Categories
national politics & policies responsibility

Washing Dishes

If you can’t pay your bill at a restaurant, management may set you to washing dishes to cover the cost of your meal.

Or so it’s said — I’ve never heard of it actually happening. Clean dishes are a must for serving food to paying customers; restaurants simply can’t wait around to press non-paying customers into service. Instead, they hire folks to do the dishes.

This came to mind when our president and congressional leaders began pushing to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling by $1.9 trillion.

The raise would allow the federal debt to increase to $14.3 trillion, about the size of our country’s entire yearly economic output.

Senator Max Baucus of Montana is all for raising the limit. He says it simply must be done: “We have gone to the restaurant,” he explained. “We have eaten the meal. Now the only question is whether we will pay the check.”

No dishwashing for Baucus.

Most of us avoid Congress’s unseemly situation by looking in our wallets for cash or ready credit before we order the filet mignon, not after we’ve consumed it.

I’m no wizard of high finance, but hey: If we want to stop piling debts onto our children, at some point we will have to prevent our so-called representatives from borrowing more trillions.

Oh, and if a congressman enters your diner, better make him pay cash up front.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

How Not to Help Haiti

Haiti has suffered horrific devastation. It didn’t have to.

There was no way to prevent the 7.0 earthquake itself. But estimates of as many as 200,000 dead? That didn’t have to happen.

Economist Donald Boudreaux recalls that in 1989, an equally powerful quake hit the San Francisco Bay area. It caused lots of trouble but killed fewer than 70 people. But Haiti is a much poorer country than the U.S., with weaker buildings and roads, for starters.

Why so poor?

Haiti is not a free society. It’s had one corrupt tyrant after another, recently emerged from the terrorizing rule of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who was sent packing in 2004.

Many pundits are saying that the way to strengthen Haitian society over the long haul is torrents of foreign aid. Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants Washington to spend billions on a five-year development plan, which he says it should fund by taxing Wall Street bonuses.

Charity and rescue efforts are wonderful. Government-to-government foreign aid, not so much. Haiti has remained desperately poor despite the massive flow of foreign aid, which, over the years, has mainly subsidized corruption. What Haiti needs is stability. The ability to attract investment. Less propping up of corrupt politicians. Less foreign aid, more freedom.

But a free society is something Haitians will have to build themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption political challengers

Great Scott!

Just when you thought nothing could stop Congress from sucking another sector of American life and our economy into the dripping maw of government, a spark of hope.

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Massachusetts’s open U.S. Senate seat, won.

I’m sure I’d disagree with many of the senator elect’s opinions. But his campaign was based, loud and clear, on his promise to vote against the Democrats’ overblown, misguided, quasi-socialistic healthcare plan — a compelling enough message to propel a Republican to victory in a very Democratic state.

What now? Well, hopefully we are going to stop the big government juggernaut. That is, unless Democrats start playing some very dirty pool.

Will it be the kind of dirty pool MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz endorses? In the final days of the campaign, Schultz bragged on his radio show that if he were a Massachusetts resident he’d cheat at the ballot box to stop Brown. “[I]f I lived in Massachusetts I’d try to vote ten times. . . . Yeah, that’s right. I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would.”

It’s not unheard of, in politics, for politicians and even activists to go off the deep end, foreswearing principle for the sweet smell of partisan success. But I bet one reason Brown won was that he represents the kind of above-board probity that Schultz and far too many in Congress — Democrats, and Republicans, too — utterly lack.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Impossible Dream, Real Nightmare

Over at Amazon.com there’s a discussion of Oscar Wilde’s essay “The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”

Some visitors decry the horrors of socialism enabled by such wishful thinking. Others say, “Hey, be fair! The calamitous ‘socialist’ regimes of the 20th century aren’t what Wilde was talking about!”

But not many volunteer for Wilde’s “voluntary” socialism. To impose such utopian dreams society-wide can only be done by force.

If an unrepentant socialist admits the track record, he must insist that his own ideas of perfect, magically blissful equality have been ignored or misappropriated. What he proposes is the socialism in which the incentives and demands of human life in society have disappeared, in which men and women are disembodied spirits, in which wishes are all-powerful fairy dust.

In the real world, socialism quickly devolves into the looting of the better-off and transferring a portion of said loot to the lesser-off — at the point of a gun. The more consistently socialists work to equalize everyone’s economic condition, the more rampantly and brutally they must deploy coercion. And so, under socialism, comes death to individual hopes, dreams, options . . . and souls.

The unbridgeable gulf between socialist fantasies and inconvenient facts explains much about recent health care reform. ObamaCare won’t be the socialist medical nirvana anybody was proposing. But it never could have been.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling local leaders

Tea Party Principles – Populist?

When friends of mine started up the “tea party” protests last year, I wondered: Could large numbers of American take the common-sense, freedom point of view and really run with it?

I had hopes.

But for Democrat congressional leaders, and some in the media, there was mostly fear and loathing — along with red-herring charges of racism against Tea Partyers.

Now, David Brooks, writing in the New York Times, focuses on something a bit different. Noticing that 41 percent of Americans have a favorable attitude towards the Tea Party movement — far higher levels of support than for either major party — Brooks interprets that tendency in terms of what we oppose: “The concentrated power of the educated class.”

Brooks insists that “Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.” And he’s not cheering.

Michael Barone, in The Washington Examiner, clarifies this new class divide, writing, “The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.”

There is an ancient truth: Being smart doesn’t make you wise. In fact, flaunting your schooling and lording over others with your cleverness makes you a de facto fool.

And wrapping up fantasies and hopes in stylish, we’re-smarter-than-you packaging doesn’t make them any more intellectually defensible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

But Not ‘By’ the People

Our ability to vote directly on the chief issues of our time is a vital political power, a right. I think so, and most Americans agree.

But for some reason some of those elected to “represent” us don’t.

Last year, Missouri State Rep. Mike Parson introduced legislation to restrict petitioning to place initiatives on the ballot. Parson himself admitted that there might be unconstitutional parts to his bill. Thankfully, it failed.

Now, this year, he’s back. Parson wants to double the number of petition signatures citizens must gather to place an issue on the ballot. Presently, citizens turn in more than 200,000 signatures to meet the state’s requirement. Parson wants to make that 400,000.

Why? Did voters really elect Mike Parson to block them from having a say-so in their own government?

In Nebraska, Citizens in Charge is suing to overturn unconstitutional restrictions on the initiative process. Amy Miller with the ACLU, which is handling the case, said, “It’s hard not to see the restrictions as a deliberate effort on the part of legislators to keep independent candidates and grassroots initiatives off the ballot.”

Now Nebraska State Senator Bill Avery has introduced legislation to further increase the signature requirement for a constitutional amendment by 50 percent.

It all makes me realize how important it is to have a process whereby we citizens can overrule our so-called representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government U.S. Constitution

Know Your Rights

For years, politicians and activists have declared that we have a right to medical care. Not a right to freely contract for medical services, mind you, but a fundamental right to medical care.

This assertion serves as the moral force behind those pushing for nationalized, universal health care legislation. But can medical care really be a basic right?

Well, it’s nowhere to be found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.

Should it be?

Again, no.

Rights cannot involve requiring others to provide a product or service to us. We can’t simply demand, with talk of rights, the expertise and labor of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. Why? Because they possess the same rights we possess, in particular, the right not to be enslaved.

Watching the 2,000-page health care bill plod through the congressional sausage factory, the fraudulent nature of this “right to medical care” claim becomes painfully obvious. We’re not getting a new right from the deal. Instead, politicians are slapping us with a new mandate, forcing us to fork over our hard-earned money to health insurance companies.

If our right to freedom of speech worked this way, the First Amendment would mandate that we buy a local newspaper and sign up for cable TV or XM Radio. The Second Amendment would force us to own a gun and pay dues to the NRA.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom too much government

Googling and Snuggling No More?

After years of abetting Chinese censorship, Google may finally take a stand. The world leader in Internet search may no longer be willing to help impose the Red regime’s repressive measures. The last straw? A cyber attack on Google that originated in China and targeted email accounts of Chinese dissidents. Other companies were also attacked.

In recent decades, China has loosened controls on its economy. But it is loath to permit any significant scraps of civil liberty as well, like the right to speak out freely in criticism of the government.

China lets the Internet function within its borders. But it also erects firewalls, filters and other restrictions to block or limit access to various corners of cyberspace. For years, Google has cravenly played along, preventing phrases like “Tiananmen Square massacre” from being searched on the Chinese version of its search engine.

Google officers have long squirmed over their hypocritical willingness to “do evil.” Now a Google lawyer says the company is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results. . . .” They’re taking a few weeks to mull their next move. But they say they’ll leave China altogether if its government won’t agree to let Google’s search engine function freely.

China’s rulers won’t agree; so I hope Google does what it says it will do. Some things one should just not collaborate with. Tyranny is at the top of the list.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

Where to Cut, and How

State and local governments have been hard hit by the current depression. What to do?

Cut.

But where?

Well, legislatures could simply repeal all increases and programs starting with the most recent, going back month by month, year by year to nix spending until total spending dips below current revenue. Legislatures around the country should go into sessions of repeal.

Or they could target endemic over-spending. According to a January Cato Institute Tax & Budget Bulletin, one area of over-spending in need of tackling is “Employee Compensation in State and Local Governments.”

According to the bulletin’s author, Chris Edwards, there are several distinct indicators that demonstrate that government workers are generally overpaid.

Comparisons of compensation between state and local workers and private sector workers show a 1.45 ratio, with government workers garnering nearly half again as much as private sector workers.

The percentage of government employees to receive benefit packages over salary is also significantly higher than private sector laborers.

Further, Edwards notes, “data show that the average quit rate in the state and local workforce is just one-third the rate in the private sector. This suggests that state and local pay is higher than needed to attract qualified workers.”

So, rational employers — that is, the citizenry — would start there, first by freezing wages and new hires, then by decreasing benefits and reining in profligate promises in retirement packages.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

We Protest

You don’t need to commit violence to conduct a large, effective public protest of perceived injustice. The many Tea Party demonstrations against our federal government’s latest socialist excesses prove that.

But what if violent and nonviolent protests are equated in the minds of peace keepers?

In Reason magazine, journalist Radly Balko reports on several disturbing examples of crackdowns of persons assembled in a public place. In one incident, motivated by the occasionally violent protests of last fall’s G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, police ordered students gathered in public to disperse forthwith, though they had broken no laws. Anyone who moved too slowly was subject to arrest. Apparently, a few violent protesters hit town for the summit, but they were a distinct minority.

Balko isn’t impressed by a university official’s claim that the gatherings had to be busted up because of the “potential” for trouble. That’s a dangerous standard to apply to peaceful assembly that is not only constitutionally protected but also an important bulwark against tyranny.

Police can make honest mistakes like anybody else, especially when in charged and confusing situations. No doubt there’s sometimes a fuzzy line between a peaceful if rowdy protest and one that’s turning violent. But Balko suggests that police are increasingly harassing and handcuffing people only because they are peacefully dissenting.

Not only is that not right, it demands protest.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.