Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture too much government

Where Democrats Go Wrong

When we find ourselves in a pickle, it’s a good idea to ask: Where did we go wrong?

I’ve often probed how America got itself into the present mess. I’ve noted how easy it is for politicians to lose touch with the common sense of the American people — so much so that they cannot even imagine balancing a budget while they are in office.

Further, I’ve often castigated Republicans for betraying their promises to cut spending.

But what of Democrats? Where’s the common sense?

When President Obama proposed a non-military pay freeze on federal workers, the Democratic National Committee’s “Organizing for America” (OFA) QUANGO asked its supporters for help. Fine. But what happened? The Democratic base went ape. Bananas. Noodles-out nuts.

Example? David Dayen of the FDL News Desk. “We’ve officially gone around the bend,” he wrote, thereby going ’round the bend. He characterized the carefully worded letter sent out by OFA with a “this is what we’ve been reduced to” snipe.

Dayen and too many other Democrats think their ideology means always increasing government worker pay. Even if government workers prove almost impossible to fire, have great benefits, and comparatively high pay, they must not be asked to make a tiny sacrifice. Not even while others suffer.

If these partisans’ core concern were really helping Americans, including the poor, they wouldn’t be so fixed on keeping federal pay as high as it is.

But, priorities, you know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

The Murky, Muddled Middle

We’ve seen a lot of insightful reflection about what the recent elections say about the prospects for liberty and the efforts of many Americans to fight for endangered liberties.

One lesson I hope we’re on the way to unlearning is how allegedly “praiseworthy” it is to evade any clear-cut defense of fundamental political principle. How allegedly “critical” it is to compromise not only on the details of a program that does advance one principles, but also on the basic principles themselves.

In a recent communiqué, Representative Ed Emery rejects the notion that “moderates” lost, sometimes spectacularly, because voters “weren’t thinking.” No, “Moderates lost because voters woke up to the truth that lukewarm does not protect personal liberties; it compromises them [and] protects the status quo. . . .”

But not even the status quo is protected by huddling in the middle of the road. The premier beneficiaries of the worship of the muddled middle are those who do advocate certain fundamental (and poisonous) ideological principles but who succeed in posing as practitioners of “moderation.” Today, the radical left calls itself “the center” and screams bloody murder about “extremism” when anybody offers cogent objections to their socialist agenda. “Compromise,” to them, means only tweaking the speed at which we hurtle ever closer to full government control over our lives.

Let’s not submit to this intimidation, this fraudulent debate-framing.

Let’s demand a fair and open clash of basic political principles.

That’s a battle we’ll win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Perfect Safety?

Maybe the most interesting thing to come out, so far, from the “porno-scanner”/TSA-gropings controversy is this statement by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: “You can’t provide perfect safety.”

Going on, Rep. Paul denied that it is “the government’s role . . . to provide safety.”

It isn’t; it’s to protect our rights. But here we’re being told that we go to the gate, we buy a ticket, and you’ve lost your right, you’ve sacrificed your right. Where did that come from? It’s about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Rep. Paul has introduced legislation that would prohibit physical contact between TSA screeners and would-be airline passengers, and would prohibit taking images of people’s bodies using X-Rays, millimeter rays, etc..

Ron Paul sees all these new, invasive screening techniques as based on the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure airline invulnerability to terrorism, not the airlines’. He suggests putting the onus back on the airlines, who would likely be more respectful of their customers than the TSA is.

9/11/01 caught the airlines and the government with their pants down. Maybe the best solution to this security lapse isn’t to institute intrusions into our pants, or the kind of X-Ray vision scanners that boys used to be enticed with in the back of comic books.

There must be better ways.

Alas, government probably won’t find them. Which is why Ron Paul is on to something: It should be up to private enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies video

Video of the Week: Quantitative Easing Explained

Earlier this week I did a short Q&A about the latest in monetary policy: quantitative easing. This video goes into much more detail. And is pretty funny:

For an extended, non-animated explanation of QE, try a helpful article by monetary economist Leland Yeager: “The Fed’s Easy Money.”

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Three Cheers for Robert Murphy

Here’s something worth three cheers. Possibly four.

Robert Murphy is a prolific young economist of the free-market “Austrian” school of economics, which has a vibrant online presence at Mises.org, the website of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

In October, Murphy decided to challenge Paul Krugman, the prominent economics professor, author and New York Times columnist, to a debate on Keynesian versus Austrian business cycle theory. After all, as Nobel-Prize-winning economist and partisan left-wing scribbler, Krugman tends to insist on policies the opposite of what any reasonable economic conclusion might be.

Krugman’s extremist, Big Government über alles positions should make for a great fireworks display in a well-attended debate with the scrupulously sane and reasonable Murphy. Point-counterpoint. The debate would also be a great venue for Murphy to publicize the sorely needed Austrian explanation of why massive governmental perversion of capital structure and market incentives ain’t exactly the best way to foster economic growth.

Murphy launched an Internet campaign, complete with goofy (and funny) animated YouTube video, to pressure Krugman. Murphy is asking folks to pledge a sum to the Fresh Food Program at a New York food bank that would be collected only if Krugman does debate him.

At last count, pledges have topped $50,000.

I hope Krugman agrees. Feeding hungry people is a good cause, and so is saving the economy from annihilation by Krugmanesque economics.

Meantime, give Murphy at least three huzzahs for pluck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Feeding the Narrative

Liberal NPR fired liberal reporter Juan Williams after he admitted on O’Reilly Factor to feeling nervous when sharing a plane with passengers dressed in Muslim garb. Williams also told O’Reilly it’s important to combat prejudice against Muslims, but that sentiment didn’t protect him. Honest man, out!

Some liberals, including Jesse Jackson, have joined conservatives in blasting NPR for the precipitous dismissal.

Various commentators have also been saying, “Hey, I never did like NPR’s smug condescending liberalism, so why are my tax dollars funding it?”

There are many reasons government shouldn’t be funding broadcasting — the unfairness of forcing us to pay people to noxiously condescend to us is surely one of them.

Some hate to admit that National Public Radio is what it is. For example, Politico.com scribe James Hohmann, relaying Jackson’s support for Williams, adds: “NPR CEO Vivian Schiller apologized for saying Williams should keep his views about Muslims between himself and ‘his psychiatrist or his publicist,’ but her remarks fed into the narrative that NPR is liberal, smug and condescending.”

Hohmann’s reluctance to state that Schiller’s remarks support that unflattering view of NPR, rather than merely “feed into the narrative” about it, is but a pretense at objectivity. Should another damning bit of evidence come up — for example, another NPR broadcast — would that, too, constitute just another incidental detail to be “fed into the narrative”?

No, Politico, let’s instead accept the obvious conclusion warranted by the abundant evidence.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Alaska Misfire

The wrong man was fired.

The campaign of U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller seems to have been at least twice targeted as November 2 approached. In one case, questionable doings came to light after a reporter with CBS Anchorage affiliate KTVA forgot to turn off his phone after leaving a message with a campaign spokesman. Newsroom reporters then chatted about how to sabotage Miller’s campaign — for example, by finding that “one person” among campaign supporters who is a child molester. The station claims that a recording of the incident gives a “misleading” impression.

Then we have the campaign of Senator Lisa Murkowski, Miller’s opponent, acting to kick conservative talk-show host Don Fagan off the air.

After the Alaska Division of Elections aided Murkowski’s write-in campaign by deciding to distribute lists of write-in candidates at polling places, a listener said he had now become a registered write-in candidate himself. Fagan then suggested — on-air, as part of his regular talk programming — that other listeners might want to do the same. Uh oh. The station fired him after the incumbent’s campaign threatened to sue the station for so-called “electioneering.”

Compare the two cases. It’s fine for any media outlet to push its political opinions — but not to fabricate smears. It’s fine for candidates to make any complaint they wish to media outlets — but not to coercively curdle speech they happen to abhor.

I say, the wrong man got axed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Issue No. 1

It’s pretty clear that the big issue this election was spending. Not high taxes, or the lowering of taxes. Not war. Not illegal immigration. Not regulation. Not abortion. Above all these issues has emerged one supreme: high spending, over-spending.

According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.

One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.

And, as I argued last week, it’s the House that has the constitutional duty to decide money matters.

But talk by the Republican hierarchy, about returning to 2008 levels of spending, will hardly cut it.

Indeed, that idea, of just returning to 2008 spending levels, seems to be a subconscious repudiation of the best thing that Republicans said on Tuesday, that “we’ve been given a second chance.” But to go back to 2008 levels merely takes government back to “before Obama,” and reflects an attempt to let themselves off the hook for the Bush-era spending extravaganza.

There are reasons why I put so little hope in politicians as such, and more in the direct actions of citizens. Even the best politicians tend to lack real convictions.

If the GOP offers any hope, it depends entirely on continued pressure applied to them by the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Hitler, Ha-Ha

Monday night on E! network’s late-night chat show, Chelsea Lately, British comedian Eddie Izzard got laughs with partisan hyperbole:

  1. Izzard identified the Tea Party as “extreme right wing”;
  2. He said, oh-so-amusingly, that Sarah Palin and Tea Party folks want to take things back to “1773 when slavery was legal”;
  3. He thanked America for helping Britain out when “we had a problem, in the Second World War, with extreme right-wingers in Europe”;
  4. He identified the Democrats with the people who’ve pushed progress and “caring about other people” since the beginning of civilization.

He went on. But you get the idea, you see how partisans treat their opponents — in this example, somebody vaguely on the left attacking Tea Party folks as right-wingers of Hitlerian proportions.

Now, Izzard is a funny guy, and not just because of his funny name. But politics is allegedly serious, and you’d think he would know that Hitler was not a right-winger. Hitler was a “national socialist” whose policies don’t resemble Tea Party policies at all. He knows that the number of American activists who look back before 1776 and think fondly of slavery is pretty close to zero.

He may not know, however, that “caring” as such, without follow-through and principles and a rule of law — and balanced budgets, just to avoid mass insolvency — does the opposite of good.

Except in short-run politics. And on Chelsea Lately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture local leaders too much government

Profiles in Non-Courage

What has to happen before government officials reduce the loot they’re lobbing to special interests at the expense of the wallets and future of everybody else?

Armageddon?

The city council of Kansas City, Missouri, won’t permit even an inquiry into how the burg might save bucks.

At Show-Me Daily, David Stokes notes that a council committee has tabled (killed) a proposal “that called for SIMPLY STUDYING the idea of contracting out the management of certain city assets,” an idea proposed by Mayor Mark Funkhouser. But city unions predictably went to DEFCON 1. The resolution would have authorized the city manager to request information from firms interested in handling things like parking garages and sewer plants.

The mayor says he thought that they might have creative ideas about how to handle things more efficiently. C-r-a-a-a-zy, eh? Well, this mild, er, radical notion is off the table, at least for now.

Stokes hopes the council reconsiders while they are in a position of relative strength. If they wait until really pushed to act by “economic realities . . they won’t be [able] to get the best agreement for taxpayers.”

But aren’t the economic realities already here, for Kansas City and every other town in post-2007 America?

Single-issue voters are always going to shout louder than the general public about reforms that affect their short-term interests. Political “leaders” should do the right thing, not follow the path of least political resistance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.