Category: national politics & policies

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national politics & policies too much government

Help Us Help Ourselves

Hopeful about the innovations transpiring in various small sectors of fields like medicine or education?

Atlantic Monthly blogger Megan McArdle isn’t.

According to McArdle, the history of “social science” — society? — is “littered with exciting programs that promised to both significantly improve the lives of the targeted populations, and to save money.” Yet average costs of education and health care keep going up.

Gee willikers, why?

Scalability. McArdle suggests that successful but small-scale experiments have expertise and enthusiasm going for them that can’t be readily replicated on very large scales. The positive effects of the small programs tend to disappear when people who don’t want to change their ways have to sign off.

She says that this isn’t a medical or educational problem but a social one.

What kind of social problem? McArdle doesn’t say.

But compare and contrast. Do small-scale innovations in electronics and computers, for example, tend to dissolve into puddles of social lethargy and recalcitrance even if they achieve substantial improvements at lower cost? Apparently not. So what’s the difference? Well, hardware and software firms may be taxed and regulated by government, but they’re burdened with nowhere near the level of bureaucracy that swaddles schooling and medicine.

In free markets, bad solutions don’t get entrenched. Good ones don’t either, unless they prove economically viable over time.

So how about removing the shackles and just letting us function as free people — in every realm of human endeavor?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

A Fearsome, Fiery Cliché

Senator Chuck Schumer insists that it would be the height of irresponsibility either to freeze the federal government’s debt ceiling or “shut down the government.” Either action would risk “the credit markets losing some confidence in the United States Treasury” — tantamount to “Playing with fire.”

The opposite of his point appears closer to the truth.  Michael Tanner explains that “If the debt ceiling is not increased, the Treasury can prioritize interest and debt payment to avoid a default and essentially put the government on a stringent pay-as-you-go basis.” Economist Robert Murphy adds that “even if the debt ceiling weren’t increased, the Treasury could still roll over its debt as existing bonds matured. The only thing the Treasury couldn’t do would be to issue more debt.”

The truth behind Schumer’s clichéd metaphor is this: He and his cronies have been “playing with fire” for a long time. And it’s worth noting that forcing the Treasury to switch to pay-as-you-go would likely have the opposite effect on credit markets than he contends: When prodigal spenders cut up their credit cards and continue to pay existing bills, creditors tend to breathe a little easier.

But expect no such acumen from Schumer, who, in that same exhortation, lists the “three branches of government”: The House, the Senate, and the president. Apparently, he hopes to gain authority for his contentions by piling factual error upon cliché.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Kill Switch for Freedom

The Egyptian government — or perhaps a mysterious inter-dimensional vortex, we’re not sure which — has shut down some 99 percent of the Internet within Egypt as protests mount demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. Mubarak has ruled autocratically for three decades and the protesters are fed up. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other cyber-tools have played a part in their protest, helping them document Egyptians’ clashes with authorities in word and image.

Declan McCullough, a veteran reporter on privacy and the Internet, observes that the Egyptian government is “conducting a high-profile experiment in what happens when a country with a $500 billion GDP, one that’s home to the pyramids and the Suez Canal, decides that Internet access should be restricted to a trickle.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, U.S. pols like Senator Joseph Lieberman are again pushing a bill to give the president authority to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” in the event of a crisis and shut down major portions of the Internet. For our own good, of course. No judicial review would be necessary before the executive branch could snap the cyber-spine.

Perhaps American politicians who advocate letting the president throw a so-called kill switch for the Internet in case of emergency would deny any tyrannical intentions. And perhaps their motives are indeed pure . . . in some aesthetic sense. But once you give government new authority to exercise destructive control over us, there is, of course, the temptation to use it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Tyrants Are Not Our Friends

Last month, an upset apple cart led to political revolution.

On December 17, Tunisian government agents tried to confiscate Mohamed Bouazizi’s livelihood. When he refused to hand over his produce, he was slapped by a female inspector and then beaten by two of her colleagues, who took his scale. When he went to the municipal building to get his property back, he was beaten again.

Later that day in the public square, Bouazizi doused himself with lighter fluid and set himself on fire. He died weeks later, but not before demonstrations erupted in his home town and spread throughout Tunisia.

Tunisians had long labored under the repressive dictatorship of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who repressed both political speech and commerce. No longer. He’s been ousted.

So do our leaders celebrate with the Tunisian people? No. The New York Times reports that Ben Ali was “an important ally of the United States.” He’s now in exile in Saudi Arabia, another dictatorship allied with the United States.

Protest has spread further, most notably to Egypt, yet another repressive government supported by America’s State Department . . . and taxpayers.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reassures us that, “the Egyptian government is stable and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.”

That response? To imprison and torture bloggers and opposition political leaders.

Our most effective aid to Africa would be to stop subsidizing repressive regimes and pretending that slavery is freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

What Gets Lost in Washington

The current battle over “health care reform” is a great example of why representative government frustrates.

It’s not just that the vast majority of Americans who oppose the Democrats’ bill didn’t get their way. It’s that the proponents of socialized medicine (and that’s the real goal, here: The eventual complete government takeover of medicine) are playing a sort of obstacle-course race . . . as I argued yesterday.

Meanwhile, how the anti-Obamacare message hits Washington vexes, too.

Some partisan pundits and pollsters go so far as to say that the Democrats’ reform legislation suffers because it lacks a good name. “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is not a catchy moniker. “Obamacare,” used primarily by its opponents, is super-catchy. And the Republicans repeal effort is pretty clever: “Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.”

Though “job-killing” may reference a hot, current topic, it is far from the most salient thing one might say against the Democrats’ rushed-through plan.

Standard politics: Even when politicians do the right thing, they push it for the wrong reason.

Media folk are now beginning to spin the popular opposition to Obamacare. Carefully worded polls “prove” that Americans aren’t overwhelmingly against the plan.

Which misses the real point: Incredulity. Democrats ballyhooed the notion that further government intervention into medicine would reduce costs. Nonsense, of course. And Americans know it.

That common-sense skepticism is precisely what gets lost in all the politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Ratchet Still Holds

Government grows by a ratchet effect.

When Democrats gained unified control over Congress and the Executive Branch in 2009 they understandably moved to increase the size and scope of government, rather than, say, swiftly follow through with President Obama’s various promises to withdraw from foreign interventions. Adding new stuff? More politic.

Thus the legislation called (by opponents) “Obamacare.”

Democrats hoped that the wide number of people who would bear the initial costs would soon forget about them (the reform is already causing substantial increases in private insurance rates) while the smaller group of people who make obvious gains in services would solidly rank behind the reforms.

A slight miscalculation. Americans reacted against Obamacare immediately, and gave control of the House back to the Republicans.

Who, yesterday, voted to repeal Obamacare.

But since Democrats control the Senate, the bill will die there. If by some miracle it passed, the president will veto.

In the ratchet they trust.

Hoping dispersed costs will eventually be lost sight of, and feeling certain that the concentrated effects will indeed nurture a voting bloc, progressive Democrats see a bright future for ever-expanding government incursion into medicine. As with most government encroachments, if it doesn’t work as advertised, more intrusiveness will be the next proposal for “reform.”

So far Democrats have plied their obvious advantage, reducing the repeal effort to symbolic action. Let’s hope Republicans can muster something more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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local leaders national politics & policies

Persistence, Thy Name Is Eyman

Eyman

We haven’t had enough Tim Eyman.

I try to rotate the subjects of these Common Sense efforts, moving from freedom to democracy and back again, covering local and state issues as well as national and international ones.

But certain topics make regular returns. Like Tim Eyman. In Washington State, he’s evergreen.

He’s the citizen initiative guy. He keeps plugging away, writing initiatives, working to put them on the ballot, defending them against all comers.

His recurring theme? Lower taxes.

He recently filed an initiative to require a two-thirds majority in the Evergreen State’s legislature to raise taxes.

He’s done it before. And Washington State citizens have voted this in, before. Four times.

Trouble is, the legislature can repeal any state initiative two years after enactment, by simple majority. Within the first two years, it takes a two thirds super-majority.

So Eyman is back on the horse, whip in hand, and says he’ll keep putting these initiatives before the voters. As many times as it takes.

He’s working on the current effort in case the legislature takes down the recently enacted I-1053, like they did the three previous citizen-enacted laws. If lawmakers don’t overturn this, he’ll wait until 2012 to reintroduce it. And he’ll keep this up until legislators at last understand: Citizens don’t have unlimited resources. Taxes come at a cost. Spending less is always an option.

You can’t keep a good man (or the voters) down.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

The Warfare Over General Welfare

Constitutionalists, flush with the attention being paid this very day in the House of Representatives to the land’s highest law, finally get to hold their conversations outside of seminars and institutes.

Some pundits argue that Tea Party folks will be surprised by how much power the Constitution gives the federal government. (Sure, I miss the Articles of Confederation.)

But however much power Madison & Co. bestowed upon the Feds, there is a limit. This comes as a shock to career politicians who envision government as all things to all people, from world cop to tooth fairy.

They like to point to the “general welfare clause,” which reads: “The Congress shall have the Power To . . . provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” Could this mean Congress can do anything it wants, if designed to help people generally?

Yesterday, several Wall Street Journal readers cleared up any misunderstandings.

Michael Hanselman of Maryland cited Thomas Jefferson’s 1814 conviction that “Congress had not unlimited powers . . . to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated.”

Arnold Nelson of Chicago quoted from Federalist 41, where James Madison, the Constitution’s chief architect, decried an expansive view of “general Welfare” as “a very fierce attack against the Constitution.” Mr. Nelson and Mr. Madison point to the 18 enumerated powers in Section 8, which are the only powers Congress has to affect the general welfare.

The intent? Clear. Today’s reality? Much different.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Reading Comprehension

Never has the Constitution been read on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. And, boy, does our political situation show it.

When the 112th Congress convenes this week, the law of the land — the limited, enumerated powers granted to the federal government by “We the People” in this 223-year old document — will for the first time be spoken aloud for all honorables to hear. It’s a quick read, less than 5,000 words, and presumably cameras will be rolling, so we’ll know if any elected representative sticks finger into ear during the recitation.

A hat-tip to the Tea Party movement, this reading of the Constitution is a great way to remind our legislators that such a document actually exists.

Even better, a new rule will be proposed requiring every piece of legislation to have affixed a citation “where in the Constitution Congress is empowered to enact such legislation.”

Sure, Washington pundits have mocked this newborn constitutionalism, crying “gimmick!” One history professor called it “entirely cosmetic.” Tea Party activists are skeptical, too. As they should be.

Neither reading the Constitution nor declaring the constitutional authority for legislation amounts to magic. But, with a political process in which politicians rarely recognize any limits to their wizardry, a requirement that Congress specifically pay attention to whether its actions are permitted by the Constitution is, well, really good.

Will it lead to Congress actually abiding by the limits of our Constitution? It certainly couldn’t hurt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets ideological culture national politics & policies

Study War Some More?

Some people love spending so much they’d kill to do it.

A while back, Paul Krugman, today’s leading Keynesian shill, trotted out the old chestnut that World War II brought America out of the Great Depression. In The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty, Steve Horwitz provides a concise, reasoned response:

Wealth increases when people are able to engage in exchanges they believe will be mutually beneficial. The production of new goods that consumers wish to purchase is the beginning of this process.

And borrowing from future generations to spend on goods not connected “to the desires of consumers, but rather to the desire of the politically powerful” doesn’t work.

Krugman talks war not because he wants one, but because he thinks government spending is so important that he’ll take what he can get, “even if the spending isn’t particularly wise.”

He misses the point.

The malaise that holds back recovery after a shock like the Implosion of 2008 isn’t lack of spending as such — it’s lack of confidence. Capitalism depends on trillions of separate plans and desires working together. When investors are wary of investing and consumers — fearing the future — don’t know what they can really afford to buy, no amount of “jump start” splurging will repair the engine.

At the end of World War II conscripts were freed, wage and price controls were abandoned, and a sense of victory permeated everything — and the Great Depression ended. Finally.

The lesson? End wars. Curtail regulations. Free up the system.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.