Category: national politics & policies

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Accountability local leaders national politics & policies

Mysteriously Missing Politicians

I almost feel sorry for politicians so afraid of angry freedom-loving constituents that they couldn’t even hold a townhall meeting this summer to spout reassuring lies about the Democrats’ medical reform proposals.

I say, “almost feel sorry” . . . well, not quite “almost” — Okay, I don’t feel sorry for them at all.

Neither does blogger Leslie Eastman. Recently, Leslie and 300 other nefariously well-dressed California citizens visited the local offices of U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. They merely wished for these office-holders — who until now have strenuously abstained from conducting public meetings to defend their plans for more government intervention in medical care — to emerge from their hidey-holes and defend their notions. Live and in person.

No luck.

In fact, an office supervisor admitted that Senator Boxer had not graced her San Diego office with her presence in over two years. Says Leslie, “I think there was a revolution [once] because of taxation without representation, but I digress.”

Maybe we can help Leslie find the missing politicians. Another blogger, Ed Morrisey over at hotair.com, is hot on the trail, being very helpful with a post entitled “Who Are Your Milk Carton Politicians?” During the August recess, many politicians across the nation headed for the hills, unwilling to squarely face constituents and defend their pro-government takeover of American medicine.

Is your congressman on the list?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption national politics & policies

After Kennedy

This is a difficult time for the Kennedy clan, with Ted Kennedy’s death coming so soon after that of his sister Eunice. I’m no fan of Kennedy’s politics, but may he rest in peace.

At such a time, I am inclined to abstain from criticism of Kennedy’s ideals and means. But I can’t help noticing that Kennedy himself did not regard even the occasion of his own passing as exempt from one more try at political game-playing.

Shortly before his death, Kennedy urged the Massachusetts legislature to change the rules governing how he’d be replaced. Currently, when a U.S. senate seat in Massachusetts is prematurely vacated, there’s a special election. Kennedy urged that the rules be changed so that the governor would instead appoint the replacement. The incumbent governor is a Democrat, who would likely pick a Democrat.

Yet back in 2004, when Senator John Kerry might have become president, it was also Kennedy who urged switching from gubernatorial appointments — the rule at the time — to conducting special elections. The legislature complied. Back then, you see, the incumbent governor was Republican, unlikely to pick a Democrat had replacing Kerry become necessary.

Let’s have one policy or the other — not a switch every time there’s a vacancy, in just such a way as to serve the most partisan of goals. Such rigging of the system has become all too common.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Government Isn’t Love

Dear Reader: This “BEST of Common Sense” comment originally aired on January 7, 2002. There are tough problems in the real world. Many of them cannot be solved by “public policy” or faceless bureaucracies, but only by people who care about and for each other. Realizing the limits of government doesn’t solve every problem, but it does prevent some problems from getting even worse. —PJ

Recently I joined the growing chorus calling the war on drugs a failure. My comments were provoked by a DEA raid against the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource Center, a place where cancer patients in pain can obtain marijuana that is legal under state law, but illegal under federal law.

Well, I got a flurry of responses. Some said we need to get tougher. A woman wrote: “Paul, the way to stop drugs is to instantly execute people who push it — no trial.”

On the other hand, a gentleman wrote: “Until we start seeing addiction as a medical rather than criminal problem, we’re never going to get out of the bunker in this failing war.”

But one listener summed up what many folks were trying to say. He wrote: “Okay Paul, I agree with you. But what is your proposed solution?”

There are many solutions. The war on drugs hasn’t prevented the damage done by addiction or alleviated the pain felt by loved ones. We’d all love to pass some law that would miraculously solve the problem, but there is no magic wand.

The problem of addiction has to do with individual people and their individual circumstances. And that’s how it must be addressed: Individually, by people who care, not by distant bureaucracies who may do more harm than good.

Ultimately, love is the answer, because love does conquer all. But government isn’t love.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Cargo Cult Auction in Progress

State and local governments are lurching into insolvency because of their previous profligate spending. In the current economic downturn they are now turning to lobbyists, to beg money from Washington. Money they should be spending on services they now spend in a sort of cargo-cult frenzy, hoping against hope for a bailout.

Funny thing is, they may actually spend more on lobbyists than they will get, in total, from the central government.

That’s what happens when the government gives away HUD grants, for instance. Cities around the nation spend more money preparing grant applications than they actually get in federal money. It would be better had HUD never existed. But, once in play, most cities cannot stop themselves from bidding for HUD’s handouts.

Yes, I said the word “bid.” From an economic point of view, that’s what the grant-writing and lobbying businesses are: bidding auctions in that most peculiar market for “free money.” Economist Gordon Tullock showed why this kind of auction is so different from trade auctions. There’s no theoretical upper limit. It’s crazy.

And it’s how federal government handouts work in our society.

How much better to not bid in such auctions at all. How much better if the federal government were prevented from giving away taxpayer funds to state and local governments entirely . . . better simply to follow the limits in the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

The Rush to Non-Judgment

Politicians often don’t read the bills they pass. And what they do read they often don’t trouble themselves to actually understand.

There’s plenty of evidence for these claims in the cap-and-trade and healthcare debates. Lawmakers have been much more concerned about hurtling to the finish line than with making sure they can understand and explain what they’re foisting on the rest of us.

Some say they gotta rush because, otherwise, the economy would fall over the cliff. But what if what’s in these Tolstoy-novel-sized bills is what pushes the economy over the cliff?

Well, if lawmakers don’t read the murky and complicated, important bills, do they pause over the simple, unimportant ones? Heck no. Yet you can tuck poison into any bit of legislation. No matter how seemingly trivial.

Back in the ’70s, a Texas lawmaker named Tom Moore decided to play an April Fool’s joke on his colleagues. He sponsored a resolution to commend one Albert de Salvo for his impact on community and country.

The resolution talked about how DeSalvo’s “devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely . . . [to] achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future.” How the state of Massachusetts had “officially recognized” DeSalvo’s unconventional “population control techniques.” The lawmakers passed the resolution unanimously.

Just one problem. DeSalvo was the serial killer otherwise known as the Boston Strangler.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The “Confidence” to Accept a Free Lunch

Does the alleged “success” of the cash-for-clunkers program prove consumer confidence is on the rebound?

Cash-for-clunkers is the new handout program for car owners and car dealers. Bring in an old car with lower mileage than the latest models, and the government gives you $4,500 toward a new car.

It took about a nanosecond to dole out the first billion dollars. So Congress tossed another two billion into the pot.

Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve chairman, was at the controls when the Fed’s massive credit-for-clunky-mortgages program helped create the housing bubble. So he’s an expert. He’s been in the news lately saying that although he has his doubts about the  clunkers program, its “success” shows renewed “confidence in the economy.”

Question: If the government simply threw bags of cash at people, and people stooped to pick up this cash, would this also prove “confidence in the economy”?

Observation: The clunker subsidies comes from somebody. Because the recipients didn’t directly drop by, directly put a gun to our heads, and directly compel us to write out a check for $4,500, we’re not supposed to notice. But if you had just been forced to turn over $4,500 to subsidize somebody’s new car, you’d probably say your household economy had just taken a hit.

Your confidence might even be shaken.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Snappy Put-downs Do Not a Debate Make

There is a political struggle going on over reforming how Americans obtain and pay for medical assistance.

But is there a debate?

Mostly what we hear, instead, are snide put-downs. Gail Collins recently wrote in the New York Times that “members of Congress are getting yelled at about socialized medicine by people who appear to have been sitting in their attics since the anti-tax tea parties, listening for signs of alien aircraft. But on the bright side, they’ve finally got something to distract them from the president’s birth certificate.”

That’s kind of funny. But it doesn’t address anyone’s fear or reasonable suspicion. It’s just more liberal scorn thrown at people who disagree with “big government knows best.”

I’ve heard Rachel Maddow make similar sniping comments. According to her, all folks have against the Democrats’ reform ideas is that Obama wants to kill old people. She laughs. Dismisses it out of hand.

But there are real arguments embedded in such concerns. As I wrote recently on Townhall.com, it’s not that advocates of single-payer medical systems want to kill old people; it’s that, over time, budgetary demands force them to institute some sort of rationing. Older folk die by waiting in week-long, month-long lines for medical assistance in Canada and Great Britain right now.

This is a very real concern. It deserves honest debate, not snappy put-downs and sniping retorts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The Big “Single-Payer” Lie

Scan the history of government programs. The scope and costs usually grow much larger than originally projected.

Moreover, ham-fisted government intervention distorts markets, causing shortages or excesses of supply, leading to high prices for goods that should be cheap, and so on.

When the problems pile up one can either repeal the controls or heap on more controls.

Guess which “solution” politicians tend to prefer.

Regarding medical care, the politicians’ answer to decades of government bungling is more bungling: regulation, subsidies, rationing, mandates and a new “public option” in health insurance to squeeze out private plans.

President Obama and other public option advocates promise, on stacks of Bibles, that this is not “somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

But they’re lying. Go to YouTube. Watch the videos of Obama and congressmen explicitly admitting their goal of a single-payer system. Just two years ago, Obama was saying, “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s gonna be potentially some transition process. . . .”

That’s how we lose our freedoms. Not all at once, but a slice at a time.

Oh, and about employer-provided medical insurance. That’s a clumsy institution that exists because of World War II wage controls. We do have to transition out of that system. But we should “transition” towards more freedom, not less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Medical Insurance to the Max

Get everybody into a medical insurance plan, fast! But how?

Lots of “universal coverage” talk assumes that most uninsured folks are “too poor.” But look, most young people don’t buy insurance because they are healthy. And I know oldsters who have gone through life without medical insurance. When they’ve needed a shot, or a few stitches, they’ve visited the doctor and paid the bill.

Becky Akers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, wants to know why everyone wants to force her to buy something she thinks makes no financial sense.

Ms. Akers admits that, though she is healthy and without insurance, she could get run over by a bus. But she bets she can cover most medical needs out of her savings and income.

Supporters of government managed medicine judge this irresponsible.

And yet, many of these critics are the same folks who insist that catastrophic medical insurance — the kind that is inexpensive because of huge deductibles — cover everybody, regardless of pre-existing conditions. But this turns insurance into a transfer program, workable only with high prices. Add full coverage rather than catastrophic, and medical insurance skyrockets beyond most people’s pay grade.

Yet if politicians would just stop tinkering with insurance, medical prices would come down for everyone, as Akers suggests . . . including, even the uninsurable, who would still require aid other than insurance.

If you are already sick, it’s too late to insure against sickness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Health Rations and You

Want a laugh? To keep you from crying at what President Obama and the Congress are trying to do to health care in this country?

Over the decades, the federal government’s involvement in health care has been making it harder and harder for doctors and patients to make independent, sensible decisions about care.

Many advocates of “reform” deny the destructive consequences of past “reform” and insist that the only way to solve our problems is, in effect, to make them worse: Get government even more involved, tie the bureaucratic noose even tighter around the necks of patients and doctors.

Despite all the problems in the health care industry, we often still get great care because of the freedom that still exists. But what if advocates of Obamacare get their way and government takes over? Well, that’s the scenario satirized in a new two-minute video produced by the Sam Adams Alliance, all about “Health Rations and You.”

It adopts the black-and-white style of a 1950s-era educational film. “Health rationing. What is it? What does it mean for you?” And it’s all about how the Health Administration Bureau will give you nothing but “the best” medical care.

The video is funny. Memorable. Getting a lot of hits on YouTube. And it just might help stop this socialist monster in its tracks. Give it a look-see, and pass it on.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.