Category: national politics & policies

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

Demanding Demand

Midnight tonight marks another witching hour for Obamacare: the deadline for individuals to sign up for insurance on the federal and state exchanges.

Well, sorta . . . kinda.

The deadline was extended last week.

The dominant feature of the misnamed Affordable Care Act’s tedious rollout has been the incessant presidential fiddling with deadlines, especially those that might otherwise precede a national election. We’re told this extension is only for a couple weeks, though, and only for those who have attempted but been unable to sign up on the creaky websites.

Then again, there is absolutely no way to determine whether an individual actually attempted to purchase insurance. So, if you started the signup process but didn’t finish or just wish to so claim, you now have until mid-April.

Last week’s other big news was the administration’s self-congratulatory announcement that healthcare signups had surpassed the goal of six million.

This “success” comes only after downgrading the original goal of seven million, meaning one could more honestly claim the administration is nearly a million short of its goal. Additionally, these signups include people who “signed up” in the sense of having clicked “Yes, I can” but not having actually paid for it — something required by health insurance companies even under Obamacare.

Amidst all the boasting about how “popular,” how much “demand” there is for the taxpayer-subsidized insurance, a stark, but unspoken reality looms: There is no sign of legitimate demand for Obamacare.

It’s called “the individual mandate.” Mandate doesn’t mean free choice. Even forcing folks to sign up by penalty of law, the signups come slowly.

That’s popular?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Government Delivers Pizza

Pizza is popular. It hardly needs advertising, much less government subsidy.

And yet the federal government does, indeed, subsidize the promotion of pizza.

Apparently, our government wants us to eat more of the scrumptious (but fattening) stuff.

Has this has been cleared with Michelle Obama?Pie Chart

The program is the business of a much more power group, the USDA. In recent years, according to the U.S. Food Policy Blog,

USDA’s dairy checkoff program has spent many millions of dollars to increase pizza consumption among U.S. children and adults. Using the federal government’s taxation powers, the checkoff program collects a mandatory assessment of 15 cents on every hundredweight of milk that is sold for use as fluid milk or dairy products.

The goal is to promote cheese. (It promotes milk, too, but milk consumption is going down, steadily over the long term.) And, since the pizza industry is the biggest single user of cheese, those checkoff funds wind up in the advertising coffers of Domino’s Pizza, which soaks up about three-quarters of the dough. Ahem.

The federal government seems especially concerned to promote the eating of cheap delivery pizza.

But, good or bad, just talking about pizza makes me hungry for pizza. And yet, to prevent my corporeal presence from ballooning into a behemoth approximating the dimensions of the U.S. national debt, I don’t eat pizza very often.

In view of both of these truths, the USDA could afford to stop promoting the nominally Italian (but actually very American) foodstuff.

Get the government out of food advertising. Particularly (but not limited to) pizza.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*Pie chart not made from a pizza from Domino’s.

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national politics & policies political challengers

One Man Walkout

A famous poem ends “‘You lie,’ he cried, And ran on.” One of the better moments of modern televised State of the Union addresses was when a lowly member of Congress had the audacity to shout “You lie!” after a controversial immigration point.

Last night, Representative Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) did not run or shout, but merely walked out of the room.

Months ago, Stockman had handed out a book to each member of the august two-branched body he serves in, a book entitled Impeachable Offenses: The Case for Removing Barack Obama from Office.

What’s his beef with the president?

Tonight I left early after hearing how the President is further abusing his Constitutional powers. I could not bear to watch as he continued to cross the clearly-defined boundaries of the Constitutional separation of powers.

Even worse, Obama has openly vowed to break his oath of office and begin enacting his own brand of law through executive decree. This is a wholesale violation of his oath of office and a disqualifying offense.

Stockman is not alleging that all executive orders are dangerous or unlawful — just that some are indeed unconstitutionally usurping legislative powers.

The Prez certainly did imply that he was going to use them beyond their place in the Executive Branch, that is, instead of legislation from the Legislative Branch. Every Congressman should be concerned.

On the bright side, President Obama may be just blowing smoke. He’s just puttin’ on a show to appear more powerful.

On the dark side, a lot of people applauded. The idea of a leader with unilateral power, the culture of dictatorship, is never far enough away. . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The State of the Union of the States

Politicians know all about lying with statistics. But it’s more effective to lie with anecdotes — using stories to ignore the biggest Statistic in the Room.

President Barack Obama delivered his constitutionally obligatory State of the Union address to Congress last night. He told a lot of stories, and most of them may have been mostly true, for all I know. But what we do know for sure is that these stories distracted us from the one statistic that matters.

You know, to the actual state of the union.

Which is not sound.

The rising level of debt is putting the finances of the union in grave jeopardy. Politicians have promised too much — delivered too much — courtesy of borrowing from future tax revenues. The current debt is larger than the nation’s annual GDP. (That’s the stat that matters.) The federal government owes more than all of us, together, earn in a year.

This, of course, is unsustainable.

And yet the president is doing precious little to curb this unhappy meeting with destiny. Deficits are down a tad. He took credit for that. He didn’t credit the Republicans, his recalcitrant enemies.

But, in a State of the Union address filled with programs to expand and goals to “guarantee,” he didn’t offer to cut anything, did he? (Other than promise, yet again, to close Guantanamo.)

Indeed, in Obama’s most recent bickering “negotiation” with the House had his bid for extending unemployment benefits met with an ask price of an offsetting cut elsewhere in the budget. The prez balked.

Our “state”? In a deep debt hole, oblivious, and still digging.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Grasping for a Legacy

Rush Limbaugh recently characterized United States President Barack Obama as a narcissist — and not for the first time.

On the surface, Limbaugh’s complaint about presidential narcissism seems ludicrous: people are thinking about the president “all the time” — the man is in the position to be contemplated by millions every hour, every minute. He’s thought about in Arkansas and Zimbabwe, Alaska and Kenya, Washington, D.C., and every potential drone target in the mid-East.

So, whatever existential crisis runs through the president’s brain should worry us, too. This isn’t narcissism. Or messianism. It’s simply the position of power he’s in, and the position of null-power we’re in.

Nick Gillespie, at Reason, thinks that the prez is going through a major crisis of self-confidence. As nearly everything around Obama has turned to lead, his personal charm has shown to be something less than alchemical. He may be golden tongued, but nothing he touches upgrades to noble. The prez understandably would want a legacy, and Obamacare ain’t going to be it.

Gillespie suggests that Obama begin to end the war on marijuana. That would be a legacy!

And it would. Alas, Obama may have had some inclination to do this earlier, but likely feared that, just as it was Nixon who had to go to China, it would be best if someone other than an admitted former toker begin the legalization of drugs.

Too bad. Now’s the time.

Though neither Rush nor Nick nor I know the president’s heart, this seems certain: Obama rests most of his hopes for change on massive government programs, not on the repeal of programs. Wrong direction for a progressive!

But the right — responsible — direction for America.

Let’s hope “narcissism” trumps ideology.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies term limits

Abiding by Term Limits

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn would easily win a third term in 2016, if he chose to run. But just as he stepped down from the U.S. House after three terms, after having pledged to do, so he is stepping down after winning two terms in the U.S. Senate.

Coburn had affirmed his commitment to serve no more than two terms before winning re-election in 2010. But now he has announced that he is leaving at the end of 2014, two years early.

He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, but says “this decision isn’t about my health, my prognosis or even my hopes and desires. My commitment to the people of Oklahoma has always been that I would serve no more than two terms. Our founders saw public service and politics as a calling rather than a career. That’s how I saw it when I first ran for office in 1994, and that’s how I still see it today. I believe it’s important to live under the laws I helped write, and even those I fought hard to block.”

Expect to hear from Tom Coburn after he leaves office. A prominent former office-holder can easily exert influence on public policy debate if that is what he wants to do. And Coburn rightly observes that many Americans “with real-world experience and good judgment” can fill either his shoes directly in Washington, or make their voices heard in other ways.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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.

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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.