Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Universal Bull

“We have term limits, they’re called elections.”

So goes one argument, famously paraphrased by President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe for an African Union summit: “It is a democracy. If people want a leader to continue, let him continue.”

“All over the world,” Owen Bennett-Jones writes at BBC.com, “leaders…are reluctant to give up power.” He points to a number of cases, mainly in nations struggling for democratic stability:

“The most striking current example,” according to Bennett-Jones, “is Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza who, amidst violent opposition, is campaigning for a third term in office despite the constitution saying he can only have two.” The president’s spokesman acknowledged, “ Nkurunziza indeed believes he is president by divine will.”
In Burkina Faso, thousands clogged the streets after the 27-year presidential incumbent, Blaise Compaore, schemed to evade a constitutional term limit on his office. But facing unrelenting pressure, Compaore soon stepped down.
Speaking about his campaign to have the parliament eliminate term limits so he can run for re-election, Ecuador’s socialist President Rafael Correa told reporters, “The easiest thing would be for me to retire in 2017 as one of the best presidents in our history, as the people refer to me.” Correa’s decision to reluctantly remain in power has sparked protests across the country.

It is easy to recognize the sad abuse of power by these “third world” strongmen. Yet, we are continually fighting politicians in “first world” America.

When will politicians ever learn?

When the people are organized enough to assert power over those politicians . . . in Ecuador . . . Burundi . . . and the good ol’ US of A.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags democracy, dictators, elections, term limits

Thought

James H. Boren

“Bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.”

James H. Boren, in When in Doubt, Mumble: A Bureaucrat’s Handbook (1972).

folly free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement national politics & policies

Set aside all the snake oil that sleazy, slippery-tonged solons have sought to sell us, now comes the Bush behind Door #3 to tell the teeming masses of tailing media what we need to do . . . if Americans want to grow economically as a country, and succeed individually.

We need to work more.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush was just casually tossing about that four-letter word in a recent meeting with the editorial board of the Union Leader in Manchester, N.H.:

My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is four percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That’s the only way we’re going to get out of this rut that we’re in.

Work more? Harder? Longer?

How dare Jeb suggest that our future success, together or individually, should be dependent on us . . . of all people?

Democrats immediately pounced. A statement from the Democratic National Committee called Bush’s remark “easily one of the most out-of-touch comments we’ve heard so far this cycle.”

“Americans are working pretty hard already & don’t need to work longer hours,” tweeted John Podesta, chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, “they need to get paid more.”

We all “need” a lot of things. The point is we are all better off when we go out and earn what we need.

Well, that’s my point, anyway.

And, perhaps, Jeb Bush’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, economy, Hilary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Presidential campaign 2016

Thought

Thomas Jefferson

“The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.”

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787).

links

Townhall: The Cynics and the Minimum Wage

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 12, 2015
No Comments on Townhall: The Cynics and the Minimum Wage

This weekend at Townhall, a recurring subject, but with a British twist: why support a minimum wage if it doesn’t do the good claimed for it? Maybe the backers don’t uniformly want the good. Could they want the bad?

Which brings up the question of cynicism. We who aim to help the poor, as opposed to those who advocate policy just make themselves feel good, should be immune from the charge of “cynicism.”

Even if we are often very skeptical of the politics and rhetoric surrounding “the minimum wage.”

Click on over, then back here for more reading:

Minimum Wage, Maximum Damage, by Jim Cox
“Reich is Wrong on the Minimum Wage,” by Donald Boudreaux
“A Simple Question for Minimum Wage Advocates,” by Donald Boudreaux
Last week’s Common Sense, “A British Puzzle,” that gave the short version of this weekend’s Townhall lesson.
For an overview of the main economic theories of wage-rate determination over the last 300 years, an economicconcepts.com article goes into some detail. It is better than Britannica’s account, for example, in that it does not give any credence to “the bargaining theory,” which, too often, assumes that prices do not really matter, are infinitely malleable by powerful negotiators. That just cannot be true. Prices have consequences. Wage rates do, too. They should reflect real supplies and real demands, so we can adapt ourselves to real human needs and not phantom wishes and hopes and dreams that can come to nothing.

Tags minimum wage, regulation

Thought

Thomas Jefferson

“…he [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers; is the warfare of the Christian king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.”

Thomas Jefferson, from the original draft of the Declaration of Independence (July 3, 1776), known as the ‘anti-slavery clause,’ this section was removed from the Declaration at the behest of representatives of South Carolina.

video

VIdeo: Rand Paul and Federal Bayonets on Local Police Rifles

Post author By Redactor
Post date July 11, 2015
No Comments on VIdeo: Rand Paul and Federal Bayonets on Local Police Rifles

Fascinating confrontation:

Thought

Thomas Jefferson

“Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786).

Accountability general freedom tax policy

The People Supreme

“We’re the only state in the nation,” wails Wade Buchanan of the liberal Bell Policy Center, “where you can only raise revenues, taxes, by a vote of the people.”

Buchanan is talking about his state of Colorado and defending his side in the Kerr v. Hickenlooper case, which features 34 card-carrying members of Colorado’s political elite — sitting legislators, former legislators, former U.S. congressmen, local politicians and other assorted bigwigs — suing the voters of Colorado for having the gall to pass the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) initiative back in 1992.

Lovers of big government call TABOR a disaster; most Colorado voters like TABOR and will vote to keep it.

The crux of the case? The ridiculous notion that legislators have some cockamamie constitutional right to levy taxes and spend money without the people empowered with any veto. “When the power to tax is denied,” the suit alleges, “the legislature cannot function effectively to fulfill its obligations in a representative democracy and a Republican Form of Government.”

Immediately, however, the legal issue is whether the politically powerful Kerr plaintiffs even have standing to bring the lawsuit.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that had granted standing, returning the case to the appeals court “for further consideration in light of Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission.”

That’s good news.

“Most tellingly,” constitutional scholar Rob Natelson points out in a Denver Post column, in that Arizona case “the court praised direct democracy and held that it was ‘in full harmony with the Constitution’s conception of the people as the font of governmental power.’”

Font? We’re the boss.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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