Category: national politics & policies

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

Gross Jobs

The president says he’s creating jobs. I’m skeptical. I guess there are some things government can do to ensure that jobs get created, out there in the bill-​paying, profit-​making world. But these do not include spending trillions of borrowed money.

And neither do they include simply giving more money to state and local governments.

The truth about Obama’s much-​ballyhooed job creation is that more than half of his alleged new jobs turn out to be government jobs.

Government jobs don’t count, Mr. President. 

Remember, many things governments do actually drain us. Jobs in the marketplace, on the other hand, serve real consumer demand, make us all better off. They also help pay the taxes for those government jobs. Employing more people in government means needing more real jobs to pay for the government ones.

And how much work do politicians cause us to engage in just to unbury ourselves from their silly, wealth-​extracting regulations? I know, I know: Every time they add on some new complication to the tax code, jobs emerge in the accounting and tax-​consulting industry. But this doesn’t exactly make us better off, does it? Not on net.

This lesson applies generally. Here’s the bottom line. Government can borrow and tax to spend to create “gross jobs.” Sure. But on net, after balancing the collective books, we’re not better off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies too much government

Tea Parties Still Going Strong

The U.S. House of Representatives just passed a hulking health care bill bulging with burdensome new taxes and mandates. We can probably thank many well-​attended Tea Party protests around the country that the vote was as narrow as it was, 220 – 215, mostly along party lines. Now it goes, weakly, to the Senate.

The New York Times says the legislation “would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face penalties — an approach Republicans compared to government oppression.” Gee, I hope Republicans said such laws would be an example of oppression, not merely sorta like oppression.

All but one Republican and 39 Democrats voted No to the monstrosity. Maybe a few Democrats get the message that taxpayers are mad as heck and aren’t going to take it any more.

I like how the Cincinnati Tea Party activists are delivering this message. According to a participant’s report at InstaPundit, the group recently “organized an unprecedented four-​day ‘We Surround Him’ demonstration” to show one Ohio congressman their commitment to liberty. For the first few days, the protestors strategically surrounded Congressman Steve Driehaus’s district to convey their message to voters.

Then they surrounded the congressman himself, stationing themselves around his office building. The protesters invited Driehaus to address them on the health care question, but he couldn’t be bothered. Perhaps he can be compared to a dead duck.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Way More than Enough

“Enough is enough.” We say that when we’ve had too much.

When do we reach enough government spending?

One way to figure this out would be to determine what is the real public interest and spend enough to cover that, and no more. 

Take defense. A good diplomatic policy, backed by adequate military might, serves us all. We can argue what that good policy is, but we certainly don’t want more spending than required to serve said policy.

And yet, a much-​ballyhooed current defense spending measure is laden with line-​item spending projects that the Pentagon didn’t ask for.

President Obama, when he was a candidate, promised to crack down on such spending. It’s usually called “pork.” Unfortunately, politicians like pork. 

A fascinating post on the USA Today website explains how our prez signed “a pork-​laden spending bill left over from the previous year but vowed to be more vigilant going forward. Now, his administration is lauding a $636 billion defense spending bill, for the fiscal year that began Thursday, that includes $2.7 billion in earmarks” — including funding for destroyers and cargo planes the Pentagon didn’t ask for. 

Such spending doesn’t serve us all. It serves a few, back home in some districts. And it helps re-​elect their representatives. 

All at our expense.

By definition, it’s more than enough. It’s too much.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

A Halloween Sermon

It’s amazing how often my online critics assume that I am a Republican. Hey, I’m not a member of either major party.

Still, I reserve the right to hold Republican feet to the fire — using their own principles. Democrats, likewise. I have to: Politicians in both parties control too much of our lives and ignore too many of their principles.

I was driving the other day and caught businesses putting up their Halloween-​themed promotions. I almost drove off the road: Halloween is almost here?

Of course, the holiday is several weeks away, but as I wrapped my mind around the idea of a “Halloween Season,” it hit me: So it is with politics.

Christmas is a notoriously imperialistic holiday. The season keeps starting earlier and earlier — gobbling up more of the calendar.

The Democratic Party is like Christmas. It has its Santa figures and its lore about sleighs full of goodies and a lot of activity in chimneys, being swept clean, etc.

The Republican Party is like Halloween: A bit scary sometimes — sometimes too eager to throw out the Bill of Rights … and its own Santa-​ish treat giveaways.

But the chief function of Halloween is to put an early, pre-​Thanksgiving stop to the imperialist creep of the big-​spending Christmas Season.

And maybe the real meaning of a Democrat Christmas is to stop the foolery of the Republican’s Halloween.

As an independent, of course my favorite holiday is Independence Day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Will Politicians Ever Learn?

We don’t have time to research everything. That’s why, in theory, citizens have political representatives. They are supposed to research the issues for us, learn from past mistakes, and make improvements. Better laws. Better programs.

Welcome to reality. Instead of doing their job, politicians tempt us over and over with the same old, disproven get-​rich-​quick, get-​healthy-​quick schemes.

Peter Suderman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, looked at “The Lessons of State Health-​Care Reforms.” He did what our federal politicians should have. “Like participants in a national science fair,” Suderman writes, “state governments have tested variants on most of the major components of the health-​care reform plans currently being considered in Congress. The results…?” Suderman puts it bluntly: “[D]ramatically increased premiums in the individual market, spiraling public health-​care costs, and reduced access to care.… The reforms have failed.”

He discusses Maine’s public plan, “Dirigo Choice,” which I’ve talked about before. He traces the cause of Massachusetts’s individual mandate to its horrible effects: higher prices pushing businesses and individuals to bankruptcy. Tennessee’s 1990 reforms proved even more destructive.

One of the reasons we’re even talking about reform, now, is because of past reform failures. By our careless representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Expensive Solutions

I’m skeptical of the notion that climate change is being driven by human activity … and thoroughly unconvinced that the planet will continue to warm causing catastrophic results.

But what if? If the globe is warming, what to do about it?

For starters, sell your beach house in Florida. Global warming means ice sheets melting, oceans rising, shoreline lost.

But for those of us without the beach house, what is the cost of global warming compared to the cost of fixing the problem?

Bjorn Lomborg, author of the book, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming, looked at this question and concluded that solving the problem of climate change is not cost-effective.

Lomborg is indeed concerned about warming and says that in an ideal world we’d “solve it.” But he says we have to set priorities, and that “[w]hat we can do about [global warming] is very little at a very high cost.”

In a Washington Post column, Lomborg warned that the damage done — especially to the world’s poor — by cutting carbon emissions will far outweigh the benefits. The estimated cost from projected climate damage is $1.1 trillion dollars. The projected expense of cutting enough emissions to avoid that damage is $46 trillion.

I’m skeptical about global warming. But spending $46 for every buck saved takes me well beyond skepticism. I’m against any such idiotic plan. If we must have catastrophe, I prefer the cheaper one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Canadian Treatment

While President Obama flew to foreign lands to lobby for Chicago’s Olympic bid, a group of Americans trekked to Canada to find out about government-​run health care.

Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute in Colorado, visited Vancouver, British Columbia, to host a conference that explored Canada’s medical system. Caldara’s foray north was written about in the Washington Times, and the Los Angeles Times interviewed some of the same Canadians.

Caldara’s interest in the subject is personal as well as civic-​minded. He has a 5‑year-​old son who has undergone eight operations, including heart surgery. From what Caldara can tell, his son would have received little or none of this treatment in Canada. There, instead, he would have been put on waiting lists.

Caldara heard stories from Canadians who had been shuffled from one specialist to another, each requiring long waits before even being seen. Actual treatment? More waiting.

Outside the system, entrepreneurs have sprung up to broker deals with private physicians to the south, in the U.S., and even with growing quasi-​illegal clinics in Canada.

Meanwhile, in our little haven for sick Canadians, American politicians still talk about reforms that would ruin it for the Canadians — as well as for us. Some even prefer the Canadian system to what we have now.

Jon Caldara doesn’t think this makes sense. Neither do I.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Drop Out of the Bucket

Does $40.3 million seem like a lot of money to you? It does to me.

But to the Social Security Administration? It’s a drop in the bucket.

Or, a drop out of the bucket.

You see, while the federal government is scheduled to soon reinstate the estate tax on the wealth of deceased people, we now learn that it has also been giving money to the dearly departed.

Yes, an internal audit of the Social Security Administration revealed that it paid out more than $40 million to over six thousand dead people.

These benefits were given out weeks, months, years after receiving death certificates. The bureaucracy had been duly notified. And yet it went blithely on, continuing to send monthly checks.

Bureaucratic error. Hey, we all make mistakes. But it’s worth noting that this was an internal audit. Who knows what we’d catch if it were an external audit, with teeth?

Lately, the federal government has been talking over car companies and banks. Now the president and Congress plan to take control of the medical sector of our economy. They tell us they’ll cut medical costs by cutting waste. Yeah, right.

On a cheerier note, we needn’t fear the institution of those so-​called “death panels” to cut costs. The way the feds work, there’d be no savings — they’d still be paying for care long after the patients were dead and gone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

They Lie!

Honor amongst thieves. It’s a great literary concept, explored in The Glass Key and Miller’s Crossing. In real life, actual thieves, when organized, can’t go to the police for adjudication. So the old, tribal concept of “honor” often serves.

It sure serves Congress. Mark Twain quipped that “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” Very funny — but you don’t need statistics. All you need is the Constitution and the latest issue of the Congressional Record.

Still, Congress has its honor. Even the lies of any particular politician are not supposed to be called out by another politician. Fellow pols are supposed to say “The Honorable So-​and-​So surely errs” — not “lies.”

And legislators are certainly not supposed to interrupt a president’s speech before Congress to shout “You lie!” Hear that, Mr. Wilson? How indecent of you! How … dishonorable.

But never once in mainstream reporting on Joe Wilson’s “You lie!” challenge did I hear anyone actually address the alleged fact of the challenge: did the president lie? 

Well, I don’t like to use that word, but he was talking about health care reform. You could almost blindfold yourself and throw a dart at reform rhetoric and still hit a whopper with each throw. 

That people were more disturbed by the outburst than the likelihood of lying says a whole lot about politics today.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Over 50 and for Freedom

Say you’re a senior citizen. You’re concerned about the rising costs of medical services, but are not ready to surrender your care to well-​meaning but naive advocates of ever-​greater government. What to do?

Many seniors belong to AARP, a kind of combination consumer group and political lobbyist association for people age 50 and over. Fifty seems kind of youngish to me to be a senior citi — ow! crick in my back! — but okay.

Members get discounts and also get AARP spokesmen pretending to represent them on political questions. AARP supports a big-​government overhaul of medical services. However, they’ve discovered that the issue is touchy. So they have taken pains to dispute President Obama’s recent claim that AARP endorses any particular bill.

Some AARP members fear that Medicare benefits are at risk. Other AARP members and former members just like their freedom.

Thank goodness AARP has competition. There’s a group called 60 Plus, and now a new outfit, the American Seniors Association, is offering a special deal to all seniors who submits a torn-​up AARP card with their application. 

ASA’s president, Stuart Barton, is blunt: “President Obama must think the American people are idiots.…” if he thinks they’ll buy “the idea that health care rationing, restrictions and regulations being debated in Congress will save money and result in better preventative medicine.”

You know what? I’m not even going to wait until I turn fifty. Sign me up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.