Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

Practicing Competence Without a License

You just can’t win. Well, you can; but if you do win — or even just make a decent go of it — that only proves you’re cheating.

Before you object, please take a breath. Note the sterling sentences, above, with subjects and predicates and everything. I must be practicing grammar without a license! At least, that’s what the charge would be if I were to dispute the syntax of pronouncement from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

See, an official at NCDOT has accused David Cox, a member of a citizens group, of “practicing engineering without a license.” This was not just colorful rhetoric. The accuser filed a complaint with the state licensing bureau.

Cox’s group wants city and state officials to authorize traffic lights at a couple intersections. The Department of Transportation hired an engineering consultant to demonstrate that the traffic lights are unnecessary. In response, Cox helped prepare a sophisticated counter-analysis with diagrams and traffic projections. Cox, a computer scientist, did such a great job that he allegedly crossed the line from legal bumbling to illegal knows-what-he’s-doing.

I shan’t tear this notion to bits myself. You’re no doubt doing so in your head, and without first obtaining governmental permission — you outlaw! I will say that in this case, “practicing engineering without a license” might as well mean “petitioning of government without a license.”

But we don’t need licenses for that. We have the right. A constitutionally recognized right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Do the Business, People!

What can we do to help commerce? the French finance minister asked a group of businessmen in the late 17th century. The reply became famous — was, indeed, the snappy comeback heard ’round the world: “Laissez-nous faire!”

Let us be; leave us alone.

Or: Get out of the way! No onerous taxes, no playing favorites with subsidies or regulations or “protection.”

It’s unlikely that President Obama keeps the works of the French Physiocrats, or later “political economy” writers, by his bedside. Speaking before the Chamber of Commerce recently, he enjoined businessmen to “hire and invest,” “get in the game,” etc.

“Ultimately,” he explained, “winning the future is not just about what the government can do to help you succeed. It’s about what you can do to help America succeed.”

Stop dithering! Hire!

But what competent capitalist, enjoying a huge and lasting increase in demand, and having the means to hire new employees to help meet it, would refuse to do so? Obama speaks as if “helping the economy” were the point of getting staff. No. One hires to produce, sell and make money. This does “help the economy”; it is the economy. But companies only hurt themselves and the economy if they hire persons not yet needed just to “win the future.”

Responding to Obama’s remarks, Harold Jackson, CEO of Buffalo Supply, says it’s “a little outside the bounds to suggest that if we hire people we don’t need, there will be more demand.”

A little? Understatement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism too much government

Greenlighting Red Light Cameras?

Politicians seem to love what are called “red light cameras” — cameras that take pictures of cars that run red lights. And then ticket the registered owners.

Citizens? Not so much. I’ve reported how Tim Eyman — an activist who usually sets his sights on tax increases — orchestrated a citizen initiative petition campaign to get rid of the red light cameras in his town. There are many other such movements.

But those who habitually side with government don’t get it. They see the issue as the Washington Post editors see it, as “common sense. Police can’t be everywhere, and officers should not be diverted from high-crime areas to police every high-risk intersection.”

A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety backs up this “common sense” with, uh, science. Sort of. The study’s method has been attacked pretty thoroughly.

More importantly, as Radley Balko notes, there are better alternate policies — more effective in saving lives at intersections, and far less creepy.

Like what? you ask. Well, bear with me. It’s hard to understand: Longer yellow lights.

Yes. Longer yellow lights save lives. What a shock. And yet it turns out that when politicians have red light cameras installed, they tend to decrease the time of the yellows — the very opposite policy.

For our safety?

No.

For their revenue.

People who “go into politics” show their true colors when they prefer to pump up surveillance state powers instead of enacting simple, decent reforms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Tree of Liberty

For years, Egyptians have called for greater democracy and constitutional limits — like term limits. Now newly appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suhleiman dangles the concession of term limits for the president, freedom for the press and an end to the three decades of emergency powers, the better to retain the keys to the nation’s executive washroom and the army. Or so he hopes.

Wisely, both pro-democratic and not-so-democratic opponents aren’t buying it. Opponents fear that such concessions will (if Mubarak or his chosen cronies remain in power) be pulled back later.

At a time more opportune for thuggery.

Still, how to get from a brutally repressive state to a free, constitutional democratic republic? Revolution is a clumsy, dangerous mode of political change.

Jefferson may have written something about “refreshing” the tree of liberty every generation with the blood of patriots, but most of us prefer more peaceful methods.

Lo and behold, they exist: Free elections. Here in America, voters have had the power to change party control of the U.S. Congress several times this decade. Hasn’t gotten us the reforms we want yet, but it’s better than in Egypt.

Plus, in half the states and most cities, citizens can check government and inject reform into the political system through the initiative, referendum and recall.

Egyptians are struggling to get democracy; Americans should use what we’ve got.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Brew Stronger Tea

The Tea Party’s House Republicans have begun work, outlining a “plan to attack the federal deficit. The result: A proposal to cut $100 billion,” which amounts, in the words of Tom Mullen, on LewRockwell.com, to a mere “[s]even percent of the deficit.”

Disappointing. But wait, Mullen goes on, “if history has taught us anything, it is that this isn’t ‘just the beginning,’ with more substantial cuts to follow. This will be the high water mark as far as reduction in government spending is concerned.”

Mullen then offers an alternative venue: The states should unite in defiance of Washington, authorizing and defending citizens who withhold income tax payments until Congress balances the budget. He calls this “interposition.”

Radical, yes. But it will prove even less effective than our first House’s first foray.

Why? Many of the states are in just as bad a financial shape — or worse — than the federal union, and are presumably right now primping for federal bailouts.

What to do?

Brew stronger tea.

And throw it at Congress.

No state bailouts. The only thing the House can do, alone, is prevent more debt. Don’t raise the debt ceiling, and force President Obama and Democrats in the Senate to take budget cuts seriously — big budget cuts — now.

As I wrote a few days ago, let’s put the federal government onto a cash, pay-as-you go finance plan immediately. This would require, certainly, no small amount of courage from House Republicans.

Brew stronger tea.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

Not Guilty as Charged

If software developer Phil Mocek is guilty of anything, it’s the conviction that he has a right to move about the country as if he were a free man. He’s guilty of defending his dignity. Guilty of believing he’s innocent.

That’s his crime, not “failing to obey an officer,” “concealing his identity,” “criminal trespass” or “disorderly conduct.” Fortunately, an Albuquerque jury has now found him innocent of these bogus charges.

During his trial, a TSA official and an Albuquerque police officer both testified, in Mocek’s words, that “you do not have to show ID in order to fly and that you can use cameras in public areas of the airport.” Yes, recording the unwarranted and outrageous harassment of him was proposed as proof of the man’s criminality.

The normals among us, on the other hand, can only applaud Mocek’s nerve and presence of mind in standing up for himself.

Defense co-counsel Molly Schmidt-Nowara observes that TSA officials and police at the airport “became annoyed because he was filming.” But annoying the police or TSA officers is not in itself a crime.

Mocek says: “I wasn’t testing the system. I went in with a boarding pass. I had what I’m required to have to fly and by way of being a human I observed what happened.”

Has the tide started to turn against the noxious surveillance state and in favor of everyday freedom for human beings?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Help Us Help Ourselves

Hopeful about the innovations transpiring in various small sectors of fields like medicine or education?

Atlantic Monthly blogger Megan McArdle isn’t.

According to McArdle, the history of “social science” — society? — is “littered with exciting programs that promised to both significantly improve the lives of the targeted populations, and to save money.” Yet average costs of education and health care keep going up.

Gee willikers, why?

Scalability. McArdle suggests that successful but small-scale experiments have expertise and enthusiasm going for them that can’t be readily replicated on very large scales. The positive effects of the small programs tend to disappear when people who don’t want to change their ways have to sign off.

She says that this isn’t a medical or educational problem but a social one.

What kind of social problem? McArdle doesn’t say.

But compare and contrast. Do small-scale innovations in electronics and computers, for example, tend to dissolve into puddles of social lethargy and recalcitrance even if they achieve substantial improvements at lower cost? Apparently not. So what’s the difference? Well, hardware and software firms may be taxed and regulated by government, but they’re burdened with nowhere near the level of bureaucracy that swaddles schooling and medicine.

In free markets, bad solutions don’t get entrenched. Good ones don’t either, unless they prove economically viable over time.

So how about removing the shackles and just letting us function as free people — in every realm of human endeavor?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

A Fearsome, Fiery Cliché

Senator Chuck Schumer insists that it would be the height of irresponsibility either to freeze the federal government’s debt ceiling or “shut down the government.” Either action would risk “the credit markets losing some confidence in the United States Treasury” — tantamount to “Playing with fire.”

The opposite of his point appears closer to the truth.  Michael Tanner explains that “If the debt ceiling is not increased, the Treasury can prioritize interest and debt payment to avoid a default and essentially put the government on a stringent pay-as-you-go basis.” Economist Robert Murphy adds that “even if the debt ceiling weren’t increased, the Treasury could still roll over its debt as existing bonds matured. The only thing the Treasury couldn’t do would be to issue more debt.”

The truth behind Schumer’s clichéd metaphor is this: He and his cronies have been “playing with fire” for a long time. And it’s worth noting that forcing the Treasury to switch to pay-as-you-go would likely have the opposite effect on credit markets than he contends: When prodigal spenders cut up their credit cards and continue to pay existing bills, creditors tend to breathe a little easier.

But expect no such acumen from Schumer, who, in that same exhortation, lists the “three branches of government”: The House, the Senate, and the president. Apparently, he hopes to gain authority for his contentions by piling factual error upon cliché.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies too much government

The Kill Switch for Freedom

The Egyptian government — or perhaps a mysterious inter-dimensional vortex, we’re not sure which — has shut down some 99 percent of the Internet within Egypt as protests mount demanding that President Hosni Mubarak step down. Mubarak has ruled autocratically for three decades and the protesters are fed up. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other cyber-tools have played a part in their protest, helping them document Egyptians’ clashes with authorities in word and image.

Declan McCullough, a veteran reporter on privacy and the Internet, observes that the Egyptian government is “conducting a high-profile experiment in what happens when a country with a $500 billion GDP, one that’s home to the pyramids and the Suez Canal, decides that Internet access should be restricted to a trickle.”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, U.S. pols like Senator Joseph Lieberman are again pushing a bill to give the president authority to “declare a cybersecurity emergency” in the event of a crisis and shut down major portions of the Internet. For our own good, of course. No judicial review would be necessary before the executive branch could snap the cyber-spine.

Perhaps American politicians who advocate letting the president throw a so-called kill switch for the Internet in case of emergency would deny any tyrannical intentions. And perhaps their motives are indeed pure . . . in some aesthetic sense. But once you give government new authority to exercise destructive control over us, there is, of course, the temptation to use it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
porkbarrel politics

Monuments to Megalomania

Some reform proposals are so modest they have scant hope of passing. Why? Because the people who pass the bills are so immodest.

Congressional egos would be severely bruised if Representative Michael McCaul’s proposal were enacted. His bill would prohibit lawmakers from erecting monuments to themselves glorifying the fact that they have dedicated huge amounts of taxpayer dollars to the erecting of monuments to themselves.

McCaul says that these “monuments to me” are emblems of arrogance and “contribute to both political corruption and excessive spending.” Such contributions are prolific.

Remember Senator Robert C. Byrd (1917-2010), “serving” in Washington for more than half a century? Well, the construction industry in West Virginia sure does. Wikipedia devotes an entire entry just to listing the buildings and transportation and other projects named after the self-aggrandizing Senator Byrd. He was always eager to lug as much pork to his state as he could, and most of it is stamped with his immortal cognomen. There’s even a Robert C. Byrd highway to nowhere. A Wall Street Journal article by William McGurn gives a laundry list of other sites named after congressmen alive and in office when their names got slapped on.

The ban should be enacted. Even if this reform is small and symbolic, the abuse it addresses is real. And McCaul wants to know: “If we can’t do the little, obvious things, how are the people going to trust us on the big ones?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.