Categories
tax policy

End the IRS?

Every day: more revelations, more questions.

Was the IRS’s repressive targeting of Tea Party and similar groups seeking tax-exempt status “accidental”? Were only a few rogue or harried clerks responsible for the repressive targeting? Did anybody in the White House know about the repressive targeting as it happened? What does the frequency of IRS commissioners’ visits to the Obama White House tell us? What about the IRS union chief’s visit with Obama just before the repressive targeting began?

And that’s not all. How similar is the latest IRS repressive targeting of the enemies of those in power to previous IRS repressive targeting of the enemies of those in power? What about all the other forms of riding roughshod over individuals’ rights that the IRS routinely perpetrates?

And then there’s the practical question: What do we do about the mess?

Well, we could try to curtail the allegedly “unusual” abuses of government power and rights violations.

But what if the problem runs deeper?

Former presidential candidate Ron Paul argues that the problem lies “in the extraordinary power the tax system grants the IRS.” He very plausibly puts the current scandals in the context of the bureau’s central mandate: “The very purpose of the IRS is to transfer wealth from one group to another while violating our liberties in the process. Thus the only way Congress can protect our freedoms is to repeal the income tax and shutter the doors of the IRS once and for all.”

Hard? Yes. Doable? Yes — but only if such ideas catch on with more leaders than just the indefatigable Ron Paul.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

F. A. Hayek

It may indeed prove to be far the most difficult and not the least important task for human reason rationally to comprehend its own limitations. It is essential for the growth of reason that as individuals we should bow to forces and obey principles which we cannot hope fully to understand, yet on which the advance and even the preservation of civilization depends.

Categories
national politics & policies

Ending One War for Another?

The most important thing we could do to protect the American people and win the War on Terror would be to end the War on Drugs.

That’s the logical conclusion from what Admiral James Stavridis, the former head of U.S. Southern Command and then NATO supreme allied commander, wrote for The Washington Post on Sunday, in a column titled, “The dark side of globalization.”

The admiral didn’t actually call for an end to drug criminalization in the U.S., or even for a less militaristic approach to it. But he did importantly warn us that, after 40 years as a Navy officer, what “keeps him awake at night” is the “convergence” of narco-terrorism.

“Drug cartels use sophisticated trafficking routes to move huge amounts of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines. Terrorists can in effect ‘rent’ these routes by co-opting the drug cartels through money, coercion or ideological persuasion,” wrote the admiral. “These organizations can then move personnel, cash or arms — possibly even a weapon of mass destruction — clandestinely to the United States.”

Preventing the delivery of mayhem to our shores, “a weapon of mass destruction” being top of the list, ought to be Job 1 — right up there with scrutinizing the non-profit status of tea party groups and paying Lois Lerner while she’s on leave.

Seriously, if we can remove the most likely nasty network for that dark delivery in one fell swoop, why wouldn’t we?

Plus, according to one estimate, we’d save more than the $17 billion we’ve already spent this year on a losing police-and-courts approach to a health issue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
links

Townhall: Rand Paul is wrong

Rand Paul is running for the presidency. You can tell, because some of his statements seem designed more to assuage fears of his radicalism than make sense of the current and worsening crisis. Click on over to Townhall, for this week’s Common Sense column, and then come back here to links for further reading.

Categories
video

Video: The Federalist View of the Constitution

The United States Constitution is widely misinterpreted today because, in the 19th century, the nationalist interpretation of the document won out. But establishing a nation-state wasn’t the intent of the founders — clearly, if one looks at the debates over ratification in the states. For remember: it was the states that debated and accepted a narrow view of the Constitution as establishing a federation. Not a “nation,” and certainly not an empire.

Two notes of caution: 1. This is a conversation between historian Tom Woods and historian Brion McClanahan, and they are pitching a series of online lectures that I’ve not seen (but am tempted to take a look at: perhaps you will be, too). 2. This is a YouTube video, and many of the comments are not worth reading because ill-mannered and crude.

Categories
Thought

F. A. Hayek

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Fed Up

No one is really fit to “run the economy.” The pretense of the ability can be fun to watch, amongst economists as well as pundits. But because they’re doing the impossible, what they say can lurch from wisdom to utter folly in the space of a paragraph.

Neil Irwin, at the Washington Post, admits that the Federal Reserve’s current policy of pumping more and more money into the economy may finally be working, “but that may not be a good thing.”

I suspect he’s right.

But not for the right reason.

Irwin notes that the Fed “in September introduced a policy meant to boost housing and stock prices, and now, nine months later, housing prices and stock prices have risen quite a bit. Enough, indeed, to (so far) offset the impact of higher taxes that went into effect Jan. 1 and federal spending cuts that took effect March 1.” But the problem, he goes on, “is that these channels through which monetary policy affects the economy tend to offer the most direct benefits to those who already have high incomes and high levels of wealth.”

Irwin sees the problem as inequality: the policy helps the rich get richer and does little for the poor. His solution is fiscal policy that throws more money directly at the poor.

Yet there’s not much reason to believe his preferred giveaway would actually “stimulate” the economy. The Fed’s current policy, on the other hand, may stimulate, a bit, but will lead to a new boom-bust cycle.

The poor need jobs; the rich need to invest. But all this requires a degree of stability and trust and sustainable prices — not government-knows-best tinkering with the money supply. Or yet more deficit spending.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

Ding Jinhao Was There

Boys will be boys. And tourists will be tourists.

Not long ago, a graffito was spotted on an ancient Egyptian wall — a stone relief, with pictographs and representations and the whole gamut of ancient Egyptian art — photographed and then posted to the Internet, where it got more than 100, 000 comments.

It was soon discovered to have been scratched into the wall by a 15-year-old lad from Nanjing: his mark read “Ding Jinhao was here.” And then came the firestorm. Though the BBC tells us that Egypt’s ministry of antiquities has dubbed the scratchmarks “superficial,” the “controversy comes days after Wang Yang, one of China’s four vice-premiers, said . . . that the ‘uncivilised behaviour’ of some Chinese tourists was harming the country’s image.”

Welcome, China!

Previously, the world had been blessed with the Ugly American, the Annoying European, and the Over-Photographing Japanese — tourists from wealthy or up-and-coming countries not uniformly presenting their respective nations in the best possible light as they tramped abroad.

In this case, though, it’s worth noting that most of the scandal is confined to China itself. The bloggers’ ire was primarily an in-group thing, and even the government (especially the government?) has gotten in on the shame game bandwagon, trying to needle tourists to behave themselves. (So much so that the desecrating teen’s father pleaded for the critics to let up — “too much pressure,” he said.)

As an I-try-not-to-be-ugly American, I appreciate the Chinese concern for manners and image — honor, really. And hope that all their graffiti remains easy to repair, and that the concern for national honor doesn’t go too far in over-reaction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Voltaire

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Doctoring, Priced

Any number of economists will tell you that medicine just has to be different from other goods and services provided on the market. They will offer elaborate theories to explain, for instance, why competitive markets won’t work for health care, and why more government is necessary, and why, in fact, today’s hospitals don’t publish their prices.

I see this mainstream “explanation” as mere apologetics, designed to justify evermore government. The truth is that medicine is “different” because legislation — at local, state, and federal levels — has made the industry different. It’s an accident of history, not something “natural” to this particular market.

But, as Obamacare further consolidates medicine under the government rubric, there appear some daring examples of non-compliance. The latest is from Dr. Michael Ciampi, of South Portland, Maine, whose family practice group has stopped accepting insurance payments of any kind, public or private.

Posting its prices on the Web, Ciampi Family Practice claims to offer substantial savings over other providers. And other benefits, too, including house calls:

Because we no longer contract with insurance companies, Medicare or Medicaid, we can be more flexible and innovative. We use technology when it helps us take better care of patients, but we refuse to use it for technology’s sake. We will not spend our visit staring at a computer screen instead of looking at you. We can also spend more time with patients than the typical provider in a “big box” medical practice. . . . We do not have physician assistants or nurse practitioners.

Ciampi is not the only (or biggest) provider to do this.

Could competition just erupt without a government-provided “solution”? Could “the market” provide the leadership medicine needs now?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.