Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall term limits

Quinn Is In

Blagojevich is out! Quinn is in! There is gubernatorial hope for corruption-riddled Illinois.

Now, admittedly, I don’t agree with Governor Pat Quinn on every issue. But few governors can boast Quinn’s long record as an anti-establishmentarian reformer.

In April of last year, Pat Quinn, then Illinois’s lieutenant governor, was pushing hard for a ballot measure to give voters the power to recall elected officials. This was after the sitting governor, Blago, got in hot water for various corruption, but long before he was caught scheming to sell president-elect Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder.

Certainly, the first target of a new recall power would have been Blagojevich. The bill passed the Illinois house but unfortunately failed in the senate.

Of course, Quinn’s track record goes way beyond the political battles of 2008. In addition to being pro-recall, he is also pro-initiative rights and pro-term limits. In 1994, Quinn did the heavy lifting to put a term limits measure on the ballot. It would have capped state legislative tenure at eight years had not the Illinois Supreme Court outrageously removed the ballot measure, blocking the vote.

Quinn is in. Illinois reformers should beat a path to his door and urge him to push for these necessary changes harder than ever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability general freedom responsibility

Good Guys and Bad Guys

There are two types of people, those who divide people into wicked capitalists and saintly victims, and those who don’t.

The folks at ACORN, a lefty activist group, see only evil capitalists and downtrodden everybody-else.

Columnist Michelle Malkin reports how ACORN champions the cause of homeowners crushed by the credit crunch and housing collapse. Except that some of their poster-child victims are hardly innocent.

A few weeks ago, as a mob cheered and cameras recorded, an ACORN gang broke into a padlocked home in Baltimore. It had been owned by Donna Hanks, expelled when the bank foreclosed. “This is our house now,” ACORN activist Louis Beverly declared, with Donna by his side.

Man of the people, right?

Except that Hanks was not merely hammered by circumstances. She bought the house in 2001 for $87,000, but later refinanced for $270,000 — money she presumably spent. In 2008 the house was sold for less than the new loan but more than twice the 2001 price. In 2006, Hanks declared bankruptcy, but did not comply with the terms of the court. Malkin gives further details of her irresponsibility, but you get the idea.

There are innocent victims hurting, now, in the current financial collapse. But being a borrower rather than a lender tells us nothing by itself. As the antics of ACORN show, either can be the victim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Doctoring on the Installment Plan

How does a successful doctor deal with patients lacking insurance? Dr. John Muney decided to offer a deal. For $79 each month he would service patients with unlimited office visits, some tests, and even in-office surgeries — at all his AMG Medical Group centers.

Now, the deal’s not for me. I have insurance through work, and I also have a family, so that $79 would have to be multiplied by four. Real money. But for some people, I bet, this makes perfect sense.

Yet, if government gets its way, no patient of New York’s five boroughs — where Muney’s clinics are located — need ever consider the good doctor’s innovation. Why? Because the state Insurance Department has declared his service a form of insurance and says it requires a license from the state.

What were you thinking, Dr. Muney? This is a free country, and . . . you can’t just do what you want, you know.

Dr. Muney is fighting back. The application form for this contract has THIS IS NOT INSURANCE emblazoned on every page. He is challenging the bureaucracy’s ruling.

Once upon a time, doctors regularly engaged in this kind of pricing. Many doctors — perhaps most — engaged in pro bono work for the poor. Other had special rates, etc. But the American Medical Association pressured politicians to put an end to such competitive practices.

Thanks, AMA.

As for Dr. Muney, my thanks to you is not sarcastic. Hang in there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Bailing Out of the Bailout

Freedom lovers would like to bail out of Washington’s endless bailout . . . that is, the government takeover of the economy.

The big spenders often won’t even debate the matter. Radio talker Rush Limbaugh is catching flak for saying he doesn’t want President Obama’s scheme to “work,” which sounds goofy until you realize that many of Limbaugh’s critics, including the White House, carefully ignore Limbaugh’s point. Economic upturn, great. Permanent loss of our freedom and permanent expansion of government, not great.

GOP congressmen aren’t exactly the most credible messengers when it comes to opposing massive new spending and intervention in the economy. But I’d rather see them repent and fight than repent and slink away in embarrassment.

Some Republican congressman are indeed fighting the good fight. And some of the nation’s GOP governors are too. Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal just turned down $100 million in bailout funds that he argues would result in permanently higher taxes for Louisiana businesses.

In a message distributed by Townhall, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford notes that the trillion or more dollars “in so-called ‘stimulus’ money . . . is really little more than a social policy wish  list of the Left.”

We live in dangerous and interesting times. The only wish list worth pushing, now, is establishing the economic ground rules — and Constitutional principles — that should have been guiding us all along.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

The Next Market To Melt

“During melting markets, all pension funds come under siege.”

I’m quoting from a February article by John Entine. This Reason magazine cover story is entitled “The Next Catastrophe,” and, like so many things these days, it’s scary. Entine explains how fragile pension funds can become when markets collapse.

Regular listeners know that I’ve been worried about what we might call the Ultimate Catastrophe. Increasing demands on Social Security and other entitlement programs, like Medicare, added to never-ending deficit spending, threaten to bankrupt the nation.

But Entine looks at a different economic crisis. He points out that all pension funds can become unhinged in chaotic markets. Old news. What’s new? Well, many government and union pension funds began taking riskier stances regarding stock investing a few decades ago. And with greater risk comes You Know What.

Worse yet, many funds have been hijacked by well-meaning do-gooders, investing in “socially responsible” causes rather than reasonably run profitable companies. These funds are worth over $2 trillion. That is, they are until their fundamentals prove weak or worse, and they go down, down, down.

As with the mortgage markets, it seems that pension management has undergone a huge paradigm shift, away from security and savvy, towards . . . nonsense.

Things are not looking up, up, up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets too much government

Able to Raise Keynes

Recently on This American Life, economists told NPR listeners how the then-upcoming stimulus bill would amount to the very first legitimate and full test ever of Keynesian ideas.

Sure, politicians have been using John Maynard Keynes’s notions as an excuse to deficit spend ever since the Great Depression. But then, Lord Keynes had wanted politicians to spend even more, more than they dared.

Now, President Obama and our Democratic Congress have decided to spend enough billions, or trillions, to really do the trick.

Switch to Larry King’s latest interview with Bill Clinton. Our former prez assured us that the stimulus bill “would do what it is supposed to,” and he mentioned three things, only one of them vaguely about stimulus. He said the bill was better seen as a “bridge over troubled waters.”

Clinton said the real issue was declining asset values, which Congress would address later.

At Mises.org, Stephan Kinsella asked how this could amount to Keynesianism. Clinton used a different lingo entirely.

Here’s how: It’s not that the bill will give us Keynesian stimulus. It’s that it has stimulated politicians in the old, old Keynesian way.

Congressional Democrats know that the stimulus won’t work. So they are preparing the spin now. From them we heard the official excuse for the bill. From Clinton, the future excuse.

Politicians know zip about the economy. They just know how to spend our money. And our great, great, great grandchildren’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

Yes, Virginia, There Is a Nebraska

Government transparency is understandably popular. Voters want to know what their governments are doing.

So smart politicians promise us more transparency, more sunshine, more info. But, being politicians, sometimes they don’t deliver. And, when they do, they often spend a whole lot more than necessary.

That’s what is happening in Virginia. Bills to put the state budget online have passed both chambers of the legislature — unanimously.

But politicians estimate that the cost to get the job done will run over $3 million. Wow. That’s a lot. How does that compare with other states?

At the Tertium Quids blog, there’s a letter posted from Ed Martin, chief of staff to former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt. Martin points out that two years ago Blunt created the Missouri Accountability Portal by executive order.

The website is a national model with a searchable database of state expenditures. It’s garnered over 17 million hits from interested citizens. And it cost less than $200,000.

Then there’s Nebraska State Treasurer Shane Osborn. As the Washington Examiner recently reported, he put Nebraska spending online without the legislature passing a law. He just did it.

“I used my staff to compile the data,” Osborn said. “I just viewed it as my job.”

The grand cost of Osborn’s excellent transparency website? Only $38,000.

Sounds like there are millions of reasons for Virginia to learn from others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

A Dollar for Your Stimulus

Remember Robocop? The clobbering of the bad guys by the cyberonic cop was a tad too bloodthirsty for my taste. And the satire wasn’t exactly as subtle as Huxley’s or Orwell’s. Still, today’s economic news makes me remember that weird game-show line, horsily bellowed throughout the 1987 flick: “I’d buy that for a dollar!”

Fast forward to 2009 and dire economic times, and the question hangs there. What can you buy for a dollar?

Answer? Subsidy.

Washington state politicians have just sent hundreds of thousands of checks for . . . one dollar each — yes, just a buck — to the state’s poorest residents.

Lots of those residents have no bank account, and thus it will cost the recipients more to cash the check than the amount of the check. So what on earth are the Evergreen state politicians thinking?

Well, there’s method to their madness.

Remember the nearly trillion-dollar so-called stimulus package Congress just passed? Apparently, there’s some rule that says if you’re a food-stamp recipient and you get at least one dollar in energy bill assistance, this qualifies you for even more federal assistance.

So, Washington legislators mail out completely ridiculous, wasteful, dollar-each checks to “prime the pump” of the federal money machine — proving that the bailouts are not only lunatic themselves, but the cause of lunacy in others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
U.S. Constitution

Hold Your Applause

Here’s a quiz. “[A] populist pep rally that’s constantly interrupted by applause.” This statement refers to

A. The shameful quadrennial nominating conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties.
B. The constitutionally mandated State of the Union Address.
C. The Oscars.

It could be any of the three. There’s too much clapping in our society, not enough listening. This goes for your local PTA meeting as well as the annual presentation of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

But Gene Healy of the Cato Institute was talking about the State of the Union speeches. “In our constitutional system,” he recently explained in a Cato Weekly Video, “Congress is supposed to be the lead dog and the dominant branch. And they really shouldn’t be jumping up out of their seats to clap at every outsized promise like they’re members of the Supreme Soviet cheering a new grain quota.”

Healy says that next year, when Obama must offer up the annual State of the Union, he should begin the speech by saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, please hold your applause till the end.”

I say, go further. Do like Thomas Jefferson did: Write up the report and send it to Congress. A public speech is not required.

And if Barack Obama cannot stand giving up the chance to use his golden voice and silver tongue, then deliver the speech as a podcast, for Congress to watch on their iPods.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

The Milan Four

Four executives of Google — call them the Milan Four — are on trial in Italy for the crime of being employed by Google when an objectionable video was posted to a Google video site. The charges are defamation and privacy violation. The accused face jail time.

The video showed teasing of a boy with Down syndrome. As soon as Google was told about the posting, the company removed it. According to reports, the four were not even “directly involved in handling video from Italy.”

Obviously, this is not a just prosecution. If anything, one would go after the persons who posted the video. If prosecuting the four executives is warranted, why not haul every single Google executive into court? Or every single Google employee, for that matter? They’re all equally “guilty.”

In general, it’s bad to prosecute innocent people at random in the service of some political agenda.

This is happening all too often, not just in Italy, but in our own country. Prosecutors are increasingly becoming politicians, and are out for greater name identification. They trade their good judgment for headline-grabbing stunt prosecutions. Oftentimes, the cases fizzle. But too often, the damage done to innocent people cannot be dismissed when the false charges are.

I hope the Italian job fizzles too. Meanwhile, Google should defend itself using the viral techniques of the Internet, never letting up on this outrageous prosecution.

Google that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.