Category: Accountability

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Sledgehammer to a Bureaucracy

EPA, environment, pollution, climate change, Trump

The media hysterically pushes the line that the new Trump administration is so much “in chaos” it even frightens seasoned (salt-​and-​pepper?) heads in the Republican Party. But perhaps folks at the Environmental Protection Agency have more reason to panic.

“It looks like the EPA will be the agency hardest hit by the Trump sledgehammer,” writes Julie Kelly over at National Review.

Ms. Kelly offers striking reasons to hit the agency hard, quoting from Steve Malloy, the author of Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA. “I can think of no agency that has done more pointless harm to the U.S. economy than the EPA — all based on junk science, if not out-​and-​out science fraud.” Malloy looks forward to the new president’s promised rethink and restructuring of the agency.

Just how bad is it?

Environmentalists often cry foul over any corporate funding of ecological research. But if one worries about money influencing results, the case against grants funded by regulatory agencies for regulatory purposes is even stronger.

Especially when the agency is run by ideologues.

Trump’s transition team seeks to make all the EPA’s relevant data public, for peer and public review, and would really like to curtail the agency’s research funding entirely.

Pipe dream? Better than the recent nightmare: “For eight years,” writes Kelly, “President Obama used the agency as his de facto enforcer of environmental policies he couldn’t pass in Congress even when it was controlled by his own party.”

The EPA needs to be checked. And balanced. And more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability responsibility too much government

Out of Our Misery

Obamacare, ACA, Trump, Chickens home to roost

Obamacare may be on the way out.

According to The Atlantic, “the powers of the incoming Health and Human Services secretary are broad enough to cripple the [Affordable Care Act] so it has to be replaced.” Which is significant since the new President has just “signed an executive order empowering his administration’s agencies to do all they can — within the bounds of the Affordable Care Act — to undercut that law.”

The Atlantic’s Vann R. Newkirk II suggests this is … “ironic.” The executive leeway Trump is taking is not without precedent. “The irony of that component,” he writes, “is that it rests on precedent set by the Obama administration, which used executive and regulatory power liberally to make the law work in the face of Republican opposition.”

Irony? How about chickens returning to the home roost?

Obamacare itself undermined Obamacare. The plan, from the beginning, was so gimcrack with hidden redistribution that, to both opponents and proponents, it was designed to fail … to usher in the Glorious Era of socialized medicine.

Since Obamacare increased “insurance” costs for hundreds of thousands of previous insurance policy holders, and increased medical costs generally, too, it actually discouraged participation from the healthiest, many of whom would rather pay the exorbitant fines, er, “taxes.” Throwing the insurance industry into a death spiral.

So, putting the system out of our misery sooner seems sensible.

But Congress and Trump cannot stop there. Either they repeal more federal regulation and subsidy*, or keep parts of Obamacare, despite a lack of financial stability. A new bill in the Senate promises to do the latter.

We haven’t seen much hint of the former.

But can hope. Audaciously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* To let markets work. Note that The Atlantic tends to miss the point of Obamacare critics. In describing more market-​based options, the magazine characterizes the Medical Health Savings Account approach as “For people sick of high deductibles, Republicans offer high-​deductible plans as replacements for Obamacare.” The idea is to incentivize people to pay for their own care, which would bring costs down generally.

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Accountability initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders

The Unfairness of Losing

Sutton, Maine, Petition, Urban, Rural, signatures,

Maine’s citizen initiative process is unfair, claims State Rep. Paula Sutton.

“[R]ural Mainers are left out of the equation,” Sutton tells readers of Knox County’s Village Soup, “and Portland dictates public policy for the rest of the state.”

Hmmm? Every Mainer eligible to vote currently has the equal right to decide ballot measures.

Her grievance appears to be that there are more urban voters than rural.

Last November, voters passed four of five issues, all opposed by Rep. Sutton. Still, losing at the ballot box is hardly prima facie evidence of “unfairness.”

“Unless we do something to fix the citizens’ referendum process here in Maine,” she nonetheless contends, “the state will continue to be an easy target.”

For what, exactly? Voting on issues people favor?

Mainers are “ripe to be taken advantage of by wealthy out-​of-​state special interests,” she complains, explaining that billionaire Michael Bloomberg “spent millions of dollars in his failed attempt to squash Mainers’ Second Amendment rights with Question 3.”

Yes, you read that right. Question 3 failed. Voters weren’t exploited.

Sutton has introduced legislation “to ensure rural Mainers are no longer being run over by wealthy liberal special interest groups.” Her bill requires petitions to qualify in each of the state’s two congressional districts instead of qualifying statewide. That makes it more difficult, but hardly changes the need to circulate petitions in urban areas.

Not forests and empty fields.

Rep. Sutton seems to understand her proposal won’t effectively thwart citizen initiatives, pledging to support further restrictions. That’s easier for politicians than permitting democracy and persuading people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Bring Back the Eunuchs?

Washington, corruption, big government, too much government, book

“Everybody knows that ordinary Americans are a bunch of idiots,” a Health and Human Services official told Benjamin Ginsberg. “Why do you need to do a survey to find that out?”

Actually, he was not surveying Americans for their IQs and knowledge levels. He was surveying Washington insiders. Like her.

She hadn’t been listening.

Ginsberg and co-​author Jennifer Bachner have a new book out, What Washington Gets Wrong (2016). “We found that public officials,” Ginsberg told C‑SPAN’s Brian Lamb last month, “the people who really govern this country … don’t think much of ordinary Americans.”

Surprise, surprise. This has been an “open secret” for some time. Washington insiders “are wealthier,” “better educated,” and “think ordinary Americans don’t really know very much.” More alarmingly, they think that the government should “not pay too much attention to what ordinary folks think.”

According to Ginsberg and Bachner, this has been a long time coming. Progressive Era reformers transformed government in an effort to make it less partisan.

They succeeded — only to make it less accountable and less … American.

In ancient times, great administrative states were run by eunuchs, men gelded to curb their appetites the better to serve their sovereigns (pharaohs; emperors; kings). Not their own interests.

Is it time to bring back the practice?

Just joking. Instead, Congress can tame the bureaucratic leviathan it has created by trimming its ranks and pulling back on pay and benefits until they’re more in line with the private sector.

Let’s hope the House’s recent passage* of the REINS Act, requiring congressional approval of major regulations, is a sign that Congress’s lackadaisical attitude about the bureaucracy is changing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Let’s hope the Senate follows suit.

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Accountability government transparency term limits

Promises & Limits

term limits, senate, house, Congress

Last year, Americans — everywhere from Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering the nation’s capital on the east coast, to sunny Santa Clara, California, on the west coast — voted to impose term limits on their elected officials.

There were 40 separate local votes to enact term limits or, conversely, measures put up by politicians to weaken or abolish those limits. In every single case — that’s 100 percent — voters came down on the side of strong term limits. And by a whopping average vote of 74 percent.

Not. Even. Close.

Back in 2014, term limits admittedly did not fare quite as well. In that election year, a mere 97 percent of local term limits ballot measures prevailed. You can’t win them all.

Most folks I know believe we most desperately need term limits on Congress.

Even in these days of division, with our nation racked by partisan rancor and recrimination, a constitutional amendment to term-​limit Congress has better than two-​to-​one support by folks across the spectrum — favored by 77 percent of Republicans, 67 percent of Democrats and 79 percent of independents.

President Donald Trump pledged in the campaign’s homestretch that, as his first order of business in “draining the swamp,” he would push Congress to propose an amendment limiting House members to three terms, six years, and Senators to two terms, 12 years. Those are the limits in the term limits amendment already introduced by Sen. Ted Cruz (R‑Tex.) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R‑Fla.).

Speaker Paul Ryan has promised to bring it to the floor for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has refused. McConnell’s office number is (202) 224‑2541.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* His Facebook page is here.

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Accountability ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

We Demand Inefficiency

Price, Warren, hearings, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Elizabeth Warren, Tom Price

It’s all about the money.

Well, that is what Senator Elizabeth Warren believes.

Grilling Republican Congressman Tom Price, the physician turned congressman Donald Trump picked to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, Warren demanded that Price answer a simple question: would he swear on a stack of medical books that he would never, ever “carry out a single dollar of cuts to Medicare or Medicaid eligibility or benefits.”

Trump had said he would not cut either program. But Price, who is known for his skepticism about the efficiency of government programs and has proposed cuts to the programs before, worries Warren.

So she demanded an answer, using words like “guarantee” and “safeguard.”

Price said neither “yes” nor “no.” Instead, he evaded the question.

Thoughtfully.

“What the question presumes is that money is the metric,” Dr. Price replied. “In my belief … from a scientific standpoint, if patients aren’t receiving care, even though we’re providing the resources, then it doesn’t work for patients.”

Elizabeth Warren, the doyen of progressive politicians for several years now, was mighty upset about Price’s attempt to switch the standard (“metric” is the buzzword for this) for judging a program to the practical from the simple, easy-​to-​demagogue-​with disbursement tally.

She could have said, “We demand inefficiency; all we care about is the money. Actually helping people? Too complicated. But we sure can score points in debate when you try to cut something.”

What she said* was, “The metric is money.”

Same thing, actually.

Thus it is that government grows while real human welfare is ignored.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Peter Suderman, over at Reason, sums it up like this: “What Warren seems to want from Price is a commitment to spend more regardless of a program’s results.” Suderman calls Warren’s reaction “a surprisingly blunt expression” of a view “that undermines the programs it is designed to defend.”

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