It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?
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Spring Cleaning
For the fifth year in a row, the Washington Post has offered readers a two-page spread, “Spring Cleaning: 10 Things to Toss Out,” featuring ten people on what to cleanse from our society.
Also for the fifth time, the Post’s email asking for my “thing” was obviously snagged by my spam filter. Computers!
Still, ten is a number I can easily count to — here’s the Post’s list:
- Ben Bernanke? The measure carries! Wait . . . do we get to vote?
- Compliments? Really? Well . . . good try.
- Retweets are not endorsements? Skip.
- Flip-flops? Wrong channel.
- Innovation? Love it. And yet I look forward to the new, upgraded version of any computer program like a shot of the Ebola virus with a long, dirty needle.
- Red Lines? Foreign Policy’s Editor Susan B. Glasser tossed out red lines, noting that in Syria “The ‘red line’ has been crossed . . . And Obama is backed into a predictable corner.” By all means, if the Great O cannot live up to his red-line proclamations, let’s been done with such lines. And the color red, too.
- The term “Working Mother”? Meaning: ALL mothers are working mothers. Heck, I can testify; I probably made the mess.
- College Rankings? It’s unanimous.
- Texas? Couldn’t we just move the Dallas Cowboys from the Eastern Division of the National Football Conference so Washington doesn’t have to play them?
- Automatic Tax Withholding? This was Milton Friedman’s idea to get money into the government faster during World War II. Since regretted. But not going anywhere anytime soon.
Too bad that doggone email didn’t arrive, but let me present the eleventh thing to toss out: Career politicians.
Time again to clean both House and Senate.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry David Thoreau
Talk of mysteries! — Think of our life in nature, — daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, — rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?
Talk is cheap. And hey: this weekend’s Common Sense column over at Townhall.com is free!
But the president’s sanctimonious talk is cheaper yet, because his actions are about everything but high-minded principles. Including freedom.
Click on over to the column, and then come back here for more links to more reading.
- LobeLog: Obama Condemns Indefinite Detention (And His Own Record)
- New York Times: Amid Hunger Strike, Obama Renews Push to Close Cuba Prison
- Slate: President Obama Can Shut Guantanamo Whenever He Wants
- Breibart: Jon Stewart Mocks Obama for Guantanamo Bay Posturing
- MSNBC: Obama signs 2013 defense authorization, minus indefinite detention ban
The author of two very popular histories, 1491 and 1493, is here interviewed, discussing the great exchange of species (and specie) after the discovery of the New World:
On a pedantic note, Mr. Mann apparently had not read (at the time of this interview) E.M. Forster’s classic essay on political systems, “Two Cheers for Democracy.” And he mentioned “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” a famous essay not by William F. Buckley (whose name he suggested as the work’s author) but, instead, neo-conservative Irving Kristol. But, no matter, this remains a fascinating discussion, and makes me want to read his books. Or at least buy them. (Finding time to read a book is getting harder and harder, it seems. One of the points made in this excellent discussion is that labor is the only thing getting more expensive, over time. Reading is work, if very fun work.)
John Tierney conducts the interview, and has a great segment in the question-and-answer period towards the end.
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William H. Prescott
The authority of the Inca might be compared with that of the Pope in the day of his might, when Christendom trembled at the thunders of the Vatican, and the successor of St. Peter set his foot on the necks of princes. But the authority of the Pope was founded on opinion. His temporal power was nothing. The empire of the Incas rested on both. It was a theocracy more potent in its operation than that of the Jews; for, though the sanction of the law might be as great among the latter, the law was expounded by a human lawgiver, the servant and representative of Divinity. But the Inca was both the lawgiver and the law. He was not merely the representative of Divinity, or, like the Pope, its vicegerent, but he was Divinity itself. The violation of his ordinance was sacrilege. Never was there a scheme of government enforced by such terrible sanctions, or which bore so oppressively on the subjects of it. For it reached not only to the visible acts, but to the private conduct, the words, the very thoughts, of its vassals.
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John McCrae
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
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The Wild Punch
Who hasn’t wanted to punch a politician?
But a fracas in Athens, Greece, yesterday, demonstrates that punching people, not to mention threatening them with firearms, is a bad idea, and too often apt to harm the wrong people.
In this case, the pugilist, Giorgos Germenis, was himself something of a “wrong person.” He’s one of 18 lawmakers in the Greek parliament representing the Golden Dawn Party, which is often described as “neo-Nazi” for its ugly nationalist, anti-foreigner sentiment — and for an awfully suspicious party logo.
Germenis had been part of a charitable effort held in Syntagma Square to hand out free food . . . but only to Greek natives! The government shut down the giveaway, and the scuffle, hours later, was part of the fallout. Reportedly blocked from reaching for his gun by security, Germenis threw a punch at Athens’s mayor, Giorgos Kaminis.
He missed the mayor, but hit a young girl.
Bruised, but not seriously hurt, the 12-year old did manage to escape becoming the centerpiece of the showdown between the anti-foreigner activists and the Athens City government.
Greece’s troubles don’t really have much to do with foreigners. Greek troubles, instead, have everything to do with Greek politicians, and the sad, once politically attractive but now quite bankrupt (fiscally and morally) habit of trying to live at the expense of everyone else.
Blaming foreigners is the wrong way out. (Here in America, too.)
Germenis’s group should have been allowed to give only to natives, but a hallmark of civilization is the respect for strangers, traders, wanderers. The Golden Dawners don’t have their hearts in the right place.
Which is shown by the wild punch and who it hit. An innocent. As usual.
This Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The federal government encourages a certain “spin” regarding wages and salaries. Both taxation and regulation enforce a kind of accounting fraud in nearly all wage contracts. Employees receive a statement when they get paid, but that statement is not complete. Only half of an employee’s Social Security contributions are listed, for example — though, from the employers’ point of view, that unlisted “employer’s contribution” is just as much a part of a workers’ wage as the amount written on the check.
Most folks don’t see a full dollar-value listing of their benefit package at time of payment, either.
Of course, some things just can’t be accounted for in money terms.
In charming, smaller towns — like, say, Traverse City, Michigan, or Port Townsend, Washington — folks have been known to explain those towns’ somewhat depressed wage rates with a rhyme: “The view of the bay is part of your pay.”
And then there’s job security.
In a 2012 report comparing private sector jobs to federal government jobs, the benefit of public sector job security went unacknowledged. Naturally enough.
What we learn is that government employees tend to make a bit more that private sector employees, but, when you include benefit packages, their rates of remuneration are much higher — 16 percent higher.
But then, if to prove that the government really is all about equality, it’s not at the top end that government workers prove wildly overpaid; it’s at the less-credentialed “low end.” These job pay 36 percent more than comparable private sector jobs.
What is often not addressed in the wage and benefit debate is the fact that lower-skilled private sector workers are also disproportionately harmed by federal regulation, subsidies and other misguided policies.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Daniel B. Klein
Government is a unique player in society, and rules and norms have emerged that recognize that uniqueness. We tolerate governmental coercion that we would not tolerate from private parties, and not only because the government is more resolute and better armed.