Category: national politics & policies

Pigs Flying Too Close to the Sun

Post author By Redactor
Post date August 1, 2019
1 Comment on Pigs Flying Too Close to the Sun

What should we “fight for” in politics? The readily obtainable, the remotely possible, or the obtainable only when the proverbial pig flaps its muddy wings?

You might think this would be a pressing concern for Democrats running to oust Donald Trump from the presidency. You know, practical politics being something established political parties actually do. Yet, in Tuesday’s Democratic candidates’ debate, some of the night’s loudest applause went to Senator Elizabeth Warren, for her response to all the . . . negativity . . . from John Delaney.

“You know,” she said sternly, stridently in that tone only some of us find grating, “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for.”

Really?

She is not running under the Green or Libertarian Party banners. Green candidates can talk about getting rid of all internal combustion engines, and Libertarians can talk about their opposition to drivers’ licensing.

They have license.

Because flightless pigs give them license.

But Senator Warren has a chance.

At some point, you’d think, she has to take seriously what American voters can tolerate, not just what will make progressive activists in the debate audience “erupt,” as CNN put it. Or what Democratic primary voters will demand.

It is worth noting that Delaney, a former U.S. Representative from Maryland, was mostly concerned about the Sanders-Warren healthcare plan that, he says, would take away from workers benefits they now possess.* The fact that Senator Warren is willing to risk union worker support to play for the utopian vote is . . . interesting

And Delaney’s right — it has to be good for Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Delaney’s argument that Warren found so offensive: “I think Democrats win when we run on real solutions, not impossible promises, when we run on things that are workable, not fairy tale economics. Look at the story of Detroit, this amazing city that we’re in. This city is turning around because the government and the private sector are working well together. That has to be our model going forward. We need to encourage collaboration between the government, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector, and focus on those kitchen table, pocketbook issues that matter to hard-working Americans: building infrastructure, creating jobs, improving their pay . . . creating universal health care, and lowering drug prices.”

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national politics & policies The Draft

No Exceptions

John Delaney, conscription, selective service, slavery, involuntary, freedom,

“It’s time to bring the country together,” says Rep. John Delaney (D-Maryland), aspiring to be our next commandeer-in-chief, “restore our sense of shared purpose and a common and inclusive national destiny.”

How?

Forcibly: “John Delaney’s Plan for National Service” stat e s that “Every American will complete a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years of mandatory national service when they graduate high school, or turn 18.”

Delaney joins other glassy-eyed statists in hallucinating that “mandating national service” will “build a future where young people begin their adult lives serving their country and working alongside people from different backgrounds.”

That is, he explains, “Where people . . . who grew up in the suburbs, in farm towns, in coal country, in urban communities get to know each other, get to learn from each other, and get to see firsthand that we still have a lot in common.”

Except that young people won’t “get to,” they’ll “have to.”

As a Delaney news release emphatically emphasizes about his forced national conscription: “No exceptions.”

If you’re a LeBron James type NBA prospect, forget that multi-million dollar contract for a year or two. You have streets to sweep.

If you’re pregnant? Have a terminal disease? This time isn’t yours but the government’s.

And why is it always young people who “get to” be shanghaied?

Never the politicians.

No matter how many fifty-something politicians such as Delaney find their fellow middle-aged cohort to be disunited and non-cohesive, no one ever suggests that his own age group — that he himself — be enslaved into government service.

For their own good, of course.

And the nation’s destiny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The New New Dealer

Pete Buttigieg, president, election, labor, gig economy, candidate,

Reason magazine’s Nick Gillespie finds “a lot” to like about Pete Buttigieg. He sees a candidate “who at his best represents a new generation in American politics and a principled unwillingness to go along with the most free-spending plans of his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

I have so far resisted the charms of the Mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

He seems dangerous to me, in part because he cuts quite a figure while appearing so calm and reasonable.

But Mr. Gillespie is not making a case for Buttigieg. The Reason editor has noticed a growing set of downsides to the pol, writing that as Buttigieg “starts to unveil more and more plans — to pack the Supreme Court, say, and to call for national service — he becomes less appealing,” which, if anything, understates the situation.

You see, Buttigieg “wants to destroy the gig economy in order to save it.”

Gillespie provides that “takeaway” from the campaign’s proposal, “A New Rising Tide: Empowering Workers in a Changing Economy.” Gillespie explains that the plan’s “focus is to force more regulations on employers and increase unionization among workers, neither of which is likely to make it easier for the economy to grow or the workplace to ‘more easily adapt’ to the needs of suppliers, workers, or consumers.”

There is a lot about the current labor markets (at record all-time highs, says the President) that definitely would not be helped by a plan to “organize” labor using the old idea of the strike-threat system.

Like a lot of Buttigieg’s positions, they seem warmed-over yesteryear progressivism.

FDR, but modernly packaged.

Making Big Government even bigger.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Lorie Shaull

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ideological culture national politics & policies

The Trump of the Will

Robert Mueller, disaster, testimony, collusion, exonerate, hearing,

It’s over — our long national nightmare is over.

Or is it?

Congress’s “movie” version of Robert Mueller’s book-length report on Trump-Russia collusion flopped. That is, Wednesday’s hearings were an “optics . . . disaster.”

The Democrats and their media cheerleaders had put so much stock in the event, hoping it would be a Triumph of the Will spurring the much-longed-for Trump impeachment, an inspiration to move the masses on to victory.

It turned out to be more an industrial film on early stage dementia, with Robert Mueller the befuddled protagonist, demonstrating that he was either slipping, or had not really been in charge of the report bearing his name.

Now, we sympathize with dementia patients.

But should we sympathize with congressional Democrats? And the Republicans, too?

They are as pathetic and evil and foolish and craven as they seem for reasons. We live in a time of crisis. They have politicked themselves into their respective corners; they now feel trapped.

Their desperation has given us Trump — The Antichrist to most Democrats and The Savior to most Republicans. I am pretty sure neither is true.

Trump is a sign of the times.

Maybe, in the smoldering ruins of the Mueller hearing conflagration, the case for impeachment — and for Trump as Russian Agent — will completely disappear. Democrats can regain their senses, and Republicans can go back to their theme of responsibility (as epitomized in their long-lost cause of balanced budgets and limited government).

But I won’t hold my breath.

The nightmare may be over, but Washington’s dementia is harder to recover from.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Popular

Bernie and Economic Law

One of the things Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is known for is his push for a $15 per hour “living wage.” But this is politics — a policy position is never complete until its advocates demonstrate just how idiotic the policy actually is.

As Bernie just did.

His presidential campaign has been embroiled in labor union negotiations and a mini-scandal.

Some staffers have been paid a flat salary, not according to a per-hour contract, making Bernie’s “living wage” commitment a bit murky. You see, these salaried employees worked longer hours than a typical 40-hour work week (as is common in political campaigns), dipping their wage breakdown below the $15/hour “minimum.”

Now, no one is more deserving of this bit of policy blowback than resplendent millionaire Bernie Sanders.

Yet, it’s his campaign’s response that is especially droll: reduced hours!

So, while in one sense staffers got a pay raise, they did not get more money. Which is, as Matthew Yglesias acknowledged at Vox, “exactly the point that opponents of minimum wage increases are always making — if you force employers to pay more, they’re going to respond by cutting back elsewhere.”

Ryan McMaken, at mises.org, dug deeper, noting that there are a number of ways that the new union deal could amount to cuts in real wages. By “cutting worker hours, the Sanders campaign elected to provide fewer ‘services’ in the form of campaign activities. In practice, this will likely mean fewer rallies, less travel, or fewer television ads.” Less chance for growth. And decreased likelihood for increased employment of other workers.

Not exactly shocking. But a lesson. A terrible way to run a business.

Or a campaign.

Perhaps we should say, “Thanks, Bernie!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Make Deficits Great Again?

money, case, window, floating, deficit, spending,

Is Donald Trump really “draining the swamp”?

It’s overflowing.

Stan Collender, writing last year in Forbes, noted just what a big spender the president really is. Now, an update: fiscal year 2019 sports a deficit of $1.09 trillion, up considerably from the $897 billion projected earlier this year; the next year is expected to nudge the deficit even higher, to $1.1 trillion.

The whys aren’t a mystery: it is politically difficult to cut an expected benefit to any constituency. It looks stingy — though it is the very opposite. Spending other people’s money — including taxpayers’ — is not generosity. For a politician, it is naked self-interest. Buying votes.

Worse than merely corrupt, it’s corrupting — since the People are increasingly tempted to look to government to supply special voting bloc advantages rather than the mutual, universal advantage of liberty and justice for all.

Collender speculated that a $2 trillion deficit is “definitely within view” because “Trump is demanding that federal spending and the government’s red ink be increased even further.”

Judd Gregg, writing yesterday for The Hill, summarizes current GOP fiscal policy as “now the most profligate and debt-driving party in the nation’s history.”

He’s not wrong, but I question his next line: “Fiscal restraint is no longer part of the cloth the Republican Party wears.”

Careful wording.

Republicans sometimes talk a good game, but are known to be big spenders when not opposing a Democratic president. The Class of 94 was effective against Bill Clinton. Under unified government in the aughts, though, under George W. Bush, they went on a spree.

Maybe Republicans just need a good enemy.

Bernie Sanders for President?

Perhaps any socialist Democrat will do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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