Category: responsibility

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responsibility tax policy too much government

March to Bankruptcy

I have warned, before, about the upcoming double-​barrel crisis aimed at the U.S. financial system: The insolvency of the U.S. government itself, as entitlement debt can no longer be kept afloat by FICA withholding, and as Treasury debt can no longer be maintained on a monthly basis simply because it has grown too big.

Last week our entitlement system’s trustees said that the current recession is so undermining Medicare Part A that payments for elderly care will fail in eight years, with Social Security itself imploding in less than 28.

That is, if the economy doesn’t get worse.

Medicare Part B, covering doctors’ visits and outpatient care, and Part D, covering prescriptions, are right now insolvent, sucking money from general revenues.

This crisis rushes closer, even as our president insists on reforming health care in ways that will almost certainly add new entitlements — which will also have to be paid for. 

President Obama says that more government will do the opposite of what it’s done in the past. Until now, government involvement in medicine has increased costs and prices. Now he says what he’ll do will make for more “efficiency.”

Why do politicians believe in the magic of their new programs rather than the history of their old ones?

Why is it that, in politics, irresponsibility rises to the top? 

However you answer that, the march to bankruptcy is picking up pace.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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responsibility

They Kicked His Own Sand In His Face

John Ulizio became the CEO of U.S. Silica in 2003. That year alone, the firm got 20,000 specks of sand kicked in its face — 20,000 lawsuits insisting that the company was causing a deadly lung disease. Ulizio has been fighting back ever since.

U.S. Silica processes sand. Silica. Silicon dioxide. Grinds it so that it can be used in everything from glass to Kevlar.

Clouds of sand dust may sound like a horrifying health hazard. Maybe worse than SARS, swine flu, and psoriasis put together, judging by the spate of litigation against Ulizio’s company. But lawyers don’t necessarily need sound medical evidence to go for lawsuit gold. Sometimes they just make it up.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the harassment of U.S. Silica was even more blatant than this. After many years of costly court battles, a federal judge has concluded that that Silica was the victim of massive, unadorned fraud. Doctors involved now admit that they didn’t even see the patients allegedly suffering from the disease … just did what the lawyers told them. The fraud fell apart, and the frivolous lawsuits against U.S. Silica have abruptly abated.

Now vindicated, Ulizio is amazed that “finally, after all these years, somebody is seeing the truth.” Sad that we live in a world where this took so long. Lucky that it’s a world with folks like John Ulizio.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom responsibility

Good Guys and Bad Guys

There are two types of people, those who divide people into wicked capitalists and saintly victims, and those who don’t.

The folks at ACORN, a lefty activist group, see only evil capitalists and downtrodden everybody-else.

Columnist Michelle Malkin reports how ACORN champions the cause of homeowners crushed by the credit crunch and housing collapse. Except that some of their poster-​child victims are hardly innocent.

A few weeks ago, as a mob cheered and cameras recorded, an ACORN gang broke into a padlocked home in Baltimore. It had been owned by Donna Hanks, expelled when the bank foreclosed. “This is our house now,” ACORN activist Louis Beverly declared, with Donna by his side. 

Man of the people, right?

Except that Hanks was not merely hammered by circumstances. She bought the house in 2001 for $87,000, but later refinanced for $270,000 — money she presumably spent. In 2008 the house was sold for less than the new loan but more than twice the 2001 price. In 2006, Hanks declared bankruptcy, but did not comply with the terms of the court. Malkin gives further details of her irresponsibility, but you get the idea.

There are innocent victims hurting, now, in the current financial collapse. But being a borrower rather than a lender tells us nothing by itself. As the antics of ACORN show, either can be the victim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.