Category: responsibility

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

While the Clock Ticks

national debt, debt clock, Mercatus Center, economics, economy, folly,

Pushing annual federal spending over a trillion bucks into the red?

It has consequences.  

“Our debt is growing, and it’s growing fast,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason. “Though it’s a shame that lawmakers passed tax cuts without cutting spending to offset short-term losses in revenue, there’s no doubt that Social Security and Medicare deficits are almost entirely to blame for our impending debt crisis.”

Ms. de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, has a typo in the version of her article that I read (it has probably since been corrected): “Based on current trends, the debt held by the public is set to reach $15.7 trillion by the end of this year and continue rising to $28.7 trillion by 2028.” She surely meant “$25.7 trillion,” since the current debt clock figure shows the U.S. public debt at over $21 trillion. Still, $25.7 seems a bit high . . . but at this point we can leave the exact numbers to the professionals.

We just know that the debt’s too damn high.

As de Rugy explains, it has present as well as future cost. And, yes, entitlements are the biggest problem — but even more than Ms. de Rugy suggests. Congress owes the Social Security “trust fund” (in Al Gore’s infamous and non-existent “lock box”) nearly $3 trillion.

Our solons would have to (painfully) switch from revenue deficits to revenue surpluses just to pay off its debt to a much-relied upon institution.

What will happen, though, is surely this: Congress will borrow more from elsewhere to pay what Social Security needs — which all too soon will be a lot more than $3 trillion.

That’s not Common Sense. (But I am Paul Jacob.)

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ballot access education and schooling folly ideological culture media and media people Popular responsibility

Fiddling with the Franchise

voting age, democracy, elections, adult, maturity

In 2013, Tacoma Park, Maryland, became the first place in the U.S. to allow 16-year-olds to vote in local elections.* Now, Washington, D.C., Councilman Charles Allen, “inspired by the high-schoolers who are campaigning for gun control and filled D.C. streets last month in a massive protest that mesmerized the country,” reports the Washington Post, wants to follow suit.

“It’s pretty hard for anyone to watch the events of the last couple of months,” claims Councilman Allen, “and not understand the pure power and maturity of incredibly young voices.”

Well, they do use adult words.

One has to wonder: would the “maturity” of these young adults equally amaze this politician, were they advocating opinions** with which he disagreed?

But wait a second . . . wasn’t one of the demands of the “March for Our Lives” to raise, not lower, the age when a person would be deemed mature enough to legally purchase a scary-looking rifle?

Lowering the voting age seems odd, at best, with society lurching in the other direction — raising the age of adulthood for everything else. Decades ago, the legal age to purchase alcohol was 18 in some places; today it is 21 everywhere. In Virginia, one may still drive at 16, as I could back in the day . . . but now there are limits on other young people riding in the car unless the driver is 18.

More ominously, facilitation by many public schools of the recent student walkouts and marches present the strongest argument against lowering the voting age: So long as government schools act in a partisan manner, indoctrination and intimidation would be rampant.

Who wants a captive audience of would-be voters most?

Unscrupulous ideologues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Greenbelt and Hyattsville, Maryland, as well as Berkeley, California, have since joined Tacoma Park in allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections.

** Term limits, say. Or school vouchers. Or the rights of gestating humans.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

The Myth of the Monoliths

NRA, monolith, March for our Lives, members, gun control, guns

According to organizers of the “March for Our lives,” the National Rifle Association is wholly evil, a corrupter of democracy, a malign presence straight out of Mordor, bent upon murder — a monolithic influence responsible for every mass shooting event.

The clearest expression of this is by young David Hogg, who figured that the NRA’s sum of contributions to Sen. Marco Rubio, when divided not by the number slain in the recent Parkland shooting but instead by the total number of students throughout Florida, came out to $1.05 per student.

Forget the computation — think nasty imputation.

What Hogg and his friends in the media elide is a simple little fact: the NRA is a membership organization. When critics of the Second Amendment point at the NRA and shout “evil!” they are really pointing at the organization’s millions of members.

People, not malign institutions.

Also neglected? The fact that, as near as I can make out, not one NRA member has mown down students in any school or church in America. Instead, at least one civilian NRA member took out his AR-15 to bring down one such mass-murdering shooter.

“Evil NRA” talk is misdirection and slander.

Also not a monolith? Students. Christian Britschgi, writing at Reason, notes that teenagers made up only 10 percent of marchers at the recent rally, and, catching a whiff of astroturf, cites a poll that found less than a majority of Millenials favoring an “assault rifle” ban.

Citizens of all ages disagree. Pretending that all kids are against guns, or that the NRA is anything other than a citizen advocacy group, distorts reality.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government

You’re Fired!

Veterans Administration, health care, VA, waste, waiting time, Secretary Dr. David Shulkin, Donald Trump,

If government were reality TV — and it is — this current administration would obviously be The Apprentice.

Who do you most want fired?

Last week, President Trump gave Veterans Administration Secretary Dr. David Shulkin the heave-ho, after a “damning” Inspector General’s report not only charged Shulkin with misusing tax dollars but also detailed myriad problems at the VA that continue to “put patients at risk.”

In a New York Times op-ed, the former Secretary defended his “tenure at the department,” arguing that he had “expanded access to health care by reducing wait times, increasing productivity and working more closely with the private sector.”

Speaking of the private sector, however, Shulkin suggested his firing was orchestrated by those favoring privatization — and that “privatization leading to the dismantling of the department’s extensive health care system is a terrible idea.”

Last April, President Trump signed the Veterans Choice Improvement Act, expanding the ability of vets to access private medical care outside the confines of the VA system. Why? Because IG investigations discovered that wait times were actually killing veterans — and the VA bureaucracy was actively covering up the problem.

“Critics have questioned whether increasing veterans’ reliance on private doctors might move the VA toward privatization,” the Washington Examiner noted at the time, “while proponents of such efforts have accused the VA of resisting steps to implement the program in order to protect the status quo.”

Vets deserve a choice, not a bureaucracy. After failing veterans for decades, Status Quo, you’re fired!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard privacy responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Ecstatic with Independence

free range, freedom, Utah, children, walk, outside, law, hysteria

Utah’s legislature unanimously passed it; the governor signed it — the nation’s first measure protecting what’s become known as “free-range parenting.”

It was once known simply as “parenting.”

Certain activities are now exempt from a state law criminalizing child neglect. Children may legally “walk, run or bike to and from school, travel to commercial or recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended” — thereby allowing “a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities . . .”

Back in the day, we apparently played outside in a sort of statutory limbo.

Do we really need a law saying kids can walk on a public street?

Sadly, yes: government agencies across the country are grossly violating the most basic rights of parents to rear independent children.

Regular readers may recall my 2015 defenses* of the Meitiv parents against the absurd charge of “unsubstantiated neglect” leveled against them by Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services. Ultimately, Maryland authorities acknowledged that permitting one’s kids (in the Meitivs’ case, a 10- and a 6-year-old) to walk on a public sidewalk (from a local park) wasn’t prima facie evidence of a crime. 

The current free-range parenting movement was launched in 2008 when Lenore Skenazy publicly admitted — to mass shock and condemnation — to allowing her 9-year-old son to take a trip alone on New York City’s subway.

“My son got home,” she wrote in the New York Sun, “ecstatic with independence.”

Notice how rare it is to find anyone ecstatic with dependence.

Lesson? An old one: Happiness must be pursued with freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* My writings on the Meitivs’ battle to keep their kids:

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Abortionists’ Cartoon Advice

planned parenthood, left, Trump, extremism, radical, Trump, funding

Let it not be said that Planned Parenthood lacks for principles.

When Donald Trump offered a deal, last year, to fund Planned Parenthood only if the organization would stop doing abortions, the company immediately clarified the situation. “Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept,” said the outfit’s executive vice president. “Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is nonnegotiable.”

And, for Planned Parenthood, abortion is indeed critical. “The Trump administration needs to stop playing political games that would put access to the full range of safe reproductive care at risk,” said Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-NY), “or they will get the fight of their lives.”

Well, that fight was won by Planned Parenthood. The politician who once said he would “shut down the government” over the abortionist enterprise has caved after various roadblocks. Trump signed a stopgap omnibus spending bill, last week, which continues to funnel $500 million towards the outfit.

So, as if to celebrate, a Pennsylvania branch of the abortion mill — er, “reproductive care” service — engaged in a bit of ebullience, a “light-hearted” tweet:

We need a disney princess who’s had an abortion

We need a disney princess who’s pro-choice

We need a disney princess who’s an undocumented immigrant

We need a disney princess who’s actually a union worker

We need a disney princess who’s trans

This caused a firestorm.* And not because its Disney obsession was silly. The problem? The tweet showed that Planned Parenthood is really, really committed to valorizing the killing of fetuses. And that its agenda is far, far left.

The outfit should be left without taxpayer funds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Tweet was quickly removed.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-too familiar, is a horror . . . run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.”

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-income people,” he insists. “But low-income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-income people.”

After all, web-based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights

Good Guy With Gun

Blaine Gaskill, school shooting, gun, gun control, Maryland, defense, 2nd Amendment

Short version of the story: a good guy with a gun at a Maryland high school stopped a bad guy with a gun. In less than a minute. How? Because the good guy had a gun and was inside the school with the gun.

The bad guy was able to shoot a 16-year-old female student, apparently someone with whom he had a previous relationship, as well as a 14-year-old male before an officer on site responded. This officer, Blaine Gaskill, was on the spot in less than a minute. Gaskill and the assailant fired simultaneously. The assailant fell dead. What exactly happened is still unclear; there has been some media speculation that the bad guy may have shot himself.

But the 17-year-old shooter is dead. The female victim, though still alive, is unfortunately in critical condition. The male victim is in stable condition.

The good guy was armed — with a gun. And he was on site. If you’re learning about the incident here first, it’s because the story isn’t being plastered all over the place 24-7 as it would have been had the shooter been able to wreak much more havoc because nobody could quickly counter him.

So, is it okay to let responsible, well-trained administrators, teachers and others in schools be armed?

Well, ask the question a different way. If you happened to be inside the school at the time, would it be okay to survive when some maniac with a gun starts shooting at you and others inside that school?

Let’s defend our loved ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom individual achievement local leaders political challengers responsibility

Liberty Rising?

Nick Freitas, Republican, Virginia’s House of Delegates, libertarian, conservative freedom

“Let me make something very clear,” Nick Freitas stated unequivocally. “I don’t have a political career.”

Freitas, a Republican member of Virginia’s House of Delegates announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate, was responding to advice that running against incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine “could hurt [his] political career.”

It’s music to my ears. And to Matt Kibbe’s. The leader of Free the People calls Freitas “the most interesting liberty Republican you’ve never heard of.”

Yet, in Virginia’s conservative networks, Freitas has made quite a name for himself, defending the Second Amendment and fighting Medicaid expansion in a one-seat GOP-majority House.

“You can’t fix everything through government force and coercion,” he explained to Kibbe. “If the path we’re going down, which is just ‘let us manage the federal government as it continues to expand, as it continues to increase debt,’ that’s just not a Republican Party I’m interested in.”

Del. Freitas added that the American people seem similarly uninterested.

Perhaps he is simply telling us what we want to hear. He wouldn’t be the first bait-and-switch politician. But Freitas isn’t exactly playing for the bleachers by naming Calvin Coolidge rather than Ronald Reagan as “the best president of the 20th century.”

And he talks about individual liberty, which, he explains, is “based off the premise that I have a right to pursue happiness in accordance of what my definition of happiness is, so far as it doesn’t infringe on your right to do the same thing.”

He had me with “I don’t have a political career.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Self-Defense, Implausible?

gun, gun free, school zone, control, schools, teachers, Israel, defense, gun control

Don’t take a GUN-FREE ZONE sign to a gun fight.

Whenever there’s a horrific incident of mass murder, advocates of citizen disarmament blame the right to protect oneself against armed attackers. The thinking seems to be that if we make it illegal for all civilians to have guns, bad guys willing to kill people will also refrain from using guns as they try to kill people.

This is implausible.

And if you do not see its implausibility immediately regarding firearms, consider drugs. Not taking them, but the war on same. Drugs didn’t vanish upon prohibition. Neither would guns if prohibited.

President Trump argues that students would be safer were schools a harder target. Why not arm well-trained teachers? “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.” He’s right.

Not a new idea, of course. It’s been argued, for example, by the NRA, whose chairman says that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

This idea is being practiced right now — in Israel.

As Tzvi Lev argues at the Arutz Sheva 7 site, Israel proves the NRA’s point.

Even Israel — where Arab communities are “rife with illegal weapons” despite their illegality — has not always been quick to recognize that it’s better to have lots of armed civilians when terrorists start shooting at civilians. But after terrorists attacked a school in 1974, the government began arming and training teachers — somehow failing to defer to the terrorists’ preference for gun-free zones.

In both of the only-two school shootings in Israel since then, teachers killed the attackers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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