Category: national politics & policies

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

Corn Subsidies Fail Big

America has a problem: obstinate politicians, the Obstinacy in Chief, especially.

Almost any policy high-lighted at some point in the last few years could serve as an illustration of this point, but let’s choose the once-popular “green” pro-ethanol policies.

George W. Bush pushed ethanol, and Barack Obama doubled-down on the subsidy, making it a centerpiece for his low carbon-footprint notion.

It has not worked.

What it has done is create what environmentalists are now calling “an ecological disaster.”

How?

It created a land rush that swallowed vast tracts of land sporting alternate uses, including millions of acres of conservation land, including wetlands. And the huge amounts of insecticide and fertilizer used in the effort have poisoned wells and water supplies as well as rivers and the Gulf of Mexico.

All to plant more corn than the market demands.

But is it doing what the government wants, and Obama demanded — the whole reason for this goofy program after all?

“The government’s predictions of the benefits have proven so inaccurate,” write Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo for the Associated Press, “that independent scientists question whether it will ever achieve its central environmental goal: reducing greenhouse gases. That makes the hidden costs even more significant.”

Over-production, higher costs, externalized burdens — typical for a government subsidy. But what can we do about it?

In early 19th century Britain, Richard Cobden and John Bright started the Anti-Corn Law League, which successfully opposed the biggest protectionist program of the age. We could use another such vital force, this time to oppose the idiotic subsidies that raise food prices internationally as well as wreak havoc on land in the Mid-West.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Same Ol’ Blame Game

On Fox’s The Five last night, the subject of whom to blame for the Obamacare debacle came up. Bob Beckel thought the Republicans should apologize to the Democrats: Republicans had messed up Obamacare. Greg Gutfeld was incredulous, and told Bob to shut up.

Not good form, that. There’s no point in losing one’s cool, even if on a “hot-head show.”

After all, Beckel has a plausible point. Obamacare isn’t working. And Republicans have fought against it. Did Republican obstructionism really injure the new program’s rollout?

Is it the very essence of Obamacare to fail, or did opponents hobble it from the start?

Now, before we answer, consider what kind of a question it is. It relates to the bully’s ploy of knocking someone down and then kicking them on the ground, taunting “Weakling!”

A few months ago it became all the rage amongst “liberals” to taunt advocates of laissez faire (interestingly, an old liberal doctrine) for markets never having been made fully free and unsubsidized — for remaining just an unachieved ideal, not a live policy anywhere.

Why the failure of laissez faire?

Because its enemies keep on knocking the policy into oblivion, kicking its proponents until they cry “uncle.”

So, did Republicans similarly kick Obamacare into its current mess?

Well, they were unsuccessful in stopping its passage, or unfunding it, or even postponing it.

Some Republican governors (and activist citizens) have prevented the policy from insinuating itself into their states, as was their right. That’s it.

None of these things had anything to do with 1) the website failures and low enrollment, 2) the massive losses of promised continuance of existing insurance policies, or 3) the expected rise in insurance premiums.

Nice try, Bob. But no “uncles” here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Demonize, Demonize

Washington State’s I-517 failed yesterday. Did demonization help assure its defeat?

In the state’s Voters’ Pamphlet, the second item against the measure was “I-517 benefits Tim Eyman” because, it was alleged, the measure would allow Eyman to “double his output and increase his profits.”

Eyman is a great guy, but to insiders in the Evergreen State he’s the Devil Incarnate. He keeps on promoting initiatives that would limit the state’s seemingly unlimited taxing and spending propensities.

So, of course, he’s demonized, though the idea that I-517 would’ve benefited his professional operation more than everyday citizens just entering the process is absurd.

But speaking of absurd, and of demonization, you can’t get more of either than Harry Belafonte. The august old singer spoke in a New York church in favor of Democrat mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio. Identifying David and Charles Koch as “the Koch brothers,” he went off on a tear, objecting to their spending money on causes Belafonte doesn’t approve of:

Already we have lost 14 states in this union to the most corrupt group of citizens I’ve ever known. They make up the heart and the thinking in the minds of those who would belong to the Ku Klux Klan. They are white supremacists. They are men of evil.

What possible warrant there could be for the “white supremacist” charge? None was offered. Chalk it up to partisan hysteria, hyperbole. But, truth is, the Kochs aren’t devils, nor are other wealthy individuals who fund causes, whether we like their politics or not.

The ad hominem — ad diabolos? — fixation in politics continues to plague debate, making otherwise intelligent people seem like fools.

Unfortunately, it too often works.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Greenspan’s Tarnished Standard

Long ago, before becoming Federal Reserve Inflater-in-Chief, Alan Greenspan advocated a gold standard.

The idea is that everybody pays for things in gold, a natural medium of exchange. Receipts for gold used for convenience in trade are “backed” and can be easily redeemed. With appropriate protections in place, politicians can’t dilute the value of money by printing more receipts or by shuffling phosphor dots on a computer screen.

But our world is very different.

At the Fed, Greenspan oversaw a lot of credit expansion, encouraging a horde of folks who couldn’t afford homes to take out mortgages. Any discussion of the financial crisis of 2007-2008, or why “we” “failed to predict” it, must discuss Fed policies and other government interventions.

Not, though, if you’re a former Federal Reserve chairman intimately aware of those policies and fully capable of grasping their baleful effects. Then you blather about “irrational exuberance,” or, in a new article for Foreign Affairs magazine, Keynes’s “animal spirits.”

Not a word about how monetary inflation spawns malinvestments that must eventually be washed away. Indeed, the best interpretation of Greenspan’s new book, or his appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, is that Greenspan is doing his utmost to deflect attention from his own disastrous record.

He’d rather have us believe that “free markets” failed in 2008, not — oh, no! — the policies he himself had pushed since obtaining his seat as head honcho at America’s inflationary central bank.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.