Categories
folly free trade & free markets too much government

The Alternative to the Public Option

The congressional “progressive” caucus still wants to impose a public health insurance option, allegedly to “reduce the deficit.”

According to caucus kingpin Raul Grijalva, deficit hawks are “hypocrites” for predicting that government spending would balloon were a public option imposed. Their “excuse . . . that it was going to be too expensive is phony,” according to Congressman Grijalva.

The progressives’ notion seems to be that accelerating the pell-mell government takeover of the medical delivery industry is the very best thing one could do to reduce the deficit.

If that’s the case, then why not also “reduce the deficit” with respect to other sectors of the economy in which government spends any money at all — that is, in any economic sector — by launching a government takeover that eventually swamps private markets altogether?

By “progressive” logic, communizing the whole economy must be the best way to foster fiscal sobriety in DC.

Absurd, I know.

Perhaps Grijalva’s deceived by his franking privilege. The public option for postal delivery works so well. For him. For the rest of us, we have to pay the billions the USPS loses every year.

The solution to the USPS’s constant, persistent failure is not to regulate and nationalize Fed-Ex and UPS and every other alternative.

Real progress requires the opposite of Grijalva’s “progressivism”: Pry government out of both health care and postal delivery. This is not a radical idea. It is only . . . well . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Pennsylvania Challenge

Political change sometimes happens in hiccups.

A burst of innovation. Then a slump in its pace. An idea’s day may be done . . . or may just lie dormant, awaiting conditions for resurgence. Perhaps one tipping point is a rise in the number of voters who have become really, really, really fed up with the excesses of the ruling class.

Consider statewide citizen initiative rights, which many states installed between 1898 and 1920, with few more in the 1970s and Mississippi in 1993. The current total is 24.

Citizens of the other states need initiative rights too. Especially those graded F by the Citizens in Charge Foundation for their lack of initiative rights—for example, Pennsylvania. The Keystone State was rocked by a major legislative pay scandal a few years back, not to mention several scary judicial scandals.

Michael Nerozzi and Nathan Benefield of the Commonwealth Foundation argue that only initiative rights will enable genuine reform. Pennsylvania’s constitution recognizes the right of citizens to “alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think proper,” but citizens are thwarted by the politicians.

Citizen initiative, the authors say, “is the only reliable mechanism for implementing reforms such as a part-time legislature, term limits, state spending caps, and abolishing gerrymandering.”

It’s a tough sell with the political class. But Pennsylvanians can and will win the right of citizen initiative when enough of them insist. Strongly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Freeze Federal Salaries

Procrastination feeds deficits. Deficits feed debt. Debt feeds catastrophe.

Politicians avoid balancing budgets by saying they will do so not this year, but “sometime in the future.” Hence our looming debt crisis. This debt either must be paid, defaulted, or . . . “monetized.”

That last term is code for inflation.

Why not bring the need for cuts and inflation together? After all, the Federal Reserve still exists, so some inflation is inevitable. Inflation is what central banks like the Fed do.

So, barring a complete monetary reform, simply freeze all federal salaries, at least until the average level of compensation for federal jobs matches the average level of compensation for comparable private-sector jobs.

Currently, as James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation has uncovered, federal workers earn 22 percent more than private sector workers . . . and that’s just in terms of nominal pay. If our politicians turned heroic and cut these down to where they should be, immediately, we’d save $47 billion in taxpayer funds per year.

But it gets worse, as Chris Prandoni writes: “The average federal civilian employee earns on average $32,115 a year in non-cash compensation compared to a private sector employee who earns three times less, $9,882 annually.”

So freeze benefits, too. Defrost only when they match private sector levels.

Politicians could start the freeze right now, just to show a smidgen of discipline. More likely? They’ll go with what they know: Procrastination.

Responsibility? Wait for another freeze. Of hell’s shiny surface.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

The Full Flush of Equality

Years and years ago, it was often said against the proposed Equal Rights Amendment that it would prohibit separate toilets. Under the ERA, men and women would have to use the same public restrooms.

Properly interpreted, nothing of the kind should have happened. The text of the ERA stated that “equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” One does not have a right to a toilet, really, so it shouldn’t have affected restroom construction.

But leaping to absurdity is, alas, a propensity of government. In Minnesota, today, the state’s Department of Human Rights has declared that the offering of a “ladies’ night” by taverns and bars, etc, is illegal, discriminating (as it does) on the basis of sex.

Economist Robert Murphy has carefully explained why price discrimination is not bad — why it is common and why it benefits us. By setting up “ladies’ nights,” certain businesses attract female customers and (shock of all shocks) male customers, too . . . men actually eager to pay extra, if only to be around women.

I don’t see much point in explaining the philosophical basis for not getting carried away over the “sexual/gender discrimination” involved in this. But it may be good that the ERA fizzled in 1982. It would have been twisted by bureaucrats in state after state, and we’d all endure uncomfortable encounters in public toilets throughout the land.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture insider corruption political challengers

The Wicked Witch Is Dead

Many is the time I’ve compared various politicians to The Wizard of Oz’s man behind the curtain. They’re not bad men; they’re just not very good wizards.

But today brings a different connection to Oz: I can’t get the song, “Ding-dong, the Witch Is Dead!” out of my head.

Tuesday, Oklahoma’s Democratic Party primary voters ended Attorney General Drew Edmondson’s gubernatorial bid.

Regular readers of Common Sense know I’m no fan of Mr. Edmondson, who attempted to bully and threaten two others and me, the Oklahoma Three, for daring to push a petition to put a state spending cap on the ballot. Edmondson indicted us, in 2007, on a phony felony charge that carried a ten-year prison term. After a year and a half of Edmondson delaying to deny us our day in court, the trumped-up charge was dismissed.

We certainly weren’t the only victims of Edmondson’s put-politics-before-justice philosophy. A Competitive Enterprise Institute report judged Edmondson to be the third worst AG in the nation for, among other things, abusing “the power of [his] office for political ends.”

At CapitolBeatOK.com, Patrick McGuigan detailed much of Edmondson’s bad behavior, helping hasten the day that Oklahomans would be free of him. In January 2011 that day will come for the man once described as “Barney Fife with bullets — and no Andy.”

Justice is finally sweeping down the plains.

Oh, wrong movie. Here: You-know-who has just met his opportune bucket of water.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders political challengers

Candidate Somebody

Sharron Angle, who is running for U.S. Senate against Harry Reid, the majority leader seeking a fifth term, had a very good reason for entering politics. The powers that be wouldn’t leave her be.

In his column “Candidate Nobody Is Not to Be Underestimated,” George Will reports that the roots of the grandmother’s current campaign lie three decades in the past. Her son was being forced to repeat kindergarten, so she decided to teach him herself. But although homeschooling was legal in Nevada, you couldn’t do it unless you lived at least 50 miles from a public school.

Angle and other parents trooped to the state legislature to demand change. One job-holder there, annoyed by this torrent of interest by mere citizens in legislative doings, said if he’d “known there would be 500 people here instead of 50 and it would take five hours instead of 30 minutes, I would have thrown it [the legislation] in my drawer, and it would never have seen the light of day.” Angle has been “politically incandescent” ever since.

I like this story for many reasons, in part because my wife and I have home-schooled our kids. One thing you have to teach the young is not to expect politicians to look out for your genuine best interests.

Another is that vigilance is the price of liberty.

A third is that if you want something done right, often you have to do it yourself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture insider corruption

Lott of Chutzpah

Some people you can always count on. Like former congressmen and current lobbyist Trent Lott.

Count on Lott to confirm that he’s a true-blue partisan of gravy-train politics-as-usual, a dyed-in-the-wool establishmentarian committed to extinguishing each faint, flickering chance to downsize Leviathan.

The man is a rock.

“We don’t need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples,” Lott with calm, sneering authority recently told the Washington Post, as his granite-hard jaw jutted with stern, rectitudinous integrity. “As  soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them.”

What kind of creature is a “Jim DeMint disciple”? What terrible deeds will these zombie-like Jim-DeMintians perpetrate if the heroic former congressmen and his redoubtable cohorts fail to co-opt them in time?

The creatures are affiliated with the Tea Party rebellion against the super-escalating scope and reach of the federal government, as manifested in the looming takeover of the medical industry, trillion-dollar annual budget deficits, etc. Senate candidate Rand Paul told the Post that the goals of Jim-DeMintian Tea Party sympathizers like himself have something to do with fighting for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and legislation that is consistent with the Constitution.

Sounds like if they make any headway we can expect more freedom, more real wealth, less red ink, less Washington-based strangling of everybody.

Hence, Trent Lott to the rescue.

Thanks a lot, Lott.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

People With Influence?

Late summer primaries, then September primaries — before you know it, November’s election is here. ’Tis the season when politicians really need us — at least our votes.

But do they respect our vote? That means keeping their word. It also means supporting ballot initiative rights, so that voters have the last word.

Today, Citizens in Charge and U.S. Term Limits are running two television campaigns to focus attention on respecting the vote of the people for term limits and respecting the right of citizens to petition their government by voting on issues directly.

One spot tells about Oklahoma State Senator Randy Brogdon, who authored two amendments that will appear on this November’s ballot: State Question 747 would term-limit statewide offices and State Question 750 would make it easier for grassroots groups to put measures like term limits on the ballot.

In Missouri, our television ad calls out State Rep. Mike Parson for not respecting the people of Missouri’s 74 percent vote for term limits. Parson voted to gut the limits. Nor does Parson respect initiative rights. He introduced legislation to hamstring citizens in ways already ruled unconstitutional in other states.

Why don’t more elected officials have Dan Maes’s attitude? Maes is a Colorado businessman seeking the Republican nomination for governor. At a business forum, he stood up for citizen initiative rights, saying, “I really want people to have influence in their government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Roll Your Eyes, Sigh

People disagree. When it comes to government policy, people not only disagree, but on occasion even get hot under the collar. Why? Governments have so much power and tend to waste so much money. Our money. Yours.

That’s why, in public meetings, we should expect citizens to fly off the handle every now and then.

And that’s why those who run public meetings must retain a measure not merely of civility, but lenience. When some citizens disagree, that disagreement will sometimes be . . . disagreeable. But understandable.

I’m preaching the obvious here, but to town officials in Elmhurst, Illinois, I’m preaching a message they don’t want to hear. When citizen Darlene Heslop rolled her eyes and sighed out loud as they moved to hire a state lobbyist, the officials running the meeting objected. They threw her out, saying she was disorderly.

And then they told the city attorney to look into the guidelines for public meetings — you know, everything from state statutes to Robert’s Rules (I kid you not) — to find a definition of “disorderly conduct” that would allow them to keep Heslop out of their hair. Her eyes! Her sighs!

Heslop is all for settling on a definition. Perhaps she knows state law, which defines disorderly conduct as acts of “such unreasonable manner as to alarm or disturb another, or to provoke a breach of the peace.” Her eye-rolling and sighing in no way qualifies — and should be tolerated . . . maybe even as free speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability government transparency too much government

The Liability Behind the Curtain

Do not look at the liability behind that curtain! Or: Do not mention that we don’t know what the liabilities are.

Some things are too painful to report.

Apparently.

The folks who audit the Social Security Administration are late on a set of reports. The reports in question account for the financial and actuarial (un)soundness of Social Security, specifically on the (un)funded liabilities of the pension system and Medicare.

Unlike corporations, which are required to report to the IRS on March 15 each year, and individuals, who must report on April 15, there’s no set date for the trustees of our federal government’s biggest program to make its report. But in recent years the reports have been published early enough to allow summary by May. The last report summary we have is for 2009.

Why so late?

Could it be that things have gotten so bad that it’s difficult to figure out — and embarrassing to sign one’s name to — the actual financial situation? After all, this year Social Security ran out of money to write checks for its promised (and quite immediate) pay-outs.

Sheila Weinberg, CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, writes that she heard the reports were late because “trustees wanted to include the effect the health care bill had on these liabilities.” Ms. Weinberg not unreasonably challenges this rationale. Wouldn’t Social Security’s liabilities have been worth knowing before Congress committed to more entitlement spending?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.