Category: ideological culture

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ideological culture too much government

Togetherness

“We’re all in this together,” folks say. I’ve even said it. But are we?

Yesterday, I discussed Mitt Romney’s secretly recorded comments on the “47 percent” he believes are hell-bent on supporting President Obama . . . and an apparently different 47 percent not paying federal income taxes. Romney expressed a not unreasonable fear that government bailouts and handouts and entitlements will cause dependency, and there will come a breaking point where those working and producing will be unable to shoulder that burden.

But Mr. Romney shouldn’t go along with the bifurcation of the American public facilitated by the structure of the federal income tax and the payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare. Most people of all incomes are paying a lot more in taxes than they should have to, even when they do not pay federal income taxes.

Moreover, while no doubt some folks wallow in dependency through welfare or crony insider deals, the vast majority of Americans desire to stand on their own two feet. Part of the 47 percent not paying income taxes are people on Social Security, as noted in an online comment by John C. Bisely:

To lump Social Security in with the other parasites is very disturbing to me. I didn’t ask for SS, it was a government run insurance for my retirement that made sense, actually. The politicians used it as a cash cow and stole billions to buy votes — plus the fact, I gave them real dollars at the time I paid into it and they give me, inflated fiat!!!

Mr. Bisely, like most Americans, is not a parasite. He’s earned his way in this world. He deserves a less parasitic government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Bite the Hand

I’m not sure there’s much percentage in talking about percentages.

Divvying folks into groups, and then relying on people to “stay” within their group — behaving according to one’s specifications — seems . . . kind of creepy.

Last year’s “Occupy” movement, with its relentless pitching of the “99 percent,” demonstrated that creepy/icky factor pretty well.

But Mitt Romney had to horn in on the action. “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what,” he said. These wards of the state, he went on to say, believe that

  • they are victims
  • government has a responsibility to care for them
  • they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it

Furthermore, “these are people who pay no income tax,” Romney stated. “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Well, not all folks who are somehow “dependent on government” — a group ranging from Social Security retirees and the non-working poor to federal employees and agribusinesses and Solyndras feeding at the federal trough — necessarily want to increase their own ranks. Not a few are savvy enough to notice that the system that feeds them would, if larded up with more recipients, be made less capable of feeding them.

As for the logic of “not biting the hand that feeds you,” the advice of the late Thomas Szasz is pertinent: “maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.”

After all, many of the people who may qualify, technically, as being “dependent on government” would rather not be. And might like the option of being less encumbered by government “help.”

Mitt, I wouldn’t write them off yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture

That’s Rich

What have the rich got that we haven’t got? Besides money?

Well, many assaults on their money.

Less cash-encumbered mortals also get our pockets picked by those with political pull. But persons of certain envious bent are particularly eager to assail the wealthiest among us. (You know who you are, envious people and wealthy people.)

Peter Schiff took a camera to the Democratic Convention and asked attendees what they felt about the idea of curtailing or outlawing corporate profits. Interviewee upon interviewee exclaimed in grateful agreement, “Oh yes! Great idea. Love to see that!” Outlawing profit, killing enterprise, destroying economic life, turning the earth into a barren landscape, sure, let’s do it!!!

Forward!null

Then there’s the Chicago Teachers Union’s strike bulletin, which was issued on September 8 but has apparently been memory-holed from the web page where the Illinois Policy Institute found it. Among the chants for union members hoping to pad their on-average $76,000 per annum salaries with a 30 percent hike were such beauties as “The war on unions is a joke. Tax the rich that made us broke. How to fix the deficit? Tax, tax, tax the rich!”

Blame the rich? While some rich people and businesses rigged and gamed the system to take huge government subsidies, thus helping “make us broke,” everyone with their hand in the cookie jar contributed. The problem is the cookie jar itself.

And I note that the teachers’ chant isn’t “Stop, stop, stop subsidizing some corporations and appeasing the ridiculous demands of teachers unions!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture responsibility

Custom and Customers

Muncie’s Traci Markcum remembers when the news was free. The Indiana citizen wants a return to those carefree days.

“I think it is pretty bad The Star Press is trying to charge people to read the paper online,” she wrote in a letter to the editor. “Whatever happened to being able to see the news on the Web for free?”

Free? Well, you can find plenty of news on the internet for free, sorta, once you’ve bought a computer and Internet access — and paid the electric bill, of course. In the really olden days, before cable TV, network news was free once you had a TV set. (Why computer and television manufacturers, internet providers and electric companies dare to charge us money, when we’re simply being good citizens and keeping up on current affairs, I’ll never know.)

Ms. Markcum “used to buy the Sunday paper and would read the news at work or on the go on [her] phone, but not now.” Not now, because The Star Press has “stooped to a new low by having to charge Muncie citizens who live and work in the city a fee to read something. Your paper prices have increased and people cannot afford to get the paper.”

In fact, Markcum became so desperate, she asked, “Are we supposed to start stealing the news you are supposed to be providing?”

Paperboys beware!

“Go back to the way it used to be, or lose a lot more customers,” she concluded.

Customers? A customer “purchases a commodity or service.”

For its part, The Star Press tells online visitors to “Enjoy a limited number of articles over the next 30 days” offering a button to “Subscribe today for full access.”

Oh, the humanity!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Predictable Prescription

President Obama loves a laugh line he uttered during his convention speech and is now on tour with it, using it to stoke up his campaign whistle stops.

Obama told us that Republican policy amounts to this: “Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call us in the morning.”

Obama is correct that tax cuts don’t magically cure behemoth deficits or leviathan debt. And, frankly, Republicans are often as loathe as Democrats to cut — really cut — government spending.

But it’s not as if Obama were the Lone Ranger when it comes to hacking away at the federal octopus, constantly proposing only balanced budgets and demanding shutdowns of federal agencies and programs. No. Obama, like so many in DC, demands ever higher spending, ever higher taxes, ever more regulations — as exemplified by Obamacare. The president demonizes as Darwinian dastards all who support even vanishingly small reductions in projected increases in spending.

If the GOP plays a one-note tune of tax cuts, ad infinitum, the Democrats’ have their own long-playing record spinning around and around: the idea of government as the solution to every problem. But whatever “fiscal irresponsibility equivalence” exists between Republicans, who want to cut taxes in the face of trillion-dollar a year deficits, and Democrats, who want to keep spending more, the underlying issue remains whether we need more government or less.

Take less government, less spending, lower taxes, and call me on election morning.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture

Rescue Them

“Ideas are forces: the existence of one determines our reception of others.”

This is more than just a statement of associationist psychology.

Take the politics of “welfare.” The modern project has placed government at the heart of society, construing its basic mission as that of “rescuing” people who make mistakes or suffer ill fortune. Taking over where self-help, mutual aid, and charity left off — and at the risk of squelching self-help, mutual aid, and charity — government steps in and provides assistance. Often permanent assistance, and within the context of vast bureaucracies and inescapable institutions.

The socialists who most insist on this messianic government seem to be mostly driven by a concern for the poor . . . and a hatred for the rich. (Sometimes both, sometimes just one or the other.) But the Progressives and New Dealers who actually established the institutions of “welfare” didn’t stop with just the poor. Once the Rescue Mission mentality stuck, there was no class that “shouldn’t” receive benefits.

The result? We watch anti-corporate leftists squirm as they defend corporate bailouts.

But not all left-leaning folks buy the whole package. In America and Europe high-level panic led to vast fortunes squandered to bail out banks, etc. But in Iceland, the people let the creditors take their lumps and the banks fail while drastically cutting back on government deficits (though not targeting assistance for the poor).

That is, they behaved more like laissez faire economists than messianic technocrats.

And Iceland’s thriving, bounced back.

Of course, true believers in the awesome powers of government will resist any notion that bailouts aren’t necessary . . . ideas being forces and all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies

Great & Powerful Teleprompter

There’s a man behind a curtain somewhere doing whatever one does to a teleprompter.

Load? Arm? Detonate?

Last week, in Tampa, a Republican teleprompter put words into the mouth of Speaker of the House John Boehner, then chairing the convention, specifically these words: “In the opinion of the chair, the ‘ayes’ have it and the resolution is adopted.”

The resolution concerned whether a number of Ron Paul delegates would be seated. The vote was awfully close. How the actual voice vote turned out was supposed to be for Boehner to judge, not an anonymous guy (or gal) behind the curtain, ghost-writing democracy.

Yesterday, while the Democrats gathered in Charlotte, North Carolina, were busy tucking God and Jerusalem back into their platform, Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa held the gavel. But not control of his own teleprompter.

The resolution restoring those elements to the party’s platform, coming after the platform committee had already completed its work, required a two-thirds vote. When the votes were heard . . .  well, Mayor Villaraigosa wasn’t sure. He had the convention vote again. And then again.

Finally, perhaps after seeing the teleprompter, which read, “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds having voted in the affirmative . . .” he decided, to loud booing, that the resolution had received two-thirds.

As the country prepares (cringes) for the fall campaign, we’ll hear plenty from President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney and about both men. But who cares? The real power in our system of governance, as these conventions make clear, are the guys running the teleprompters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

The Gray Fox

Clint Eastwood, crazy? Like a fox.

Last Thursday, at the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, he spoke to a primetime television audience of millions in the type of direct language politicians never utter. The movie star’s message was simple, but his presentation was more acting routine than speech, using an empty chair as a prop and pretending President Obama was sitting next to him. His delivery came in stops and starts, seemingly ad-libbed with the 82-year old no quicker or more nimble of thought and word than other octogenarians I know.

Much of the mainstream media pounced, diagnosed Eastwood as nearly insane, and noted that the actor’s 12-minute talk upstaged presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Funny, I think Eastwood’s words touched many regular folks — and perhaps a raw nerve for those favoring the president.

While celebrities have every right to speak, I’m tired of the usual sophomoric spewing of famously uninformed opinion — “hot-dogging it,” as Eastwood put it. But we didn’t watch movie star Clint Eastwood last week; we saw businessman Clint Eastwood.

In 1967, early in his Hollywood career, Eastwood created his own production company, Malpaso, which has handled virtually all of his American films. Eastwood knows firsthand the demands of running a business. In fact, he enjoys a reputation for finishing his films on time and on budget and making profits.

When someone doesn’t do the job, Eastwood signs the proverbial pink slip. He thinks voters should do likewise. After all, “we own this country,” Eastwood reminded us. “Politicians are employees of ours.

“When somebody does not do the job, we got to let them go.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment ideological culture

Ends, Means, Evils

Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who used bombs and guns in a terrifying killing spree a little over a year ago, got what he wanted: He was judged as a political terrorist and not insane, sentenced to prison for ten to 21 years, Norway’s unbelievably minimum “maximum” — with the state’s option of keeping him confined indefinitely if judged too dangerous for release.

Which sounds rather “clinical” to me. Even without a ruling of insanity, Norway appears to treat its murderers as madmen.

But as one survivor of the Utoya massacre explained, “I believe [Breivik] is mad, but it is political madness and not psychiatric madness.” Exactly.

“Madness” is some sort of loss of self-control, a dangerous instability; “insanity” legally defines that subset of madmen who cannot distinguish between right and wrong. It is pretty obvious that though Breivik is deeply off his rocker, his condition is the result chiefly of bad ideas channeling base impulses.

And yet . . .

Breivik’s terrorism — like all others — justifies killing innocent people to serve a political goal. In doing so, the terrorist’s ideology becomes de facto insanity, rendering the terrorist incapable of recognizing his own evil.

In this case, his ideology also kept the terrorist from seeing the actual consequences of his horrifying violence. Breivik’s politics is of an extreme anti-Muslim nature. It has surely been fed by the rise of radical Islamic terrorism. But killing 77 people, including scores of non-Muslim teenagers, doesn’t exactly serve to rally European “militant nationalists” to an anti-Muslim pogrom. Mad. Wanton. Feckless.

But just “evil” will do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

The Left Discriminates

The political “left” dominates a number of institutions, including, most famously, Hollywood entertainment and up-market journalism. But perhaps even more striking is the heavily “liberal-progressive” bent observed in many academic fields, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, far in excess of the leftist percentage in America at large.

And this certainly deserves an explanation.

Could it be the result of bias and discrimination?

It’s long been fun to listen to academics defend their heavily leftist cut of the higher ed pie using arguments that have nothing to do with bias. Why “fun”? Because similar arguments trotted out in other fields receive nothing but scorn from academics.

Now there’s a study showing that social psychologists, at least, self-admit to an anti-conservative bias in grading papers, awarding grant proposals, inviting symposium speakers, and accepting job applicants. And here’s the kicker: “The more liberal the survey respondents identified as being, the more likely they were to say that they would discriminate.”

Those who are already sharpening their ad hominem retorts should note that the study was not conducted by folks on “the right.” Co-author Yoel Inbar described himself to Inside Higher Ed as “‘a pretty doctrinaire liberal,’ who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008 and who votes Democrat. His co-author, Joris Lammers of Tilburg, is to Inbar’s left, he said.”

The most interesting aspect of bias uncovered in the study, however, is that interviewed academics estimated that their colleagues were twice as likely as themselves to discriminate on ideological grounds.

The “other guy” is always worse than oneself.

Which is where bias and prejudice begin, perhaps.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.