Category: ideological culture

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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.

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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.

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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.

 

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ideological culture

Give Thanks for First-World Problems

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It’s simple and unpretentious — a good meal and time spent with loved ones, remembering to count our blessings.

This Thanksgiving, however, has spurred a social media maelstrom over stores opening for business on what George Washington declared in 1789 to be “a DAY OF PUBLIC THANKSGIVING and PRAYER.”

Stores have been open on Thanksgiving for years, of course, without any tear in the space-time continuum, but they’re opening even earlier this year.

Much of the “controversy” is being ginned up by professional Walmart haters, who incessantly complain that the world’s largest private employer pays wages and provides benefits so low that . . . well, arguably only these same complainers offer workers less.

A post at the Daily Kos argues that, “workers shouldn’t have to rely on having an especially good boss to get to spend Thanksgiving with their families.”

Matt Walsh writes on his blog that “a holiday created by our ancestors as an occasion to give thanks for what they had, now morphs into a frenzied consumerist ritual where we descend upon shopping malls to accumulate more things we don’t need.”

New York Post columnist Nicole Gelinas sounds alarm bells that workers required to make time-and-a-half or double-time for clocking in today are being “cut off from fully celebrating America’s all-race, all-religion family holiday.”

But she adds, “It’s shoppers, not the government, who should force stores to close.”

She’s right there. Everyone has a right to boycott stores for opening on Thanksgiving. But the government should butt out entirely.

Still, since this day is all about giving thanks, wouldn’t having a job be something for which to be thankful? In fact, someone needing extra money to fund their family’s needs might even see working today as an opportunity.

It is possible to give thanks on a day other than Thanksgiving. Some might say that every day in America provides an occasion for offering thanks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture too much government

What’re They Smokin’?

We live in strange times. The “nanny state” mentality is ramping up into overdrive just as the War on Drugs hits the rock of enlightened public opinion.

And nothing shows this to stranger effect than the contrast between the continuing success of the anti-tobacco movement while marijuana liberalization proceeds apace.

As “medical marijuana” and even decriminalized recreational marijuana use seem to be gaining ground, the whole “smoking in public” thing has become more draconian.

For years now, state legislatures and town councils and even voting populations have been cracking down on smoking tobacco in public, despite the very shaky science regarding second-hand smoke.

And now the city council of San Rafael, California, has voted — unanimously — to ban residents of apartments, condos, duplexes, and multi-family houses from smoking cigarettes and other “tobacco products” inside their homes.

This American Cancer Association-approved legislation is quite intrusive. And one of the writers of the law boasted how little it matters to her who owns what property: “It doesn’t matter if its owner-occupied or renter-occupied,” she said. “We didn’t want to discriminate.”

And yet, contrasted with the cannabis liberalization movement — with medical marijuana legal (in some sense) statewide — there is discrimination here: in favor of the “weed” and against the “leaf.”

Perhaps history repeats itself. The war against cannabis began as the war on alcohol ended, with the repeal of the 18th Amendment. We could be we witnessing, now, another weird and inconsistent trade-off of paranoid prohibitions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

A Too-Clever Prez?

“It’s all right in politics to be clever,” said George F. Will last week, “but you don’t want to look like you’re trying to be clever, because that looks tricky and sneaky.”

Will, who has recently jumped ship from ABC to Fox News, was identifying the autocratic nature of current national politics. He did this on his premiere appearance on Fox’s The Kelly File, starring Megyn Kelly.

“And, in fact, as the president continues to waive this and suspend that in the exercise of what he calls ‘enforcement discretion,’ the American people are beginning to feel that the law is in constant flux. And if the law is in constant flux . . . there is no law. . . .”

In a Washington Post column earlier in the week, Will identified the president’s personal flaw at the heart of the tragedy. Obama has always thought of himself as an extremely clever fellow, and as a result of his (perhaps undue) self-esteem, has often been bored. Bored, even, with competence.

For Ms. Kelly’s audience, Will painted the problem in the broader context of Democratic Progressivism. It’s been a hundred years since the disastrous reign of Woodrow Wilson, another clever fellow hailing from the Ivy Leage. Obama’s parallels with Wilson are apparent, and it’s no wonder that “Obamacare is collapsing under the weight of accumulated cleverness,” Will states, perceptively — well, at least echoing what I wrote a few weekends ago on Townhall.com.

America doesn’t need super-clever (much less faux-clever) leaders. The country, on the brink of insolvency, needs wise ones.

But Barack Obama, self-diagnosed clever person, seems more interested in appearance than reality, and is, in the end, merely tricky and sneaky.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people too much government

Got Ads?

First the hush-hush secrecy; then the lies. Now something even . . . worse?

President Barack Obama doesn’t think the American people can handle the truth. Neither do several progressive non-profit groups in Colorado that have produced a plethora of cringe-worthy ads promoting Obamacare.

One print ad, “Let’s Get Physical,” pictures a young women giving a thumbs up sign and showing off her birth control pills standing next to a scruffy-faced man-boy, with the text: “OMG, he’s hot! Let’s hope he’s as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which means all I have to worry about is getting him between the covers.* I got insurance.”

No worries, eh? The asterisk informs readers that, “The pill doesn’t protect you from STDs.”

Another advertisement, “Brosurance,” reaches out to young . . . drunkards. “Keg stands are crazy,” we’re informed. “Not having health insurance is crazier.” It continues: “Don’t tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills. We got it covered.”

Gee, thanks. In fact, both print ads end with the “thanks obamacare!” slogan.

So, can floundering Obamacare be saved by harnessing the awesome power of sex appeal and inebriation and huge dollops of kitsch and irony? Only if young people are as vacuous as these ads insinuate.

“Younger Americans may indeed be reckless enough to do keg stands and have unprotected sex on a regular basis,” Nick Gillespie wrote in Time, “but they’re not so dumb as the ‘Got Insurance?’ ads — or the architects of Obamacare — seem to think.”

Because, as Gillespie and others point out, Obamacare overcharges young people to supposedly lower costs for others. Let’s get real, bro.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling ideological culture

Pledge or No Pledge

School authorities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, decided not to require students of all ages to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. They said they couldn’t find time to put it in the schedule, etc., thereby both disappointing and puzzling local veterans, who were the ones who brought the issue up.

The “time” excuse was just that, of course. What the real reasons for the decision are, I don’t know, and will let others guess.

On the bright side, there are reasons not to require recitation of the Pledge. My qualms center on how un-American it seems. Veterans today often talk up the Flag, and the Pledge, etc., but the Founding Fathers took allegiance seriously, and they didn’t secede from Great Britain to pledge their sacred honors to a symbol — a fighting banner too easily unanchored from the best part of the short declaration, “with liberty and justice for all.”

Besides, the Pledge was written in the late 19th century by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist who targeted the Pledge at those sectors of society that he most feared: immigrants, anyone prone to “radicalism.” And yet when I read his political agenda, I see the very radical ideas that corrupted American politics away from limited government.

Worse yet, Bellamy devised an ominous salute to go with his recitation. (Thankfully, that was modified to the hand-on-heart gesture in 1942, when Congress officially adopted the Pledge.)

I’d rather students learn about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Substance, not symbol; law, not fiction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture political challengers

Is the Tea Party Dead?

Newspapermen used to keep files on major figures, for that inevitable day when the newsworthies shuffle off that final coil. Timely obituaries don’t just “happen.”

Heedless of the danger of a premature obit, today’s journalists seem always ready with an autopsy, even before the corpse cools.

Every few years we endure talk of the death of a major political party. Journalists love this sort of speculation. And apparently it’s so forgettable that it never really sticks to the journalists who trotted out the last false prophecy. In the real world, sociologists study what happens to cults “When Prophecies Fail”; in journalism, the eternal cranking out of copy goes on as if nothing happened.

The Last Democrat, a book produced at the height of the Bill Clinton scandals, argued that Americans would never again elect a Democratic president — Americans, you see, had finally wised up, given up on the old redistributionist racket. Wishful thinking.

The book should be prominently placed on every would-be prophet’s desk. A cautionary title.

Today, the old political rackets have ratcheted up, and Democrats are riding high. Sort of.

So now, after Tuesday’s elections, we hear talk of the death of the Tea Party.

A possibility? Yes. But remember: it was never a real party, and it was never about tea. It was (as near as I could make out) about responsibility. In government.

I can’t see how that idea will ever go out of style.

Though how it will win, that’s harder to envision.

And whether the name will stick with the idea, that’s another matter, too. Tea and revolutions, like obituaries, must be prepared in advance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Demonize, Demonize

Washington State’s I-517 failed yesterday. Did demonization help assure its defeat?

In the state’s Voters’ Pamphlet, the second item against the measure was “I-517 benefits Tim Eyman” because, it was alleged, the measure would allow Eyman to “double his output and increase his profits.”

Eyman is a great guy, but to insiders in the Evergreen State he’s the Devil Incarnate. He keeps on promoting initiatives that would limit the state’s seemingly unlimited taxing and spending propensities.

So, of course, he’s demonized, though the idea that I-517 would’ve benefited his professional operation more than everyday citizens just entering the process is absurd.

But speaking of absurd, and of demonization, you can’t get more of either than Harry Belafonte. The august old singer spoke in a New York church in favor of Democrat mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. Identifying David and Charles Koch as “the Koch brothers,” he went off on a tear, objecting to their spending money on causes Belafonte doesn’t approve of:

Already we have lost 14 states in this union to the most corrupt group of citizens I’ve ever known. They make up the heart and the thinking in the minds of those who would belong to the Ku Klux Klan. They are white supremacists. They are men of evil.

What possible warrant there could be for the “white supremacist” charge? None was offered. Chalk it up to partisan hysteria, hyperbole. But, truth is, the Kochs aren’t devils, nor are other wealthy individuals who fund causes, whether we like their politics or not.

The ad hominem — ad diabolos? — fixation in politics continues to plague debate, making otherwise intelligent people seem like fools.

Unfortunately, it too often works.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.