Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture insider corruption

Disguised Corruption

Some things about government are eternal.

The latest New Jersey scandal a-brewing has it that Hoboken’s mayor was informed her city was to be denied federal aid following Hurricane Sandy unless she went along with a real estate project favored by Governor Chris Christie.

Shocking, but hardly . . . unheard of. Back in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt distributed disproportionate “stimulus” funds to swing states for one reason: re-election.

Corruption is ancient.

Christie’s staff seems, well, merely a bit more honest than usual. For modern America. Take the “Bridgegate” scandal: Trying to “hurt” a mayor by shutting down bridge lanes to his city, thus severely inconveniencing the mayor’s constituents? This sort of pettiness in policitics is common, with one difference: Most players disguise the pettiness.

So how does the continuing scandal of misgovernment usually get hidden? Dishonesty? Evasion?

Or, just ideology?

In several cities throughout the United States — Portland, Oregon, in particular — top metropolitan bureaucrats have deliberately developed policies that make automobile traffic more congested. Why? To encourage ridership in public transportation, which is considered (for ideological reasons) somehow better. Thus billions are spent on infrastructure supporting light rail, which take lanes away from car drivers, and move fewer people at greater inconvenience.

So why is that policy not itself a scandal?

The intent of Chris Christie’s aides was, obviously, base and petty and wrong. And actionable.

The ideology driving today’s anti-automobile agenda, on the other hand, is said to be noble and altruistic. Even though the harms to the public in terms of hours lost in frustrating commutes far exceeds the recent New Jersey scandal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Equality on the Brain

We’re told that “economic inequality” is on the rise.

Ronald Bailey, at Reason’s site, does a pretty good job of setting the record straight. The rich may be getting richer, but the poor aren’t getting poorer.

Further, “the rich” aren’t the same folks one year to the next. There is still income mobility in America. Some poor folks become super-rich; a majority of super-rich “1-percent-ers” will fall out of that 1-percent category.  Over time, most folks move from one quintile to at least the next.

What prevents widespread understanding of this? Intellectual muddles. The difference between income and wealth often get fuzzed up, for example. Take two high-income workers, earning the same pay: The one who saves will wind up with much more wealth than the other who spends it all. And rates of savings vary radically from person to person.

As does everything else.

Making things more complicated? Government policy. Bailouts are now an integral feature to aid some of the rich, to prevent their losses (we’re told) from spreading “financial contagion.”

Considering the moral hazard involved, I’d say “financial contagion” is endemic . . . on a whole different level.

And the same President Obama today decrying income inequality was yesterday bailing out rich folks.

A question for the inequality obsessed: Since the War on Poverty really set in, poverty rates have leveled off and even worsened (that is, the numbers of the officially impoverished have increased, despite increases in after-tax/after-subsidy incomes) — could you be missing the moral hazard that any sort of bailout portends?

Real economic justice, as I suggested in my most recent weekend column, is just that, justice. Establishment of good rules, no special privileges.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Graph on this page shows income per household, courtesy Cafe Hayek. Caution: Households changed complexion radically in the 1960s-1980s.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets ideological culture

The Visible Hand Drops the Ball

One of the great things about the Obamacare fiasco is that we get to revisit many of the left’s talking points for the last half-century and more — and hand the points right back, underlined.

How many times have we heard about market failure? A relentless litany.

Today’s topic? Government failure.

How many times have we been told that markets aren’t as important as we think, since what really matters is managerial know-how? The “visible hand” and all that. It was a book, if not a movie. And its basic message was that a few college-grad experts — highly trained technocrats, all — mattered more than competition. Government experts have the information. They have the skills. The techniques are known. Don’t give us any of that “free market” mumbo-jumbo, they say.

And yet, while the federal government’s efforts to build a usable healthcare.gov website proved feckless, lame and wildly expensive, Obamacare’s increasingly unbelievable proponents kept the patter going. Some states were doing just fine, they offered. Maryland, for instance.

Well, no.

The Old Line State has had just as much trouble in its new line of pushing online medical insurance policies as other governments. Biggest problem? You mean, other than not being able to put up a usable website on schedule? Or getting only four people signed up on launch day?

The Washington Post informs us that state officials ignored warnings that “no one was ultimately accountable for the $170 million project and that the state lacked a plausible plan” for its scheduled launch.

The evidence is in. Want a new market “exchange”? Don’t turn to government.

Rely, instead, on folks competing in the real market.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

We Can Do With Less When Less Is More

With congressional approval ratings at the lowest ever, it’s evident: the sclerotic old institution needs new blood.

But note what I’m not saying — that “Congress doesn’t do enough.”

As A. Barton Hinkle points out in a column, yesterday, complaints about the 113th Congress hail from “CNN to McClatchy to NPR to the L.A. Times,” one lamentation dominating: “the 113th makes ‘the infamous “do-nothing Congress” of the late 1940s look downright prolific.’”

But, as he makes clear, the complaint is witless.

Producing more bad legislation is certainly no improvement. And, as Hinkle observed, the most talked-about recent congressional responses to apparently real problems have been widely judged worse than the problems themselves. Almost everybody was glad that SOPA — the “Stop Online Piracy Act” — didn’t pass; vast majorities opposed and now regret Obamacare.

So, why is most new legislation bad? The reasons are legion, but one stands out: Congress doesn’t even have time to read the laws it debates and passes. 

A British economist explained it like this:

[E]ven Members of Parliament find the burthen of reading through the multitudinous and mazy provisions of the Bills issued day by day . . . too heavy to be borne by mortal man.

That was over a hundred years ago. It’s worse in this new year of 2014, both in Britain and America. Today’s laws are cooked up in back rooms by legislative assistants and lobbyists. When such is “more,” less is better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

Precious Gifts . . . 2013 and Beyond

There’s a quiet on Christmas morning . . . after Santa has come and gone . . . and the kids are still sound asleep . . . sugar plum fairies dancing to their gentle snoring.

A moment to stop and think.

I hope they’ll like their presents; they always do. There’s so much love my wife and I want to share, to give to them.

Of course, the biggest gifts are never under the tree. The most important being a staple home, with love, and the freedom for children to grow into themselves.

My parents gave me that . . . along with the bicycles and baseball gloves and some really good books. I’ve tried to be the same kind of parent.

Another incredible endowment I’ve enjoyed is to be born in a country “conceived in liberty.” A place where individual citizens are the sovereigns, creating government to be a servant and not a master. Land of the free.

What a gift!

But Tom Paine told us that, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly, ’tis dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”

Freedom is under siege. And, therefore, we who love freedom, grateful for our historic luck, must come together to protect our “expensive” gift.

Some may get discouraged after setbacks, recent and not-so-recent, but none of us got involved in politics because we like “the game” and figured we’d pile up a shelf of trophies. We’re engaged because we must be and we seek victories because, as Churchill once put it, “without victory, there is no survival.”

In 1776, on this very day, General George Washington and his soldiers of the American Revolution crossed the Delaware River to score a surprise military victory against the British at Trenton, New Jersey.

Thank goodness, for these brave patriots and their muskets. Three Americans gave their lives in the battle. To secure our liberty.

Today, the Gift has been handed to us. Not to play with on Christmas morning and forget about, not to let get broken without our fixing it, but to protect and defend and cherish.

My commentary strives to illuminate, to amuse and to motivate toward action, bringing citizens together. Citizens in Charge protects the initiative process — the best weapon citizens have to cut taxes, term-limit politicians, stop the drug war, protect property rights, and place limits on government. The Liberty Initiative Fund partners with leaders across the nation putting measures  on the ballot to protect freedom and hold government accountable.

Thanks for your gifts to these efforts and to the many other important ones. We aim to protect the precious gift of freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!

Categories
ideological culture too much government

The Christmas on War

There’s a war on Christmas, I’m told. But I say, “Let’s declare Christmas on war.”

After all, Christmas is about giving, while war is about breaking and taking. Christmas is about love, about celebrating life. War is about hatred and counting the dead.

Thankfully, nobody’s actually being killed in the many very un-merry public Christmas controversies.

Just joy.

Who’s at fault for this clash of Christmas trees against Festivus poles made of beer cans and Nativity scenes versus symbols to Satan?

Whoever turned their Christmas over to government, that’s who.

Don’t governments have enough to do, and a difficult enough time doing it? Who had the bright idea of letting politicians run Christmas?

Let’s not vote on it.

We can and should stand on our own feet, celebrating Christmas on our own property, at our own churches, civic clubs, businesses, wherever, and at our own cost, carrying our best Christmas cheer into the public arena, but without asking for any public assistance or subsidy for our holiday.

They can’t declare war on Christmas if we keep the peace of Christmas by not giving even the merest piece of it to government.

What’s more, what a great gift should this attitude last past the season and be more widely applied. How many other controversies could be changed from wars — on drugs or poverty or what-have-you — to challenges increasingly addressed by peaceful private — and voluntary community — action.

This is Common Sense. Merry Christmas. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

Camp, Kitsch, Goofy Pitch

The pitches aired in service of Obamacare have descended from the twee and lightly vulgar to worse than disastrously kitschy and outrageously camp.

The latest example is not the pajama boy icon for Obamacare, a young man wearing a onesie and demonstrating all the manliness of Peter Pan. Of that, Nick Gillespie agrees, it’s egregious: “For many — arguably most — Americans, this guy is hipster douchitude on a cracker.” But, Gillespie reminds me, I’m not the campaign’s audience. Young single women are.

Hmmm?

No, the nadir of fawning, in-groupy appeal went much further in a video advertisement concocted, we are told, for the LGBT community. You have to see it to believe it — or better yet, just take my word for it. The first minute is jaw-droppingly silly; the second goes beyond tasteless.

Its propaganda value? Dubious. I would not be surprised to discover that this was made as a parody, for comic purposes alone.

But I think I know enough about camp — the theory of which I’ll leave to Camille Paglia — to not be surprised that someone, somewhere, might actually think it a good way to reach the LGBT community.

Folks often complain about advertising. Well, the pandering, lip-smacking vulgarity of “capitalist realism” has now come to the welfare state — even if at the hands of folks not directly connected to government. But to those in the know, let me confess: what gets my goat the most is its frank promotion of “assistance to help you pay.”

With the singer making the most vulgar gesture of all, a show-me-the-money shot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people

For the People?

Politicians always talk about how hard they work for us.

Of course, not even the most recent tumblers off the proverbial turnip truck believe them. Politicians don’t work so hard, first of all, and certainly not with the idea of putting what “We, the People” want ahead of what “They, the Politicians” want.

This is true across party lines. Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is under fire and two high-level appointees have resigned over allegations that they closed two highway access lanes from Fort Lee, New Jersey, over the George Washington Bridge into New York City, causing a massive traffic jam just to punish the town’s mayor for not endorsing Christie in the election.

Working hard for the people or turning the screws of government for one’s own benefit?

Meanwhile, a new report by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent federal agency, finds that the Obama White House “systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election.”

ACUS also determined that delays in issuing regulations “under Obama went well beyond those of his predecessors” and were caused by “concerns about the agencies issuing costly or controversial rules prior to the November 2012 election.”

Notice that the Obama Administration wasn’t willing to permanently shelve any rules as too burdensome. The only concern? Delaying the pain they intended to inflict on folks until after the election, when voters would have less effective means for expressing their disapproval.

Hardly working for the people; working hard for themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

Unlimited Entitlement

“The political problems of liberal populism are bad enough,” Jon Cowan and Jim Kessler of the “centrist” group Third Way wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal. “Worse are the actual policies proposed by left-wing populists.”

They’re warning Democrats not to push policies promoted by Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Cowan and Kessler aren’t exactly Tea Party activists. Before Third Way, Cowan was Democrat Andrew Cuomo’s chief of staff at both Housing and Urban Development and then as Governor of New York. Kessler worked for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and as director of policy and research for Americans for Gun Safety.

Still, Warren and de Blasio are faulted for having a “‘we can have it all’ fantasy,” believing that, “If we force the wealthy to pay higher taxes (there are 300,000 tax filers who earn more than $1 million), close a few corporate tax loopholes, and break up some big banks then — presto! — we can pay for, and even expand, existing entitlements. Meanwhile, we can invest more deeply in K-12 education, infrastructure, health research, clean energy and more.”

It’s “reckless” to ignore the looming financial insolvency of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (which is being dramatically expanded) warn these Third Way authors: “Sen. Warren and her acolytes are irresponsibly pushing off budget decisions that will guarantee huge benefit cuts and further tax hikes . . . in a few decades.”

In response, groups like Social Security Works, Progressives United and Progressive Change Campaign Committee are threatening any politician associated with Third Way not to dare challenge their hankering for unlimited entitlements forever.

Delusions die hard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

The Race Card, Again

Are persons necessarily racist if (a) white and (b) opposed to expansion of the welfare state — that is, merely for opposing such expansion?

In the New York Times, journalism professor Thomas Edsall, echoing a now-familiar charge, implies as though it were self-evident that many who oppose Obamacare-ized medicine do so because of the race(s) of the recipients:

“Those who think that a critical mass of white voters has moved past its resistance to programs shifting tax dollars and other resources from the middle class to poorer minorities merely need to look at the election of 2010. . . . [Obamacare] forced such issues to the fore, and Republicans swept the House and state houses across the country.”

Poor(er) people can come in all shapes, sizes and colors. But for the sake of Edsall’s freighted non-argument, let’s stipulate that the poorest Obama-subsidy recipients are slightly or much more likely to be minorities than not. Why must this fact motivate an individual’s opposition to seeing more and more of his hard-earned income coercively transferred to  anybody?

Change the context to a street mugging. If a mugger is non-white, does the victim’s dislike of being mugged necessarily hinge on the race of the mugger?

Of course, any victim of crime may be a racist. But you wouldn’t simply assume it.

Gratuitous charges of racism are one sign of desperation by friends of Obamacare — a program the color-blind horrors of which will only grow more evident over time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.