Category: Accountability

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Hard Words, Soft Left

socialism, democrats, Hillary Clinton, Common Sense

“The word ‘socialist’ is a really hard word,” warned former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

“Now, I love Bernie Sanders, really,” Granholm added, acknowledging she’s okay with his socialist policies — just not the term.

Not in mixed company.

The former governor of the Wolverine State was responding to a question — “How about the charges ‘he’s a socialist’?” — from Martha Raddatz, who was hosting ABC’s This Week that week.

“The socialist label is something that he applies to himself, right,” Granholm noted. “So the question is how does that play across America?”

Armed with a Gallup poll, Granholm answered that socialism doesn’t play very well at all. Voters are “even” less apt to vote for a “socialist” than for an “atheist.” In case you wondered.

So, what is the difference between a socialist and a Democrat?

“You’re the chairman of the Democratic Party, tell me the difference between you and a socialist,” Chris Matthews had implored Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on MSNBC months ago.

“The relevant debate we’ll be having over the course of this campaign,” dodged the DNC chair, “is what’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.”

Chuck Todd, noting that Bernie Sanders “is an unabashed socialist” who is always praising European social democracies, echoed the question on Meet the Press: “what is the difference?”

“It’s always fun to be interviewed by Chris Matthews and I know that he enjoys that banter,” bobbed an answer-​less Wasserman Schultz. “The important distinction we’ll be discussing in this campaign [blah, blah, blah] …”

Earlier this month, Matthews likewise asked Hillary Clinton to state the difference. Mrs. Clinton said she wasn’t a socialist but, instead, “a progressive Democrat.”

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn’t answer the question either,” Matthews replied.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

A Diminishing Lagtime

Flint, water, crisis, government, austerity

The modern age sports an amazing feature that used to be hard to detect, because so drawn out: a shorter-​than-​ever-​before lag between the proposal of some popular inanity and its complete debunking.

It used to take seemingly forever for a bad idea to be shown up, either in argument or evidence. Now it can be a matter of days or even hours. Call it the Buncombe/​Debunking Lagtime.

Take the Flint, Michigan, water fiasco.

When the story hit the news cycle, almost immediately the progressive meme machinery began cranking out slogans imposed upon visuals — jpegs and gifs — to the effect that the poisoned water was the result of Republican “austerity” or (even) “libertarian” policy.

Somehow a Democratic mayor was less to blame than a more distant Republican governor, but in the minds of knee-​jerk partisans, common sense is not as important as an in-​your-​face accusation.

But now, days and scant weeks into the story, it turns out that the story behind the story is not merely wrong, but entirely, upside-​down wrong. The Flint water fiasco was caused by a stimulus project, and the switch from bad to worse water sources was made to promote “jobs”!

In the words of Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, “the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.”

Yes, another failed Big Government policy — just like progressives are always pushing.

And it didn’t take years for the truth to seep out.

Hooray for today’s accelerated history! Now, if we could only decrease the lagtime between lesson given and lesson learned.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access folly ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

The Anti-​Democratic Party Establishment

superdelegates, democracy, democrats, Sanders, Clinton, voting,

Democrats aren’t very good at democracy.

Consider the party’s presidential contest, as I did yesterday at Townhall.

As an appetizer, I noted the Democratic National Committee policy of hiding their debates from viewers by placing them on weekend evenings pitted against major sporting events.

For meat and potatoes, ponder my warning of the very ugly scenario of Sen. Bernie Sanders capturing as much as 58 percent of the primary and caucus vote and resulting delegates, but still losing to Hillary Clinton.

How could that possibly happen?

Because of folks designated as “superdelegates” — those awarded voting delegate status for holding a party office or being an elected or former elected official.

Democrats brag that they’ve reduced these insiders’ impact. Democratically-​unaccountable superdelegates once accounted for 30 percent of Democratic Party convention delegates; now it’s only 15 percent of the total. Still, Clinton leads Sanders 380 to eleven among superdelegates.

At that rate, she could lose the actual state elections and still win the party’s presidential nomination.

The Democrats’ dereliction of democratic duty doesn’t end there, either.

The process by which various powerful party “interests” endorsed either Sanders or Clinton is quite telling. Journalist Zaid Jilani reports in The Intercept that, “Every major union or progressive organization that let its members have a vote endorsed Bernie Sanders.”

“Meanwhile,” Jilani found, “all of Hillary Clinton’s major group endorsements come from organizations where the leaders decide. And several of those endorsements were accompanied by criticisms from members about the lack of a democratic process.”

Seems the insiders have decided Mrs. Clinton will be on the Democratic Party presidential menu, whether Democrats like it or not.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency moral hazard too much government

Buying Quality of Life

Indiana, pork, Mike Pence, Regional Cities initiative, Common Sense, illustration

People who spend other people’s money in Indiana are applauding their amazing ability to write big checks and hand them out.

The Regional Cities initiative — enacted by the Republican legislature and heralded by the Republican governor — just awarded grants of $42 million of taxpayer dough to three of seven county consortia in the Hoosier State.

“This is big. This is a big deal in Indiana,” Gov. Mike Pence told reporters, “and I believe it’s part of a third century strategy for growth that will pay dividends for generations.”

Really? Government redistribution will fuel “growth” … and “pay dividends”?

The more-​spending “strategy” is “geared toward quality of life projects ranging from economic development and job creation, to improved recreational and arts opportunities,” according to WNDU-​TV in South Bend, adding that, “The Regional Cities Initiative is aimed at the younger generation and giving those people more reasons to love — than leave the state.”

Love it or leave it, eh?

“The public has been told that we have some sort of $42-​million jackpot to spend on wonderful things,” explains Fort Wayne City Councilman Jason Arp in his Indiana Policy Review. “What hasn’t been made clear is that with the award comes [an] obligation not only to match that $42 million with taxpayer and private money but a separate eight-​year commitment to a portfolio of $1.4 billion in projects.…”

In other words, it’s a classic government-​spends-​our-​money-​better-​than-​we-​can program.

The Regional Development Authority will, in the end, “have discouraged actual entrepreneurship, innovation and free enterprise,” Arp explains. In their place? A “sort of unaccountable directorate.”

Growing ever bigger to better spend our hard-​earned dough.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility tax policy too much government

Berating Bernie?

Bernie Sanders, Glass Steagall, ratings, agency, Common Sense, illustration, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Bernie Sanders has risen in the polls. He may even beat Hillary Clinton in the first caucus and primary contests for the Democratic presidential nomination.

A cause for celebration! Witnessing a huge hunk of Americans accept Mrs. Clinton, the consummate and corrupt insider, is too disheartening.

Bernie Sanders, for all his faults, is at least not an insider like Hillary.

And even when he’s obviously wrong, he’s a breath of fresh atmosphere. Take his recent call for turning the credit ratings institutions into non-​profits, or into government-​run bureaus. It’s good to hear someone on the left blame something other than the partial repeal of Glass-​Steagall as the cause of the Crash of 2008, and (thus?) of the current “Great Recession.” Glass-​Steagall was utterly irrelevant to the institutions that were hit hardest in 2008’s collapse; it has, nevertheless, served as leftists’ idée fixe for years now. Embarrassing.

The ratings agencies, on the other hand, did play a part in the crash.

Still, remember: their prominence and importance (and very existence) in financial sectors rests entirely upon one provision of FDR’s New Deal.

More importantly, Bernie’s favored solution — government bureaus — is no solution at all. Europe’s ratings system failed in 2008, too, as Mark A. Calabria has noted, and “it was the international financial regulators, not the rating agencies, who decided that Greek debt was ‘risk-​free.’”

Earth to Bernie: government regulatory failure is normal.

Calabria agrees that we need to have a political conversation about the ratings agencies, but insists it be “based on facts,” not ideology.

I’m all for the facts, but ideologies are inevitable. And ideologies promoting Big Government inevitably fail.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Bernie’s Bogus “Medicare for All”

Medicare for All, Bernie Sanders, healthcare, analysis, bogus, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders promises universal health care, but, up until the other day, just waved his hands in the air, without specifics. Now he has a plan.

Sort of.

Ezra Klein, writing at Vox, says Sanders’s “Medicare for All” is not a plan at all. It’s a “gesture towards a future plan.”

But that doesn’t mean that the thing isn’t “well sold.”

After praising the Obamacare/​Affordable Health Care Act for giving “health insurance” to more than 17 million people, the preamble of Sanders’s proposal made its most predictable statement: “Twenty-​nine million Americans today still do not have health insurance and millions more are underinsured and cannot afford the high copayments and deductibles charged by private health insurance companies that put profits before people.”

Forget that deductibles are integral to the very idea of insurance. Forget that profits are absolutely necessary for the success of an industry. Forget that profits come from serving people.

Remember, instead, the leftist clichés.

Sanders’s plan, such as it is, is a lie — or, in Klein’s phrasing, “has nothing to do with Medicare.” Sanders aims to get rid of deductibles and copays, on which Medicare depends. It’s what makes Medicare distinct from, say, socialized medicine.

Insurance covers individually unforeseeable but actuarially manageable risks. Socialized medicine gets rid of the idea of “payment for service” on every level — and thus the very idea of insurance — and turns the whole thing over into a tax-​and-​spend program, i.e., what Sanders really wants.

That won’t be cheap, as Megan McArdle demonstrated some time back during the Vermont “single payer” kerfuffle.

The only option for increasing value while lowering prices? Go the opposite direction from socialism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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