Category: national politics & policies

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Prez States Obvious; News at 11


A magazine profile of President Barack Obama has set the commentariat a-talking.

On racism, the president says that “some” folks hate him because he’s black; and others support him because he’s black.

Wow. What was obvious in 2008 seems . . . painfully obvious now.

Similarly, the prez ’fessed up (again) to his past marijuana use — and his long-term tobacco habit. He uttered the word “vice.” He noted that marijuana doesn’t seem any more harmful than alcohol . . . which implies that the prohibition of marijuana makes less sense than the once-prohibited but now-legal hootch.

A reasonable opinion. Held, before President O’s pronouncement, by a clear majority of the public  . . . not as radical, but as obvious.

So why make such a big deal about these statements? Because of previous taboos? It’s not as if Obama took leadership on any of these ideas, moving them from “horrors!-false” to “blah-true.”

Years ago, the movie Bulworth featured Warren Beatty as a senator who, all the sudden, started blurting out things he believed to be true, but which were not usually said in public. It was a comedy. (Your tastes and appraisals may vary.) The prez comes off as nowhere near as outrageous (or straightforward) as the Beatty character, though he, too, has rapped in public.

But perhaps we grade on a curve. A president speaking obvious truths is memorable not because the truths are daring, but because of the novelty: a politician has deigned to acknowledge truth.

File the brouhaha under O, not for Obama but for Obvious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

A Cry for Justice

Is taking bread from the mouths of those who labor to feed the appetites of able-bodied adults who decline to work your idea of economic justice?

Or of injustice?

A recent Cato Institute study by Michael Tanner and Charles Hughes found that welfare benefits exceed the minimum wage for workers in 35 states. In 15 states, welfare benefits top $31,200 annually — equivalent to the $15 an hour minimum wage that SEIU and other unions are promoting for fast-food workers.

In short, at the lowest rungs of the economy, one can make more money not working.

The Washington Post’s Charles Lane advances another aspect of economic justice in a recent column suggesting that while some wealth is merited, the bulk of the wealth swirling about in the nation’s capital is not earned, but wrested from a system where insider politics meets crony capitalism.

And Lane notes that “too many of our public institutions — from Congress to big-city school systems — have been captured by rent-seeking interest groups,” warning broadly that, “Various societies have grown free and prosperous by many different methods; dividing up existing wealth according to political connections is not one of them.”

Yesterday at Townhall, I embraced the idea of economic justice, calling for a healthy dose of it, namely:

  1. Stop making welfare pay better than work;
  2. End government subsidies to cronies, farmers, everyone;
  3. Let people create new businesses by ending licensing laws and regulations that serve only to block needed competition.

That’s economic justice.

Not futzing about trying to make us “equal,” but making the basic rules equitable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

How to Protect Yourself from Spying

We value our privacy.

No wonder we’re nervous. The National Security Agency, in blithe disregard of our constitutional right against unwarranted search and seizure, has been indiscriminately scooping up data (“meta” data) about our communications (among other covert acts that have compromised the security of our transactions).

However the controversies triggered by the scandals play out, it’s clearer than ever that you can’t trust the government to respect your right to privacy. Your line of first defense has to be you.

Even before the NSA scandal broke, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was on the case, explaining how to reduce your risk when saving data to your computer, sending the data elsewhere, and entrusting it to third parties. Their Surveillance Self-Defense site spells out what the government can legally do to spy on you and what you can legally do to protect yourself. The discussion includes nitty-gritty stuff like advice on the proper use of passwords and encryption, protecting yourself against malware, and lowering the risk of eavesdropping on confidential conversations.

That’s right, SSD talks about “what the government can legally do” to breach your data or listen in on your life, not so much about what it can do illegally. A banner atop the home page notes that the site “has not yet been updated to reflect the 2013 revelations about the NSA. . . .”

Updates are coming. Meanwhile, we can fill in some of the blanks ourselves. . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Illustration by ocularinvasion used under a Creative Commons license.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Pro Bono

U2 singer Paul David Hewson, best known by his stage name Bono, has come to recognize that capitalism is crucial in lifting people out of poverty in any permanent way.

He now calls institutionalized charity like foreign aid only a “stopgap,” not a basic cure for poverty — an understanding perhaps still too generous, since such aid can prevent needed economic and other reforms and thus help entrench poverty.

In any case, for decades Bono has both raised money from individuals for international charity and chastised government officials whose policies seemed too stingy (in spending other people’s money). Now he is surprised to be touting the pivotal virtues of money-making and entrepreneurship.

“Rock star preaches capitalism. Wow. Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it. But commerce is real. That’s what you’re about here. It’s real. Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce — entrepreneurial capitalism — takes more people out of poverty than aid. Of course we know that.” (See a clip of these words.)

The rock star’s epiphany came after a TED talk a few years ago by George Ayittey, in which the speaker “made a special effort to rip into the foreign aid establishment,” knowing that Bono was in the audience. When the star came up after the talk to express his disagreement, Ayittey gave him a copy of his ideology-changing book Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Development.

Perspectives unchained by myth and politics are a good idea too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies too much government

Best Obamacare Prescription

Is non-compliance the answer?

I recently discussed how sheriffs in Colorado and elsewhere are refusing to cooperate with oppressive new laws, in their case farcical gun-control laws. Can we find similar inspiration in other fields?

Yes. Consider the medical industry.

Despite the Supreme Court decision okaying some of Obamacare’s key unconstitutional assaults on commerce, judicial battles over the new law are still being fought. More to our point, many doctors scheduled to be manacled by Obamacare have been refusing to slap on the cuffs.

A survey by the New York State Medical Society finds that 44 percent of respondents won’t work with Obamacare clients; another third are unsure what they’ll do. The doctors perceive the chaos and uncertainty of the new regulations and expect low fees.

Dr. Sam Unterricht, president of the Society, says, “This is so poorly designed that a lot of doctors are afraid to participate.” Others are participating only because obliged by organizations that employ them. Perhaps those doctors loath to becoming cogs in the galumphing Obamacare bureaucracy will find ways to extricate themselves from their organizations. Maybe they will emulate the respondent who says that from now on he will accept only cash for his services.

Another survey respondent says: “The solution is simple: Just say no.”

Are these non-cooperating docs motivated by fear of Obamacare’s destructive impact? Or are they moved mainly by uneasiness about the color of ink at their bottom line? Or, just possibly, are they expressing principled concern for their rights and freedom?

All of these, I hope.

Whatever the case, though, they’re following the right prescription.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access national politics & policies

Mandela’s PR

Few have known the political prestige and power held personally by Nelson Mandela, who passed away yesterday in his 96th year.

Mandela’s behavior as the first black president of a multi-racial South African electorate (1994–1999) reminds me of George Washington’s approach to power. Washington showed restraint in stepping down from his position after two terms, steering clear of any sort of pseudo-monarchy.

In terms of uniting a disparate population, Nelson had a much tougher task than George. Mandela met the task by promoting an election system called proportional representation — PR, for short.

During Apartheid, elections for the whites-only legislature had been winner take all. Mandela and the ANC knew (upon his release from 27 years of imprisonment) that with voting rights for the large black majority they would win big. Less than one percent of the country’s 700 districts contained white majorities.

So Mandela opted for a PR election system where even a tiny segment of the vote could gain representation in the National Assembly.

At GlobalAdvocacy.com, Andrew Reynolds emphasizes

the importance of South Africa’s choice of a List PR system for these first elections. Many observers claimed that a PR system, as an integral part of other power-sharing mechanisms in the new constitution, was crucial to creating the atmosphere of inclusiveness and reconciliation which has so far encouraged the decline of the worst political violence, and made post-apartheid South Africa a beacon of hope and stability to the rest of troubled Africa.

A group I work with, the Center for Voting and Democracy — or FairVote, for short — works on election reforms we in the USA could use to create greater participation and competition and, ultimately, better representation. In honor of Nelson Mandela, I’m going to make a contribution today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Ending Obamacare

Getting rid of Obamacare has proved not so easy.

The GOP House majority, won in late 2010, voted dozens of times to get rid of the program, but without Senate support to pile on (much less override a presidential veto), they could vote to repeal every day of the year and still nothing would happen.

Besides, the Supreme Court has ruled that it’s okey-constitutionally-dokey to compel custumers to buy insurance or pay a fine — or a tax that’s not a tax.

And then there was the 2012 presidential election, in which the Romneycare candidate lost to the Obamacare candidate.

But laws imposed by men are not laws of nature. Gravity cannot be annulled; Obamacare sure can.

The New York Times reports that the thinking of “conservative and libertarian theorists” at the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute and elsewhere has informed several lawsuits challenging the Obama Administration’s attempts to unilaterally redraft provisions of the law as passed.

A key point is that the IRS has no authority under Obamacare to award tax breaks or subsidies to persons who buy insurance through the federal exchange rather than a state exchange. Ability to impose penalties in turn depends upon the availability of such subsidies. All this matters because many states have fought Obamacare by refusing to set up state exchanges. Some of these states are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuits.

Meanwhile, Congress is holding hearings on how the Obama Administration has repeatedly amended the Affordable [sic] Care Act despite lacking legislative authority to do so.

Our freedom, wealth and health are too important to surrender to government dictocrats. Thankfully, many advocates of medical freedom remain in the trenches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Website is Fixed?

At Monday’s White House briefing, a reporter challenged Press Secretary Jay Carney, “if you . . . hit the ‘login’ button . . . it does take you to that screen where you’re asked to leave an email and come back later. That seems to be coming up . . . all day long. . . . is that going to be acceptable if that’s the norm for a lot of people for an extended period of time?”

“What I think is important to note,” Carney responded (repeating himself and blathering a bit) “. . . is that we have a queuing system made for a better user experience so that individuals could get in that queue, could be notified when was the best time to return to healthcare.gov and enroll, if they so desired.”

Desired? We’ve been legally required to purchase insurance. Obamacare-supporting politicians keep talking about all the “demand,” but when folks are forced by law to buy a product, penalized for not, that’s hardly true demand.

After writing that “the functionality of the site does appear to have improved considerably,” the New Yorker’s John Cassidy admits, “However, I didn’t get the opportunity to submit an application, or even to choose a plan. After filling in forms and fiddling around for about forty minutes, I reached a screen that said, ‘You have started an application for health coverage, but our verification system is temporarily unavailable.’”

For those who somehow miraculously navigate the website, the Washington Post reports, “errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1. . . .”

Also revealed this week: security was not built into the site, and retrofitting it in could take years.

It turns out that Big Government 3.0 is no more advanced than Web 1.0.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The Woman Who

The good news? Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke is getting the boot. The bad news? His replacement looks no better.

Last Thursday, the Senate Banking committee voted to place Janet Yellen as head of the Federal Reserve. The full body of august solons is expected to confirm this nomination, electing her as head honcho and chief cook (kook?) at the nation’s quasi-private/quasi-public central bank.

I am sure there are folks who look on this passing of the baton with a sort of patriotic piety. I know there are Democrats who rejoice in a banker referred to by Reuters as “a monetary policy dove who puts more weight on driving down high unemployment than the risk this will ignite future inflation. . . .”

Of course, the Fed has already pumped trillions into the system. A burgeoning employment boom has not resulted. To say the least.

Reviewing the current situation, and the likely appointment, economist Gerarld P. O’Driscoll, Jr., reminds us of the big truth about those who push at the Veil of Money: “the Fed is not capable of stimulating job creation, at least not in a sustained way over time.” What the Fed has succeeded in doing, in recent years, is prop up our benighted federal government’s continuing crisis of over-spending: “Congress and the president have been spared a fiscal crisis, and thus repeatedly punted on fiscal reform.”

Problem is, no one really believes debt accumulation or monetary back-up make for a sustainable policy: at some point, O’Driscoll tells us, rising interest rates will “precipitate a crisis.”

I wouldn’t want to be in charge at the Fed when that happens.

So, some sympathy for Ms. Yellen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
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.