Category: too much government

Categories
folly too much government

Owls to Spare?

Since 1990, the federal government has placed a stranglehold on the forest industry in Oregon and Washington and California in order to save a species of bird, Strix occidentalis caurina, better known as the Northern spotted owl.

The program has not been successful, experts tell us, with spotted owls declining 40 percent over the last 25 years. Meanwhile, the common striped barred owl, Strix varia, has horned in on the spotted owl territory. It’s a more aggressive bird.

What to do?owls

Why, call the barred owl an “invasive species” and shoot the interlopers, of course!

The slaughter, approved over a year ago, is now going forward, at the cost of a million dollars per year.

Though the government and reporters like to call the two species of owl “distant cousins,” they apparently interbreed, and their offspring — called “sparred owls” — look just like spotted owls. You might think that this is a problem that takes care of itself, but no. On with the slaughter!

Meanwhile, as Teresa Platts of the Property and Environment Research Center notes, vast sectors of national forest remain unlogged and unmanaged, while wildfire suppression continues . . . which leads, of course, to mega-fires. Coming soon.

The ways of animal flourishing, in the wild, are not the ways of the governments that aim to protect the wild. Both are cruel, but at least one can understand the processes of nature.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

In the Zone

You’re a businessman. You see a need for low-cost apartments. A property owner is happy to sell you the plot on which the complex may be built. The local senior housing center has a long waiting list, so your units would clearly be snapped up just as soon as available.

Everything’s a go, except . . . your project is against the law. A zoning law. Therefore, you are out of luck, as are the persons who would rent from you.

Such bans don’t proliferate in a vacuum, of course. Enforcement of zoning laws is often ardently demanded by the residents of the neighborhoods in which developers wish to build.

That’s what happened a few years back in Darien, Connecticut, where townsfolk were up in arms over a proposal to build condos for seniors. Residents felt entitled to forcibly prevent others from moving in. (It is dangerous to play with fire, though. Zoning laws can be used against insiders as well as outsiders. Some Darrien dwellers recently learned, for example, that the eaves of their homes were “too big” for regulators’ tastes.)

Another zone-ified town mentioned in John Ross’s review of Lisa Prevost’s new book Snob Zones: Fear, Prejudice, and Real Estate is Ossipee, New Hampshire, where workers sometimes live in tents to save on rent. The zoning code prohibits the building of new apartment buildings.

Observes Prevost: “The market is hungry for apartments, condominiums, and small homes, if only zoning restrictions would get out of the way.”

Of course, “the market” is simply shorthand for the needs of lots of people, and the freedom to meet those needs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Comparable Worth?

The federal government encourages a certain “spin” regarding wages and salaries. Both taxation and regulation enforce a kind of accounting fraud in nearly all wage contracts. Employees receive a statement when they get paid, but that statement is not complete. Only half of an employee’s Social Security contributions are listed, for example — though, from the employers’ point of view, that unlisted “employer’s contribution” is just as much a part of a workers’ wage as the amount written on the check.

Most folks don’t see a full dollar-value listing of their benefit package at time of payment, either.

Of course, some things just can’t be accounted for in money terms.

In charming, smaller towns — like, say, Traverse City, Michigan, or Port Townsend, Washington — folks have been known to explain those towns’ somewhat depressed wage rates with a rhyme: “The view of the bay is part of your pay.”

And then there’s job security.

In a 2012 report comparing private sector jobs to federal government jobs, the benefit of public sector job security went unacknowledged. Naturally enough.

What we learn is that government employees tend to make a bit more that private sector employees, but, when you include benefit packages, their rates of remuneration are much higher — 16 percent higher.

But then, if to prove that the government really is all about equality, it’s not at the top end that government workers prove wildly overpaid; it’s at the less-credentialed “low end.” These job pay 36 percent more than comparable private sector jobs.

What is often not addressed in the wage and benefit debate is the fact that lower-skilled private sector workers are also disproportionately harmed by federal regulation, subsidies and other misguided policies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Four Percent Off the Top

Suppose you get a 4 percent pay cut.

Suppose you can’t borrow; you can only reduce your spending. Your household budget includes rent, videos, food, saving for a rainy day, and a front-door lock to replace the one destroyed when your home was broken into yesterday. What’s the first thing that pops into your head?

“Well! Better forget that lock!”? No.

Now suppose you head the executive branch of the federal government and want to entrench disastrously high spending. So you want to “prove” that even trivial budget cuts must produce blatant, instant pain. Then, for example, school kids en route to DC find that White House tours have been canceled. Then, for another example, airline passengers find that security delays at the airport drag on longer than ever.

Congress has tasked the Federal Aviation Administration with safely and efficiently directing airplanes on and off the tarmac. The sequester reduces the FAA’s budget by some 4 percent. What to do? What else but furlough controllers for one working day out of ten, inflicting delays in an estimated four of ten flights?

That’s what the Obama administration has done, even though many less destructive budgetary changes are not only possible, but far more preferable.

Much more than 4 percent must be cut from government spending. It won’t be painless. But the Obama administration, consulting a very old, very nasty “insider’s” playbook, seeks to “prove” that the only feasible way to even begin to reform is the least sensible way. False.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Unions versus Obamacare

Former friends of Obamacare keep discovering that the law treats them as enemies.

Three years after Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, Kinsey Robinson, president of United Union of Roofers, Waterproofers and Allied Workers International, says that many provisions “were not fully conceived, resulting in unintended consequences . . . inconsistent with the promise that those who were satisfied with their employer-sponsored coverage could keep it.”

Robinson worries that members who now enjoy multi-employer health plans through the union will lose both benefits and employment as Obamacare goes into effect. Small contractors not required to offer insurance coverage under the law will enjoy an unfair bidding advantage. So he now calls for “repeal or complete reform” of Obamacare. (Let’s do the repeal, then restart with the right reforms.)

I’m no fan of unions, which have too often acted to quash competition in the labor market. But as long as unions exist, if they’re going to oppose something, let Obamacare top the list until it is gone.

No doubt many more expressions of shock and dismay await us as people discover the consequences of the law. In 2010, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared that the health care bill had to be passed so we could learn what was in it; after which, free of the fog of partisan debate, we’d all come to understand at last that lumbering Big Brother is indeed our very best friend.

We’re finding out alright, we’re discovering that with friends like BB, and Pelosi, who needs fiends?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Slow Times for a Fast Car

How economical are electric cars? It’s hard to know. We don’t have a free market setting in which to judge the question.

Their obvious advantage? They don’t pollute.

But, skeptics remind us, their electricity does have to be first produced, and the most likely additional source? Coal. Dirty coal.

In any case, electric tech’s progress (or lack thereof) remains fascinating. When I wrote about the Tesla Motors electric sports car back in 2006, I was enthusiastic. But since then the car has not exactly “taken off,” and the company has received a huge, huge hunk of money in the form of loans from the Department of Energy in 2009, so it looks like just another Solyndra-like boondoggle.

But wait: It turns out that the company has faced an uphill battle: government.

The states heavily regulate auto dealerships. You know, “for the consumer” (read: for a few privileged dealers). Indeed, this regulation at the state level has plagued America’s auto industry for years. And dealers, privileged by these protectionist laws, really, really hate Tesla Motors’ marketing model: direct-to-customer.

In Colorado, car dealers got the law changed to prohibit direct-to-customer auto sales.

I hope Tesla sues to overturn the state dealership laws as illegal under the Constitution — after all, they do precisely what the interstate commerce clause was designed to prevent.

More likely, though, Tesla will seek and get an exemption from the Energy Department. And American mercantilism will continue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Image is anachronistic, and later appeared no this site to illustrate a very different Tesla story.

Categories
too much government

A Conspicuous $2.4 Million

Flint, Michigan, has seemed like a hopeless case for a long time. Even before Michael Moore’s Roger & Me, Flint was undergoing deindustrialization. Politicians resisted, promising to reverse the trend. Failure after failure, they still desperately prove themselves interested in trying something, anything, to make the town “seem” vibrant and “cutting edge.”

Most recently, the Flint Mass Transportation Authority has exerted its rhetoric, its dreams, and its grant-writing skills to nab a $2.4 million bus.

The hydrogen fuel cell technology transit bureaucrats have set their eyes upon is quite leading edge, and I guess it seems a bargain, what with the recent drop in prices (“$3.5 million a few years ago,” according to the Michigan Capitol Confidential).

But the town could buy nine diesel buses for the same money, and it’s not as if they’re rolling in dough. Flint has had to order out for emergency management, suffering a tax base plagued by an official (read: underestimated)  unemployment rate of 18 percent.

So, of course, the transit authority hopes to pull in federal “stimulus” funds.

Ask yourself, though: how would a new, expensive bus stimulate Flint’s economy?  Luxury buses running on outré technology don’t exactly inspire businesses to invest in otherwise depressed towns.

As a rule, only rich people can afford leading-edge technology.

Sad to say, folks in government behave like rich people.

Only worse. Folks in government behave like rich people spending other people’s money.

And, now more than ever, the citizens of Flint can’t afford such conspicuous consumption.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
folly too much government

Borrow It Forward

The consequences of borrowing to fund welfare states have been getting more obviously destructive. In the European Union, the fates of governments with still a few years to go to pay the piper are tethered to the fates of even more wildly profligate states.

Yet the solution most EU officials propose, aside from more tax hikes, is to lend and borrow even more. Whole governments go on the welfare roll. The countries delivering the loans in turn “borrow” from their own unwilling citizens.

When will it end?

Maybe never, if the precedent being pondered by the innovative government of Portugal is implemented and gains traction.

A court there has ruled that it’s unconstitutional for Portugal to save money by cutting the salaries of government employees. (Perfectly all right to hike taxes, though.) So the government is thinking of end-running the decision by paying workers part of their salaries in treasury bills instead of the usual funny money.

The logic is stunning. Obviously, we can pay everything we owe just by issuing IOUs! Not since Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into more straw has anybody fashioned something this magical.

Nobody need ever go bankrupt again so long as we all keep issuing IOUs to vendors and creditors. All the bad consequences of bad practices will maybe just disappear through this expedient! Incredible!!!

Maybe I’ll call up my credit-card company to explain how this works. Once I figure it out myself, that is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Spoiled Sports

Americans get riled up by the slightest things.

As numerous Facebook posts pointed out last week, feminists across the country were incensed that their beloved president complimented a prominent woman on her looks . . . yet remained unfazed by that same presidents’ policy of killing innocent women and children with drone strikes. Amongst conservatives, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly got harsh condemnations for using the phrase “thump the Bible,” despite “The No Spin Zone” host’s long service in defense of what he calls “Judeo-Christian” culture, and his lack of any malign intent. And, in sports news, Rutgers Coach Mike Rice got the pink slip for his violent, offensive treatment of his players . . .

But there’s no “but” with this story, except as identified by Nick Gillespie at Reason.com: “there’s another, more subtle and yet more profound way that Division I college sports is abusing most college students at most schools . . . even if they never suit up for a practice or attend a single varsity competition of any sort.”

What is Gillespie driving at? Subsidy. Particularly, subsidies from government-subsidized student payments:

The vast majority of colleges — public and private — massively subsidize varsity sports directly out of mandatory student fees and other school funds. Despite the ability of top-tier teams to earn a lot of revenue via television contracts, ticket sales, merchandise sales, and other activities, most schools still hit up students in both direct and indirect ways.

Gillespie gives us some disturbing numbers: In 2011, Rutgers siphoned off $9 million in student fees and $19.4 million in general school funds while producing about $23 million in non-donation revenue. George Mason University students pay $12 million a year for sports teams that pulled in much less than a million. Only eight Division I schools balk at subsidizing their athletics departments.

I love college sports. It’s sad to think that they are corrupting academic economies, just as pro sports corrupt city and metropolitan economics around the country. All by reliance upon subsidy . . . that sports programs can do without.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Flight to Freedom

One of the more inspiring perennial stories of my youth were of defectors, people who left their Communist-controlled countries to reach freedom . . . on American soil.

Many, many Soviet and Eastern bloc subjects smuggled themselves out of their countries, or “jumped ship” while visiting the U.S. or other Western nations. The list of freedom seekers is long, impressive, and inspiring.

And this isn’t just “ancient history.”

After an international tour, seven members of Cuba’s National Ballet were confirmed by homeland sources as “not having returned.” And a Cuban exile website has informed us that six of the defectors are now in the U.S., while the seventh remains in Mexico, where the troupe had broken free:

“We were intent on seeking a better artistic life and economic well-being for our families,” Cafe Fuerte quoted one of the group, Annie Ruiz Diaz, as saying.

Correspondents say Cuba’s National Ballet has suffered from a number of high-profile defections over the years, as performers stay abroad in search of greater creative and economic opportunities.

But this is only the tip of the proverbial floating mass of frozen water. In truth, thousands of people defect to the United States every year. Leaving their countries of origin, they flee poverty, tyranny, reckless government and outrageous criminality (too often these latter are the same thing), seeking the comparatively peaceful life found under a nation run by the rule of law.

Alas, defection is going the other way, too, as more and more Americans attempt to escape from increasingly burdensome taxation, oppressive regulations, and selective enforcement of innumerable laws.

We honor the heroic defectors from Cuba only by making the U.S. a place that fewer and fewer peaceful folks would be tempted to flee from.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.