Nothing succeeds like success.
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There are few things less inspiring than listening to Republican and Democratic Party candidates and their flunkies discuss entitlement reform.
Last weekend, the Romney camp defended its newly acquired reform high-ground from assaults by the current administration. Rep. Paul Ryan had famously charged that the Democrats’ health care reform package of 2010 had “raided” nearly three-quarters of a trillion dollars to help extend Medicare-like benefits to younger populations. The Obama camp swears on a stack of, uh, Bibles, that all it did was cut waste and fraud and, yes, expanded services to seniors in the process and . . .
I don’t have the heart, or stomach, or liver (which organ is it that deals with bile?) to diagnose all this with scientific scrutiny, but I will say, off-hand, both sides look pathetic.
Who can believe that politicians and their hangers-on in the bureaucracies have actually honed in on — much less will actually cut —nearly a trillion dollars of waste, fraud and abuse?
Not that they aren’t there. It’s just that waste and fraud seem awfully stubborn, given that even those spending a lifetime in politics have made no progress against them.
Except during campaign speeches,
Washington politicians seem much friendlier to the wasters, fraudsters and abusers than to taxpayers. And the former are better organized, too.
It’s all preposterous.
And the supposed Republican reformers? They are “defending Medicare” so that older people don’t have to lose anything. But if the system is falling apart, it may be that the only fair thing is for every current recipient to lose something, so as not to lose everything.
The unmentionable truth? Waste is part of the system, and the programs are themselves fraudulent and abusive.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Bolesław Prus
Let people be happy according to their own lights.
It’s hot out, and I’m thinking of ants.
Specifically, I’m thinking of the City of Phoenix functionary who told Dana Crow-Smith and her fellow Christian proselytizers that they could not hand out bottled water in the 112-degree heat. She and her fellow “good Samaritans” lacked a permit for vending.
Though, as Brian Doherty noticed on Reason’s website, she wasn’t vending. She was giving.
One needs a vendor’s license to give?
Thankfully, lawyers have come to the rescue, claiming that the city has violated the good Christian lady’s “First Amendment right to freely exercise her religion, her Fourteenth Amendment due process rights, as well as Arizona’s Free Exercise of Religion Act.”
Specifically, Ms. Crow-Smith demands a formal apology from the city, hoping, she says, to avoid a lawsuit. She just wants to be able to hand out water as she spreads the gospel. “I don’t think it’s even about religious beliefs.” she said. “I think anybody should be able to give away water on the sidewalk to anybody.”
Anarchy! Chaos!
Government isn’t about freedom, or even “nice.” On the one hand, governments increasingly force people to behave like the Gospel’s Good Samaritan; on the other, if you spontaneously take on the role yourself, government folk want you to get permission, first.
Call it insect logic. Above the ant colony in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, there is written the ants’ totalitarian motto:
EVERYTHING NOT FORBIDDEN IS COMPULSORY.
Hot or cold, we must not let our governments take such insectoid philosophy as a principle. (Oh, and Phoenix? Apologize.)
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Bolesław Prus
A scoundrel will be a scoundrel, even with two university degrees.
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The Rest of the Story
One thrill of my lifetime occurred soon after I helped launch U.S. Term Limits in 1992, when radio commentator Paul Harvey phoned me to fact-check a story he was doing.
Harvey, king of radio back then, was a huge fan of term limits. And I was a big fan of him. I loved his quirky vocal mannerisms and the way he told us “the rest of the story.” Today, three years after his death, I’d like to bring you “the rest” of a few recent Common Sense stories.
I. “There is no Olympic medal for political dishonesty,” I concluded a recent commentary about a Missouri State senate race where the principled Ed Emery was wrongly and ridiculously smeared by State Rep. Scott Largent. “Let’s hope Show-Me State voters show Largent the agony of defeat.”
Well, voters did just that. In the August 7 primary, Emery narrowly defeated Largent.
II. Recall my rant on the California parks system apparently hiding $54 million from the department of finance?
With an investigation underway, the Sacramento Bee not only reports “a department that wanted to keep secret a reserve of its own special funds” and — surprise, surprise – the unauthorized use of those slush funds, but also “a springtime rush each year to spend money authorized by the Legislature to avoid having the funds return to the general fund.”
Seems the parks department may also have been dummying up million-dollar contracts to make funding look like it was spent when it wasn’t.
All while asking for donations from the public and closing parks.
III. Objected, I did, to the Obama Administration’s successful push to get a record number of people to sign up for food stamps. Others have objected to David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, who posted on Facebook that we should follow the advice of the National Park Service — “Do not feed the animals” — noting that, “Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”
Fowler was denounced for being insensitive, for calling poor people animals.
But aren’t all people animals?
We’re not potted plants.
And now you know the rest of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Mark Twain
Patriotism is merely a religion – love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare.
In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the Throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.
The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek.
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Video: How to Deal with the Police
Some useful advice:
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President John Tyler
Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette — the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.
The n-word got dropped on MSNBC’s The Cycle this week. The show’s co-host [No First Name] Touré called Mitt Romney’s use of the word “angry” to describe some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House as “the ‘niggerization’ of Obama”:
“You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.”
Naturally this led to a battle between Touré and conservative co-host S.E. Cupp. She took particular issue with the fact that Touré admitted that VP Joe Biden‘s “chains” comments were divisive, but is now calling Romney a “racist” for saying the Obama campaign is “angry.”
“Do you see how dishonest that is?” she asked.
Good question. But here’s a better one: Doesn’t talk of race and code-words obscure the real issue here, anger?
Romney shouldn’t be calling for the Obama administration to be less angry. He should be angry himself, and castigating the president and his crew for being angry at the wrong things.
We should be angry at the continuation of wars, foreign (the Middle East) and domestic (on psychoactive drug use), to the detriment of fiscal stability as well as our civil liberties.
We should be angry that the nation’s pension system has been systematically stripped of its surpluses for 77 years — by politicians in Washington.
We should be angry that federal (along with state) policy has interfered with medicine to such an extent that the most idiotic ideas around — nationalization/socialization — almost seemed plausible to a sizable minority of Americans.
We should be angry that the Democrats pushed through yet another expensive entitlement, “Obamacare,” while the rest of the federal government sunk further into insolvency.
And yes, we should be angry that our leaders can’t stick to decent issues.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.