Category: Accountability

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Accountability

The Fickle Finger of Flexibility

President Barack Obama — love him or loathe him, give him his due: He sometimes speaks the truth.

At least, when he doesn’t know he’s being recorded.

During a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, President Obama asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” on missile defense issues between our countries, pointing out that, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Much attention has been focused on what this means for U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system. But let’s consider more generally this concept of “flexibility” regarding politicians.

“Where annual elections end, tyranny begins,” was a popular slogan in revolutionary America. The idea being that giving elected officials too long a leash, without an election in the offing, i.e. without the voters back home breathing down their necks, our representatives might sorta start forgetting to represent us and begin to represent themselves.

Our founders were not big fans of such flexibility.

Today, our elected “leaders” regularly attempt to distance their policy decisions from the elections where voters might make decisions of their own canceling out those decisions, or at least, tossing out the politicians who made them.

At our country’s founding, representatives were often officially instructed on how to vote regarding important issues. Today, most incumbents refuse to sign any type of pledge, saying it would tie their hands, denying them flexibility in solving problems.

Elections serve voters; flexibility serves politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies

Against Regimentation

On Monday, Senator Rand Paul got caught in a contretemps with the TSA. He was not in transit to or from his work in Congress, so he couldn’t enlist constitutional protection from being detained.

And detained he was.

Well, the TSA insists that he was not “at any point detained,” but what he says is this:

I was detained by the Transportation Security Administration … for not agreeing to a patdown after an irregularity was found in my full body scan. Despite removing my belt, glasses, wallet and shoes, the scanner and TSA also wanted my dignity. I refused.

I showed them the potentially offending part of my body, my leg. They were not interested. They wanted to touch me and to pat me down. I requested to be rescanned. They refused and detained me in a 10-​foot-​by-​10-​foot area reserved for potential terrorists.

Both Senator Paul and his father, Congressman Ron Paul, have criticized the TSA. They echo those 19th century classical liberals who had a word for the kind of treatment that modern security-​obsessed Rand Paul makes a statementgovernments inflict upon a (too willing) populace: “regimentation.” What’s more regimenting than being forced to wait in lines, holding shoes in hand, emptying the contents of pockets into institutional-​gray trays, submitting to a variety of scans and gropes?

There have got to be better ways of securing big ol’ jet airliners. Why not apply greater legal liability to airlines for safety, and let them figure out more customer-​friendly methods of keeping terrorists out of cockpits?

Any government security effort ought to focus on spotting and stopping terrorists … without sacrificing everyone’s freedom and dignity.

It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability political challengers

The FUBAR State

Newt Gingrich came from behind for a smashing victory in South Carolina’s primary last Saturday. And yet a more interesting story may be emerging in Iowa: Rick Santorum, not Romney, is apparently the Republican caucus winner. Though that’s not counting the eight precincts whose official results forms went missing.Iowa counties

This could be just another typical screw-​up. Democracy means “rule by the people,” and “the people” aren’t perfect.

Foul-​ups happen.

On the other hand, the whole thing smacks of back-​room manipulation. The fact that the official tabulations were moved away from the traditional site, GOP state party headquarters, to an undisclosed location — allegedly to “protect” the vote-​counting from Occupy protest influence — makes the uncertain results all the more suspect.

And Republicans can’t blame this on Occupiers.

The winner may have been the biggest loser. Santorum got the proverbial bump from the initial Iowa results — losing by a mere handful, it was reported — but Romney received a bump from it too, simply by being declared a winner in the closest caucus race in American history. By “losing control” of the actual count, the Republican Party of Iowa skewed the national election.

Leading into the caucuses, Ron Paul’s supporters sniffed something conspiratorial in the vote count location switch, complaining that such a move could help “disenfranchise” Paul’s supporters, knowing that GOP caucus officials were not at all friendly toward his candidacy.

You’re probably familiar with Stalin’s most famous quote about democracy: “It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.”

In Iowa, Stalin’s shade sports a mischievous grin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly national politics & policies

Getting It Wrong at the Fed

The Federal Reserve is America’s central bank, and its managers are political appointees. But transparency — an essential feature of the republican form of government — is something that doesn’t quite describe the information we (and our representatives) get about that institution.

“Opacity” is probably the best word to describe former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan’s speeches to Congress — deciphering his testimony was often more difficult than a line-​by-​line interpretation of a Sorbonne phenomenologist.

And full transcripts of the Open Market Committee reports go public only after a long lag. Only last week did 2006’s Federal Reserve insider badinage escape the confines of secrecy, and boy, what a pathetic situation was revealed.

Remember, in 2006 the mortgage boom was reaching its peak, and its excesses were obvious. Federal Reserve insiders made jokes about it, yet “gave little credence to the possibility that the faltering housing market would weigh on the broader economy,” as Binyamin Appelbaum noted in the Wall Street Journal. Geithner went so far as to say that the market’s “fundamentals” looked good, and that outgoing chairman Greenspan’s “greatness … was not fully appreciated,” which Appelbaum cautions is “an opinion now held by a much smaller number of people.”

This weekend at Townhall​.com, I wrote that Rep. Ron Paul was surely right to focus on the Federal Reserve all these years. He bucked the tide and proved himself prescient, just as the folks within the Fed, engaging in groupthink and chummy insider-​to-​insider praise, proved themselves quite clueless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets too much government

Who Creates Jobs?

There’s way too much pressure on politicians to “do something.” Most of the things they can do are bad. “Do something” too easily translates to “do anything,” and odds are that “anything” will end up as catastrophe.

There’s a division of labor in doing things: Investors, capitalists, and entrepreneurs create businesses which employ people; legislators and government executives have the more humble task of setting up and refining the groundrules, allowing others to do the great works.

Politicians don’t create jobs as such.

Few politicians understands this. But Gary Johnson, former two-​term governor of New Mexico, does — and he’s running for the Republican presidential nomination.

“The fact is,” he said in the recent debate, “I can unequivocally say that I did not create a single job while I was governor.” He went on to say how proud he was of this fact. New Mexico underwent an “11.6 percent job growth” rate during his two terms. All he did was get government out of the way of businesses.

Now, I understand: The “politician as jobs creator” talk is sometimes just a way to focus attention on getting policy right. National Review Online called Johnson “the best job creator” of all the candidates. The august journal didn’t mean much by it, other than note the statistic.

But too often politicians decide they can create jobs by taking money from all of us in taxes and investing it in private companies or new government programs. Those politicians aren’t creating jobs for us, but doing a job on us. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability ideological culture

A Membership Group vs. Its Members

What is the American Medical Association for? The group claims, in public-​relations-​ese, that its function is “to promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.”

But ask a doctor. You are apt to get a very different diagnosis.

The September 2011 survey of “Physicians Opinions About the American Medical Association,” published by Jackson & Coker, a physician recruitment firm, makes that very clear. Here are a few highlights:

  • “The AMA’s Stance and Actions Represent My Views”: 77 percent of doctors disagree.
  • “I agree with the AMA’s Position on Health Reform”: 70 percent disagree.
  • … effectively supports “physician practice autonomy”: 69 percent disagree.
  • … effectively insulates “physicians from intrusive government regulations”: 78 percent disagree.
  • … “protects physicians from insurance company abuses”: 75 percent disagree.

Those percentages include non-​member and non-​practicing doctors. Understandably, members of the AMA are more positive than non-​members. But even among member doctors, a majority disapproves of the AMA’s insurance protection (the last bullet point, above).

The AMA carries a lot of weight in public policy debate. Unfortunately, its history of lobbying government has been very … “progressive,” paternalistic, and heavy-handed. 

For example, before the AMA dominated American national medical policy, doctors routinely engaged in extensive pro bono work for the poor. The AMA worked mightily to stop that. 

The result of this prescription? Medicare, Medicaid … and an insolvent entitlement system.

Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.