Category: national politics & policies

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies subsidy too much government

Subsidy for Everybody!

According to Vice President Joe Biden, the debate is over. Health care, by which he means medical assistance, is a basic right — to be obtained through government, and made effective by the Affordable Care Act — not a “privilege.”

By “right” he means  “something others are forced to provide,” in this case by taxes, regulations, and the full panoply of U.S. law. Today’s “liberals” like to use the word “privilege” to mean anything obtained without direct government assistance. And therein lies a huge problem.

In his first weekly address of the year, Biden touted how great the ACA, “Obamacare,” is. How affordable it is for families, for everyone! It’s a panacea, though Biden didn’t use the word.

Actually, he didn’t say that we have a right medical care. He said we have a right to health “insurance,” which we’re forced to purchase — and for which many are subsidized, too.

How far does he go with this?

“An awful lot of people who didn’t think they could or would find quality, affordable health insurance are actually able to get assistance from the government to help them pay for their health care plans at a cheaper rate,” he earnestly intoned. “A family of four with an income of around $95,000, they can still get a subsidy to lower their health care premiums.”

You can see where the problem is. If a household making $95,000 per annum can receive subsidies, who’s paying for all this?

Perhaps you.

Can you see why Obamacare’s a prescription for financial disaster?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Endless Fog of Endless War

Yesterday, NBC’s Chuck Todd opened a “Meet the Press” segment by calling U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq “wars now without an end.”

“The U.S. now seems to be in a semi-permanent state of war,” added Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel.

“Right now, we’re just in damage control,” explained Lt. General Dan Bolger, Retired, the author of Why We Lost: A General’s Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. “Our enemies, the Taliban and ISIS, are talking about winning.”

Mr. Todd asked, “Why do we have this incredible military that can’t win these wars?”

“The military can give you a quick victory over a conventional army. It cannot deliver a rebuilt country in the place you go,” replied the general. “That takes an effort of the entire U.S. population and government. And moreover, it takes the commitment of the American people for the long term.”

And then Baghdad and Kabul will look a lot like Chicago or Boston?

“At what point do we walk away?” Todd wanted to know. Never?

“It becomes difficult to walk away, because these situations are spinning quite badly out of control,” offered Sarah Chayes, now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and formerly an assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “And it’s spreading.”

Our decade-plus in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost us greatly and accomplished little good, if any.

Even a century of Americans fighting and occupying and pacifying these countries will not succeed. The cost, not just in billions of tax dollars, but also in thousands of our countrymen dead and maimed, is unacceptable.

It’s time to really end the “endless” wars.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

Rand Paul Raises Banner

Last weekend, 60 Minutes offered up a fascinating profile of outgoing Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma). Coburn has prostate cancer, and is leaving Washington for his home state before his term is up.

My trouble with the segment? It didn’t mention Coburn’s views on term limits, or make any point about him leaving early, other than, well, cancer. But it is worth mentioning that many, many politicians die in office. Coburn retains enough of his views to exit the political stage at an appropriate time.

He’s not clinging on to power as if he were Gollum at the Crack of Doom.

Thankfully, not all of Coburn’s projects will languish. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) is planning to re-introduce a piece of legislation that Coburn had developed, a plan to halt the federal practice of sending “military-grade equipment to local police departments.”

It’s a typically Coburn-esque notion.

Though Occupier folks may have some trouble understanding where Coburn is coming from, or in what direction he wishes the country to go, Coburn’s Tea Party constituencies get the idea. And, if they had misunderstandings, Rand Paul made the limited-government perspective clear in August with his Time op-ed arguing against the militarization of America’s police forces.

The revived bill will still allow (too much) federal taxpayer money go to local departments. But it will (fortunately) stop the distribution of “vehicles and weapons used by the U.S. armed forces” to police.

No better tribute to Tom Coburn could be found than Rand Paul’s taking up his banner on this important issue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom insider corruption national politics & policies

The Madness Method?

To those nattering nabobs of negativity who don’t trust government to do the right thing, or even to stop doing the wrong thing once discovered, I just want to say: “You’re right.”

Again.

Last April, a Washington Post exposé about a bizarrely tyrannical debt collection program caused the Social Security Administration (SAA) to publicly promise it would cease and desist from said program. The Social Security bureaucracy had been snatching the tax refunds of grown children — $75 million from roughly 400,000 victims — whose parents, many decades ago, had allegedly been sent excess money by this same incompetent outfit.

Due process? The SSA didn’t go before a judge to prove these people owed a valid debt, nor even bother to inform folks that their income tax refunds were being seized. Instead, the Social Security gang just flat-out took the money . . . surreptitiously, like a thief.

In some cases, the SSA wasn’t certain who exactly owed the money. In one case, the agency went after a child even when they could find the mother who supposedly owed the money. Why? The mother had already beaten them in court.

The SSA flouted more than common sense and decency. Children should not be held legally responsible for the debts of their parents.

Hasn’t this been settled law for at least the last couple of centuries?

After publicity back in April, the agency’s commissioner announced it would stop. Yet, now the Social Security Administration is right back at it, claiming Congress has given it the legal power to collect debts “as it sees fit.”

You see why governments need limits. Because they take liberties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

Another Insider?

Earlier this week, Jeb Bush, former governor of the State of Florida, announced on Facebook that he is “exploring” a 2016 run for the Republican nomination for the presidency. I have mixed feelings, to say the least.

There’s the whole dynastic problem. Another Bush? Or, is Jeb the cost of finding a candidate to beat Hillary . . . who has her own dynastic baggage?

But the big story, here, is to watch the insiders scramble to keep out the outsiders.

The trouble with both Hillary and Jeb is that they are insiders. They represent where the leadership of both parties wants its representatives and front-men (and -women) to go: to the putative “center.”

By which they really mean: don’t disturb the bailout system in American finance or the Pentagon procurement system for the military-industrial complex.

While it might be fun to contemplate Bill Clinton as the First Gentleman, or pick at the two issues over which Gov. Bush seems not very conservative at all, the truth is that both have access to a lot of entrenched power and loose money. Both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton enjoy incumbent-like advantages.

If the near future does sport a Clinton-Bush battle for the presidency, we can be sure of only one thing: status quo vs. status quo.

Leaving the real work of reform to those of us at the grassroots, with state and local issues our preoccupation. As long as insiders occupy the White House, our choices will be limited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Aeschylation

“In war,” the Greek dramatist Aeschylus told us, “truth is the first casualty.”

This came to mind when Secretary of State John Kerry testified in the Senate last week.

The new Iraq War has been pitched exhaustively to the American people as “only air strikes” and “absolutely no boots on the ground” — even as the Obama Administration continues to send additional U.S. military advisors to place their boots on Iraqi sand (and, at least once thus far, to engage ISIS directly via Apache attack helicopters hovering above Iraqi ground.)

Kerry again assured senators that the president “has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”

Strangely, however, the Secretary most adamantly urged Senators not to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would restrict President O from doing precisely what he has so often and emphatically pledged not to do: put combat boots on the ground in Iraq.

The fact that the Obama Administration has foreclosed any possibility of putting US troops on the ground to fight, according to Sec. Kerry, “doesn’t mean that we should preemptively bind the hands of the commander in chief or our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.”

Impossible to foresee? Yeah, right. The “no boots” promise provides all the stability of leaves in the wind.

Having any trust in this administration is impossible to foresee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

The Blast of the Big Spenders

The primary populist concern with “money in politics” is conspiratorial: “they” will grab total control because “they” buy the politicians.

The cries on the political left that The Evil Koch Brothers™ spend money, thereby “corrupting OUR democracy,” have become ubiquitous.

The fact that the left has its own billionaires, and that they give far more money to their causes than the Kochs do to theirs? Conveniently left out of the hysteria.

But the real case against money in politics has almost nothing to do with buying politicians.

Which leads us to the biggest problem with money in politics: most of it is a waste.

Binyamin Appelbaum, writing Tuesday in The New York Times, reports on the conclusion of a number of economists that “buying elections is economically inefficient.” Appelbaum quotes a major donor who posits why that’s the case: “politicians don’t stay bought.”

Yes indeed, politicians are a tricky investment.

Still, giving patterns suggest contributions are more often intended to advance one’s beliefs and values, than to purchase or rent the allegiance of (or protection from) an elected official.

When we switch from spending money on politicians to spending money on causes, especially initiative and referendum campaigns, the situation looks a bit different. You don’t buy anyone. You persuade voters. Or not.

I’ve seen many a well-funded initiative fall because citizens just wouldn’t have it. Businesses and lobbyists and unions all hate term limits, and have often outspent supporters. But, barring deception, term limits usually win with voters.

Who can’t be bought even for a while.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Stupid Before Congress

MIT economist Jonathan Gruber has had a big influence on American life, much of it “behind the scenes.” He helped put together RomneyCare in Massachusetts, then Obamacare at the federal level. And he made a curious case for abortion that was picked up by Steven Levitt and made famous in Freakonomics.

But he wasn’t summoned before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Oversight Committee, yesterday, to talk about abortion. His boastings, in public, that the Affordable Care Act had been designed to deceive caught congressional attention.

And referring to voters as “stupid” doesn’t sit well with politicians — maybe because they’re living evidence.

Gruber started with some newfound humility. He had been bragging. In truth, he wasn’t that important to the process.

None of this was very convincing.

His explanations for his too-honest statements? Less than satisfactory: he chalked it all up to a spoken “typo.”

More entertainingly, when repeatedly asked whether he would give the committee his work product relating to his Health and Human Services contracts, he reiterated one simple answer: the committee should “take it up with my council.”

“You’ve been paid by the American taxpayer,” stated Rep. Jason Chaffetz, with escalating frustration. “Will you or will you not provide that information to this committee?”

But what was the Utah representative expecting?

Full disclosure?

Transparency?

Responsibility?

A straight answer?

Yeah, yeah, I know . . . talk to Gruber’s lawyer.

Even with the stonewalling, I think we’ve already seen enough of Mr. Gruber’s “work product.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Rewarding Gruber

Revealing to all the world the contempt for the American people that Washington insiders possess might garner for Prof. Gruber a future Medal of Freedom.

Perhaps by a president elected by the Irony Party.

What Gruber is unlikely to get, however, is a Nobel Prize for Economics.

Benjamin Zycher, writing at The Hill, questions Gruber’s astuteness as an economist. The MIT professor surely has the wit to sucker those representing American taxpayers out of six million bucks for his consulting, but, otherwise, reveals some blind spots about where incentives should be figured in.

“Economists may disagree about many things,” writes Zycher, “but absent among them is the central role of incentives as determinants of behavior,” a principle that “applies fully to government.”

To reward one constituency at the expense of others, health care bureaucrats will quickly come to regard limits to spending as a kind of “savings.”

From this type of rationing, Zycher suggests, there will be “a reduction in the flow of research and development investments in new and improved medical technologies, yielding fewer new medicines, devices and equipment.”

This means that the most negative effects will be seen down the road. While the easier-to-publicize positive effects of more people covered by insurance can be pointed to right now, as a “benefit.”

However, even that upfront goody isn’t what we might pretend it is. “Gruber seems actually to believe that an expansion of insurance ‘coverage’ is the same as an expansion of actual healthcare,” Zycher notes, with apt incredulity.

By ignoring negative effects of his convoluted program, and concentrating on a few dubious upfront benefits, Gruber proves himself more con artist than economist.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

Mike Lee’s Fix of Congress

“What too few in Washington appreciate — and what the new Republican Congress must if we hope to succeed — is that the American people’s current distrust of their public institutions is totally justified.”

So wrote Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) in The Federalist shortly after the big election earlier this month. “Americans are fed up with Washington, and they have every right to be.”

Lee starts off with the need to earn trust. Will many readers simply shrug? His notion of a “more open-source strategy development model that includes everyone” sure sounds nice. But after Obama’s promise of the most “transparent” presidency in history, and delivery of one of the least, skepticism is natural.

At least Lee knows his challenges: “Republicans in fact can’t ‘govern’ from the House and Senate alone — especially without a Senate supermajority.” He sees the necessity of working with Democrats, but insists that the congressional majority not compromise away the whole enchilada.

“Anti-cronyism legislation is win-win for the GOP,” he writes, and views “taking on crony capitalism” as a test of the GOP’s “political will and wisdom.” Fighting the corrupt Washington culture of insider deals is sure to test Democratic lawmakers, too.

“[A] new Republican majority must also make clear that our support for free enterprise cuts both ways,” argues the Senator. “To prove that point, we must target the crony capitalist policies that rig our economy for large corporations and special interests at the expense of everyone else— especially small and new businesses.”

Echoes of Ralph Nader, but with deep free-market rumblings. Not discord, but harmony. Music to my ears.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.