Building a mega-state to fight corporate power…
…is like giving yourself AIDS to fight the flu.
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Category: general freedom
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.
Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.
But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.
Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”
But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?
Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”
That is Establishment.
Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea . . . in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.
But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers . . . like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.
Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Rand Paul, the junior senator from Kentucky, suspended his presidential campaign yesterday. He took fifth place in Iowa, but garnered just four percent of the vote.
I’ll miss him.
“Ours has been a unique voice in this race,” the senator rightly declared, “one that says Big Government threatens Americans from all walks of life, rich and poor, black and white — from the coal miner who has lost his job over President Obama’s destructive EPA regulations to the teenager from a poor family facing jail time for marijuana.”
Some of Rand’s message resonates in the Republican Party; other parts, not so much.
An anonymous senior Paul aide told Politico that the problem — in addition to “Trump” — was “this foreign policy environment,” noting that “Rand was more flavor of the month a year ago . . . before they were beheading people in the Middle East. . . .”
Still, the GOP would be wise to heed Paul’s message, especially on foreign policy.
“I will not ignore the terrible cost of decades of war and chaos in the Middle East, and the unintended consequences of regime-change and nation-building,” the senator assured supporters. “I will continue to fight for criminal justice reform, for privacy, and your Fourth Amendment rights.”
In assessing his presidential campaign, Paul told reporters, “Brushfires of Liberty were ignited, and those will carry on, as will I.”
That’s good. Like his father, Dr. Rand Paul has become freedom’s foremost firebrand. We need him in the U.S. Senate.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob
Both Germany and Japan now transfer money, on net, from the young to the old. Austria, Slovenia, and Hungary, The Economist reports, do the same.
The instrument of this transfer? Well, the elephant in the room: those nation’s entitlement programs — their versions of our “Social Security.”
John O. McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University, explains how unnatural the direction of the transfer is. Normally, societies “give more to the young than the young can ever repay.” Remember the truism, “the children are our future”? Families, McGinnis explains, “exemplify this principle. Socially too, the intergenerational flow of resources is what creates civilization as each generation receives benefits from the previous one.”
Taking from the young to give to the old, on the other hand, is not just counter-intuitive. It stifles innovation, entrepreneurship, progress itself.
What drives the trend? It is complicated. But the politics behind redistributionist programs is the main culprit:
The elderly vote more than the young, who have more distractions, and politicians are thus all too eager to give them goodies. And while individually the elderly would like to direct more resources to their young relatives, when they act in politics they face a kind of tragedy of the commons. They cannot prevent others from living off the state, so they might as well do themselves.
As my generation, the infamous Baby Boom, retires, the demographics turn Social Security against society’s main purpose: building a future. The culture refocuses on retirement . . . preparing for death.
Another way — on top of growing debt and increasing regulatory burden — we’re leaving our kids with less than we had.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”
He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.
This . . . from a presidential contender.
No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.
The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.
Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.
Sound sort of Trumpian?
Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.
“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”
The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.
“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”
I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“Local Moralist Doing His Part to End Income Inequality”
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Mugger photo by Flikr user cometstarmoon
Yesterday, we decried the rigged superdelegate voting process used by establishment Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s benefit — and party members’ detriment. Today, we switch parties to find the GOP establishment in full panic mode, so terrified at the prospect of a Ted Cruz victory that they’re now rallying around Donald Trump.
Republican Party stalwart Bob Dole, the 92-year-old former Senate Majority Leader and a 35-year Washington insider, called Sen. Cruz an “extremist.” A Cruz victory would lead to “cataclysmic” losses for the party, Dole contends, and by the way . . . “Nobody likes him.”
“Nobody in Washington,” Dole means.
As for Trump? Dole thinks Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”
The right personality?
Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fixture in Congress for the last 41 years, introduced Trump recently by clumsily validating Trump’s campaign slogan: “we have an opportunity, once again, to make America great again.”
And again.
According to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Trump does not have any particular enemies down here. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and is irritated with him. That’s not how it is with Cruz.”
Former GOP congressman turned lobbyist Vin Weber says that the establishment’s hated of Cruz “has forced some people to look past all of Trump’s issues and think about what he could offer.”
Offer?
The Republican establishment really, really, really despises Sen. Ted Cruz. But they can live with Donald Trump.
Hmmmm . . . advantage Cruz.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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.
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.
Would your favorite presidential candidate force women to register for the military draft?
A federal court case, National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, is bouncing around the Ninth Circuit. It challenges the male-only draft registration program as discriminatory against men.
Thirty-five years ago, when yours truly was fighting the draft, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a male-only program because women were then barred from combat. Now the All-Volunteer Force has opened all military fields to women, including combat roles. It follows that the federal courts will likely strike down male-only registration.
What will Congress do? What will the next commander-in-chief advocate? Allow the program to end — or mandate that both young men and young women register?
Hillary Clinton answered this question in 2008, during her first run for the presidency: yes, register women for the military draft.
What about the other presidential hopefuls?
Back in 1980, then-candidate Ronald Reagan pledged to end it, saying that conscription (and registration for it) “destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.”
Sadly, President Reagan continued draft registration, prosecuting me and others.
“The question is nothing less, than whether the most essential rights of personal liberty shall be surrendered,” the great Daniel Webster railed against conscription, “and despotism embraced in its worst form.”
Men and women have an equal right to freedom — not conscription. Free people will always volunteer to defend their country.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
