Category: too much government

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national politics & policies too much government

No Waiting for the Lies

From the beginning, Democrats urged us to reserve judgment about their beloved “Affordable Care Act.” Wait, they said, until enacted . . . “to find out what’s in it.”

Then they said: wait till we see how it works.

Now, they tell us to wait some more, while they figure out how to bring some competence to the “glitch”-ridden healthcare.gov.

Waiting was the thing some folks feared most. The closer the country got to socialized medicine, the more queues, lines, and waiting lists would get set up, as bureaucrats scrambled to prevent disastrous cost overruns. Hobbled with regulations and mandates and increased demand (without properly paying for said demand — such is the way of politicians’ promises), it was never unreasonable to expect that “death by waiting” would eventually become the integral feature (not a bug!) of the new system.

Still, in one thing, there was no wait. Though the president may have been lied to right up until healthcare.gov’s launch — misled about the testing and integrity of the IT system — there was at least one lie known from the beginning as a lie: that we could all keep our current insurance policies.

Considering the extent of Obamacare’s regulations, that was impossible. Only a small set of choices would be available to Americans. Most legacy policies just wouldn’t cut it, short a special waiver from Washington.

Now, hundreds of thousands of Americans are getting cancellation notices from their insurers. Others, more “lucky,” are being informed that their policies will be upgraded to the nearest Obamacare-acceptable alternative, at raised rates.

This is the Honest Truth about Obamacare: Obama lied; his staff lied; Congress lied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people too much government

Detroit Ironies

Detroit, Michigan, is a failed city. In recognition of this, its government went to court yesterday to beg for bankruptcy status, and the protection that implies — mainly, the legal ability to force the re-prioritization of its $18 billion debt:

In his opening statement, attorney Bruce Bennett said he “could stand here for hours” to describe the “mountain of evidence” that shows Detroit is insolvent. Without relief, he added, 65 cents of every dollar . . . residents pay in taxes could be needed to address the problem, leaving little for everyday services for 700,000 residents.

There’s hardly anything hopeful about this story.

Recently, libertarians have noted that the people of the city have begun to band together, solving voluntarily and through community and market activity the deficit in services coming from city government. Fine, fine, but enough for a solution?

Still, for real drollery, consider the witless comment by MSNBC’s most witless socialist, Melissa Harris-Perry, that Detroit’s troubles are the result of what happens when government becomes “small enough to drown in a bathtub” (a witticism of my friend Grover Norquist). Hilarious, in that Detroit’s corrupt and spendthrift pols are anything but libertarian, and Detroit government anything but small.

The fact that Detroit can no longer competently enforce some of its own laws only shows the ultimate result of the policy of over-governance.

Despite what socialists and (perhaps) some libertarians may say, liberty is not “no government.” It’s the right amount of good government, defending rights and property from vandals, con men, thieves.

In Detroit, the vandals have been the government.

And a bankruptcy ruling would simply confirm that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Obamacare as Bad as Windows 8?

The spectacular failure of Healthcare.gov to sign people up for the much-promised easy-to-access “healthcare” plans, has now gone mainstream.

So, how bad is it?

Worse than Windows 8?

Just as I know of no one, personally, who has bought a medical coverage package through the new Obamacare system, I also know of no one, personally, who likes Windows 8 . . . at least, on a non-touchscreen computer.

So, are the disasters comparable?

Healthcare.gov fails to hook customers with insurers; Windows 8 fails to do basic o.s.-type tasks, like allow you to do your work.

Still, people are buying Windows 8 computers. Voluntarily. But sales are down, far enough that a number of manufacturers have been selling computers without operating systems installed. And Microsoft is offering discounts to manufacturers for including Windows 8.

Surely Microsoft will speed up the delivery of Windows 9, or at least some fix that makes Windows 8 more usable.

But what will the Obama Administration do?

There are a lot of expert Web technicians out there. For hire. Big companies — Amazon, Travelocity, Priceline — find them and manage to put together successful online trading services. So, surely if the government spends two or three times what businesses spend, it will get a workable system about half as good.

It’s what we expect from government.

Of course, Microsoft could fail, and isn’t too big to fail. But I expect it will survive, simply because of the possibility. The fear. The disincentive.

Those who believe in government über alles, however, forswear such incentives. Bad programs are expected to continue forever and ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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too much government

Where the Jobs Are

Sixteen days. The federal government went into shutdown mode for that long, if a soft shutdown, with most services carrying on — and some government bureaus going into overkill mode to stick it to citizens.

But during those 16 axial rotations, some of the things that carried on “business as usual”-wise might surprise you.

Federal job applications, for instance.

“The government is still aggressively hiring,” informs Lily Whiteman. In a fascinating Washington Post article, Annys Shin quotes this author of How to Land a Top-Paying Federal Job to help explain the weird fact that, during the shutdown, the government was bombarded with job applications, and was even advertising a few positions. But, as Whiteman stated, it’s hardly inexplicable. Government is “where the jobs are.”

And, as Shin’s reportage makes clear, this popularity of federal work

reflects the continued weakness of the job market, four years out from the end of the Great Recession, federal hiring experts said. As much as the public sector has been buffeted by turmoil in recent months, it is still seen as a haven from something even more uncertain: the private sector.

The federal government is alive and well and siphoning wealth in large gulps. The best way to spark a sputtering private-sector job recovery isn’t more government, but for Congress to go into a long, long repeal session, and jettison our most burdensome programs, taxes, spending, regulations, and unfulfillable promises.

It’s no wonder the Great Recession is still going on. After all, Big Government is still going on and on and on and on . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Affordable [sic] Healthcare [sick]

The Pelosi-Obama Affordable Care Act was passed as a pig-in-a-poke. Now with that poke open, with the pig fully emergent as of next year, what do we know about “Obamacare”?

  1. It’s not socialized medicine, but it is heavily regulated- and subsidized-medicine, almost designed not to work. Its inevitable failures will be said to require more government as “fixes,” eventually (some Democrats hope) going all the way to, yes, socialized medicine.

  2. It’s chockfull of new subsidies, which raise medical costs by making demand for services even more inelastic . . . and thus can only increase taxpayer burdens and more strain on budgets. The original reason so many Americans opposed the reform was that promoting a new “entitlement” even as the old entitlements of Social Security and Medicaid teetered further into insolvency was the very opposite of common sense.
  3. It’s filled with new “mandates” at every level, for businesses as well as individuals. A few have been postponed, but the bulk of the increased regulations are indeed going into effect next year. That will generally raise prices.

But by how much? Well, a new all-state study predicts that

insurance premiums will increase under the first year of Obamacare in 45 of 50 states. This finding flies in the face of President Obama’s promise that his health care overhaul would cause premiums “for the typical family” to fall by $2500.

Why the decrease in five states?

Those had already embraced the goofy over-regulations that Democrats just seem to love.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Resistance Is Not Futile

Who says signing up for Obamacare is all snarls and snafus?

Thirty-year-old law student Brian Mahoney already had a high-deductible, low-premium insurance plan. But the day the Obamacare exchanges went online, he decided to check it out. For him, unlike thousands of others, signing up was easy.

Great. Except that . . . Mahoney had been paying for medical insurance, and now he’s on Medicaid. The website told him he was eligible. Thus, the “success” here is the triumph of making a capable adult less self-responsible and more dependent on government handouts.

And that’s bad. If we care about our freedom, what we must do is resist appeals, or demands, that we forfeit control over our lives — even if offered a mess of pottage in return. Refuse to cooperate with the bureaucrats and politicians. Not become martyrs, but resist to the extent that we can resist. Even if it’s, well, more than a tad inconvenient. Certainly we should not submit to new chains and crutches eagerly.

A reader at the Hot Air blog reports that when he asked his doctor about “about how our electronic records would be used and protected” under the Obamacare regime, the doctor replied: “We’re not keeping electronic records. We refuse to comply with Obamacare. We’re not switching over.”

Good for you, Doc. We need more like you.

I certainly don’t want my medical records in the hands of government . . . to name just one of the things having to do with me, my rights and my life that I don’t want government anywhere near.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Something to Protect

Blasé about sweeping government surveillance? Think you have “nothing to hide”?

I bet you do.

Ever draw curtains? You have “something to hide.” If you balk when a con man says, “I need your birthday and Social Security Number,” you have “something to hide.” When you feel comfortable giving certain information about yourself to some persons but not others, you demonstrate your preference to hide some things from some people.

That’s not nothing.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger, however, says he is not worried. “I have no secrets. Those who raise the specter of Big Brother are not on a wrong basic premise, but they are being unrealistic: when and if we fall into the grip of totalitarianism, there will be nothing to stop the dictatorship from spying on us by any means it wishes. Such a regime does not require that the tools have been set up in advance.” Some reining in may be appropriate, but “alarmism” is unwarranted.

It’s warranted.

Totalitarianism doesn’t happen with a flip of the switch. Tyranny works from precedents. Daily encroachments help establish it.

And our government violates our rights in the here and now, in days prior to any fully Orwellian dystopia. The tools usable tomorrow by an American-style GPU or Gestapo to violate our rights can be thus used today by an IRS or NSA.

Our governments snoop on us unwarrantedly today. They hide the extent of their spying on innocent people, today. They have motives to use what they get by their spying — today.

It should stop.

Today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Big Government Blows It

The Obama Administration won’t say how many Americans have successfully navigated the online sign-up during last week’s grand opening of the Affordable Care Act healthcare exchanges . . . if anyone.

To quell the media manhunt, the White House tweeted that Chad Henderson, a mild-mannered 21-year-old Georgia college student with a part-time day-care job, had, through sheer determination of will, managed to sign up for Obamacare at a cost of only 30 percent of his salary.

“I really just wanted to do my part to help out with the entire process,” Henderson said. But Chad was soon found to be hanging out there, suspiciously, finally admitting he hadn’t truthfully grabbed the new entitlement’s brass ring after all.

Chuck Todd announced on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown that it had been a “rough first week” for Obamacare. He wondered how the folks who “brought us the most technologically advanced campaign in history . . . blew it this badly on this — their biggest, most important government outreach?”

“[T]hey really had to get this right,” added National Journal’s Ron Fournier, “not just for the healthcare reform, but for the whole idea — that a lot of us believe in — that a strong, effective government can help people through this huge economic and social transition we’re going through.” Fournier admitted that the failure undermined the “central argument that we’re having in this country.”

Even “objective” media folks, who believe government should play a much larger role in running our lives, aren’t so sure it’s up to the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Billions to Billionaires

I began the week talking about opera. If I end the week discussing football, you can be sure that I’m closer to my home turf.

Which doesn’t make this any easier, for, though many operas stay afloat with taxpayer funds, far more taxpayer money goes to football.

The National Football League, owned by billionaires whose product rakes in big bucks through ticket sales and eye-popping broadcast fees, could certainly support itself. And yet these rich folk don’t merely pass the hat, they wave guns under the table, extorting money out of taxpayers across the country.

Writing in The Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook surveys the damage. He might as well channel Carl Sagan, for the answer to “how much do taxpayers waste on football?” is “billions and billions.”

Santa Clara’s new “home” for the 49ers is a $1.3 billion stadium, which, writes Easterbrook, although largely “underwritten by the public,” will drive revenue that will mostly “be pocketed by Denise DeBartolo York, whose net worth is estimated at $1.1 billion, and members of her family.”

So much of subsidy ends up helping mainly the rich. Opera? Mainly an upper class thing. Football? It may reach the lowbrow, but boy, do the rich make out like bandits, off the taxpayers.

Indeed, argues Easterbrook, this is worse than the bailouts. “Public handouts for modern professional football never end and are never repaid.”

If you don’t oppose subsidies to football, which are obviously unnecessary transfer payments from the poor to the super rich, what subsidy would you oppose?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Mysterious Barricades

One might wonder: Do we really need the government we don’t notice when it is gone?

Which perhaps explains why national monuments have been cordoned off during the federal government budget stalemate: Not merely shut down and left unswept and poorly lit, but barricaded. With guards.

Is there any practical reason to shut down outdoor monuments like the Jefferson Memorial? Or the Lincoln? Doesn’t it cost more to truck in barricades, print “closed” signs and post guards? Seems the executive branch is expressing a “stick it to the citizenry” message, a strategy of maximizing public pain.

Childish. Apparently those at the helm think our government is theirs to roll up and take away.

But try to send that message to aged war veterans, determined to pay their respects at the World War II War Memorial, according to the Washington Post:

The graying and stooped men, wearing blue baseball caps, red T-shirts and garlands of red, white and blue flowers, surged forward, accompanied by members of Congress — the same lawmakers who, hours earlier, had triggered a government shutdown by failing to pass a budget resolution.

A shout went up. The barricades had been moved — it was unclear by whom.

Was it a congressman? A park policeman humanely modifying his orders? A vet? No credit was taken . . . The old men rolled and marched and hobbled forward, enthusiastic. One of the congressmen present declared it “the best civil disobedience we’ve seen in Washington for a long time.”

Common sense triumphs over the monstrous stupidity of official Washington.

Glad to be on the side of Common Sense, I’m Paul Jacob.