Category: national politics & policies

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national politics & policies

It Could Be Worse

If your candidate or issue didn’t win on Tuesday, then, sure, Western civilization is completely finished, kaput. No doubt.

But still, let’s look at the bright side.

At least the presidential election provided a $2.5 billion stimulus to the economy, without raising anyone’s taxes (yet) or borrowing a nickel from China. And what a fabulous circus to, well, take our minds off the nasty state of our economy and our politics.

Or maybe not so much.

But consider: For all the corruption in our country’s politics, aren’t you glad you don’t live and work in Russia, where near-superman President Vladamir Putin is the Big Kahuna? Putin just sacked his defense minister. The cause for the minister’s dismissal? Corruption! So, everyone is wondering: what was the real cause for the firing?

Now, that’s a culture of corruption.

Forget politics. Just be thankful you’re not Alex Ocasio hunkered down in his New York City apartment waiting for a nor’easter to clobber his community as the too-soon second whammy following Hurricane Sandy. During Sandy, Ocasio and his neighbors stopped a group of looters after they broke down the door. “They tried to say they were rescue workers,” he told the Washington Post, “then took off.”

Now he won’t leave for higher ground, putting a sign on his door: “Have Gun. Will shoot U.”

In a crisis, I think I’d rather have Mr. Ocasio for a neighbor than FEMA for a savior.

So, what’s the political sunny side to Election 2012? Is there any?

Sure. Executive term limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Where Reality Sells

A lot of people, Democratic and Republican, have been saying that yesterday’s election was “the most important in our lifetime.” It wasn’t — and wouldn’t have been had the presidential race gone the other way.

But as it is, the outcome was hardly shocking. An incumbent got re-elected. Wow.

The Senate solidified its Democratic position; the House remained solidly Republican. America after Election Day looks almost exactly the same as America before.

So, why so little change?

Blame it on “hope.”

Face it: in electoral politics, fantasy sells. Mainstream politicians love to promote The Dream. Not the American Dream, which is about hard work and honest dealing, but the Changeling Dream, about getting something for nothing. Or getting ahead at others’ expense. At present, this Dream rests upon spending more than government takes in forever and ever, believing that somehow there are no disastrous consequences to the resulting accumulation of debt.

Democratic politicians may be better able to describe their lavish dreams for all that government can do, but Republican office-holders sure seem to hang out on that same street in Dreamland.

Now they’ve just about all been re-elected to go back and hang out for another term.

What can we do? Hope they change their spots?

No. That’s too passive. “Cast your whole vote,” Henry David Thoreau wrote, “not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence.”

How? In 2013 and 2014, citizens can petition to put important issues on state and local ballots. We change the terms of political debate; we gain the upper hand — and put common sense back into government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Panel Decides “Death”

The practice of medicine historically straddled between being a business profession and a charitable endeavor. When government took it over — nearly in one big gulp, in Great Britain— that uneasy mix mutated, leaving us with the occasional bout of stark horror.

A British woman suffering from cystic fibrosis has been denied a new wonder drug that the manufacturer has agreed to provide for free, while the National Health Service gets around to approving it. But NHS says no.

Her family say she will die soon without it, yet managers at Heartlands Hospital in Birmingham say it would be unethical to provide the drug under the deal, only for it to be withdrawn later.

The drug, Kalydeco also known as ivacaftor, costs £182,000 per patient per year, and works for five per cent of people with CF who have a certain defective gene, around 270 people in England.

It corrects a malfunctioning protein which causes the characteristic build-up of fluid and mucus in the lungs that causes devastating damage.

A long shot, apparently. But is that any reason to deny a charitable offer?

These kinds of deals get offered and accepted in America all the time.

But then, when a private insurance company here decides not to cover some drug or treatment, that’s an excuse to excoriate American capitalism — while forgetting about all the characteristically American workarounds. But in “single-payer” Britain we see the state acting as a proverbial “death panel.” The outcry against socialism should be just as loud, if not louder.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Cliff Dwellers

When you hear talk about “the fiscal cliff,” ask, “Which one?”

This coming January, if Congress and the president fail to take action, every American who pays income taxes will pay more. Also set to increase? Payroll taxes, which every worker pays.

But even if we can avoid falling off those cliffs, another threatens.

It has been identified by finance professors Robert Novy-Marx at the University of Rochester and Joshua Rauh at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, who summarized their recent research paper, “The Revenue Demands of Public Employee Pension Promises.”

The bottom-line? Looking at the pension commitments state and local governments have already made to public employees, the professors “found that, on average, a tax increase of $1,385 per U.S. household per year would be required, starting immediately and growing with the size of the public sector.”

That’s only the average. “New York taxpayers would need to contribute more than $2,250 per household per year over the next 30 years,” according to their analysis. “In Oregon, the amount is $2,140; in Ohio, it is $2,051; in New Jersey, $2,000.”

Politicians have promised lavish pension benefits. And then not funded them. Plus, employees often outrageously game the system, spiking their benefits to the tune of millions over decades of retirement — like the Illinois teacher’s union lobbyist did by teaching a single day in the classroom.

If we don’t get the problem under control, this cliff keeps getting higher, making, as the professors put it, “the $1,385 per-household increase required today seem cheap.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Celebrities, Cannabis, Change

A new website, Marijuana Majority, makes an impression by listing famous people who think America’s laws against marijuana are crazy, unjust, or at least not very wise.

The site is elegant; it presents a long list. And by offering statements from each celebrity, we get a few ideas beyond the “marijuana should be legalized [to some degree]” message. Lawrence O’Donnell makes something close to an actual argument:Sarah Palin on Marijuana

Since Gallup starting asking Americans if marijuana should be legal back in 1969, most have always said no — until now. In a Gallup poll released yesterday, 50 percent said pot use should be legalized. . . . A minority of 46 percent continue to say marijuana should not be legalized. . . . In a democracy we should expect such a dramatic shift in public opinion to be reflected in our public officials.

Evangelist Pat Robertson offers the practical point, often iterated:

I really believe we should treat marijuana the way we treat beverage alcohol. I’ve never used marijuana and I don’t intend to, but it’s just one of those things that I think: this war on drugs just hasn’t succeeded.

A lot of folks, including British entrepreneur Richard Branson, enthuse about the taxing possibilities:

[I]t’s currently estimated that the annual revenue that would be raised in California if it taxed and regulated the sale of marijuana would be $1,400,000,000!

But this is not primarily a propaganda-by-the-word site, it’s a propaganda-by-the-celebrity site. Alas, the bulk of celebrities hail from the entertainment industry . . . not the most convincing bunch on the whole.

Still, the barrage of support and ideas is impressive, showing you don’t have to be a stoner to want to liberalize marijuana laws.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies political challengers

Silence, Please?

At this time in an election year, condemnations of “negative” political ads crescendo to fortissimo. But hey: Are folks really so attached to watching the standard menu of TV advertisements for GEICO, Viagra, and Chia Pets?

I doubt it. I think they worry about what such nasty attacks say about our political process. Granted, many 30-second political spots stretch the truth like a pretzel, though not any more than the candidates regularly do in person.

Still, political debate today is no nastier than it was when Washington and Adams and Jefferson roamed the earth.

And TV wasn’t even very big back then.

“An onslaught of negative political advertisements in congressional races,” the New York Times relates, “has left many incumbents, including some Republicans long opposed to restrictions on campaign spending, concluding that legislative measures may be in order to curtail the power of the outside groups behind most of the attacks.”

Incumbents are smart . . . and informed about campaigns. I’ll bet they know that in the 54 races lost by incumbents in 2010, Super PACs spent on average over $900,000. In races incumbents won, about $75,000.

“Incumbents have a lot more money than challengers do,” Professor Bradley Smith, former Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, points out, “and Super PACs help to level that playing field and make challengers competitive.”

Incumbents think that elections are a time for them to speak. It’s all about them. Plus, no one — great, lousy or mediocre — likes to be attacked.

But elections in a free society are a time for everyone to speak.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

New-Fashioned Racism

“A deeply divided Supreme Court squared off Wednesday over the future of affirmative action in college admissions,” reports the Washington Post, covering the admissions policy of the University of Texas. The arguments for and against race-based admissions preferences were mostly old hat, but got weird when Justice Alito noted a policy of preferring the children of minority professionals over more-qualified, but poorer, non-minorities:

“I thought the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help the disadvantaged,” Alito said. He asked why a minority child of the “1 percent” should get a “leg up against, let’s say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income?”

State universities are allegedly all about equality of opportunity. Favoring the under-performing children of wealthy minority folks doesn’t exactly qualify. As a friend of mine put it, “If the elites have to choose between rubbing elbows with the poor or hanging out with the under-performing children of upper middle class professionals, there’s no contest: administrators much prefer racial diversity over a diversity of economic class and ideas.”

What we have here is a new classism using “anti-racism” as a wedge.

But it is itself racism. It’s just not “old-fashioned racism.”

Barack Obama, way back in 1994 — in the earliest recording of our current president arguing policy — used that phrase (“good old-fashioned racism”) to attack Charles Murray and defend reverse discrimination and massive increases in welfare programs. So, in keeping with his terminology, perhaps we should call today’s race-based “compensatory” policies “new-fashioned racism.”

After all, these policies favor some over others not based on their relevant qualifications — or on the “content of their character” — but, instead, based on their race.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

China Syndrome, 2012

The two major presidential candidates, incumbent Obama and challenger Romney, must spend their final weeks of the campaign appealing to

  1. Members of their respective parties disappointed enough to stay home on election day — or vote the dreaded “Third Party” ticket;
  2. Independent voters apt to find something distasteful about both candidates;
  3. The apathetic and the uninformed.

How to appeal to all three groups simultaneously? Well, go for the old standby: fear and hatred of foreigners.

This year, it’s the Chinese.

Romney started the China-bashing by calling our Chinese trading partners “cheaters.” Apparently he is much vexed about how the Chinese don’t respect established intellectual property rights, “stealing” our technology, “everything from computers to fighter jets.” Of course, this mainly happens after “we” set up manufacturing plants for that technology there. He charged that President Obama has not deigned to “stand up to China.”

Earlier, he had accused China of manipulating its money in its favor. He seems to have dropped that, perhaps out of embarrassment — our own Fed’s monetary manipulations, after all, dwarf China’s.

The Obama campaign responded by avoiding the intellectual property issue just as Romney now avoids the monetary one, calling Romney himself a “cheater.” You see, in his Bain Capital days, Romney invested in firms that relocated jobs to “low wage countries like China.” Romney, we are told, has “never stood up to China.”

By which is meant: Romney engaged in globalism and opposed protectionism.

Is Mr. Obama really suggesting that prosperity will come if we shrink from global competition and enact barriers to international trade in goods and services?

The biggest problem the U.S. economy faces isn’t Beijing; it’s Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Avoid the Big Gov Trap

We do not face just one problem, but our many problems tend to come down to one thing: trying to do too much through government.

Last weekend, at Townhall, I noted that the most wildly popular economic policy doctrine of the last hundred years, Keynesianism, has not — its proponents say — been properly given a chance during the two biggest financial contractions of our time, the Great Depression and the recent mortgage-backed securities implosion. In both cases, more money was needed for proper “stimulus.”

Ironic, perhaps, since Keynesianism has been used as an excuse to run deficits and increase debt for scores of years.

Yes, even a doctrine designed to play into the hands of politicians gets abused by politicians.

The lesson: Excuses to grow government are not revolutionary insights, they’re traps.

Yesterday I talked about how the “Laffer Curve” point where raising the tax rate actually reduces revenue is lower for capital gains than for general income. But one consequence of a revenue-maximizing capital gains rate is that there would then be rich investors who wind up paying a smaller percentage of their incomes in taxes than do common laborers.

Tax fairness is an issue that should not be ceded to those caught in the clichés of the age. Think of tax fairness, instead, as a rationale for a limit. Not as an excuse to raise tax rates punitively, hatefully, foolishly (like the current president wants).

Bring all tax rates down to the level of the tax with the lowest revenue-maximizing rate. Don’t raise capital gains taxes, lower the income tax. 

Taxes would then be fair. And government would have to be reduced to accommodate the fairness, and thus more limited.

Less of a trap.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Polled American!

More people view Mitt Romney unfavorably (49 percent) than view Barack Obama unfavorably (45 percent), according to the most recent Reason-Rupe Poll. This, despite Romney being the challenger, while President Obama must live down his sorry record.

By this measure, and others in the poll, Obama’s re-election seems ever more likely. And if you think that’s depressing, wait till you read about the general views of taxing the rich more. The “soak the rich” mentality remains quite strong. But some of this “the rich don’t pay their fair share” notion is based on misinformation. Get a load of this:

Last year, the government collected about $1.8 trillion dollars in income tax revenue. If you were to estimate, about what PERCENTAGE of this total tax revenue do you think the top 5 percent of households probably contributed? Would you say…

<1% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  3%

1% to less than 20% . . . . . . . 29%

20% to less than 40% . . . . . . 19%

40% to less than 60% . . . . . . 15%

60% to less than 80% . . . . . . 11%

80% or more . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8%

Don’t Know/Refused . . . . . . . 16%

The truth is that America’s Top 5 percenters pay more than 60 percent of income taxes collected. The vast majority of those polled (66 percent) thought the Top 5 should pay less than they currently do.

I’m not going out on a limb, here, to infer a lesson: Were Americans to learn a few more truths about their government, about taxes, and (hey, why not?) real life, they might change their minds on a few crucial political notions.

Education — and by this I don’t mean schooling — is obviously important to political betterment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.