A nuclear-power plant is infinitely safer than eating, because 300 people choke to death on food every year.
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Acting Accordingly
Last week, the British Parliament declined to support Prime Minister David Cameron’s call for joining a military action against Syria — an effort to punish the regime for its alleged use of chemical weapons against its own citizens.
Afterwards, asked on the floor of the House of Commons to confirm that he would not use force against Syria under “royal prerogative,” Cameron assured his country that, despite his strong belief
in the need for a tough response to the use of chemical weapons . . . I also believe in respecting the will of this House of Commons. It is very clear tonight that . . . the British Parliament reflecting the views of the British people does not want to see British military action. I get that. And the government will act accordingly.
How refreshing for a national legislative body to actually reflect the interests of the people, and for the government to abide by the will of the people. Perhaps this positive example from the Brits helped convince President Obama to seek congressional approval for the military strike he urges.
Process is important and, though Congress doesn’t do much of a job of representing us, I applauded the president’s decision.
Why the past tense? Because Time magazine reports that “Obama’s aides made clear that the President’s search for affirmation from Congress would not be binding. He might still attack Syria even if Congress issues a rejection.”
Yesterday on CNN, Secretary of State John Kerry said President Obama “has the right to do this no matter what Congress does.”
The Brits have authentic citizen-controlled government. Is ours just for show?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Henry George
Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.
Addicts all? No, but as a “body politic” we sure seem addicted to government.
It should come as no shock to realize that this addiction has hit the industry from which the metaphor arises. Take a look at Townhall.com this weekend. Regular readers may notice that the Common Sense column is an expansion of Thursday’s effort. I hope it’s even more clear, more convincing. The reason to oppose Obamacare is not that Obama approved it, or Pelosi pushed it through. It’s just more of the same-old, same-old, and we really could use a better prescription.
Click on over and then come back here, for further doses of reality (hope it’s not too much).
- Lies of Obamacare, Michael D. Tanner (Cato)
- Congress’s Obamacare Waiver, Michael F. Cannon (Cato)
- Obamacare as Big Brother, Michael D. Tanner (Cato)
- The Obamacare Fraud, by Shikha Dalmia (Reason)
- Obamacare Abominations, by John Stossel (FEE)
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Henry George
The struggle of endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has often been compared to — a war; and, like all war, it lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like the organization for war, be tyrannical.
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Video: Britain’s Syria Intervention Vote
Amazing. The British Parliament bucks the establishment warmongering.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEV6ySlsAmk
Public schools often get lousy report cards.
One big reason is that under the bureaucratically run government monopoly, teachers and administrators have no freedom to try fundamentally different approaches and be rewarded by consumers when they get it right. Educators must obey uniform and stifling standards.
Alas, too many of these public-school staffers are far from eager to shuck the mandatory mediocrity. They’re more worried about keeping their jobs and keeping captive their mis-taught and under-taught students. Such educrats oppose all policies — tax credits, vouchers, more autonomy for charter schools — that help students escape failing classrooms.
The educrats’ prejudice against educational freedom is being abetted by Obama’s “Justice” Department, suing to block school-choice policies in Louisiana on “civil rights” grounds. Obviously, no “civil right” is violated merely because a student attends a private school. But Obama’s lawyers want to make the issue about race regardless. Something about how it’s harder to maintain racial balance if too many children of a particular race leave public schools . . . even if fostering school choice makes it easier for all kids of whatever race to do so.
By Justice’s bogus standard of “justice,” then, actual justice — indeed, actual freedom and opportunity, even actual quality of education — must be shoved aside as irrelevant. What matters is only “racial balance,” no matter the injury to any student’s rights or well-being.
But preserving the jobs of educrats and preserving somebody’s idea of ideal demographics are not the purpose of going to school. The purpose is to learn.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Locke
The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is no law, there is no freedom.
Could medical insurance — insurance for “health care” — itself act like a drug?
Are we addicts?
Third-party (“insurance”) payments sure are super-convenient. But their convenience comes at a cost: insurance (and other third-party payers) that remunerate doctors and hospitals directly is what’s driving much of the price inflation in this sector.
Automobile insurance policies overwhelmingly pay the insured, not the mechanics, and we have no automobile repair crisis.
This was related with utmost clarity by Jeffrey A. Singer in his recent Wall Street Journal commentary “The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less.” A patient got an astoundingly better price for a surgery by simply setting aside his insurance program and paying in cash. Singer explains why:
- “Hospitals and other providers make their ‘list’ prices as high as possible when negotiating contracts with health plans and Medicare regulators. No one is ever expected to pay the list price.”
- “[M]ost people these days don’t have health ‘insurance.’ They have prepaid health plans. They pay premiums to take advantage of a pre-negotiated fee schedule arranged for and administered by a third party.”
- “It is the third-party payment system that interferes with true price competition, so ‘market clearing prices’ can’t develop.”
Singer reminds us that specialty services like Lasik eye surgery, which tend not to be covered by insurance policies, have improved in quality and gone down in price.
Alas, as he laments, the United States is “headed in the exact opposite direction” from a real, cost-reducing solution. To a nation addicted to third-party payers in medicine, Obamacare is nothing more than upping the dose of the same old drug.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Locke
The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.