Category: national politics & policies

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general freedom national politics & policies

Promises of Murder

Thought Crimes

Senator Lindsay Graham kills me.

The hawkish Republican from South Carolina isn’t exactly standing up for limited government. His latest oration, on the presidential stump in Iowa, warned Americans far and wide that, were he sitting in the White House with his finger poised above The Button and “you’re thinking about joining al-Qaeda or ISIL [Islamic State] — anybody thinking about that? — I’m not gonna call a judge.”

Adding mucho macho-flash: “I’m gonna call a drone and we will kill you.”

Like you, it never crossed my mind to join either the Islamic State or al-Qaeda. So, a big “meh,” eh?

Neh.

The attacks on civil liberties, committed under the cover of fighting terrorism, must end. I hope that Section 215 of the ridiculously-named USA Patriot Act will expire. I also want to halt the secret, process-less, law-less, global drone-strike program.

And I don’t think I am asking too much for the next president to not regularly threaten audiences with wider, more gleeful and less accountable use of drones.

Remember, Sen. Graham said “thinking about.”

Even with the NSA tracking our every key-stroke, government could still make a mistake about what we’re thinking.

Moreover, even if you disagree with me — perhaps wanting the War on Terror to be fought with more fury — it still seems counter-productive for the wannabe POTUS: (a) to imply that Americans must be bullied out of joining the latest jihadist gang in the Middle East and (b) to suggest the Prez has the dictatorial power to summarily execute an American on the mere suspicion of a thought crime.

Graham, president? Don’t die laughing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought Crimes

 

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national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

That’s What They Want

More money for infrastructure!

The political class sings monotone, striking one note ad nauseam.

The song is “Money.”

One night an Amtrak train crashes, with fatalities; early the next morning a crowded chorus argues for amped-up spending on “infrastructure.”

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) pled to the MSNBC lens, “Is it going to take more of these crashes and deaths to wake up the members of Congress who keep wanting to slim down the budgets going into infrastructure?”

Of course, no dollar amount is high enough that, if thrown at the problem, could guarantee no future accidents. Politicians want to toss the maximum moola at it, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Baltimore smolders — and not because the Orioles won a World Series, but rather at the hands of rioters using protests sparked by the death of a man in police custody as their cover. To many, the tragic events call not so much for justice in court, or enacting law enforcement reforms, but for more “investment” in “urban areas” to solve the persistent problem of urban poverty.

“There’s been no effort to reinvest and rebuild in these communities,” President Obama claims.

Isn’t Obama the country’s head honcho? Did he not make any effort?

That’s funny, because an analysis by the Free Beacon finds that the City of Baltimore raked in $1.8 billion from the 2009 stimulus bill alone.

Doesn’t that count?

“Today, government spends 16 times more . . . than it did when the War on Poverty started,” wrote Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield in their Heritage Foundation paper, The War on Poverty After 50 Years. “But as welfare spending soared, the decline in poverty came to a grinding halt.”

But why quibble about results?

Just send more money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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More money for infrastructure!

 

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crime and punishment general freedom government transparency judiciary national politics & policies

Court Vindicates Snowden

Edward Snowden

Sometimes if you postpone something long enough, someone else will do the job.

Last week, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled the National Security Agency’s metadata collection program unlawful, I immediately saw it as a vindication of Edward Snowden and his “illegal” leaks.

It will be hard to charge the man with treason for uncovering programs that have been determined, in court, to be themselves treasonous — or at least unconstitutional.

But I was busy last week; didn’t have time to make the case.

Nicely, Noah Feldman made it for me, at Bloomberg View. “This is the most serious blow to date,” writes Feldman in his May 7 article, a blow against “the legacy of the USA Patriot Act and the surveillance overreach that followed 9/11.”

The linkage with Snowden is in no way an imposition on the story:

The first striking thing about the court’s opinion was how openly it relied on Snowden’s revelations of classified material.  The court described how the program was known — by Snowden’s leaks. It also analyzed the NSA order to Verizon, leaked by Snowden, that proved the existence of the program and revealed indirectly the legal reasoning that the government relied on to authorize the metadata collection.

More importantly, Feldman recognizes that the decision rightly breaks “the bad precedent of secret law created by the NSA.”

A republic isn’t a republic if its laws are secret.

Now, of course, it’s time for Americans to cease their procrastination. If we don’t recognize that our government is out of control, no one else’s determination will matter.

Except, perhaps, history’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Edward Snowden

 

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Common Sense national politics & policies too much government

Chimps, Chumps, and the Minimum Wage

Unemployment Chimp

It’s time to talk minimum wage laws again!

Confession: I tend to understand some issues on the level of logic — of, even, common sense. A prohibition (which is what a minimum wage law is, forbidding payment at a rate below the “minimum”) doesn’t spur productivity, and it’s from increased productivity that we get general higher wages and wealth and progress itself.

Sure, there are “studies” that indicate otherwise. But, we don’t conduct field studies amongst chimps arranging their bananas to prove 2 + 2 = 4. If an experiment of chimp-arranged bananas comes up with 3, I look for the chimp with the banana-eating grin.

Anyway, there’s this new study about employment from 2007-2009, when the economy went into the toilet, and right after the national minimum wage was upped from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour.

The study’s authors look at employment broadly. They pride themselves on their careful assessment of “the minimum wage from an anti-poverty perspective” and “its effects on the broader population of low-skilled workers. . . .”

Off the top of my head, I marvel that anyone can distinguish one cause for unemployment (financial crash) from another (minimum wage law), but the authors make a pretty convincing case.

Their conclusion? “Our best estimate is that these minimum wage increases reduced the employment-to-population ratio of working age adults by 0.7 percentage points. This accounts for 14 percent of the total decline over the relevant time period.”

So, yes, they say, the last minimum wage hike led to higher unemployment.

Which is what I would suspect. Because of, you know . . . Common Sense.

I’m Paul Jacob.

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Unemployment Chimp

 

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ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Rise in Unrest

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On Monday, pushing an expansion of his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, President Barack Obama gave a talk about the recent rise in racial discord.

Does he ever ask himself, “Under whose watch?”

When the financial system melted down in 2008, candidate Obama — not without some justification — blamed President Bush and the Republicans. Why shouldn’t he and his party be today held somewhat responsible for rising racial unrest?

Wasn’t his very status as the First Black American President supposed to continue the healing process between blacks and whites?

In his talk, Obama recognized the “sense of unfairness, of powerlessness, of not hearing their voices, that’s helped fuel some of the protests. . . .” Well, sure. But there would be no occasion for this were inner-city blacks not treated unfairly in the first place.

The president wants to spend more money on education, for example, despite the high levels of per-student public ed funding in hot spot Baltimore.

It is quite clear that other programs have done the most damage. We still have a War on Drugs, which is unpopular enough that it turns cops “racist” perhaps even against their wills — as I’ve explained before, police tend to focus their unpopular policing against drug use to the classes of society that have the least direct political power, most especially against inner-city blacks.

But even more bedrock: we see protests and talk about inequality during economic downturns. Obama should learn from Bill Clinton’s initial presidential campaign: It’s the economy, stupid.

Or put more bluntly: It’s your stupid economic policies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Brothers' Keeper

 

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Common Sense national politics & policies too much government

The Ultimate Result of Campaign Finance Regs

Last Thursday I tried to be magnanimous. Of campaign finance regulation proponents, I wrote, “I suppose a reasonable person could blanch at rich people giving money to political causes . . . if they objected to all super-rich donors.”

My expectation of reciprocity was dashed at the non-reciprocal gambits of the Koch-hating campaign finance regulation advocates. It all really does come down to how they hate having others spend lots of money . . . against their causes.

Hardly democratic, that. Sorta ‘live and don’t let live.’

But they could (and will) defend themselves. They could say something like this: “We don’t like our billionaires having to give so much either. We’d like to cap our billionaires’ giving, too!”

It’s tough to have to keep up with your opponents’ spending, a pain having to give and give to get what you want and want.

We’d all like to get our way without having to spend time and money. But that doesn’t seem to be the way the world works — everything has a cost.

I sympathize. Economists call the problem of political campaign spending a “Tullock auction,” which sports no rational upper limit on spending, because winners take all.

Still, to bitch about your opponents’ spending but never your own gives away your game.

And we all know what the ultimate progressive game is: tax-funded elections. Tightly controlled, with more and more intrusions into how citizens assemble and cooperate to promote their candidates and causes.

So if the promotion, debate, and decision process is to be government-funded, government-controlled, we might as well call it Socialism and be done with it.

Could such a system be biased, just possibly for the pro-government growth side?

All mysteries solved.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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govFundedElections

 

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

Sanders Didn’t Say

Bernie Sanders

What can we make of the leftist hatred of the Koch brothers, David and his elder brother Charles? For their support of libertarian and Tea Party causes, and a few Republican candidates, the left doesn’t just demonize them, the left singles them out.

I suppose a reasonable person could blanch at rich people giving money to political causes . . . if they objected to all super-rich donors.

But that’s not what’s happening here.

Leftist hatred of the Kochs is especially weird, considering that Koch causes include gay marriage and opposition to war in the mid-East. And yet it’s the Kochs who get called out . . . by Bernie Sanders, who wants to mobilize “millions of people to say ‘enough is enough — Koch brothers and millionaires can’t have it all.’”

Sanders didn’t say, “Soros and millionaires cannot have it all.” Leftist billionaire George Soros gives millions to organizations working to turn the U. S. into a European-style “social democracy.”

Sanders didn’t say, “Bloomberg and millionaires cannot have it all.” Super-rich statist Michael Bloomberg has spent fortunes to undermine the Second Amendment and make America more of a Nanny State.

Sanders didn’t say, “Steyer and millionaires cannot have it all.” California billionaire Tom Steyer sure spent a lot of money to raise taxes and elect Democrats.

Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is blinkered: others are greedy; his side is pure.

Enough is enough — what’s important to Sanders is that his opponents be silenced by government order. There’s nothing democratic about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders

 

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national politics & policies political challengers

My Mom for President

My mom for president

My musing, yesterday, about Hillary Clinton’s hat throw into the presidential ring failed to recognize that yesterday was also my mother’s 81st birthday.

Jane Jacob is not yet an announced presidential candidate, but when I think of a hard-working, organized, smart and always-optimistic woman — someone who keeps promises and looks out for the other person; someone with commitment to principle — I think of her.

Not Hillary Clinton.

Maybe Mrs. Clinton would have put in the hours playing catch with me as a tyke. But can Hillary even catch? My mom can. And throw too. (Not like a — well, incorrectly, either gender.)

My mom has a soft heart. I remember coming home from school and seeing her crying from watching a soap opera.

Nonetheless, she can dish out tough love. During a family clean-up effort (like a Bataan death march, but in English) she asked if one of us six kids could do something or other. I stepped forward to say, “I’ll try.”

Mom looked at me plainly and explained, “I need someone to do it, not just try.”

She is still full of fun and passion. Her deep love and concern for America’s freedom has certainly had an enormous impact on my life.

Too bad my mom’s not running.

Hillary Clinton has demonstrated none of the presidential timber my mom has, and yet Clinton is very likely to enjoy a large electoral advantage among women voters. So, here’s my idea: the Democratic Party’s competition should each nominate a woman for the top of the ticket. There are plenty of women qualified to serve as president. Not just my mom.

May the best woman win.

Have I started a stampede to office supply stores to buy binders?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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My mom for president

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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Humble Hillary Heads Off

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Hillary Clinton announced, yesterday, that she wants to be the next president of these United States. She made it official via an Internet video, which starts off with all kinds of normal, regular folks expressing their hopes and plans for 2015.

The small boy singing about “little tiny fishes” steals the show.

After a minute and a half of innocence-by-association, Hillary Clinton comes on to say that she, too, has big plans: “I’m running for president.”

Mrs. Clinton continues: “Americans have fought their way back from tough economic times, but the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top.”

She should know, what with her family’s struggles after leaving the White House in 2000 — multiple mortgages on multiple multi-million-dollar domiciles. I’m sure we all relate to that.

“Everyday Americans need a champion and I want to be that champion,” she states, “so you can do more than just get by, you can get ahead and stay ahead.”

Apparently, without Hillary at the helm of our Leviathan federal government, all we can do is “just get by.” Barely. Never “get ahead” and “stay ahead.”

“Because when families are strong,” intones Clinton, “America is strong.”

Yes, the woman who wrote It Takes a Village now extols family strength.

“So I’m hitting the road to earn your vote,” she pledges. “Because it’s your time.”

Or so says this Everywoman, a former first lady, U. S. Senator, presidential candidate, Secretary of State, and savvy cattle futures trader.

Hillary Clinton has had a long career in government. It will be interesting to see what she runs on — what she identifies as accomplishments — as opposed to what she runs away from.

Or deletes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton Campaign

 

 

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Common Sense national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Poor, Poor IRS

Squeezing the Taxpayer

As Tax Day approaches, you can bet the Internal Revenue Service has readied itself to help taxpayers file their returns.

No?

“It’s abysmal,” admits IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, discussing his agency’s help for Americans trying to decipher a byzantine, ever-changing tax code.

It seems only four of ten citizens ever succeed in getting through to the IRS on the phone, even after waiting multiple hours. Over days. There have been over 5 million “courtesy disconnects” — that’s IRS lingo for its phone system hanging up on you.

To boot, once you get to a real person, that employee can’t tell you much.

The problem? According to the Washington Post, the poor agency lacks the necessary funds because “Republicans on Capitol Hill have slashed the IRS budget.”

Actually, the IRS budget has gone up every year . . . in nominal dollars. When adjusted for inflation? Well, there has been some decline.

Bemoaning this supposed “era of shrinking government,” the Post assails conservatives in Congress, citing the “cuts” as “punishment for a string of missteps: an extravagant conference for employees in Anaheim, Calif., the targeting of conservative groups seeking tax exemptions, $1 million in bonuses given to agency employees who didn’t pay their federal taxes.”

Punishment seems in order.

But another story puts in perspective this crocodile cry for more money. The Daily Caller recently reported: “The Obama administration has quietly killed an IRS tax preparation program designed to help low-income and disadvantaged citizens, choosing instead to give millions of dollars to liberal groups for the same purpose.”

Look on the bright side, a review of these help-groups found their advice to have a mere 49 percent error rate.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Squeezing the Taxpayer