Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Righteous Recalls

According to Ballotpedia.org, a wiki-based website created by the Citizens in Charge Foundation to track ballot initiatives, referendums and recalls, this year voters have already launched more than twice as many efforts to recall public officials than occurred all of last year.

In Flint, Michigan, voters were set to recall the mayor for corruption, mismanagement and more. Ten days before the vote, the mayor resigned.

In Tuolumne County, California, voters removed an entire school board that failed to account for $16 million in bond revenue.

After failed attempts to remove mayors in Toledo and Akron, Ohio, the Akron city council is now trying to dramatically increase the petition signatures needed to start a recall.

In Kimberly, Idaho, a campaign to recall the mayor and two city councilors for jacking up utility rates fell short of the needed voter signatures. But now the police are investigating whether town officials illegally obstructed the effort.

In Cincinnati, no process yet exists for recalling officials, so the local NAACP is poised to launch a petition drive to establish one. County Republican leaders are “studying” the issue. The county’s Democratic Party chairman opposes recall, saying, “I’d hate to see a situation where the mayor could be recalled any time he made a controversial decision.”

That’s a straw man. Recalls have been used very rarely. Besides, none of our political problems stem from voters demanding too much of politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Snappy Put-downs Do Not a Debate Make

There is a political struggle going on over reforming how Americans obtain and pay for medical assistance.

But is there a debate?

Mostly what we hear, instead, are snide put-downs. Gail Collins recently wrote in the New York Times that “members of Congress are getting yelled at about socialized medicine by people who appear to have been sitting in their attics since the anti-tax tea parties, listening for signs of alien aircraft. But on the bright side, they’ve finally got something to distract them from the president’s birth certificate.”

That’s kind of funny. But it doesn’t address anyone’s fear or reasonable suspicion. It’s just more liberal scorn thrown at people who disagree with “big government knows best.”

I’ve heard Rachel Maddow make similar sniping comments. According to her, all folks have against the Democrats’ reform ideas is that Obama wants to kill old people. She laughs. Dismisses it out of hand.

But there are real arguments embedded in such concerns. As I wrote recently on Townhall.com, it’s not that advocates of single-payer medical systems want to kill old people; it’s that, over time, budgetary demands force them to institute some sort of rationing. Older folk die by waiting in week-long, month-long lines for medical assistance in Canada and Great Britain right now.

This is a very real concern. It deserves honest debate, not snappy put-downs and sniping retorts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency insider corruption

Setting the Jet-Setting Record Straight

The media has falsely reported that Congress bought itself three new corporate jets at a price of $200 million to jet-set across the globe, without even a shred of transparency as to who requested this earmarked spending.

It’s not true. One of those jets was requested by the military. Congress really only bought two new corporate jets at a price of only $132 million.

Yes, after enviously berating auto company CEOs last year for daring to use jets their companies had already purchased, our legislators have the unmitigated gall to one-up them by buying new jets to jet-set about in.

You might ask which politicians are responsible for this gross excess. The leaders of Congress, the Speaker and Majority and Minority Leaders, are most likely to use these aircraft. But who actually made the request is being kept from We the People.

Because this spending gets called a “program increase” rather than an “earmark,” this insertion into the Defense budget can remain secret.

Steve Ellis, with Taxpayers for Common Sense, laments that “The more you push for transparency, the more of this stuff goes underneath the carpet.” He called the Appropriations Committee “the judge, jury and executioner over what is an earmark and what isn’t and how much information we get.”

So much for transparency. The only thing transparent in Washington is the arrogance and greed of our so-called leaders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

The Big “Single-Payer” Lie

Scan the history of government programs. The scope and costs usually grow much larger than originally projected.

Moreover, ham-fisted government intervention distorts markets, causing shortages or excesses of supply, leading to high prices for goods that should be cheap, and so on.

When the problems pile up one can either repeal the controls or heap on more controls.

Guess which “solution” politicians tend to prefer.

Regarding medical care, the politicians’ answer to decades of government bungling is more bungling: regulation, subsidies, rationing, mandates and a new “public option” in health insurance to squeeze out private plans.

President Obama and other public option advocates promise, on stacks of Bibles, that this is not “somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.”

But they’re lying. Go to YouTube. Watch the videos of Obama and congressmen explicitly admitting their goal of a single-payer system. Just two years ago, Obama was saying, “But I don’t think we’re gonna be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s gonna be potentially some transition process. . . .”

That’s how we lose our freedoms. Not all at once, but a slice at a time.

Oh, and about employer-provided medical insurance. That’s a clumsy institution that exists because of World War II wage controls. We do have to transition out of that system. But we should “transition” towards more freedom, not less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

The Moral of the Madoff Story

Detecting fraud is one of the most important roles for government. But our friends in power tend to be incompetent at it.

This becomes clear in light of that most costly Ponzi scheme, Bernie Madoff’s.

Before he was caught, Madoff — who now paints signs in prison — perpetrated one of the longest-running scams in investment history. It wasn’t an investment scheme that lost its way. No, it was a fraud through and through. It cost his marks billions.

Joseph Cotchett, a lawyer for some of Madoff’s victims, interviewed the fraudster at length. Cotchett calls Madoff “charming” and “no dummy.” But he noted that his fraud was not a great work of sophistication: “It is amazing how simple it was.”

Still, the regulators responsible for finding this kind of fraud didn’t see it. Early in the millennium, Madoff thought he might get caught. In 2005, the SEC sat down with him, and he thought the gig was up. Regulators, insists Cotchett, did not dig “to the next level, and the next level was not deep by his own admission.”

Lots of folks clamor, these days, for more regulation. Here’s my advice: Improve the most basic form of regulation — protection against fraud — and build on success. Leave complicated micromanagement stuff alone until governments get competent at the very basics.

If you cannot detect an unsophisticated fraud, how can you run a very sophisticated economy?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Tenth Amendment federalism

The Tenth Amendment Movement

When Sarah Palin announced her resignation as governor of Alaska, she caused quite a stir. Both Palin haters and Palin lovers united in their inability to talk about much of anything else.

Then, a week later, she had an op-ed on environmental policy published in the Washington Post.

And then, not long after that, she signed a resolution declaring the state of Alaska sovereign under the Tenth Amendment, and telling the federal government to back off from engaging in activities not delegated to it in the United States Constitution.

This sounds weird to lovers of big government, to Palin haters in general. But even some Palin lovers misconstrued the event.

It was not about Sarah Palin. She was not the only governor to sign such a resolution. Tennessee’s Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, had done the same thing, earlier.

In fact, it’s not about governors at all. Other states, like Oklahoma and New Hampshire, have passed similar resolutions. As I wrote recently at Townhall.com, “[a]ll these resolutions have passed state legislatures. It’s not just lone ‘whacko’ governors doing the deed. Deliberative bodies have decided these measures.”

What’s happening is the re-emergence of the original idea of our federation: A central power limited in scope, and states with different sets of powers and responsibilities.

And people’s rights and powers limiting both.

Yes, folks, there are signs of hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Pity the Politicians?

In tough times, who get hit hardest? According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “[a]t least 39 states have imposed cuts that hurt vulnerable residents.”

Why? Well, states have been spending at increasing rates for years now. And then came the slump, with less income — and fewer sales — to tax. So of course state revenues plummet.

And politicians must force themselves to do the thing they hate most: Cut.

But, as Steve Chapman argues in his column, “A Hole They Dug for Themselves,” simply by increasing spending no more than the rate of inflation, they would have avoided this. Chapman insists, “governors and legislators might have prepared for drought.”

One thing Chapman doesn’t say is that this spending limit idea has been on many states’ tables for some time. It’s often called TABOR, or the Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Such measures constitutionally limit spending to the rate of inflation plus the rate of population increase. Only voters can break this spending cap.

But politicians hate such measures, oppose them for all they are worth.

So, we may pity the poor, but let’s not shed one drop of sorrow for the politicians.

And, if you live in Maine or Washington state, vote for the TABOR-like initiatives that will be on the ballot this November. Help yourself, help the poor — by forcing politicians to spend as if things could change and tomorrow matters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

Medical Insurance to the Max

Get everybody into a medical insurance plan, fast! But how?

Lots of “universal coverage” talk assumes that most uninsured folks are “too poor.” But look, most young people don’t buy insurance because they are healthy. And I know oldsters who have gone through life without medical insurance. When they’ve needed a shot, or a few stitches, they’ve visited the doctor and paid the bill.

Becky Akers, writing in The Christian Science Monitor, wants to know why everyone wants to force her to buy something she thinks makes no financial sense.

Ms. Akers admits that, though she is healthy and without insurance, she could get run over by a bus. But she bets she can cover most medical needs out of her savings and income.

Supporters of government managed medicine judge this irresponsible.

And yet, many of these critics are the same folks who insist that catastrophic medical insurance — the kind that is inexpensive because of huge deductibles — cover everybody, regardless of pre-existing conditions. But this turns insurance into a transfer program, workable only with high prices. Add full coverage rather than catastrophic, and medical insurance skyrockets beyond most people’s pay grade.

Yet if politicians would just stop tinkering with insurance, medical prices would come down for everyone, as Akers suggests . . . including, even the uninsurable, who would still require aid other than insurance.

If you are already sick, it’s too late to insure against sickness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Arresting New Jersey

For the millions of people living in New Jersey, who’ve never been arrested on corruption charges, this one’s for you.

Recently, the FBI arrested 44 folks there, including two state legislators and three mayors. Big news, I guess, but hardly unusual by Jersey standards. The U.S. Attorney says the state’s politicians work in an “ethics-free zone.”

Chris Christie, now the Republican candidate for governor in 2009, used to be the U.S. Attorney. In seven years, he prosecuted 130 state and local politicians and convicted every single one of them.

Unfortunately, reducing corruption will take more than building additional prisons to hold politicians. The trick is empowering voters to hold government accountable — thereby putting less unchecked power in any individual’s hands.

Christie believes voters need the power of ballot initiatives. But earlier this year he said, “I hesitated about proposing initiative and referendum because my party had been such a failure on initiative and referendum ten years ago . . .”

Republicans gained a majority in both legislative chambers in part on a promise to enact a statewide initiative. Once in power, Republicans took a dive.

Christie pledges to be different, and to campaign with shoe leather: “I will travel around the state to publicly campaign for [initiative and referendum] and try to get the citizens to put pressure on their legislators to vote for this.”

In a usually safe state for Democrats, the latest polls show Christie with a sizable lead over Democrat Governor Jon Corzine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Security Deposit for Term Limits?

Politicians do pay a price when they break a term limits pledge: No pledge breaker has ever been elected to higher office.

In 1992, Marty Meehan ran for Congress promising to serve four terms at most. In 1995, he rebuked congressmen for violating similar pledges, saying, “The best test of any politicians’ credibility on term limits, is whether they are willing to . . . limit their own service.” Meehan even filed a letter of resignation with the House clerk that supposedly would go into effect should he break his own word. But he did break it, finally leaving Congress only in 2007.

Meehan had always wanted to be governor. That was not to be.

Term limits have always been popular, and it’s embarrassing to be known for breaking a term limits pledge.

A new outfit called Alliance for Bonded Term Limits believes more than reputation should take a hit when politicians violate a term limits pledge. They think candidates should legally contract to pay up if they wimp out.

The plan, according to their website, is to “provide a vehicle for sincere candidates to demonstrate their commitment to limited tenure in office by voluntarily bonding their term limit promise with personal assets in advance of the election. These bonded assets of substantial worth will be forfeited to charity only if their promise is broken.”

Will it work? So far, the organization just has an idea. It’s a gleam in someone’s eye. But let’s keep our fingers crossed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.