Category: national politics & policies

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government transparency national politics & policies

The Latest Legislative Land Mine

The most prescient thing ever said about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, was articulated by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

The medical reform package is quite the hodgepodge. Actually reading the whole thing makes taking on Middlemarch, War and Peace, and In Search of Lost Time a course of light entertainment.

The latest revelation from its thousands of pages? A passage prohibiting doctors from asking their patients questions about guns in the home.

The Washington Post reports that many gun control groups are incensed at the power of the NRA to limit their ability to “collect information”:

Physician groups and public health advocates say the cumulative effect of these restrictions undercuts the ability of the White House and lawmakers to make the case for new laws, such as an assault-weapons ban, in the face of opponents who argue that there’s no evidence such measures are effective. Advocates for regulating guns lament that reliable statistics are limited in part because physicians and health researchers who could track these patterns are being inhibited.

Considering the quality of previous doctor-led sociological studies into gun usage — and really, this is not a medical problem but a complex, society-wide issue far beyond the competence of medical training to comprehend — the prohibition might really best be described as a defense of scientific method.

But the big issue here is not the politics of “research.” It’s that a health care reform package passed nearly three years ago contains hot potatoes such as this, and we are only discovering them now.

Nancy, you were all too disastrously correct.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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links national politics & policies

Townhall: Hair on Fire

In case you didn’t notice, the world didn’t end on Friday. Oh, and Paul Jacob’s Sunday column on Townhall.com is up. Click on over, and come back here for more prophetic nourishment.

The bigger cliffs ahead include problems associated with

  • a structurally unsound and unstable Social Security
  • Medicare and Medicaid commitments that are also unsustainable
  • a continuing regime of “too big to fail” providing incentives to another round of risky investments
  • a looming dollar crisis
  • imperial overreach risking the life and liberty (not to mention pocketbooks) of American citizens
  • a general increase in the “gimme gimme” mentality, the political and moral hazard of everyone trying to live at the expense of everyone else.

Any one of these is very bad. Together they threaten the very existence of the union. Here at Common Sense, we’re always interested in these problems, and in finding solutions. So, if you haven’t already, click on the link, above right, and subscribe to the email version of this weekday commentary. Thanks!

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crime and punishment folly national politics & policies

Shooting from the Hip

Wearing his I’m-Not-Partisan-No-Not-Me hat, President Obama has again declared war on partisanship, telling congressional Republicans to “peel off the partisan war paint.”

To be partisan in a bad way is not merely to belong to a political party and more or less support its program. It is to cling to party at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.

Unless, that is, it’s about opposing the program of a president determined to be partisan at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.

I often disagree with both parties. But let’s say that a representative of one party is marginally more reluctant to destroy our wealth and freedom than a representative of another party. Then I prefer the slightly more responsible stance of the former — and wish it were tougher and more consistent — even when the latter engages in name-calling and abuse of the former.

Demanding “perspective,” President Obama declares that he and the Congress should “not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months.” And I wholeheartedly agree. These crises happen because their spending programs always go up and up and up, even when a few “cuts” get made.

But the president doesn’t stop there. He explains they must “allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in Newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform. . . .”

Um, sir, please do not suggest that an unimpeded path to fiscal ruin is the only way to prevent fiscal ruin, or can somehow enable policymakers to prevent crazy gunmen from killing people. Please.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Death by a Thousand Non-Cuts

As I write this, the United States of America is $16,275,179,205,442 in debt. By the time you read this, we’ll have piled up millions more.

Much debt is of recent vintage. When George W. Bush became president in 2000, the national red ink totaled $5.7 trillion. In eight years, Dubya nearly doubled it to $10.6 trillion. Since his 2008 election, President Obama has far outpaced Bush, sinking us another $5.3 trillion in debt in just half Bush’s time.

And, by continuing to run yearly deficits of over $1 trillion, we’re digging the hole deeper at top speed.

For all the hysteria over draconian cuts, forced at the so-called fiscal cliff, those somewhat slippery savings would at best amount to about 10 percent of our yearly deficit, leaving us spending 9/10ths of a trillion dollars we don’t have.

In the “other cuts” department, the Obama Administration had been supporting paltry reductions to federal Medicaid spending of $17.6 billion over ten years (that’s less than $2 billion a year), but just flipped its position. Why? State governors are deciding if they can afford to take part in Obamacare’s massive Medicaid expansion to cover those earning up to 133 percent of the poverty line.

Not content to spend recklessly alone, the Feds picks up the entire tab of new Medicare recipients’ first three years. After that, Washington pays 90 percent and the states pay 10.

States are wondering how they’ll come up with that additional 10 percent — seven governors have already declined to join in the spending program. No one in Washington has given a second thought to paying the 90 percent.

They figure they can always raise taxes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Paying for Agreement

How do you get a body of professionals to go along with your program?

Pay them.

It’s an old idea: He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The pipers are economists. The paymaster is not you, but the Federal Reserve. There’s a suprising amount of agreement amongst even disagreeing economists that the Federal Reserve is, on the whole, “a good thing,” a necessary thing, even an institution whose existence and rationale must not be questioned.

Shocking, but less so when you apply what is called “Public Choice” analysis to economists themselves. Assume that economists are self-interested. Assume that they like to get paid. Opinions turn out to be somewhat elastic, even given some very hard facts. The results?

Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Nicely, a few economists bring this up, every now and then. Garett Jones on EconTalk did, reviving a letter monetary economist Milton Friedman wrote to researcher David M. Levy in the early 1990s. Friedman summarized the situation concisely, saying that the Fed

hires directly roughly half of all economists specializing in the field of money, and indirectly provides funds for a large fraction of the remainder. I have no doubt that is a major reason why the Federal Reserve, despite such a poor record of performance, has such a high public standing.

This also helps explain why there was a major shift away from laissez faire amongst economists. In the 20th century, the “worldly philosophers” developed a new labor market; they found that they could make a great deal of money working for government. And they don’t get paid for telling the government not to do what it wants to do, or to fire most economists.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Our Youth

Adults have expressed disappointment in the behavior of young people since civilization began. You can read complaints about “the kids these days” on cuneiform tablets.

That being said, I have some sympathy for U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)., who has asked MTV to cancel its latest “reality TV” extravaganza, Buckwild, slated to debut in January. This West Virginia-based show show emulates Jersey Shore, a low-level satire on low-life New Jersey twentysomethings that I know too much about . . . without ever having watched.

“As a U.S. Senator, I am repulsed at this business venture,” Manchin asserts. He seems especially troubled by the fact that “some Americans are making money off of the poor decisions of our youth. I cannot imagine that anyone who loves this country would feel proud about profiting off of” the presumably horrid show.

First, as Ed Krayewski notes on Reason’s Hit and Run, were the senator really to take pride in business, he could mind his own: “The Senate . . . hasn’t passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. And, unlike MTV, it’s their job.”

Second, this is “Reality TV” here, folks. Not much to see. The truth is that Americans, for reasons ranging from Schadenfreude to mirth, like watching people make fools of themselves. And the youngsters hired on to play the foul-mouthed, inebriated, uncultured, promiscuous ninnies of Buckwild will be well paid for their efforts, and, as Americans chortle at them, they’ll chuckle all the way to the bank.

Third, they perform a useful service. Most folks watching fools don’t want to become fools themselves. They laugh. And, in so doing, begin to grow up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly national politics & policies

Copyright and Wrong

Even if one disagrees that patent and copyright laws should be shelved (as some critics contend), no sensible person denies that these protections are subject to pretty ridiculous abuse. People have claimed extraordinarily ludicrous proprietary rights to everything from commonplace words (“spike”) to generic software functions (click to buy).

Now we have German publishers demanding payments from Google and other aggregators for the crime of pointing visitors to the publishers’ websites. Fair-use excerpts are unfair without compensation, according to the German Association of Newspaper Publishers and others. The idea seems to be, “You must pay us if you give our work free advertising.”

Suppose the demanded licensing rules were confined to commercial contexts. If applied consistently, the rules would jeopardize a wide range of hitherto uncontroversial citations, e.g., in book and movie reviews, not to mention books and movies. Making the demand even sillier is that Google enables sites to block any displaying of their content, or to reduce a search result for their site to a bare link with no snippet of text. No site is obliged to benefit from the horror of receiving Google-directed traffic.

Google is arguing its case publicly, and German business sentiment is hardly united in favor of mandatory licensing. According to Bernhard Rohleder, who heads an association of German technology companies, such legislation “would be unique worldwide [and would tell] investors: Innovative online services are not desired in Germany.”

Let’s hope sanity prevails. (Send me a nickel if you quote me on that.)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Spelling Stagnation

The just-re-elected president had promised to slash the deficit in his first term. That didn’t happen, but there’s talk of back room deals being made right now, saith Politico:

Taxes will go up just shy of $1.2 trillion. . . . Entitlement programs, mainly Medicare, will be cut by no less than $400 billion — and perhaps a lot more, to get Republicans to swallow those tax hikes. There will be at least $1.2 trillion in spending cuts and “war savings.” And any final deal will come not by a group effort but in a private deal between two men: Obama and House Speaker John Boehner. . . .

However, the cuts all come in the far, Star Trekkie future. Nick Gillespie of Reason not unreasonably asks if Boehner is really “Dumb enough to take $400 billion in cuts a decade from now in exchange for $1.2 trillion in tax hikes that start ASAP?” Gillespie defines “dumb” in the context of history:

[T]here’s a clear pattern: Republican presidents ratchet up spending and Democratic presidents consolidate the increases. This reality is at almost complete odds with political rhetoric. . . . Perhaps the near-total disconnect between rhetoric and reality is the reason why we can’t get anywhere — taxpayers are constantly being misdirected by the powers that be.

Still, Republicans have stood for lower tax rates. Are Republicans alone in “standing by principle”? No.

There’s another: the 77-member Progressive Caucus “will not support any deal that cuts benefits for families and seniors who rely on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to put food on the table or cover their health costs.”

So, realistically, there is no insider constituency for reducing spending. If enough congressional Republicans vote to increase taxes, they’ll be bilked. Meanwhile, debt overhang strangles the economy, and increased taxes will also cut into the investments that make jobs.

Thus stalemate spells stagnation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies tax policy

The Muppet Is Right

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is being mocked by oh-so-funny lefty pundit Matthew Dowd because Dowd dislikes the anti-higher-tax-rate pledge Norquist invites politicians to sign.

Some long-serving Republicans have renounced the commitment they made to their constituents to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses.” Senator Saxby Chambliss says he cares “more about the country than . . . about a 20-year-old pledge.” Co-Republican and co-pledge-signer Senator Lindsey Graham agrees.

“Grover Norquist is an impediment to good governing,” Dowd said on This Week, ABC’s Sunday morning talking-head program. “The only good thing about Grover Norquist is, he’s named after a character from Sesame Street. ”

Welcome to sound-bite alley. Lucky for Norquist his first name isn’t Elmo or Snuffleupagus, eh?

Expanding on the theme of Norquist’s putative irrelevancy, Time’s Joe Klein says Norquist has passed his “sell-by date.”

Let me interject a question neither about muppets nor sour milk: What is “good governing”?

Does it require stripping the wallets of taxpayers to fund every conceivable government program concocted by those who would run every aspect of our lives?

Those who most eagerly wish to loot the rest of us seem, at the moment, to have the upper hand. That doesn’t mean that the rest of us should supinely wait to be rolled over. The fight for freedom is always relevant. So is keeping one’s word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Let’s Jump!

When I was a kid, my mother would rhetorically ask, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, Paul, would you?”

Moot question now. My friends don’t dare jump, nor do my political enemies. Face it, Ma, nobody wants to do a swan dive off the fiscal cliff.

Except for me.

It now appears that enough House Republicans will join Democrats in voting to raise taxes on the so-called “wealthy,” thus hiking up taxes on some of my countrymen. It will do little to raise revenue, and nothing to control spending.

We taxpayers should stand together. I oppose being divided and conquered. And when they ask us to turn over Spartacus — er, the wealthy — we should each declare, “I am wealthy!”

Debt-delivering, big-spending politicians relentlessly provide us with pious pronouncements to the effect that, though we simply must stop piling up such debt and cut wasteful and out-of-control spending, because such fiscal responsibility remains unthinkable, at present, we must postpone responsibility till later.

They see the fiscal cliff and insist we climb higher.

Let’s face this fiscal cliff honestly, let’s not pretend that the acme of responsibility is funding government on the backs of the few. Besides, if there is no political will to make spending cuts today or tomorrow, why would anyone expect such backbone to miraculous appear . . . later?

I see the cliff and say, “Let’s jump!” While we can still land safely.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.