“Reason, like the Sun, is Common to All; And ’t is for want of examining all by the same Light and Measure, that we are not all of the same Mind: For all have it to that End, though all do not use it So.”
William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, #169
Washington Post scribe Dana Milbank is panicked about the “chaos on Capitol Hill.”
He hyperventilated, in a recent column, concerning the difficulty Republicans are having in choosing a new Speaker of the House, after the announced resignation of current Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), then the sudden withdrawal from the race by House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), and now the reluctance of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) to seek the post.
We’re informed of the speaker’s importance — “second in line to the presidency” and “key to national security and domestic tranquility” — as if Milbank, alone, has access to a Constitution.
Yet, is it really “chaos” or continued gridlock that’s bothering our company-town columnist?
If it were, Milbank wouldn’t focus his attacks solely on conservative Republicans for their unwillingness to “compromise” (read: surrender). Both Democrats and so-called establishment Republicans seem equally adamantine.
According to Milbank, these conservative “hardliners” and “zealots” constitute “a rough crowd” who employ “thuggish tactics.” Why, they have “hijacked the chamber”!
How so?
They had the audacity to not always vote lockstep with Speaker Boehner; they balked at supporting the Speakership for Rep. McCarthy; and (heavens!), they even dared communicate their viewpoint to voters in McCarthy’s home district.
Could free political speech still be allowed by law?
Milbank reviles the “efforts by conservative groups to depose [McCarthy] before he ever took the throne.”
Depose? Throne?
Milbank even laments that Eric Cantor “would have been speaker today” had only voters in his district not voted for somebody else. Pesky voters!
Methinks Mr. Milbank has been lounging around the halls of power a tad too long.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“We started off a group of interested citizens that didn’t like the way things were going, particularly the way taxpayer money was being spent in Kansas City. Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.”
Dan Coffey, Kansas City Star, October 12, 2015
Mayor Sly James loves his city: Kansas City, Missouri.
He dreams of a shining new airport on a hill, a land of milk and honey with a new, luxurious, taxpayer-financed downtown hotel. He envisions it as a harmonious hub in which the thrill of . . . waiting for a richly subsidized streetcar is ubiquitous.
Yet, at every turn, a group of pesky citizens, Citizens for Responsible Government, has dashed the mayor’s dreams.
How?
“This is democracy at work,” claims Dan Coffey, serving as the group’s spokesperson.
For his part, the mayor offers, “I respect the people’s right to voice their opinion, but . . . I’m going to fight for this hotel deal.”
A man of principle!
Mayor Sly has taken to calling Coffey’s group CAVE — “Citizens Against Virtually Everything.” Coffey only notes that the mayor has left out a letter: the acronym should be CAVES — “Citizens Against Virtually Everything Stupid.”
“We started off a group of interested citizens that didn’t like the way things were going, particularly the way taxpayer money was being spent in Kansas City,” Coffey recently told the Kansas City Star. “Everybody talks about it, but nobody does anything about it.”
Coffey’s group has changed that dynamic . . . using direct democracy.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Social Security, like similar systems in Europe, is on a trajectory to insolvency, which could lead to a sovereign debt crisis.
The reason for the crisis? Social Security has always been a pay-as-we-go system, dependent on many workers paying in to a system that sends their contributions to a smaller number of retirees. When the number of retirees expands above the ability of workers to cover at established rates, the system goes broke. Meanwhile, all the system’s budget overages from the beginning to the present date have not been saved and invested. Congress has been taking the overages and spending them, putting IOUs in a notebook.
It is a serious problem.
Or, it isn’t! That is, not if you believe The Nation, which states in a recent article that this is all the result of a legally mandated “bogus” accounting conceit. The Congressional Budget Office, you see,
assumes that Social Security and Medicare Part A will draw on the general fund of the US Treasury to cover benefit shortfalls following the depletion of their trust funds, which at the current rate will occur in 2034.
That would obviously lead to an exploding debt, but it’s a scenario prohibited by law.
The Nation’s somewhat confused author suggests the dire warnings are wrong because “Congress could preemptively pass laws to avert the situation before the deadline; it could take the approach favored by progressives and increase revenue to the programs by lifting the payroll tax cap, or alternatively raise the retirement age and lower benefits.”
Well, yes. But until a fix happens, the doomsday warning stands.
Why does he think we make the warning?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Politicians like to spend citizens’ money. But what about those citizens? They tend to want to spend their own money, and not give it up to politicians to spend. Thus, one of the great political tensions of our time. Click on over to Townhall.com for this week’s foray into local politics and the idea of citizens being in charge.
Then come back here for more reading:
There is no one hated more by today’s “progressive” left than Charles Koch and his younger brother David, the captains of industry and philanthropists. Why? Because they are EVIL? Or just because of their sometimes surprisingly effective political patronage?
So, this interview of Charles Koch, by Megyn Kelly of Fox News, is worth looking at:
The second half of the interview:
“A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it.”
William Penn, Some Fruits of Solitude, #537
President Barack Obama pledged we’d be out of Afghanistan by 2016, but yesterday announced a “modest but meaningful extension of our presence” — keeping the 10,000 troops currently stationed there for all of 2016, and then, in perpetuity, maintaining a force five times larger than previously planned.
Why? Because, after 14 years of conflict and nation-building, Afghanistan is still neck-deep in violence. Last month, the Taliban briefly captured Kunduz, a city of over 250,000 people. Going forward, Obama admitted, “There will continue to be contested areas.”
The Afghan government is not self-sustainable and nobody seems to know how many years or decades or centuries that might take to achieve.
Meanwhile, over in Syria, the U.S. cannot train more than four or five moderate soldiers after much bluster and promise — and splurging a cool $500 million.
The U.S. invaded and “regime-changed” Iraq, helping shape a new government and national army. With all that effort — a cost of thousands of lives — once our soldiers weren’t doing the daily fighting to tamp down the bloody sectarian chasm, ISIS formed, the Iraqi army ran away and the country soon collapsed into civil war.
The Iraq Conquest put southern Iraq into Iranian orbit. How many lives was that worth?
The problem? Not military incompetence. The mission is the problem. Has any politician or military leader plausibly put forth a plan whereby our country’s intervention actually creates an improved and sustainable political order in any of these nations?
If so, let’s see it.
If not, why are our soldiers still in harm’s way?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“One cannot live for ever by ignoring the price of coffins.”
Ernest Bramah, Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat