Category: national politics & policies

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national politics & policies

The Obama Approach

President Obama’s credo seems to be that if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. He’s “doubling down,” as the phrase goes. We’re going to get his killer dose of government-controlled medicine whether we want it or not.

Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts U.S. Senate race killed the Democrats’ filibuster-proof 60-vote advantage. So Obama is now in favor of “bipartisanship.” He’s pretending to listen to Republican doubts about strangling what’s left of freedom in the medical industry.

But Obama’s new health care bill seeks simply to reconcile the House Democrat plan with the Senate Democrat plan. It’s more bichambership than bipartisanship. Under the “new” plan, Americans would still be socked with lots of penalties and commandments.

One addition, though. Obama also wants to create a federal agency that can veto supposedly “unreasonable” increases in health insurance rates. So what happens when the only practical response to huge new costs under the vast panoply of new requirements is to raise rates . . . and government prohibits this?

Might insurance companies be forced out of business?

Might Washington be waiting in the wings, eager to finish the takeover and shove us all into a “public option”?

Obama is pretty relentless, trying to gulp up a huge sector of the economy despite growing and cogent opposition. Not, I think, a particularly admirable quality in this context.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

Idealism or Brute Power Play?

Senator John McCain and other politicians advocate violating your right to contribute as much as you want to the political candidates you support. They also advocate violating your right to speak as much as you want, either positively or negatively, about a candidate.

Do they support these repressive doctrines out of misguided idealism, or misguided pragmatic politics? Doubtless the answer depends on the individual. But McCain certainly acts as if today’s confusing welter of campaign finance regulation best serves as a very convenient club to beat an upstart challenger over the head and shoulders.

McCain faces a tough primary. His conservative challenger, J.D. Hayworth, a former congressman, is also a radio talk show host. Or at least he was until buddies of the senator began yelping to the Federal Election Commission. See, Hayworth attacked McCain on his show, which supposedly makes his show a form of “political advertising.” As a result of this pressure, Hayworth and the station agreed to take the show off the air.

Jason Rose, who works with Hayworth, calls what happened a “political mugging.” Sounds right to me.

McCain is on record endorsing what his friends did here. So . . . Hayworth can say anything he wants to — à la the First Amendment — unless it’s a criticism of McCain.

Funny how the framers failed to stipulate this when they were putting together the Constitution and that First Amendment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies responsibility

A Deficit of Common Sense

Congress has just raised the federal debt “ceiling” to $14.3 trillion.

Yes, it’s called a “ceiling,” though I cannot recall seeing any other ceiling so adjustable.

The Associated Press reassures us: The new ceiling means that congressmen won’t have to pass an even higher ceiling until after November. According to the AP, if Congress had to raise the debt limit too close to the election, this would “[feed] a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.”

“Feed a sense”? Yes, committing fiscal crime in broad daylight might serve to “feed a sense” that the crime is in fact being committed.

Meanwhile, Moody’s, the Wall Street credit agency, warns that the U.S. is at risk of losing its triple-A credit rating. The federal government must stop its fashionable trillion-dollar annual deficits. But Moody’s also proclaims to understand why the government has run these trillion-dollar deficits. Seeing as how we’re in a recession, it would be politically tough to trim budgets right now.

Let me get this straight. If you’ve been taking on way too much debt, the best solution to the problem is to borrow money even faster and even more irresponsibly? But only for now? Then kick the habit later . . . when it’s suddenly real easy?

No, I don’t think so. Try again, Moody’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Ice Is Also Great

We all like talking about the weather, and one reason “global warming” theory caught on was not because of the science, but because it gives us a “just-so”-type scenario to spice up any conversation.

Here on the East Coast, we’ve endured one of the snowiest winters in years. Elsewhere, the winter’s been moderate.

Must be global warming!

The tendency to make every kind of weather a paradigm-case instance of global warming has become something of a joke. We all know that “weather is not climate,” but we’ve also heard a lot of silliness about how this or that weather proves a coming global warming catastrophe.

Al Gore almost invented the technique.

Last week a quip — a “tweet” — from Senator Jim DeMint made the rounds. He wrote that “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.’”

Droll. But the truth remains that one cold snap does not a climate make. What counts for global climate depends on averages, highs, lows, medians, means, and all that.

Knowing this — and knowing that world climate has been much cooler than now as well as much warmer — still leaves me something of a skeptic about the notion that human civilization is the major factor.

Or that warming is altogether bad. An Ice Age, which scientists have been saying we’re overdue for, would be worse.

Brrr. Do I know!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Smart Reaction?

If you balk at having more and more of your life run from the nation’s capital, you’re stupid.

Or, so blares Joe Klein in a Time magazine online article, “Too dumb to thrive.”

See, “smart” Americans understand that a trillion in federal “stimulus” spending can only do “good.” Apparently dumb Americans are the ones telling pollsters that the “stimulus” money is being wasted.

Klein says the biggest part of the stimulus is a tax cut for most, meaning more money in their paychecks. But ignorant Americans focus on the huge debts we’ll have to pay back . . . in higher taxes.

Klein says that the second biggest portion of stimulus money went to state governments to keep our kids’ teachers from being laid off and state taxes from being raised. The notion that without the stimulus all the public school teachers would have been pink-slipped is a bit much.

As for higher state taxes, couldn’t state spending actually be cut? And not just on police, teachers and firemen?

Klein’s blithering blathering reminds me of Chris Matthews, and other MSNBC geniuses, who contend that politicians are in deep doo-doo because “people are angry and scared” and want to take their frustrations out on someone.

People are angry and scared, sure. But taking out our anger out on those responsible for destroying our wealth and freedom seems . . . well .  .  . smart.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Do As I Don’t

Many American politicians decry any attempt to liberalize the market for grade school education. They insist that the public school system must be protected from competition. They hate charter schools, vouchers, tax credits, anything like that.

Yet many of these same politicians send their own kids to private schools.

But simultaneously promoting government-run industry, while choosing private alternatives, isn’t just an education pathology. Consider medicine.

Canadian politicians eager for medical care that really works have made it a habit to travel to the United States to get it. The latest is Danny Williams, premier of the Canadian providence of Newfoundland and Labradour. Williams recently trekked stateside for heart surgery. His office wasn’t releasing many details, but indicated that the surgery isn’t routine.

That explains it. If there’s any chance a life-saving procedure will be tricky, quality is really important.

Williams’s deputy premier, Kathy Dunderdale, told reporters that surgery in the province was never an option. She said: “He is doing what’s best for him.” I’m sure that’s true.

Folks, we can’t, just cannot, further put the American medical industry under government bureaucratic control — that is, make our health care as bad as Canada’s. There’s got to be somewhere for our Canadian friends to go when they really need the good stuff.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Do the Right Thing – Later

Late in life, St. Augustine characterized his youthful, wayward ways in a droll prayer: “Lord, make me chaste and celibate — but not yet!”

Today, politicians of both parties understand the sentiment.

On Monday of last week, President Barack Obama unveiled his budget to Congress with this nicely worded maxim: “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax money of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money.”

Obama proposed a record budget of $3.8 trillion — including a deficit of well over $1 trillion. We can’t keep deficit spending like this, but we keep deficit spending like this.

Talking to reporters, Obama admitted that he and his friends in Congress “won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight.” He cited the need for more job creation as reason to continue to spend so much money.

Money we don’t have. So it will be borrowed. Against future taxes. Or future default.

Sure, the president is proposing a freeze. To start next fiscal year. And he’s proposing a bipartisan committee to cook up some way to balance the budget. The committee hasn’t been formed yet.

That seems like too much procrastination for the state of our nation. I think St. Augustine would agree with me: Virtue is not something you put off until next year.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies

Greater Eloquence

Last week, two major speeches caught our attention.

Barack Obama wagged his finger at the Supreme Court and orated in front of Congress. He said the state of the union is sound.

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave the other big speech, presenting the new iPad, a portable device that accesses the Web, allows users niftily to buy and read e-books, and much more.

Which speech will usher in real change?

Both have their critics. Many people no longer trust Obama, whether he’s pushing more government or a freeze. And many folks second-guess Apple’s newest project, despite Jobs’s spectacular success record.

For my part, I don’t buy Obama’s agenda. But I probably won’t buy an iPad, either. I tend to regard even the best new tech breakthroughs as just more vacuum cleaners. They really do suck . . . one’s time, anyway.

But to succeed, Apple doesn’t need my excitement. Just enough from others.

Early in each of Apple’s revolutions, it was hard to prophesy success, with certainty.

The neat thing about a possible neo-Gutenberg Age of tablets, e-books and virtual libraries is that I will still be able to read a normal book. One the other hand, if Obama gets his way, his policies will, willy nilly, crowd out better ones.

Still, it’s heartening to realize that to most of us the eloquence of a revolutionary thing means more, now, than the eloquence of any politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies responsibility

Washing Dishes

If you can’t pay your bill at a restaurant, management may set you to washing dishes to cover the cost of your meal.

Or so it’s said — I’ve never heard of it actually happening. Clean dishes are a must for serving food to paying customers; restaurants simply can’t wait around to press non-paying customers into service. Instead, they hire folks to do the dishes.

This came to mind when our president and congressional leaders began pushing to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion.

The raise would allow the federal debt to increase to $14.3 trillion, about the size of our country’s entire yearly economic output.

Senator Max Baucus of Montana is all for raising the limit. He says it simply must be done: “We have gone to the restaurant,” he explained. “We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we will pay the check.”

No dishwashing for Baucus.

Most of us avoid Congress’s unseemly situation by looking in our wallets for cash or ready credit before we order the filet mignon, not after we’ve consumed it.

I’m no wizard of high finance, but hey: If we want to stop piling debts onto our children, at some point we will have to prevent our so-called representatives from borrowing more trillions.

Oh, and if a congressman enters your diner, better make him pay cash up front.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

The War on Terror Lumbers On

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up himself and 277 other people on Flight 253 to Detroit Christmas Day. Fellow passengers subdued and disarmed him.

Lessons? Start with the obvious: There are still terrorists in other countries who want to hurt us.

Some will say that we must beef up security. But consider: America’s security state, which has been in alleged high gear (or some bright color) since 2001, has already been beefed up. And yet, once again, this security broke down.

It could be that preventing violence is just not that easy to do. If you have determined enemies who spring up in unexpected quarters, it’s really hard for government to stop them.

Herbert Spencer, a 19th century sociologist, explained it this way: “The law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.”

We cannot expect government to always foresee dangers. We cannot even rely on government to transmit warnings of a specific terrorist from one department to another, and do something about it.

I’m not saying we should expect nothing of government. Just don’t expect too much.

All hope is not lost, however. We have each other. From the heroism of

Flight 93 on 9.11 to this Christmas Day incident, passengers have shown they’re not powerless.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.