Category: responsibility

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folly porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

A Bullet Train to the Head

California, high speed, rail, boondoggle, waste, illustration

Romanticism. The yearning for greatness; the need for speed. Efficiency! It’s all there in California’s high-​speed rail project — hopes and dreams and a sense of the grandeur of progress.

And yet the bullet train project, approved by voters in 2008, is a fiasco.

One can blame the voters, I suppose. At least the 53.7 percent who said yes to a referendum authorizing a 9.95 billion bond. Just to get the project started.

But we shouldn’t, really. All the people pushing the bullet train notion (from Los Angeles to the Bay) said that most of the investment would come from private investors. Further, it would require no ongoing subsidies.

Those assurances, however, “were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con,” writes Virginia Postrel for Bloomberg.

How bad is it? Total construction cost went from a $33 billion to $68 billion — despite route trimming. The first segment, which is understood to be the easiest to build (shooting through an empty stretch), is four years behind schedule, and still lacks necessary land.

The list of failures goes on and on, and includes a dearth of investors. And then there’s the estimate of the company who got the first bid on the project. It says that the line will almost certainly not be self-sustaining.

“The question now,” Postrel concludes, “is when they’ll have the guts to pull the plug.”

Corruption, hope without realism, business as usual — all these are revealed in the project. And wasn’t the second season of True Detective about this? Let’s hope this real-​world fiasco ends with less bloodshed.

Californians have already lost enough in treasure!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility

The Climate Cassandra

Global warming, climate change, illustration

Thirty years ago, in June, 1986, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met to consider the problems of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change.

Present at those hearings was today’s climate Cassandra, James Hansen, then of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. And he was predicting that “global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years,” according to Associated Press reporting at that time.

There was some sloppiness either in Hansen’s account, or the AP’s, for in one part of his testimony Hansen claimed that his institute’s climate models projected, for “the region of the United States, the warming 30 years from now is about 1 1/​2 degrees C, which is about 3 F.”

Ronald Bailey, the science writer over at Reason, tries to make sense of this mess of numbers, models, and predictions.

Oh, and actual, tabulated results.

Hansen’s predictions went, as Bailey put it, “definitively off the rails when tracking the temperature trend for the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2016. Since 2000, according to the NOAA calculator, the average temperature trend has been downward at ‑0.06 F degree per decade.”

That’s not the whole picture, though: “global temperatures have increased by 0.51 C degree since 1986, so perhaps the man-​made global warming signal has finally emerged.”

No matter, though, as Bailey notes, “the United States and the Earth have warmed at considerably slower pace than Hansen predicted 30 years ago.”

Which suggests that Hansen’s models may be inspired more by wish, fear, and ideology than genuine science.

So, to those who wish to rush to “do something” (anything?) to combat “climate change,” take it slow. Follow the pace of the Earth itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Global warming, climate change, illustration

 

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Common Sense responsibility

Fatherlessness

father, father's day, dad, Paul Jacob, role model, illustration, photo

Yesterday was Father’s Day; tomorrow, I’ll attend my father’s funeral.

Ample opportunity to reflect on missing Dad … and dads.

My father was two months shy of 85 years. He lived a long, full life with a loving wife of more than 60 years, six children he adored and who felt likewise about him, 13 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

He started his own small business and achieved his version of the American Dream: to be his own boss.

More than a decade ago, when my pop was fighting through open heart surgery, I wrote in this space that he was, in the words of one of his favorite movies, “the richest man in town.” Sadly, he’s no longer in town.

Except that he still is … in me. And in my kids and their kids.

As an adult, admittedly I haven’t often asked my dad for advice. Why? Because I already know exactly what he would say. I like that. And thankfully that voice remains.

Moons ago, I also acknowledged that I was privileged, but argued “My Privilege Isn’t White.” Instead, my advantages mostly came from growing up in a home with two loving parents.

We Homo sapiens learn by imitating others. Hence the term “role model.”

Nowadays we often hear about poor role models when some spoiled-​brat sports celebrity or narcissistic rock star behaves badly. As a teenager, I had their posters on my wall. But my dad served as my 24/​7 role model.

He still does.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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father, father's day, dad, Paul Jacob, role model, illustration, photo

 

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crime and punishment responsibility

Don’t Demand Too Much

police, law enforcement, prevention, law, response, illustration, photo

It’s commonly said that government is here to protect us. Well, that’s one theory.

In the wake of the horrible massacre at the Pulse in Orlando, Florida, I’ve been hearing a lot of murmuring. People are wondering why a man who had been interviewed by the FBI several times in relation to possible terrorist activities could have legally purchased firearms without flagging greater attention.

Others complain that it took the police three long hours to gather themselves and enter the Pulse, to rescue the living, and kill (as they ended up doing) the shooter, Omar Mateen.

Where’s the protection? Where’s the security?

Governments don’t seem to be much good at that.

And why should we expect them to be?

It’s hard to collate information well — though the government had everything it needed, what it lacked was the sense and the willpower to do it. Why? Because novel, dispersed information is hard to deal with.

And let’s not second-​guess the Orlando police. It’s a tough job dealing with a killer who wants to kill as many people as he can before he is, himself, killed.

If we wanted real security, real protection, we’d be more armed ourselves (the Pulse had security personnel, but the night club was a gun-​free zone, so that’s not much protection), and we’d hire, by contract, security professionals to protect us.

Government police aren’t here to protect us. We have them to clean up after something terrible has happened. Re-​establish order. Seek justice against the perpetrators. And, thus, provide “security theater,” more than security itself.

Governments are good at some things.

Just don’t expect more than they can deliver.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: Elvert Barnes on Flickr

 

Categories
moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Sit, UBI, Sit: Play Dead

Swiss, Switzerland, UBI, Universal Basic Income, socialism, robots, illustration

This weekend, the Swiss people rejected the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) with a whopping 77 percent against.

That’s the kind of overwhelming result that one finds in America for, say, term limits. And 23 percent, you might notice, is about the percentage of the population in America of hard-​core “liberal” progressives, the kind of people usually in support of such measures.

In Switzerland’s case, it was a measure put on the ballot by one group, Bien-​CH. But if you are thinking “socialism,” the group insists that that’s the wrong way to think about the plan. UBI is needed, the group’s website says, “to grease the wheels of the capitalist economies” facing a declining need for workers as a result of technological advance.

Yes, UBI is a policy designed to accommodate the coming horde of robots! How? By “increasing demand” by spreading out wealth from the connected-​to-​tech few to the witless-​about-​tech many. (How vulgar Keynesian.)

The Swiss government urged a No vote, fearing a need to raise taxes by fifty percent. Quite a hike.

Meanwhile, the notion garners worldwide interest, and even libertarian social scientist Charles Murray promotes this guaranteed income idea (under a different initialism), mostly to streamline the costly bulk of the welfare state.

I’m dubious.

After all, about our latest industrial revolution, in artificial intelligence and in robotics: I say open up labor and entrepreneurial markets from excessive regulation, and allow networking advances to transform capitalism on its own terms, with person-​to-​person (P2P) cooperation (think AirBnB and Uber and Lyft) and much more.

The best is coming, I bet. If clunky proposals like UBI don’t get in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Swiss, Switzerland, UBI, Universal Basic Income, socialism, robots, illustration

 

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Accountability government transparency nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Disneyland vs. Politicians

V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

Last week, when asked by reporters about the arguably deadly wait times that vets have endured (or not), Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald replied, “What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the VA. When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? … What’s important is: What’s your satisfaction with the experience?”

The national commander of the American Legion, Dale Barnett, calls the remark “an unfortunate comparison”:

“People,” after all, “don’t die while waiting to go on Space Mountain.”

The secretary also errs about Disney, as Fox News’s Neil Cavuto noted. Disney does measure the time people must wait in line. The for-​profit company goes out of its way to entertain folks while they wait.

But the clowns running the Veterans Administration shouldn’t take up entertainment.

Fix the problem. 

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders both seek to throw more money at the VA. They seem most concerned in protecting the Veterans Administration, not veterans. And Sanders’s real beef turns out  to be with Disney.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, tweeted: “Obama’s VA Secretary just said we shouldn’t measure wait times. Hillary says VA problems are not ‘widespread.’ I will take care of our vets!”

But will he? Through the VA system?

A zillion reform efforts have failed.

Let’s demand more than a simple promise sans details.

Do congressmen wait months to get a medical appointment? No. Then why not close the VA and give veterans the same healthcare coverage as our (pardon the term) representatives?

On this Memorial Day, who comes first: the vets or the politicians?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

 

Photo credit: Xiaojun Deng on Flickr