Category: too much government

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

A Million for Each Congressperson

A business filed for bankruptcy last week.

These have been tough times, so that’s not a shock. What makes the story juicy is that the FBI raided the company’s headquarters two days later.

The company? Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer. A few months earlier, it had been boasting a profitable return on investment. And, as President Obama had proclaimed the previous year in a visit to the California outfit, Solyndra was precisely the kind of company that deserved federal government assistance. It was so cutting edge, so innovative, that it deserved a huge loan guarantee, to the tune of $535 million.

The raid occurred on the same day as the president’s “jobs” speech last week. Yet, Mr. Obama neglected to include an update on his administration’s previously self-praised policy of industrial subsidy pertaining to that very company.

Republicans are making much of this. They are themselves not immune to (indeed, during the Bush years they excelled at) just this sort of corruption.

And it is corruption. The Solyndra deal went down after major investors in the company gave millions in support of the Obama presidential campaign. It was fast-tracked as part of the federal government’s Keynesian “stimulus” spending.

This is how the politics of modern mercantilism — of systematic “business-government partnerships” — works. The moneymen support the politicians who support the moneymen.

It’s one way to get rich.

And gain (and maintain) power.

But it’s not good for the country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Off to See the Wizard?

Tonight, President Barack Obama will ride down Pennsylvania Avenue with his sinking approval ratings, to stand beside our most unpopular Congress ever, so he can give a speech about jobs (before the football game starts). Our prez is a good speaker, but I doubt this speech will do any more to soothe our economic stress than have past speeches.

Speeches don’t create wealth — or jobs.

But image can entice votes, and with the election year rapidly approaching, he needs to look like he has a plan.

Or at least a clue.

So, the White House back room boys have been busy re-packaging. News reports say the president will suggest spending $300 to $400 billion to stimulate the economy. But he won’t use the word “stimulus.” For some reason, that word rings hollow.

Rest-assured, his non-stimulus stimulus will be “revenue neutral.” In other words, the spending will happen now while the offsetting spending cuts (or tax increases) will happen . . . later.

Not every provision of whatever plan Obama orates will be a terrible idea, but the thrust of it — the notion that with proper central planning and fiddling by our wizard-in-chief the federal government can create prosperity — will be tragically mistaken.

We need a president who understands that Americans could pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get moving economically . . . if only Washington politicians would stop stage managing the whole show.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights too much government

Oysters In, Soup Out

Oysterville Sea Farms in Oysterville, Washington — a small, coastal town that some of you may know from wordplay author Willard Espy’s memoirs — is in danger. The business has long sold soup and t-shirts and other items to tourists, as well as books, knives and buoys “since the 1970s,” according to a local paper. But Pacific County is putting the kibosh on all that. It turns out that the business isn’t zoned for retail sales.

“I’m really puzzled,” says the owner, who doesn’t see why the county would turn on a thriving business in the midst of a depression. He’s had to lay off six of his ten employees.

Considering that the county is just fine with his wholesale business, much of the complaint does seem a tad over-the-top. Indeed, the sea-food wholesale biz is nothing if not noisome, and this operation has been a going concern at that location since the 1930s.

I understand that zoning laws are often justified on property rights grounds, to defend neighbors against nuisances and the like in a consistent way. But there’s been a lot of research showing that zoning is usually just a means to reduce competition and deliver favors to some at the expense of others.

The complaint that inspired the crackdown was anonymous. In court, one sees one’s accusers. In regulation, one does not.

Finally, it is somewhat amusing, in a dark sort of way, that this business is being crippled by a “Department of Community Development.” Great job, guys.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

The War Against an Infant Industry

In The Addams Family, young Wednesday sets up a sidewalk lemonade stand. A Girl Scout comes by and asks her if there are real lemons in her lemonade. After double assurances, the girl says she’ll buy Wednesday’s lemonade if Wednesday buys her cookies. Then comes the kicker: “Are they made from real Girl Scouts?”

The line works, in part, because of the historical setting. There is nothing more “American” than a kid selling lemonade by her home on a sunny day.

And yet, somehow, this traditional right of American life — a rite of passage — is under attack across the nation. Selling lemonade is a “business,” you see, which requires a license, and one may only engage in commercial enterprise in areas zoned for that, and . . . well, you get the idea.

Bureaucrats and over-policers feel it’s their duty to instruct the kiddies that they may only engage in nasty things like business with special permission.

Children must never see it as a right.

I know, there are problems (even in common law) about setting up a business in your home and stinking up the neighborhood or bringing in dangerous traffic. But, well, come on. Get real.

We’re talking lemonade stands!

So, a shout-out to Dave and Jenifer Roland and their Freedom Center of Missouri, for defending lemonade stands in their neck of the woods.

The issue may be more important than the size of the industry would suggest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Forest for the Tyrannies

Traveling abroad? Don’t take your mandolin or guitar. Or, if you do, expect to hire a lawyer to fill out the paperwork.

It’s all about protected wood. The ebony of Madagascar, for instance, is legally protected. Anyone transporting wooden items across borders is supposed to fill out forms proving the provenance of each piece of wood. Make a mistake, go to jail. And pay a hefty fine.

And travelers aren’t the only targets. Gibson Guitar, a world-leading instrument maker, was raided by federal agents last week. The agents seized wood used in the manufacture of guitars — in a previous raid, they’d seized pallets of wood as well as guitars and electronic files. Apparently they are out to prove that Gibson has been knowingly purchasing illegal materials.

I might as well confess: I’m skeptical of the whole shebang, the protecting of wood by criminalizing sale and possession. Prohibition of the materials seems the wrong way to protect renewable resources, just as prohibition of the ownership and sales of elephant ivory has worked to the detriment of elephant populations. It’s where elephants are owned and their populations managed that elephant populations have stabilized, rather than shrunk.

I bet that private property in ebony forests would similarly preserve resources as well — if that property were defended by a rule of law so that the capital value of the land the forests sit upon, as well as the trees themselves, would figure into the accounting of entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, our federal government continues to prove its anti-Constitutional, pro-tyranny bent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Dead Doctrine

Take off your hat, crank up a dirge, and get out the shovel, for it’s time to put the last bit of dirt over the Fairness Doctrine. It’s dead.

The FCC killed it on Monday. Buried it.

“Our extensive efforts to eliminate outdated regulations,” explained FCC Chairman Julias Genachowski, “are rooted in our commitment to ensure that FCC rules and policies promote a healthy climate for private investment and job creation.”

A total of 83 regulations were deleted in the efficiency-minded campaign.

And it’s nice to hear of it. Couldn’t have happened to a more deserving . . . target.

Actually, it’s been a score of years since the old dinosaur of speech regulation “fell into desuetude,” as President Grover Cleveland might have put it. (Ol’ Grover was not exactly a punchy writer.) And hurray for its death and burial — let’s hope it shall not rise from its coffin, like Dracula in a cheap horror flick.

For the “Fairness Doctrine” was an attempt to regulate speech rather than let speech remain free. It  helped further solidify the two-party system in America, and the very idea that there were only “two sides” to any political question . . . when it is obvious that a whole spectrum of possibilities exists for nearly any proposal or issue.

The Founding Fathers were right: Congress should “make no law” abridging the freedom of speech.

Interestingly, the regulation received its death blow not from Congress, but from the Federal Communications Commission.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Millions for Chickens

The U.S. government doesn’t have all that much money. A few weeks ago, the big “funny” news story was that Apple, Inc., had more cash on hand than did the federal government. As August began, the big unfunny news story was the debt ceiling deal, wherein our leaders raised the debt ceiling in return for . . . increased spending.

So, in this environment you might think that boondoggle market-fixing programs would be anathema. But you would be wrong. Our beloved federal government announced on Monday its plan to buy $40 million of excess chicken products.

Prepare yourselves, kiddies. It’s not government cheese that will be pushed on you, soon.

You may remember similar buy-out programs from years gone by. I have this vague recollection of vast storehouses of frozen chickens, and the precarious value of same.

Why the buy-out? To prevent well-connected business folks at Tyson (or similar businesses) from having to brace themselves against lack of demand, pulling back on the number of chickens raised.

Our government: Protecting big business and assuring the needless slaughter of birds. What strange boasting rights.

Amusingly, in the article that prompted this commentary, the author uses the relative pronoun “who” to refer to the birds in question.

Birds aren’t people, and require a “that” . . . the “who” in the story are our ninnies in government, though “who” suggests owls, and our D.C. (“dumb cluck”) folks aren’t wise enough to merit such comparison.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Liberals Against Fracking

Fracking — not just for Battlestar Galactica nerds any longer.

Colloquial for “hydraulic fracturing,” fracking is a process of forcing water deep into oil shale to bring up natural gas. Combined with horizontal drilling (that is, and I’m not making any of this up, drilling somewhat sideways to avoid topside damage), fracking promises to be the next big breakthrough in energy development.

Just so long as government doesn’t mess it up.

Well, there’s debate about this. Gasland, a recent documentary, cited numerous examples of contaminated well water. And yet, last week Judge Nancy Freudenthal reversed federal government regulations against fracking, dismissing Gasland-promoted harms as “speculative.”

Anti-factual? Anti-science?

Not according to science writer Ronald Bailey, who has argued that fracking itself is harmless. Things can go wrong in any industrial process, and in cases where substantial damage has occurred because of negligence or incompetence, major judgments against energy companies have been awarded to their victims.

Just as things are supposed to go, in a free society.

But folks leaning to the left prefer the “precautionary principle,” at least when it comes to business. “[T]he new reality,” according to a Washington Examiner editorial, is that “those who are now seeking to stop history — or at least the development of new energy technologies — are liberals, led by President Obama.”

Had the Examiner used “progressive” instead of “liberals,” the irony of today’s Progressives being against progress might have unearthed one of this age’s sadder political truths.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Ceanneidigh Case

“You don’t have a paycheck, you don’t file taxes, you have no income.”

You can’t say that welfare caseworkers aren’t helpful. A man calling himself Ted Ceanneidigh walked into a Maine welfare office and presented his problem. He worked for himself. He had a lucrative, cash-only business and didn’t pay taxes. He had plenty of money and drove a Corvette. He showed his business card, which incorporated a certain well-known leaf as a distinctive symbol (and it wasn’t Canada’s maple leaf). Interestingly, he said he operated his parents’ fishing business, though that was going under — all they knew was that the boats were going out and money was being placed into their bank account. He was requesting the state’s subsidized medical assistance, though he had enough money to be able to afford private insurance —but that, he said, “doesn’t matter.”

That’s when the Maine civil servant advised Mr. “Ceanneidigh” to keep his income hidden. And offered him government assistance in medical care. After all, it made a sort of bureaucratic sense: The man couldn’t show a paycheck, didn’t file taxes. Obviously no income!

This was a setup, of course, a private “sting” operation organized by the Maine Heritage Policy Center. You can watch the video on YouTube.

It showed something interesting: The narrow focus of Health and Human Services caseworkers. They are there to give out “welfare.” Even to criminals. Even if it bankrupts the state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

The Costs of a Good Cause

Costs are what we give up for what we want. Focus only on a transaction, and that McChicken sandwich “costs” only a bit over a buck. But ultimately that McChicken costs you what you give up in your budget because you purchased it: a candy bar, a chocolate milk, or a tune on iTunes.

Nearly everything has costs, often hidden.

Take Michele Obama’s anti-obesity campaign. The Hunger-Free Kids Act, the legislative kicker of the First Lady’s cause, withholds money from schools that don’t provide a rigorous well-balanced menu. Kids must take a variety of fruits and veggies with each meal. Must!

The regulation will cost local school districts about $7 billion to comply. Cash-strapped school districts. It will also cost quite a lot in thrown-away food, as kids are “required” to take food they don’t intend to eat.

And then there’s the cost in reduced nutrition.

It appears that kids like flavored milk products. You know, chocolate milk, strawberry-flavored milk, etc. But high fructose corn syrup (which was foisted on our population by the federal government in the first place, via huge subsidies to corn farmers in general and Archer Daniels Midland in particular) is now a no-no. Flavored milks are on the way out.

The cost of cutting them?

Well, kids get 70 percent of their milk from flavored milks. Take away their chocolate, and . . . the result, for many, will be no milk at all.

That’s how a pro-nutrition regulation can end up reducing nutrition.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.