The Regional Development Authority will, in the end, “have discouraged actual entrepreneurship, innovation and free enterprise,” Arp explains. In their place? A “sort of unaccountable directorate.”
Growing ever bigger to better spend our hard-earned dough.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bernie Sanders has risen in the polls. He may even beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus and primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A cause for celebration! Witnessing a huge hunk of Americans accept Mrs. Clinton, the consummate and corrupt insider, is too disheartening.
Bernie Sanders, for all his faults, is at least not an insider like Hillary.
And even when he’s obviously wrong, he’s a breath of fresh atmosphere. Take his recent call for turning the credit ratings institutions into non-profits, or into government-run bureaus. It’s good to hear someone on the left blame something other than the partial repeal of Glass-Steagall as the cause of the Crash of 2008, and (thus?) of the current “Great Recession.” Glass-Steagall was utterly irrelevant to the institutions that were hit hardest in 2008’s collapse; it has, nevertheless, served as leftists’ idée fixe for years now. Embarrassing.
The ratings agencies, on the other hand, did play a part in the crash.
Still, remember: their prominence and importance (and very existence) in financial sectors rests entirely upon one provision of FDR’s New Deal.
More importantly, Bernie’s favored solution — government bureaus — is no solution at all. Europe’s ratings system failed in 2008, too, as Mark A. Calabria has noted, and “it was the international financial regulators, not the rating agencies, who decided that Greek debt was ‘risk-free.’”
Earth to Bernie: government regulatory failure is normal.
Calabria agrees that we need to have a political conversation about the ratings agencies, but insists it be “based on facts,” not ideology.
I’m all for the facts, but ideologies are inevitable. And ideologies promoting Big Government inevitably fail.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Would your favorite presidential candidate force women to register for the military draft?
A federal court case, National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, is bouncing around the Ninth Circuit. It challenges the male-only draft registration program as discriminatory against men.
Thirty-five years ago, when yours truly was fighting the draft, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a male-only program because women were then barred from combat. Now the All-Volunteer Force has opened all military fields to women, including combat roles. It follows that the federal courts will likely strike down male-only registration.
What will Congress do? What will the next commander-in-chief advocate? Allow the program to end — or mandate that both young men and young women register?
Hillary Clinton answered this question in 2008, during her first run for the presidency: yes, register women for the military draft.
What about the other presidential hopefuls?
Back in 1980, then-candidate Ronald Reagan pledged to end it, saying that conscription (and registration for it) “destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”
Sadly, President Reagan continued draft registration, prosecuting me and others.
“The question is nothing less, than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered,” the great Daniel Webster railed against conscription, “and despotism embraced in its worst form.”
Men and women have an equal right to freedom — not conscription. Free people will always volunteer to defend their country.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Bernie Sanders promises universal health care, but, up until the other day, just waved his hands in the air, without specifics. Now he has a plan.
Sort of.
Ezra Klein, writing at Vox, says Sanders’s “Medicare for All” is not a plan at all. It’s a “gesture towards a future plan.”
But that doesn’t mean that the thing isn’t “well sold.”
After praising the Obamacare/Affordable Health Care Act for giving “health insurance” to more than 17 million people, the preamble of Sanders’s proposal made its most predictable statement: “Twenty-nine million Americans today still do not have health insurance and millions more are underinsured and cannot afford the high copayments and deductibles charged by private health insurance companies that put profits before people.”
Forget that deductibles are integral to the very idea of insurance. Forget that profits are absolutely necessary for the success of an industry. Forget that profits come from serving people.
Remember, instead, the leftist clichés.
Sanders’s plan, such as it is, is a lie — or, in Klein’s phrasing, “has nothing to do with Medicare.” Sanders aims to get rid of deductibles and copays, on which Medicare depends. It’s what makes Medicare distinct from, say, socialized medicine.
Insurance covers individually unforeseeable but actuarially manageable risks. Socialized medicine gets rid of the idea of “payment for service” on every level — and thus the very idea of insurance — and turns the whole thing over into a tax-and-spend program, i.e., what Sanders really wants.
That won’t be cheap, as Megan McArdle demonstrated some time back during the Vermont “single payer” kerfuffle.
The only option for increasing value while lowering prices? Go the opposite direction from socialism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
When I was a kid, both Democrats and Republicans sported “conservative” and “liberal” wings as well as “moderate” leaders and representatives.
Now, conservatives have pretty much corralled themselves into the GOP, and liberals into the Democratic Party.
Why? Birds of a feather?
Ezra Klein offers some interesting observations in “This is what makes Republicans and Democrats so different”:
Klein also draws on research by political scientists Matthew Grossmann and David Hopkins, who in their paper, “Policymaking in Red and Blue,” conclude that “the Republican Party is dominated by ideologues who are committed to small-government principles, while Democrats represent a coalition of social groups seeking public policies that favor their particular interests.”
Interest groups demanding that their “particular interests” be addressed with more “deliverables” from government would certainly explain a strong Democratic Party bias in favor of more government. Klein seems to be saying that Democrats are led, as if by an invisible hand, in the socialistic direction.
But why does a Republican Party supposedly “dominated” by those with “small-government principles” also advance policies that grow big government? “New policies usually expand the scope of government responsibility, funding, or regulation,” Grossmann and Hopkins point out.
Perhaps Republican politicians are more influenced by their own position in government than by the views of their base voters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Tragedy has hit the environmental movement: The price of oil is going down.
And may go down further.
While environmentalists quiver, science writer Ronald Bailey chortles. “Resource depletionists” — the prophets of “peak oil” — should, he says, hide their heads in shame! They’ve been so very, very wrong in the prophecy biz.
As oil descends towards $20 per barrel, we should ask ourselves: where’s the tragedy? Well, it will postpone the switch to non-fossil fuels. The need is far from obvious, and the incentive is to use energy in its cheapest, most efficient forms.
But if increased CO2 in the atmosphere is destabilizing the planet’s atmosphere and ecosystem, cheaper oil (and thus more burning of it) might lead to the much-ballyhooed tragedy for all.
Still, that’s a big “if” — the more we learn about the climate, the more doubtful the identified CO2 causation and attendant doom.
Besides, global warming catastrophism’s implicit message — the “need” for global political control over everybody and everything to “manage” climate changes — seems awfully convenient for those who just love intrusive government . . . on “principle.”
It echoes the Keynesian technocratic conceit in economics — that experts should manage the economy by fiscal methods (increasing debt) and monetary intervention (central bank interest rate manipulation and bad asset purchase). It’s pretty obvious that they shouldn’t, because they’ve demonstrated they can’t.
As prices for oil defy “peak oil” prophets’ predictions, it becomes obvious: the world works differently than dreamed up by the prophets of doom.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Why did Dr. Ben Burris give up his orthodontic license? Where did he go wrong?
Dr. Burris broke the law. He flagrantly violated the hallowed precepts of the Arkansas Dental Practices Act. Let me rinse and spit out the truth: This dentist illegally cleaned people’s teeth.
Not just once — he did it again and again. Often twice a year per patient — or victim, depending on your viewpoint.
Plus, brace yourself, he didn’t merely scrub their choppers, he did so — get this — at very low cost.
We need strong laws to stop such scoundrels.
That bastion of wisdom, the State of Arkansas, has no qualms about Dr. Burris’s qualifications to remove plaque from our incisors, canines and molars, having licensed him to practice dentistry. The problem is actually that Dr. Burris is over-qualified.
Especially to charge low prices!
Burris got licensed in a specialty: Orthodontia. You see, according to state law, a dentist so licensed “must limit his or her practice to the specialty in which he or she is licensed except in an emergency situation.”
Only after terrorist attacks or earthquakes can society risk allowing Orthodontists to daringly and brazenly polish people’s teeth. For less.
This particular statutory tyranny aims to close healthcare markets, minimize patient choice and keep dental costs artificially high. Luckily, beyond being maliciously wrongheaded, Arkansas’s dental law is absurdly foolish.
Dr. Burris dropped the federal court challenge being litigated by the Institute for Justice. Why? He discovered that by simply relinquishing his orthodontic license, he could legally practice orthodontics and clean people’s teeth at low cost.
He just can’t call himself an Orthodontist — but can call the law an ass.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The King Canute Memorial Award for Clueless Legislation (Winter 2015-16) goes to Senator Bernie Sanders. He had stiff competition from ocean-lowering President Barack Obama, this season, but surely earned it these past few months.
Canute famously warned his advisors that he was no miracle worker. Standing by the sea and commanding the tide to turn only works on a regular schedule — set by natural forces, knowable in advance only after years of careful observation. All the hand-waving, incantations and official edicts cannot change the tide.
The award goes to those most in need of the Full Canute Object Lesson. Sanders’s latest ninnyism begs for just such a lesson: He wants to establish maximum fees for ATMs, down to $2 per transaction.
As everyone knows, some ATMs charge more than others. Why? It is not costless to provide electronic bank inquiries and withdrawals around the country . . . and the world. And profitability varies.
Supply and demand. Entrepreneurs do not offer these services out of charity. Close off profits in some areas, there will be corresponding effects.
From my experience, transaction fees range from about five bucks down to . . . Zero.
I usually pay nothing.
Outlawing fees above some arbitrary maximum will almost certainly ensure there will be fewer ATMs — particularly in low-use areas — and might even raise those zero-priced transactions to one- or two-buck fees.
Prices aren’t arbitrary, so no matter how loudly Bernie Sanders sputters “Unacceptable,” price ceilings aren’t magically going to produce the same service at less cost.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The biggest problem facing Americans? According to a Gallup poll, for the second year in a row, it’s our government.
Maybe I should say “the government.” Few think it represents us. Which is sort of a big problem for a representative government.
Presidential candidate Donald Trump says our leaders are “stupid.” Were that the case, it’d be easier to correct. The reality is worse.
We have an ethical problem in government. Those entrusted to represent us represent, instead, themselves. And their cronies. And special interests.
Charged with creating a level playing field where we can all succeed through hard work, our elected officialdom have tilted that field. Oh, they’re doing just swell. The rest of us? Not so well.
Elected officials from Washington to state capitols have hiked up their pay, finagled perks, per diems and other bennies, and rewarded themselves with lavish pensions. Meanwhile, most Americans lack even a 401K to help save for retirement, much less a pension beyond a meager (and politician-imperiled) Social Security safety net.
Transparency? Well, it’s not just Hillary Clinton who has conducted public business privately. Even with her scandal looming in the headlines, Defense Secretary Ash Carter confidently did likewise.
Let’s end pensions for politicians, nudging them to return to our world. And let’s change the rules so they work serving the public, not for private gain.
Can we count on our elected representatives to rectify their ethical lapses? Not on your life. We need to do it ourselves, using ballot initiatives to put ethics first.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
