Category: national politics & policies

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Common Sense general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Forget Frankenstein

Import Export

Some proposals are so shocking and not common that, no matter how rational or sensible, we cannot legitimately call them “common sense.”

Could this be one?

You tell me.

Congress is right now struggling to pass a highway funding bill. Authorized funding by the federal government on roads ends with the passing of this month, July. So, blogs Scott Shackford at Reason, “the legislature has to pass something. Because the legislature has to pass something, people are trying to squeeze everything into it.”

And our illustrious president wants to revive the recently dead, the Export-Import Bank. “When he was a senator, Barack Obama knew the program was nothing but corporate welfare,” writes Shackford. “But now as president, he has flip-flopped and is trying to keep the institution alive.”

I don’t know if the prez will ultimately succeed, cajoling Congress to revive the monster by stuffing it into the roads bill, but at least “Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced an amendment to the highway bill that would kill the bank and unload its assets to the treasury.”

Go, Rubio! Getting rid of the Ex-Im Bank is just anti-crony common sense.

So what’s the “uncommon” sense? This out-of-the-mainstream notion: We don’t need a federal transportation bill at all. It’s not as if states cannot secure funding for roads. (They already do.) Devolve the whole Interstate system back onto the states!

Radical? Maybe. But the federal government just spends and spends without much sense. Distribute the responsibility for roads to the states; let Congress figure out how to manage its remaining tasks.

For a change.

I think this is . . . Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Import Export

 

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Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Fifteen or Fifty or Zero?

Finding the Right Balance

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell just stumbled into a truth. Raising minimum wages could be disastrous. Depending on the rate.

While “Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley and a host of other well-intentioned liberals want to hike the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour,” she calls the proposal “badly misguided.”

And yet she says that the current federal wage floor, at “just $7.25 an hour . . . is absurdly low.”

Why, this Friday, she notes, marks six years since the last minimum wage hike!

Rampell recognizes that raising the minimum wage to $50/hour would cause unemployment, massively. She also realizes that, in many low-wage states, the mere $15 rate would do the same. But raising “the federal minimum wage to $10.10”? Might work! “This is a trade-off . . .”

Yes. Stop right there. Trade-offs, indeed.

She wants us to think about getting the rates right.

Employers and job-seekers do that already, in the marketplace. If businesses don’t pay enough, the workers will move on to employers who will. Force businesses to hire workers for more than their productivity? Unemployment results.

A minimum wage rate helps some and hurts others. Rampell admits that, appearing to “accept” 500,000 people losing their jobs as collateral damage to boost wages for others.

Her proposed fine-tuning of rates supposes that politicians have greater knowledge about the “proper” price of labor than employers and job-seekers. Moreover, she ignores the inevitable political game, whereby politicians take credit for rewarding some, while hiding the costs imposed on others.

Finding the “right minimum wage” rate is mainly about hiding the victims . . . so voters won’t notice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Finding the Right Balance

 

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Robert Reich Makes Common Cause With Police State

Police State Apologist, Facebook, Robert Reich, collage, photomontage, Paul Jacob, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, political, politics

Common Cause says its job is “Holding Power Accountable.” Robert Reich is the pre-eminent “people’s progressive” propagandist of our time, promoting himself as on the side of underdogs and against corporate power structures.

After the Wisconsin John Doe probe was judicially squelched, last week, Reich promoted Common Causes’s official reaction, insisting that “Corruption — even the appearance of corruption — erodes our democracy. Corruption of our system of justice undermines strikes at the heart of our government.”

This is the Common Cause take:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court recently ended the investigation of possible illegal activity between Scott Walker’s 2011-2012 recall campaign and outside special interest groups.

Four of the justices of the court were the beneficiaries of dark money spent in their behalf and which was the heart of this case. They should have recused themselves and did not.

Robert Reich enthusiastically reiterated Common Cause’s demand for adoption and practice of strict judicial “recusal rules.”

Hmmm. No mention that a federal judge had also ordered the investigation shut down, but that ruling was stayed awaiting state court resolution.

No mention, by either Reich or Common Cause, of the methods the prosecutors used in this case, the gag rules and secrecy, the official attempt to squelch public discussion.

Also no mention of the pre-dawn raids, complete with SWAT teams, barking dogs, and pointed guns, as if the political activists (targeted for unsubstantiated campaign finance rule breaches) were violent drug dealers or terrorists.

The lack of mention of those tactics suggests not merely a lack of interest in the real rule-of-law questions, but also an acceptance of those tactics . . . when applied to political enemies.

That is worse than mere corruption.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Police State Apologist

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

C Is For Curmudgeon

Curmudgeon

Every writer can count among his loyal readers at least one curmudgeon. I have several. Today we consider the criticism of one special curmudgeon.

Let’s call him “Mr. C.”

Mr. C. agrees with my last several invokings of Common Sense. But he wonders, “Sure the [insert expletive here] of Republican presidential candidates are annoying, but never forget: the best Democratic candidate is worse than the worst Republican candidate.”

Mr. C. doesn’t mind ridiculing Trump, or questioning the savvy of Santorum. But, he tells me, “the very existence of a self-professed ‘socialist’ on the Democratic side suggests just how bad things have gotten.”

I don’t disagree. But should I agree with Mr. C. when he insists that “to call oneself a ‘socialist’ at this point in time is worse than calling oneself a ‘Ku Kluxer’”?

Further, Mr. C. informs me, it’s not just the candidate whose initials are “B.S.” who says outrageously commie, er, socialistic things.

“Hillary C.,” he insists, “trumps both Elizabeth Warren [who isn’t running] and B.S. with a whole wheelbarrow load of b.s. She just came out for ‘encouraging’ profit sharing by a business with its workers.”

What could be wrong with that?

Mr. C. has an answer: “All sorts of businesses engage in employee profit-sharing, aiming to encourage the proverbial ‘skin in the game.’ But forcing this is bad for many reasons.”

Again I agree. Mrs. Clinton’s proposal is just a sneaky way to play Robin Hood, without addressing the real issue behind all other issues, a lagging, red-tape bound economy.

Or, as was told to another Mr. C. years ago, “It’s the Economy, Stupid.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Curmudgeon

 

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Accountability folly national politics & policies responsibility

Failing in the Future Biz

future, predicting the future, political, politics, collage, photomontage, illustration, prophecy, fortune teller, mistake

If you can’t sell us the future, you’re doing it wrong. We all want to get there in one piece.

Right now, a horde of Republican presidential candidates and a small cohort of Democrats vie to present themselves as visionaries, leaders.

Yet, what they all have in common is that they ignore the most serious issue facing us. Bigger than borders and terror and ISIS and gay marriage and all that, is the financial stability of the United States. Our future is in peril because of the continual Washington stalemate of never-ending deficit spending and continual debt growth — total debt being around $100 trillion.

The reason for this enormity? Politicians like to promise things, lots of things, very expensive things like wars and entitlements, to win our votes. But these same promiscuous over-promisers have more than a little difficulty agreeing on the taxes that would pay for all those “things.”

Why the difficulty? Because Americans already pay plenty in taxes and very few of us non-Omaha-based non-billionaires care to fork over even more of our hard-earned pay to a wasteful leviathan.

Any respectable vision of the future must acknowledge the current predicament, and provide a way out — before it’s too late, like it may very well already be . . . for Greece.

Wanting something for nothing isn’t Greek to any of us, unfortunately. That’s why we need leaders with the honesty and courage to present a vision more real than government providing ever more goodies on credit ad infinitum.

Credit just doesn’t add up, infinitely. The more you rack up debt, the more finite your future.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Future Fail

 

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement national politics & policies

Work Longer?

Work more

Set aside all the snake oil that sleazy, slippery-tonged solons have sought to sell us, now comes the Bush behind Door #3 to tell the teeming masses of tailing media what we need to do . . . if Americans want to grow economically as a country, and succeed individually.

We need to work more.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was just casually tossing about that four-letter word in a recent meeting with the editorial board of the Union Leader in Manchester, N.H.:

My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is four percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.

Work more? Harder? Longer?

How dare Jeb suggest that our future success, together or individually, should be dependent on us . . . of all people?

Democrats immediately pounced. A statement from the Democratic National Committee called Bush’s remark “easily one of the most out-of-touch comments we’ve heard so far this cycle.”

“Americans are working pretty hard already & don’t need to work longer hours,” tweeted John Podesta, chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, “they need to get paid more.”

We all “need” a lot of things. The point is we are all better off when we go out and earn what we need.

Well, that’s my point, anyway.

And, perhaps, Jeb Bush’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Work more

 

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies too much government

A British Puzzle

White labor and minimum wages

Most folks think minimum wage laws are there to help the poor in particular and everybody in general. But economist Scott Sumner, exploring “Britain’s new minimum wage: Is there a hidden agenda?” finds Britain’s new Tory double whammy of decreasing welfare payments while hiking mandatory minimum wage something of a mystery:

Why would a Conservative government sharply increase the minimum wage, in a budget that in many other respects favored small government? The minimum wage is currently 6.50 pounds/hour, and 9 pounds/hour is almost $14/hour in US terms. Also recall that average incomes in the UK are lower than in the US.

He finds a possible reason: to dissuade immigration. Migrants usually have low skills, in part because of language difficulties, so they cannot command high wages — market wages, of course, being defined by worker productivity.

Could the new minimum wage be there to influence migration without doing so directly?

Sumner goes on to discuss the racist origins of the minimum wage in America, Australia, and South Africa. The purpose was pretty clearly to hurt poor workers. Minimum wage laws were established to protect white workers from cheap competition by darker skinned folk.

Sumner’s postscript is interesting: “The [American] Democratic surge of interest in the minimum wage occurred soon after the GOP surge of interest in immigration restriction. Let’s see if the GOP jumps on the minimum wage bandwagon.”

Of course, for every advocate of a class-based, favoritist policy who argues deceptively, there are dozens who are merely mistaken.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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White labor and minimum wages

 

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general freedom individual achievement meme national politics & policies responsibility

NOT the Impossible Dream

Independence Day

The American Dream is dead.

Has been for at least a year . . . or so we’re told:

  • “American Dream Dead,” said the Huffington Post
  • “The American Dream is out of reach,” CNN Money
  • “The American Dream is Dead, and Good Riddance,” according to a column by Keli Goff at the Daily Beast.

Golly. Have a great July 4th holiday . . . I guess.

That 2014 CNN Money poll found 59 percent of Americans agreed with the statement: “The American dream has become impossible for most people to achieve.”

What is “the American Dream”? What do folks mean when they speak of it?

Historian James Truslow Adams coined the phrase in his 1931 book, The Epic of America:

The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.

Note that Adams wrote of “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.” He didn’t say “from each according to ability, to each according to need.”

He didn’t suggest a dream world wherein government would wave a magic wand to bestow financial success upon everyone, program by program. In fact, Adams embraced a land of capitalism, but without the cronyism — thus, with some significant measure of equality of opportunity.

President Obama also addressed the American Dream in his 2014 State of the Union speech, only with a different tone. It had “suffered some serious blows,” he summarized. “Over more than three decades, even before the Great Recession hit, massive shifts in technology and global competition had eliminated a lot of good, middle-class jobs, and weakened the economic foundations that families depend on.”

Surely Mr. Obama isn’t so economically brain-dead as to think that the computer revolution, the information revolution, and the communications revolution were terrible scourges on mankind that cost jobs. Mr. Progressive-in-Chief, these “shifts in technology” amount to what’s commonly called “progress.”

Yet, Mr. Obama, like most politicians, has only one thought: how to turn talk of the American Dream into snake oil he can sell politically — to achieve his own dreams.

He believes our dreams depend on him, on bigger and bigger government. There are those who want a government big enough to somehow make all our dreams come true.

And those of us who simply want the freedom to try to fulfill our own dreams. Meaning, usually, we want government out of our way.

America is about individual freedom, all people created equal, pursuing happiness in their own personal ways, so every dream is accordingly different.

But what runs through them all is something to note as this country’s 239th Independence Day approaches:

I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-C-E.

The United States of America was a world-historic innovation in government — it offered an “asylum for mankind,” as Thomas Paine wrote. We declared our independence as a nation so that every man and woman walking this parcel of the earth could likewise declare his or her independence.

The American Dream isn’t, as Adams wrote, “a dream of motor cars and high wages merely,” but of standing on one’s own two feet, making one’s own way in the world, being self-reliant, independent, doing it one’s own way.

Makes me miss Frank Sinatra.

Put another way or three:

  • If your dream is to start a company like Solyndra, taking over $5oo million in subsidies from the taxpayers, it’s just not the American Dream.
  • If you want to live off government programs, rather than your own smarts and achievement, you may have a dream, but it ain’t the American Dream.
  • If you’re just sitting in your boat waiting for the tide to lift you up, you may indeed be dreaming, but it’s not the American Dream.

One doesn’t have to be as successful in business as Bill Gates to achieve it. You could take a vow of poverty and still grasp the American Dream in full.

Life is short. It’s not about amassing the most toys. It’s about freedom, the freedom to pursue your own happiness. And the courage to use that freedom to go for it.

That’s the American Dream.

I have a Common Sense American Dream that my commentaries and the memes and videos we post at ThisisCommonSense.com 365 days a year — and send to tens of thousands by email — will rally the spirit of independence that triumphed more than two centuries ago and is still alive and strong in us today.

Thank you!We cannot do it without your help. I need your support now, on this Independence Day. Please take a moment to make a generous and tax-deductible gift to keep this Common Sense coming to you and a growing audience of active, interested and independent Americans.

Happy Independence Day!

The Dream lives on in you. Now please help us grow our voice and our movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

P.S. A recent poll now shows that asked a slightly different way, nearly two-thirds of us believe the American Dream is achievable for those that are willing to work for it. Should it be achievable for those unwilling to work for it?

Thank you!

P.P.S. Thank you for helping provide Common Sense to liberty-lovers everywhere. Please give generously. Your one-time contribution of $100, $50, $25 or a monthly pledge of $17.76 makes this program possible.

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Independence Day

 

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crime and punishment national politics & policies too much government

Armed Americans

Terror Warnings

Scared? “July 4 terrorist attack on U.S. soil a legitimate threat, officials warn” — headlines the Washington Times.

Scared now?

Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R-Tx.) expressed his extreme concern that “Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States . . . and then activate them to do whatever they want to do. Whether it’s military installations, law enforcement or possibly a Fourth of July event parade.”

Michael Morell, former CIA deputy director, told CBS This Morning, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States. That’s how serious this is.”

In the last three weeks, the FBI has arrested ten U.S. citizens allegedly plotting attacks here — in solidarity with the Islamic State.

Just a week ago, I suggested we dump the Department of Homeland Security and start anew, because the DHS bureaucracy is hardly the best way to organize government to stop terrorist attacks.

Yet, no matter how well organized, government cannot possibly stop every act of violence.

While contemplating the Independence Day prospect of lone-wolf lunatics or homicidal decapitators and suicide bombers organized “at lightning speeds,” a thought came to mind: We had better depend on ourselves.

If those who will heed “the siren calls” of the Islamic State do get past Homeland Security and our alphabet quilt of security agencies, let’s do everything we can to make certain they still have to face us, armed Americans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Terror Warnings

 

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folly nannyism national politics & policies

Doom Fails to Arrive on Schedule

DOOM

Doom is not always bad. I’d appreciate the doom of nonsensical doomsaying, for instance. . . although I doubt that that glorious day will dawn anytime soon.

Equally unlikely is an apology from ABC and Chris Cuomo for pitching, back in 2008, a muddled ABC special, “Earth 2100,” about all the disasters expected to arrive by 2015, among other years.

The idea? Forecast the harm inflicted by allegedly man-made global warming and collateral calamities, via the scientific methodology of being safely vague or just making stuff up. One way the network secured data was to ask viewers to pretend they’re in the future and then “report back.” (Well, it was 2008, a more primitive era. They did things like this back then.)

Here’s a sample of what ABC purveyed as possibly impending:

  • “Temperatures have hit dangerous levels.” (Time for air conditioning and/or heat!)
  • “We’ve got more people, less and less resources. That’s a recipe for disaster.” (Let markets be fully unfettered so we can be sure to get more and more instead!)
  • “It’s June 8, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (Unless that’s a big carton, no. Try $3 or $4 a gallon.)
  • “We’re going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.” (Good work, Nostradamus!)

We still get storms. (Always had ’em; always will.) And inflationary Fed policy and other bad governance still swirl on the horizon. So let’s have shelter, fire departments, umbrellas, and market-friendlier policies; and let’s not reside on hurricane-prone beaches.

Thanks for the heads-up, Chris.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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DOOM