Category: too much government

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national politics & policies too much government

Withdrawal, with Enduring Presence

President Barack Obama recently signed a much ballyhooed Strategic Partnership Declaration with Afghan President Harmid Karzai, ostensibly to remove all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. He trumpeted the withdrawal in pursuing a second term, aware that most Americans want out. A late March New York Times poll found 69 percent of the public against our continued presence.

Yet when Mr. Obama’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was questioned, last Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” about the Taliban gaining strength awaiting a U.S. pullout, he replied, “Well, the most important point is that we’re not going anyplace. We’re gonna, we have an enduring presence that will be in Afghanistan.”Afghanistan

So, our forces can somehow both leave the country and remain there . . . simultaneously?

Yes, they can!

Well, no. The administration is being duplicitous. Our leaders plan to leave a “residual force” in country for the next ten years. Americans will train (and pay for) the Afghan army. When our state-fed media report that U.S. combat troops are all leaving, tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO soldiers will almost certainly remain.

If you ask me, our original goals in going to war in Afghanistan have been achieved — it is long past time to bring all troops home. But whatever one’s view, we can surely agree that our leaders ought to talk honestly about issues of war and peace. Not trick us.

President Obama should admit that just like his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, he has no plan to actually remove the United States military from Afghanistan within the next decade . . . or ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Dragon by the Tail

The idea of a man-made satellite was conceived first by a science fiction writer. Space travel was often depicted as a private activity in that genre, with sci-fi master Robert Heinlein, especially, imagining private launches of rockets as well as private travel from Earth to Moon, and beyond.

But for fifty years, governments have directed — and still direct — money, technology and manpower to develop outposts in space. The current International Space Station is a multi-government project. The rockets that lift payloads of Earth’s surface and into orbit, allowing the station to continue to operate, have all been state-run efforts.SpaceX Falcon rocket launch for Dragon

Until now.

Last week, a private company launched a rocket into orbit, and this weekend its unmanned cargo ship, named Dragon, was caught by a robotic arm and dragged in to dock with the space station.

“Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” came the words from out there.

Since mothballing the Shuttle program, NASA has been hiring Russian rockets to launch American payloads, thus meeting American “obligations” to the international effort. Now, with this first successful private launch to a space station, NASA will be able to rely on more local technology and expertise.

By contracting with private firms like SpaceX — the enterprise that launched Dragon — NASA hopes to save money. Its current contract with SpaceX amounts about $1.6 billion.

We can argue about the necessity of developing “outer space,” I know. But if contracting out with private enterprise can save money over government-run efforts, and at the same time encourage the old science fiction dream of private business in space, that seems like progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Slowest Spending in Decades?

Government tends to grow in spurts, with budgets not decreasing after each spurt. This “ratchet effect” of fast growth then tapering off amounts to a long-term trend: growth.

You’ve probably seen Rex Nutting’s MarketWatch squib, the subject of many a Tweet and Facebook post. Entitled “Obama spending binge never happened,” it begins, “Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.” Nutting reframes the issue as one of the rate of spending growth . . . just as Republican apologists did in the ’80s, even though spending under Ronald Reagan’s first term grew at a whopping 8.7 percent — a bigger rate increase than Obama’s. Nutting entitles his graph comparing administrations’ spending growth rates “Slowest spending in decades,” indicating not how much Obama has been spending over revenue, but year-to-year rates of increase.Barack Obama, Spree Spender

The prez gets a bad rap.

Well, yes and no. The graph should make party-loyal Republicans and Bush admirers cringe with shame. Sure. But Obama and the current Congress are still spending. Hugely. And rapidly — those dollars fly out the door!

Further, by maintaining high annual deficits, Obama has increased the federal debt so that this year it has shot above 100 percent of current Gross Domestic Product, a first for my lifetime.

Obama can be blamed for not doing the decent thing after the horrible six years of united government under the Republicans, he didn’t reduce spending.

In other words, he’s no Warren G. Harding, who presided over a huge contraction of government spending, thereby helping usher in a quick recovery from the post-Great War bust.

We could use a man like Warren Harding again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

Spending Cuts, Seriously

Taking on the government employees’ unions was a gutsy move for Wisconsin’s freshman governor, Scott Walker. Now facing recall, he’s caught in a swarm of controversy, his opponents as angry as bees near a kicked hive.

Nick Gillespie and Jim Epstein, in a Reason TV video segment called “3 Lies About the Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker Recall,” look behind the hysterical denunciations and at the facts. All three of their points deserve consideration, but I’m most interested in the first, their debunking of the “lie” that “Gov. Walker Cut Spending.” Surprise, surprise — total spending in Wisconsin is going up:

Gov. Walker has cut the rate at which Wisconsin’s state budget is growing, but he hasn’t actually cut spending. In fact, the state’s biennial budget is scheduled to increase by about 3 percent on Walker’s watch, rising from $62.6 billion (2009-11) to $64.3 billion (2011-13).

We see the same disconnect at the federal level. A few Republicans present budgets that slow growth in spending, yet do not decrease spending in total. But, since we do see cuts here and there, to this program or that, Democrats take each minor cut as an occasion to scream and holler about how indecent and heartless “greedy Republicans” are for cutting spending.

And yet spending has gone up.

The complainers, by focusing on those few actual cuts, ignore the overall increases. They thus effectively demand that government spending increase always and everywhere.

While talk of Republican “cutters” must be taken with a grain of salt, it’s impossible to take their critics seriously at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Ziggy Stardust Bucks

Josiah Warren Time Store note for Three Hours Labor

When times get tough, the tough . . . switch currencies.

A fascinating report in The Atlantic tells of the upswing in “local currencies.” In the United Kingdom, the Brixton Pound is being floated, engraved on its paper notes the likes of “David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust era.” Pegged to the British pound, it serves mainly as a scheme to promote local business and trade, though maybe it’s a tad more than mere boosterism.

Bavarians are also “enthusiastically using the local currency as a protest” — the local currency being the Chiemgauer. And “similar currencies have popped up around the world,” including in Canada and the United States.

The Atlantic story also mentions the idea of a “time bank,” a one-step-up-from-barter method based on labor hours and (in some cases) accounting for a variety of skill levels. Such “systems are in use all over the world . . . though the organizers are careful to make sure that the time is never given a specific value in a hard currency, which would open the door to taxation from governments.”

That caveat shows how barter and labor time exchanges might seem the more “revolutionary,” from, say, an establishment point of view. It’s worth noting that the idea’s greatest early proponent was Josiah Warren, America’s genius utopian experimenter and theoretician of “individual sovereignty.”

Less of a radical, Rep. Ron Paul echoes eminent monetary economist and Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek by promoting the “denationalization of money,” arguing that government policy should allow all currencies to float, getting rid of all taxation on trade amongst currencies as well as repealing all legal tender laws.

For my part, I would greatly enjoy spending a Ziggy Stardust banknote.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom too much government

A Caricature Worth 25 Lashes?

One hallmark of a free society is the legal right to make fun of our leaders. Several times per week I engage in ridicule as well as argument against the folks who think they know what they are doing when they attempt to rule us.

We should wear this freedom to ridicule like a badge.

Iranians, alas, can’t say the same.

Mahmoud Shokraye was tried and found guilty for insulting Nameye Amir, a member of parliament. Shokraye drew a mildly funny caricature of Amir, in a colorful post-Nastian style (the kind most major papers now fall back on), and for his trouble got 25 lashes.

Heroically, a number of cartoonists have upped the ante and created even less flattering caricatures, as you can see at the Cartoon Blog. (I sample some of them, here.) Amir got more than he bargained for. I hope it stings — more than 25 lashes’ worth.

There are several lessons to draw from this.

First, “taking offense” is not the basis of any legal action. Or any violent action. In the west, we’re centuries away from duels and other deadly fights of “honor.” The Islamic east is, alas, still embedded in old honor cultures. The faster they can shuffle off that obsession and move to a rule of law, instead, the better.

Second, as Thomas Jefferson put it, governments should fear the people, not the other way around. That’s part of what it means to live in a free society.

Politicians who don’t like it are free to seek a less public job. Really.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Businesses Rate Governments

What do small businesses worry about the most? I mean, besides serving their customers?

Regulation — licensing in particular.

At least when rating government, owners of small businesses surveyed by Thumbtack.com indicated that “licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax rates in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.”Thumbtack.com's state ratings in terms of small business concerns.

Yes, taxes are a burden. But regulations and licensing can be amazingly arcane and costly in many communities. Their burdens often kick in before you’ve made a dime, and, despite that, they can sneak up on you, with the heavy weight of bureaucracy descending like the proverbial brick ton.

Thumbtack’s page allows you to see how your state rates. Idaho and Texas come out on top, and my state, Virginia, is surprisingly good. “Blue states” (horrible term: sorry) tend to come out much worse. California gets a big fat F, scoring abysmally low in most categories.

No surprise: The most politically unrepresentative state in the union over-regulates!

Distrust the survey? Just talk to the owner of a small business — you’ll likely get corroboration. Tim Sutinen, a businessman from southwest Washington State, noted in his campaign for state office a few years ago that there were only a handful of licensed occupations in the Evergreen State during the economic downturn in the early ’80s. Now, a few decades later, there’s over a thousand occupations you need a license to work in.

No wonder the recovery stalls.

That’s not progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies political challengers too much government

So Goes the Ancient Chinese Curse

Election news from the weekend tells us that Ron Paul won the majority of delegates at Maine’s GOP state convention, with a sizable hunk of Republicans saying, yet again, “no” to Mitt Romney.

In France, Nicolas Sarkozy got ousted, as French voters put in a self-declared socialist for the second time since World War II.

Meanwhile, in beleaguered Greece, elections gave no clear majority to any party.

Since the new French president, François Hollande, has pledged to fight back against German “austerity” measures, and since Greece, too, resists those “bailout” procedures, it looks like the collapse of the European Union may be at hand.Stop Overspending

On one level, Greek and French voters seem to prefer to live in that special fantasy land where you can grow government and debt indefinitely and expect good times to roll on forever. On another, they are reacting, at least in part, to the idea that austerity is being pushed by foreigners, that they have been forced not by reality to reform, but by . . . Germans!

Americans wouldn’t be happy about having a policy shoved down their throat by France. Or Germany. Or (more likely) Beijing.

It’s not easy accepting less than one is used to.

Which is why, here in America, neither Obama nor Romney talk seriously about measures to balance the budget. Obama lives in la-la land, and Romney thinks that Rep. Ryan’s plan — which allegedly would balance the budget scores of years from now — is a responsible fix for the irresponsible reality of the day.

Only Ron Paul and Gary Johnson are really taking reality seriously. Perhaps that’s why they are still in the race.

Thus it is, in interesting times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets nannyism too much government

Kids Demand Right to Chores

“The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child labor laws to children working on family farms,” Daily Caller’s Patrick Richardson reported on Wednesday, “prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.”

Somewhere, farm kids high-fived each other.Rusty tractor

But not Rossie Blinson of Buis Creek, NC. Now in college, Blinson expressed concern that the new rule would shortchange young people. “I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around eight,” Blinson declared. “It’s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.”

Minnesotan John Weber, 19, argued that the proposed regulation would “prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It’s harder to get a 16-year-old interested in farming than a 12-year-old.” Weber is majoring in Agriculture at college and credits working on his grandparents’ and uncle’s farms with instilling a “work ethic” in him. “It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life.”

In high school, Weber took out a loan to purchase a few steers to raise and sell. “Under these regulations, I wouldn’t be allowed to do that.”

Further, the regs would forbid groups like 4-H and FFA from providing safety training, mandating, instead, a 90-hour federal government course.

Oh, but wait a second . . . it must be an election year or something! “Citing public outrage,” informs a notice posted on the Daily Caller story after business hours last night, “the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.”

My goodness, that’s actually common sense! I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling free trade & free markets too much government

Harvard Shrugs

Wait for it: There’s another financial bubble ready to pop.

I’m not an economist, so I could be as wrong as, uh, a Keynesian strung out on (and pushing) “economic stimulus.” But the usual signs of an over-priced market sure seem to apply to higher education, today. After all, colleges and universities are sustained and over-fed by massive debt . . . in this case, government-guaranteed student loans, now passing the trillion-dollar mark.Harvard Shrugs

From your local community college to the Ivy League, the whole industry reeks of insider advantages, constricted supply and inflated demand. So of course prices rise.

Beyond all reason.

The latest sign on the way to the bubble’s bursting comes from Harvard. That august institution’s Faculty Advisory Council for the Library issued a memorandum last week declaring that the cost of subscribing to peer-reviewed journals has become too great to bear. Robert T. Gonzaleaz, writing at io9, puts this news in perspective:

What does it say about the world of academic publishing, the accessibility of knowledge, and the flow of information when the richest academic institution on the planet cannot afford to continue paying for its peer-reviewed journal subscriptions?

When I look at the prices of textbooks and journals and academic books, I wince. Were this industry marked by laissez-faire policies and free markets, the typical leftist “anti-greed/anti-business” attitude might make sense. But this is an industry riddled with government intrusion, as far-reaching as the intrusions into housing and banking that led to 2008’s financial debacle.

How could the over-sold, over-subsidized, over-controlled college-university industry remain immune to a similar catastrophic deflation?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.