Category: national politics & policies

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national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

It’s the Season

Ho, Ho, Ho. It’s that time of year again. Shopping. Selecting the right gift. Thinking of those special someones.

Yes, it’s Omnibus Spending Bill time, the Satan Clause time of year, when politicians fill up the stockings of their naughty friends in the lobbying business, and give generously.

With our money.

This year, Harry Reid went all out. He pushed an omnibus spending package that included so many earmarks that Congress had to use its whole box of Crayons just to keep some order to the bill’s marked corners. Yes, there were over six thousand “special holiday gifts” for special interests.

As I said, “Ho, Ho, Ho.”

That’s not an elfin chuckle, that’s a popular euphemism for what the politicians are who cooked up this list without checking it twice.

But an unseasonable gust took the wind out of Reid’s sails. Pressured by folks back home, the bill was soundly defeated. As Daniel Mitchell put it, it was the American people — not the special interests — who got the Christmas present:

[F]iscal conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers have won an important battle, but this is just one skirmish in a long war. If we want to save America from becoming another Greece, we better make sure that we redouble our efforts next year.

At last, special interests get a lump of coal. It’s something to celebrate. And repeat. Ho, Ho, Ho! Like that ol’ elfin chuckle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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

Madison’s Angels to the Rescue?

Something called “behavioral economics” has arisen in recent decades, testing and probing many of the assumptions-cum-postulates of basic microeconomics. Researchers have discovered that human beings are prone to biases, cognitive errors, and a whole bevy of choice glitches. We are not perfectly rational.

Shocking, I know.

Some people draw an odd moral from this: Since people are such fools, they require the help of government to regulate them from utter folly and ruin.

Economist David Henderson quotes one of his Facebook friends, TV creative director John Papola, as supplying the “most succinct criticism” of this tack: “Why in the world do behavioral economists who study our flaws and irrational quirks advocate centralized power in the hands of a small group of flawed overlords? If people are irrational, so are government regulators, only they have corrupting monopoly power.”

You’ve seen this kind of argument before, in political theory. James Madison famously noted that

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Just so: Were we entirely rational, no regulation would be necessary — no laws would. But, given universal human limitations, the regulators themselves require regulation, and a (non-existent) supply of non-biased, error-resistant rationality, to boot.

Forget vast reams of regulations and huge teams of bureaucrats. Instead, perfect the basic rule of law, regulating markets by a well-conceived basic set of rules.

And expect some imperfection.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Commerce, Compulsion and the Constitution

Every once in a while a judge attends to the Constitution, and freedom lovers cheer wildly as if this were very strange, even wondrous. I guess it is, considered in light of the sweep of human history.

Should the Democrats’ “health care reform” package kick in fully, it would compel people to purchase medical insurance by punishing abstainers with a steep, extra tax. So hurray for Judge Henry Hudson of the federal district court in Richmond, according to whose recent decision the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to point a gun to our heads and force us to buy health insurance.

If the Constitution could be honestly read that way, it would mean that the Founding Fathers had fought to replace British tyranny with an even worse home-grown one. But no, no Founder thought that giving the federal government power to smooth trade relations among the states equaled authorization for universal, compulsory purchase of books, booze, bobby pins — or whatever Congress-Approved “health care” delivery system some future central planners might concoct. Nor does it.

We’re not out of danger yet, obviously. There are many more battles to come, many other provisions of “Obamacare” that have yet to be challenged and quashed in courts or in Congress. But in any tough job, you need to accomplish the first step.

Judge Hudson’s common-sense conclusion sounds like a great first step to me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Good and Bad in the 112th

The 112th Congress is beginning to take shape, and, well, we have good news and bad news.

Good news first: Ron Paul has been slated to chair the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee.

The Texas congressman has been toiling away at the margins of power on Capitol Hill for years. A proponent of a gold standard and a free-marketer of the “Austrian” School, he has been a voice crying in the wilderness. One of the few people in Congress who did not treat Alan Greenspan as a divine oracle, he is now one of Ben Bernanke’s harshest critics.

Of course, after recent events and bailouts and all, Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke has lots of critics.

As chair of the subcommittee that watches over the Fed, Ron Paul has finally attained a position to accomplish something. This is a major reversal in the power structure. We can’t expect miracles (Ron Paul being but one man), but do expect fireworks.

Now, the bad news.

It’s been less than a month since Republicans in the House voted on a moratorium on earmarks. And already they are, reportedly, beginning to feel queasy. Perhaps as a sign of a general turncoatish nature, the next chair of the House Appropriations Committee is set to be Rep. Hal Rogers.

Sixteen-term congressman Rogers has earned a reputation for pushing pork. His hometown has received so much federal largesse it’s called “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

Still, he says he’ll enforce the pork moratorium. We’ll see.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

Fat Lot of Good That’ll Do

It sounded like a good idea — Michelle Obama would get involved in a campaign to reduce childhood obesity. Obesity is a problem, yes, and a good cause for the First Lady. But, today, advocacy must always be paired with legislation.

An AP news story provides all you really need to know:

A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.

So now we are to have federal government’s micro-mismanagement reach far beyond the curriculum. The basic idea being . . . give up on parents. Give up on local control. Go, Washington!

Our national nannies took special care with the bill’s language, adding the category of school fundraisers as a special target of the regulations. Apparently, they can’t stand the fact that, on special occasions, mothers and fathers bake up sugary treats to sell, to support special school activities that affect their kids.

I guess they want us to sell broccoli.

Yup. That’ll send the school band to Disneyland.

The whole bill is a bad idea, and not just because Washington can’t tell special occasions from one’s day-in/day-out diet. The very singling out of special fundraisers for federal attention shows just how far into our lives Washington’s busybodies believe they can insert themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights government transparency national politics & policies

Secrecy Broken

The “Wikileaks” controversy proceeds to grow and mutate, like Clostridium botulinum in a Petri dish with spoiled pork, and I’ve avoided talking about it up till now.

Wikileaks is a website devoted to publishing leaked documents from governments and other scandal-prone institutions. You probably know the major players, and the various permutations of the story. You can hardly miss them. Because of that, I’m not going to go through the story in detail. Instead, I’d like to take a step back and offer a few “meta-thoughts” . . . ideas that might help produce a good conclusion.

  1. Republican forms of government require a great deal of transparency, though not on everything. There are military secrets and diplomatic info-dumps that, for our security, would best remain secret and un-dumped.
  2. Politicians, soldiers and bureaucrats tend to hate transparency. Why? They don’t like being second-guessed by “non-professionals.” So they often make government more opaque than it should be.
  3. Some of our leaders have tried to put nearly everything foreign-policy-related into the tightest security, demanding high clearances even for viewing. Much of this is self-serving, not truly security-related.
  4. A government worker who breaks security protocols to leak documents can be at once a hero and still prosecutable by law.

Now’s a good time to rethink transparency and our government’s secrecy protocols.

But, rethought or not, no one’s been surprised to learn of more amazing lapses in ethics and judgment on the part of our leaders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Neutrality or Tragedy?

Everybody likes freebies. New York renters often seek apartments advertised with “utilities included.” Why? So they can run their air conditioners 24/7.

Similarly, a lot of people are pushing for something called “Net neutrality.” We must guarantee a “free and open Internet,” they say.

Sounds good. After all, “free” is a good deal, if you can get it. But “free” comes at a cost. “Not having to pay for it” can become “paying through the nose” pretty quickly.

Here’s the problem: The rise of VoIP, streaming video and audio, and similar broadband luxuries has strained the Internet. Regulating the Net for “neutrality” prevents price and quality-of-service discrimination by owners of the Net’s infrastructure.

Might as well require all landlords to provide all utilities “free” . . . distributing the costs of extra usage via basic rent charges. That would be “Apartment neutrality.”

It would also be a big waste, and not just of electricity.

When suppliers of goods aren’t allowed to price and move product to their advantage, we get something  like the “tragedy of the commons.” The term comes from the medieval commons, a field that all villagers could use. They were, historically, overgrazed. Devastated. Hence the need to divvy up the fields into private plots, allowing trade to increase wealth, to the benefit of all.

U.S. regulators, tackling Net neutrality this month, should be wary of laying waste to the Net in the name of “openness.” Never confuse “free” of price with freedom itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Gore’s Gas-Based Admission

Al Gore gives the impression of someone never willing to acknowledge error if said error happens to be self-serving.

This impression is wrong.

If I have ever suggested that Gore never admits self-serving mistakes, I hereby rescind and repudiate that suggestion. He appears more than willing to retire a dishonest assertion . . . so long as he has another dishonest assertion to replace it with.

Ed Morrissey tells the tale at Hot Air, opining that Al Gore’s revised opinion about the virtue of government subsidies for corn-based ethanol seems just a little too convenient.

Gore now acknowledges that the energy-conversion ratios of first-generation ethanol “are at best very small,” and that corn subsidies probably bid up food prices. He even admits that he pushed for the funding to help farmers in states like Tennessee and Iowa. So it came to pass that taxpayers paid billions, in part to help Gore run for president.

Wait, there’s more.

Having recanted his support for “first-generation” ethanol, Gore now wants to use wood and grass to make ethanol. A new and better way, n’est-ce pas? No. There’s this small detail: Grass etc.-based ethanol is even more inefficient than corn-based ethanol.

Why top a bad blunder at taxpayer expense with an even worse blunder at taxpayer expense? Could this have anything to do with Al Gore’s investment in Abengoa Bioenergy, a firm begging for government subsidies for second-generation ethanol?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

The Murky, Muddled Middle

We’ve seen a lot of insightful reflection about what the recent elections say about the prospects for liberty and the efforts of many Americans to fight for endangered liberties.

One lesson I hope we’re on the way to unlearning is how allegedly “praiseworthy” it is to evade any clear-cut defense of fundamental political principle. How allegedly “critical” it is to compromise not only on the details of a program that does advance one principles, but also on the basic principles themselves.

In a recent communiqué, Representative Ed Emery rejects the notion that “moderates” lost, sometimes spectacularly, because voters “weren’t thinking.” No, “Moderates lost because voters woke up to the truth that lukewarm does not protect personal liberties; it compromises them [and] protects the status quo. . . .”

But not even the status quo is protected by huddling in the middle of the road. The premier beneficiaries of the worship of the muddled middle are those who do advocate certain fundamental (and poisonous) ideological principles but who succeed in posing as practitioners of “moderation.” Today, the radical left calls itself “the center” and screams bloody murder about “extremism” when anybody offers cogent objections to their socialist agenda. “Compromise,” to them, means only tweaking the speed at which we hurtle ever closer to full government control over our lives.

Let’s not submit to this intimidation, this fraudulent debate-framing.

Let’s demand a fair and open clash of basic political principles.

That’s a battle we’ll win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Perfect Safety?

Maybe the most interesting thing to come out, so far, from the “porno-scanner”/TSA-gropings controversy is this statement by Rep. Ron Paul of Texas: “You can’t provide perfect safety.”

Going on, Rep. Paul denied that it is “the government’s role . . . to provide safety.”

It isn’t; it’s to protect our rights. But here we’re being told that we go to the gate, we buy a ticket, and you’ve lost your right, you’ve sacrificed your right. Where did that come from? It’s about the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.

Rep. Paul has introduced legislation that would prohibit physical contact between TSA screeners and would-be airline passengers, and would prohibit taking images of people’s bodies using X-Rays, millimeter rays, etc..

Ron Paul sees all these new, invasive screening techniques as based on the idea that it is the government’s job to ensure airline invulnerability to terrorism, not the airlines’. He suggests putting the onus back on the airlines, who would likely be more respectful of their customers than the TSA is.

9/11/01 caught the airlines and the government with their pants down. Maybe the best solution to this security lapse isn’t to institute intrusions into our pants, or the kind of X-Ray vision scanners that boys used to be enticed with in the back of comic books.

There must be better ways.

Alas, government probably won’t find them. Which is why Ron Paul is on to something: It should be up to private enterprise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.