Category: Accountability

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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.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

The Last Dark Chapter?

Last week, the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues revealed that United States federal government researchers purposely infected unwilling Guatemalans with deadly sexually transmitted diseases (syphilis, gonorrhea and chancroid) back in the 1940s.

Between 1946 and 1948, U.S. personnel experimented on more than 5,000 Guatemalans — including prisoners, mental patients, and even children — without their consent. At least 83 Guatemalans died during the project.

In at least one case, a woman dying from the syphilis she had been given was infected with other diseases to boot. Unconscionable.

One commission member, Raju Kucherlapati of Harvard Medical School said, “These researchers knew these were unethical experiments, and they conducted them anyway.”

Anita Allen of the University of Pennsylvania added, “These are very grave human rights violations.”

Commission chair Amy Gutmann pointed out that, “This is a dark chapter in our history. It is important to shine the light of day on it.”

She’s right. And note that this dark crime was committed by members of America’s “greatest generation.” When some people have power over others bad things seem to happen — throughout history, even among people like us. Not surprisingly, holding power accountable, especially when it’s exercised thousands of miles or oceans away, has proven mighty difficult.

This ought not be repeated. If we are the government, we must do something about it. But in an era of secret CIA prisons, what’s really to prevent it from happening again?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Mann FOIA Dump

Michael Mann’s Last of the Mohicans was a great film.

But the work of Michael Mann the climatologist?

Quite another story.

He’s the biggest name behind the much-​disputed “hockey stick” graph of world temperatures — the “hockey stick” being the shape of the upward temperature spike in recent times. Mann was also one of the biggest offenders in the Climategate scandal, where emails showed more politicking than objectivity going into how climate models were concocted and presented to the public.

In May, a Virginia state judge ordered the University of Virginia to release Mann’s data and emails under the state’s Freedom of Information Act. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and the American Tradition Institute (ATI), smelling something fishy in Mann’s work, sued for access to the basic data. ATI now has a disk with info, saying the info dump is about a third of what they requested.

ATI folks haven’t had time to study the data.

Mann has been exonerated from the charge of “research misconduct” by the National Science Foundation — the organization found no “direct evidence” of “data fabrication or data falsification.” Still, Mann’s obvious bias continues to do more than raise eyebrows.

Ronald Bailey, who reports on all this for Reason, yearns to make FOIA battles superfluous. He urges “publicly funded researchers” to place their raw data up on the Internet for public testing — true transparency (and completely in the spirit of scientific method).

Well, that might happen … after a few more FOIA battles.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability too much government

Congress to Blame

Last week, the budget deal, with its first consequence: the immediate increase of U.S. government debt, to outsize the Gross Domestic Product. 

By week’s end, that notoriously rising debt was downgraded in the ratings.

Immediately, politicians began blaming each other.

In other words: No surprises.

Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Michele Bachmann both called for Timothy Geithner to resign. Sen. Paul argued that “Secretary Geithner assured everyone that raising the debt ceiling without a plan to balance the budget would not result in a downgrade to our debt.… He was clearly wrong. Our debt has been downgraded for the first time in history, and now American taxpayers will have to suffer the consequences.” Rep. Bachmann blamed the president first, then demanded Geithner’s walking papers.

Now, I hate to defend Geithner (he probably should resign), but the debt debacle is Congress’s fault. 

But such niceties of responsibility didn’t stop Move​-on​.org from setting up a Facebook campaign to impugn the Tea Party, blaming the Tea Party’s cussedness for the downgrade. 

Really? To focus only on the one political group actively trying to decrease the size of the debt demonstrates huge hunks of partisan chutzpah. By trying and failing to restrain spending, Tea Party folks only demonstrated Congress’s dedication to binge spending. The fault is in the binging, not in the feckless attempt at self-restraint.

Which is just what S & P considered: the company cited the wimpiness of the debt deal as the reason for the downgrade.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability folly initiative, referendum, and recall

A Modest Proposal for Madison

“Ninety percent of life is just showing up.”

Well, Woody, tell that to Democratic state senators in Wisconsin. Or, should I say, in Rockford, Illinois … hiding from the Wisconsin police.

They’re not wanted for any crime. Wisconsin state troopers would simply take them into custody and deliver them to their worksite: the state capitol in Madison.

Unemployment soars, and folks with cushy jobs go underground. I hate to be so boringly practical, but people should show up for work or let their employer(s) know that they are resigning. Not showing up is irresponsible. (Of course, these are politicians.)

And the whole biz is about responsibility. Wisconsin Democrats don’t want to vote on Republican Governor Scott Walker’s proposals to make government employees contribute 5.8 percent of their pay toward their lucrative pensions and 12.6 percent toward their medical insurance premiums, and to end collective bargaining for benefits and work rules, while keeping it for pay.

These are legitimate issues for the legislature. Democracy is about voting on them — even when you won’t win. But by lurking next door in the Land of Lincoln, Democrats can deny the quorum necessary for the legislature to do business.

Citizens have one immediate recourse: Recall.

Under Wisconsin law, no elected official can be recalled in their first year in office. But eight of the 14 shirking senators could be recalled right now. Were a mere two of them recalled, Republican senators would alone constitute a quorum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.