Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Withdrawal, with Enduring Presence

President Barack Obama recently signed a much ballyhooed Strategic Partnership Declaration with Afghan President Harmid Karzai, ostensibly to remove all U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. He trumpeted the withdrawal in pursuing a second term, aware that most Americans want out. A late March New York Times poll found 69 percent of the public against our continued presence.

Yet when Mr. Obama’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was questioned, last Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” about the Taliban gaining strength awaiting a U.S. pullout, he replied, “Well, the most important point is that we’re not going anyplace. We’re gonna, we have an enduring presence that will be in Afghanistan.”Afghanistan

So, our forces can somehow both leave the country and remain there . . . simultaneously?

Yes, they can!

Well, no. The administration is being duplicitous. Our leaders plan to leave a “residual force” in country for the next ten years. Americans will train (and pay for) the Afghan army. When our state-fed media report that U.S. combat troops are all leaving, tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO soldiers will almost certainly remain.

If you ask me, our original goals in going to war in Afghanistan have been achieved — it is long past time to bring all troops home. But whatever one’s view, we can surely agree that our leaders ought to talk honestly about issues of war and peace. Not trick us.

President Obama should admit that just like his likely Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, he has no plan to actually remove the United States military from Afghanistan within the next decade . . . or ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Voltaire, “Rights,” 1771

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Categories
Thought

Roger Pilon, May 14, 2012

We’ll know soon enough whether foes of [Gov] Scott Walker made a bad bet on the recall, but either way, Wisconsin made a bad bet years ago in initiating America’s public-sector union movement.

The incentives thus established — with concentrated benefits for state employees and dispersed costs for taxpayers — have made it all too easy for politicians to cave in to union demands, resulting over time in government workers with benefits far exceeding anything a rational market would afford – or those who pay for the benefits (taxpayers) can afford. Not surprisingly, therefore, states with strong public-sector unions — California, Illinois, New York — are today in economic disarray.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Learning from Krugman

We often have much to learn from our intellectual opponents. But some opponents we must deal with only because they are there . . . in some inescapable way.

Paul Krugman, for instance, is a Nobel Laureate economist. We deal with him not because his technical work is more relevant than the work of a hundred other economists, or because he wrote a really fine essay on the law of comparative advantage. Or because some Swedes thought enough of him to give him a big award and cut him a huge check.

We deal with him because he has a column and a blog at the New York Times.Paul Krugman, economist of a different color

And for the Times he’ll commit almost any sort of fallacy or public foolishness. Thanks to the New York Post, you can read a grand demolition of Krugman’s modus argumenti. “Krugman is a most unusual economist,” Kyle Smith writes:

Others may measure their words, issue caveats, acknowledge that the research isn’t conclusive, admit that their biases influence their reading of facts. Not Krugman. . . . He changes the subject, ignores inconvenient evidence and plays playground bully to people he sees as ideological enemies (a list longer than Nixon’s). He blasts away at others’ work without even providing the basic courtesy of a link to what he’s talking about. . . .

And Smith goes on, in part to review Krugman’s new book, End This Depression Now! (turnabout being fair play, no link from me). Not surprisingly, Krugman’s advice is a Democratic politician’s delight: spend more. Lots more.

Smith’s destruction is funny, and devastating. My complaint with Krugman has long been his relentless partisanship. But Smith reminds me that we have something to learn from Krugman, too: How not to promote a cause we regard as good.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Davy Crockett, after being defeated in the 1830 congressional elections for opposing the Indian Removal Act

“I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized.”

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Dragon by the Tail

The idea of a man-made satellite was conceived first by a science fiction writer. Space travel was often depicted as a private activity in that genre, with sci-fi master Robert Heinlein, especially, imagining private launches of rockets as well as private travel from Earth to Moon, and beyond.

But for fifty years, governments have directed — and still direct — money, technology and manpower to develop outposts in space. The current International Space Station is a multi-government project. The rockets that lift payloads of Earth’s surface and into orbit, allowing the station to continue to operate, have all been state-run efforts.SpaceX Falcon rocket launch for Dragon

Until now.

Last week, a private company launched a rocket into orbit, and this weekend its unmanned cargo ship, named Dragon, was caught by a robotic arm and dragged in to dock with the space station.

“Looks like we got us a Dragon by the tail,” came the words from out there.

Since mothballing the Shuttle program, NASA has been hiring Russian rockets to launch American payloads, thus meeting American “obligations” to the international effort. Now, with this first successful private launch to a space station, NASA will be able to rely on more local technology and expertise.

By contracting with private firms like SpaceX — the enterprise that launched Dragon — NASA hopes to save money. Its current contract with SpaceX amounts about $1.6 billion.

We can argue about the necessity of developing “outer space,” I know. But if contracting out with private enterprise can save money over government-run efforts, and at the same time encourage the old science fiction dream of private business in space, that seems like progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Julia Ward Howe, the American abolitionist and poet, born on this day in 1819, from “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat:
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”

Categories
links term limits

Townhall: California’s Cross-dressing Ballot Initiative

California politicians are at it again, as you can see on Townhall this weekend. And come back for the links:

Categories
video

Video: Beyond Hypocrisy

Penn Jillette says that the President’s oh-so-cool chortling over his past drug use has an element of class warfare:

I think he is right. But it is worth noting three things:

1. President Obama does more than “condone” the federal drug war, he has actively upped it, carrying on George W. Bush’s breach of promise not to trump state’s medical marijuana laws.

2. This is not a new phenomenon. Both Clinton and Bush Jr. were guilty of the same offense, if not quite so egregiously.

3. It is possible to agree with Penn without echoing his rather vulgar speech.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Rocky Mountain Low

In the closing days of this year’s legislative session, Colorado Rep. Lois Court sponsored a bill that would have amended the state constitution to require a 60 percent supermajority to pass any future constitutional amendments. This issue had previously been floated to — and defeated by — voters in 2008, as Referendum O.

In 2009, 2010, 2011 and again this year, this attack on the citizen initiative had been introduced in the Legislature, but beaten back by a coalition of citizens and policy groups, including Common Cause and the Colorado Union of Taxpayers.Louis Court, Colorado

This year, Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels informed us that Court’s bill had been “hijacked.” Republican Rep. Jon Becker amended it in committee, requiring the bill’s 60 percent supermajority to apply to any amendment to the state constitution — an idea so repulsive that even Court voted against her own bill.

But there, oddly, is where Bartels’s explanation ends.

You see, Court’s legislation mandated a supermajority to pass a new constitutional amendment, but not for repealing past constitutional amendments — at least, not past amendments proposed by citizens.

Why? Look no further than TABOR.

Passed by citizen initiative in 1992, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights amendment requires any increase in overall government spending, or any tax increase, to be approved by the politicians’ boss: the people of Colorado.

Therefore, Court and her fellow legislative Democrats seek a supermajority to block any future amendment like TABOR, while at the same time allowing TABOR to be more easily nixed with only a simple majority. They want two sets of books, two sets of standards, one for the people and another custom-made for them.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.