Category: national politics & policies

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

A Question Worth Asking?

The presidential candidates talk about leadership and change. What’s the one question that combines both, but is not asked? Simple: What happens if it all comes crashing down?

After the worst stock market drop since 9/​11, the question doesn’t seem so out of place. Our federal government’s debt is rising fast. Even if we balanced the budget tomorrow, the government would have a deep, multi-​trillion dollar debt. Trillions and trillions, you might say.

So, Mr. Obama; so, Mr. McCain — what do you do when the Treasury can’t find anyone to invest in all the debt we have created, and must maintain? What do we do when the compounding of interest and increased deficits make monthly maintenance impossible?

Neither of you have even suggested a balanced budget early in your first term. So what do you do when our credit goes crunch?

Add to this the federal government’s obligations to the citizenry, in the form of Social Security retirements and Medicare and pensions and such, and what can you do?

How do you stave off — or, if not, survive — a worldwide depression?

The scenario is not fantastic. Just look at current figures and crunch the numbers.

So, what would Senators Obama and McCain say? I’d be curious what Bob Barr and Ralph Nader would say, too. Have they thought of the possibility?

This is one question that sure would make the upcoming debates interesting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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local leaders national politics & policies

True Outsider Experience

John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate shocked a lot of people.

Even people in the media didn’t know very much about her. She hasn’t spent any time on Meet the Press, for example.

But I knew who she was long before her selection as Republican nominee for Vice President. That’s because Sarah Palin has real street cred as a reformer.

For starters, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she followed through on her campaign promise to cut property taxes — by 40 percent.

Though a Republican, she has not hesitated to challenge Party bigwigs. She went after the state’s Republican Party chairman for ethics violations — violations he later admitted. She joined a Democrat in filing an ethics complaint against the Republican attorney general. He later resigned.

Then, in 2006, she ran against the incumbent governor of her own party, and by connection the whole corrupt GOP cabal in Alaska. And she won.

Today, Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in the country.

Of course, questions remain. Though she has taken on GOP leaders in her state, she has been friendlier to their pork projects than I like.

But while some belittle her experience, her readiness to be president, I say, think again: Twenty or 30 years of Washington experience disqualifies a candidate for the job.

Now, I don’t mean to speak ill of politicians … well, yes I do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

McCain’s Admission

John McCain is a man on a mission. But it was his admission that Republicans in Washington have lost their way that jumped out at me as I listened to his speech accepting the Republican Party presidential nomination.

“I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party,” he told Republicans. “We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.”

Everyone already knows this. We’ve watched power politics triumph over principle.

But it was still nice to hear McCain say it. The first step toward solving a problem is to recognize you have one.

McCain went on to admit, “We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger.”

Oh, yeah, a whole lot bigger.

I began shouting about Republicans selling out principle early on, when, after Republicans took the House back in the 1990s, they quickly also took a dive on enacting term limits.

And the sell-​outs just kept coming. Republicans traded their rank and file supporters for a bevy of big special interests.

McCain says he wants to take the party “back to basics,” vowing “low taxes, spending discipline, and open markets.”

That’s the right message. And McCain’s opposition to earmarks is to his credit. But are voters ready to believe it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political challengers

A Plan for Republicans?

Three. Count ’em. Three special elections where congressional Democrats have defeated Republicans in seats previously held by Republicans, the latest in Mississippi.

GOP Minority Leader John Boehner offered reporters, “[T]his is a change election, and if we want Americans to vote for us, we have to convince them that we can fix Washington.”

Republicans are in big trouble. Because no one much believes they even want to fix Washington, much less that they could accomplish the task. Unless Boehner means “fix” in a different sense, as in “the fix is in.”

Years of pork-​barrel pig-​outs have taken a toll on the public. After losing the majority in ’06, congressional Republicans are poised to lose a lot more seats in ’08.

Not because folks are inspired by congressional Democrats. Not at all. No, the problem is the negatives associated with Republicans, who have discredited themselves.

In Mississippi, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spent $1.8 million on ads blasting the Republican candidate for raising taxes.

To win elections you have to connect with voters. Pledge to do what voters want.

I remember back in 1994, when Republicans took the Congress. They had a Contract with America. They had ideas, actual plans. What were they? Hmmm … Balanced Budget Amendment … Term limits … Spending restraint … political reforms.

Hey! Should we remind the Republicans about this?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense free trade & free markets insider corruption nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Welfare Kings

Bear Stearns. You gotta like an investment company with the word “bear” in it. If you are the kind of investor to go bullish over anything big, Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc., was BIG. For years its subprime mortgage biz made investors go all squirmy with bullishness.

They could pretend that the word “bear” was there for irony.

Call it prophecy, instead: The Bear Stearns bull lies on the ground, gored. Time to sell off the carcass.

The Federal Reserve has forced through a takeover deal, with J.P. Morgan buying out the dead bull. At a low, low price — though not nearly as low had the Federal Reserve stayed out. It’s another so-​called capitalist bailout, an attempt to make a failure not seem so big.

This is not free-​market capitalism, folks. This is big business welfare-statism.

In their normal run of operation, businesses negotiate the uncertainties of markets using tools like the profit-​and-​loss statement, aiming for profit. When they don’t manage this, they fail. Remember that term, loss?

Well, in today’s truly bipartisan political economy, the bigger you are the more scared our rulers get when you fail. So they prop up, as best they can, the biggest failures.

Forget welfare queens. The welfare kings are businessmen on the take from government. The losers are everybody else, as idiotic risks and bad business practices get propped up by government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Ptolemaic Obama

I’m all for democracy, but I’m sure glad science isn’t put up for a vote. If geocentrism were up for political grabs, would governments be forced to go against Galileo again? After all, a plurality could say: See, the sun rises and sets — all the proof you need that the sun revolves around the Earth!

Just so with trade policy. There are few truths so firmly established as comparative advantage and the notion that with free trade we all gain.

But some see only the negatives, fearing competition. Who? Some businessmen, some workers.

Which is why Barack Obama has been making noises to renege on NAFTA.

Now, NAFTA is no free trade utopia. It’s a real-​world political document that freed up a lot of trade, far from perfectly. Still, most of the complaints against it are nonsense.

Which is also why major Obama campaign consultants have whispered to Canadians that, no, Obama does not mean what he says. The candidate’s only saying nasty things about NAFTA to pick up extra votes.

I don’t know what Obama really believes. Right now he’s pandering to the protectionist Democrats. I am glad, however, not to feel such a need to lie.

And I am happy to affirm, once again, that the Earth revolves around the sun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Nifty Doesn’t Cut It

Just because something can be done doesn’t make it economical to do. There is a big difference between physics and economics.

Take ethanol. It might seem nifty to grow the fuel for our cars and trucks like we do our food, in fields. But niftiness alone is not enough. Nifty notions, like un-nifty ones, must prove out in terms of all the costs involved.

A growing amount of research shows that ethanol doesn’t cut costs at all.

The most recent ethanol debunker I’ve come across is Robert Bryce, author of a forthcoming book with a provocative title, Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence.” Interviewed on ReasonOnline by Brian Doherty, Bryce offers some fascinating perspectives on energy economics and policies.

  • Did you know that for every gallon of ethanol, there’s at least 51 cents of subsidy?
  • Had you heard that corn-​based ethanol produces more greenhouse gases than does our use of fossil fuels?
  • Have you stopped to think about all the water that raising more corn would require, and the increasing expense of getting gargantuan more amounts to farms in the midwest?

These and other considerations lead Robert Bryce to call current ethanol policy a “scam”and “the longest running robbery of taxpayers in American history.”

Some forms of bio-​product may be more economically feasible than ethanol, like the biodiesel made from the unused parts of slaughtered animals. But we should wait to see how they cost out, too, without subsidy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Powell Power

Should we be getting ulcers over the “digital divide” — the tragedy that not every single American already has a computer and Internet access?

Michael Powell, son of Colin Powell and the new chairman of the FCC, doesn’t think so. Shortly after he started his new job, the press asked him what he thought of the so-​called digital divide. Powell said, “I think there’s a Mercedes divide. I’d like one, but I can’t afford it.” 

Powell also said that he thought the very concept of a digital divide is a bit misleading. That’s because it “suggests that the minute a new and innovative technology is introduced in the market, there is a divide unless it is equitably distributed among every part of the society, and that is just an unreal understanding of the American capitalist system.” Powell noted that the end-​of-​the-​line of that way of thinking is pure socialism.

Every time something new comes along you’d have to make sure everybody has it or nobody has it, which would kill innovation and economic improvement. Just so the politicians can have something to do. After all, every big new thing on the market is expensive at first and only the few can afford it. Then it gets cheaper and cheaper and more and more widely available.

That’s been the pattern with cars, plane travel and TV sets, and certainly with desktop computers and the Internet. It’s not a terrible thing; it’s a great thing. More power to Powell. Instead of pandering, he made it clear that in America you aren’t supposed to get everything you want, just what you earn.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

More Politicians?

Even in good economic times, Americans are unhappy with our government. So when someone suggests that what we really need in Washington are five times as many politicians as we have today, well, my first thought is, “Are you crazy?”

But that’s exactly what Bob Novak advocates in his new book. Novak says let’s increase the U.S. House from 435 members to 2,000. But cut the salary of each representative to one fifth what we now pay. It would mean that instead of representing 500,000 people, a congressman would represent about 100,000 people. More personal campaigning and fewer TV ads.

A candidate without much money would have a better chance to speak directly to voters. Instead of spending over a million dollars on their office and paying congressmen more than $140,000 a year, they’d get only $200,000 on their office and $28,000 for salary. Are career congressmen likely to chop their own personal power to do what’s best for the country and the institution of Congress? Nope. But they do talk a lot about taking the big money out of politics.

Well, if they’re serious, this is one way to do it without destroying the First Amendment and handing incumbents the power to regulate their opponents. Increasing the number of congressmen would strengthen the connection between the representative and the individual citizen. I never thought I’d say it, but we could use more congressmen. They would represent us better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability judiciary national politics & policies

Broken Contract

Politicians say Social Security is a solemn contract between government and the people. Well, a contract is enforceable in court. And in our litigious society it’s not surprising that someone did take the government to court to get what he said he was owed from Social Security.

The case, Flemming v. Nestor, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. After paying in year after year, care to guess what the High Court says you are entitled to from Social Security? Is it (a) a set monthly payment, (b) at least 10 percent of what you’ve paid in, © whatever is behind door #3, or (d) whatever Congress says you get? The court’s answer was (d) whatever Congress says you get. Some contract.

The politicians are charging us over 15 percent of our income, but not guaranteeing us any specific benefit. You could die without ever getting back a dime, and your family wouldn’t get a dime either. Politicians have broken the contract on Social Security. They admit we must fix the System, but do nothing. They’ll simply wait until the money runs dry, blame others and then raise your taxes, slash benefits, or both.

Term-​limited Representative Mark Sanford has a different plan. He says take Social Security out of the hands of politicians and let Americans control their own financial futures. Sometimes tough problems have pretty easy solutions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.