Tag: 2016 Presidential race

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics too much government

Biden His Time

Joe Biden, president, election, nuzzle, statue of liberty, photomontage, collage, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Vice-​President Joe Biden announced, yesterday, that he will not run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, ending many weeks of speculation.

The Veep’s exit from a race he never entered benefits Mrs. Clinton, who in those same polls has a larger lead head-​to-​head against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.).

Much of “Middle-​Class” Joe’s speech was the usual laundry list of progressive pie-​in-​the-​sky, money-​can-​too-​buy-​us-​love shibboleths:

  • “President Obama has led this nation from crisis to recovery, and we’re now on the cusp of resurgence.”
  • The public schools fail to adequately educate kids — at stupendous cost. Rather than innovate, Biden demands we “commit to 16 years of free public education for all of our children.”
  • Biden’s biggest pitch was for “a moon shot to cure cancer.” (Cancer will be cured … but not by politicians.)

Still, Joe voiced something other candidates fail to emphasize:

[W]e have to end the divisive partisan politics that is ripping this country apart.… I don’t think we should look at Republicans as our enemies. They are our opposition. They’re not our enemies. And for the sake of the country, we have to work together.

That hasn’t been Hillary Clinton’s approach, having compared conservative Republicans to terrorist groups. Plus, to the question “Which enemy that you made during your political career are you most proud of?” she answered, “Republicans.”

“Four more years of this kind of pitched battle may be more than this country can take,” Joe Biden added.

I guess Joe’s not for Hillary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Joe Biden, president, election, nuzzle, statue of liberty, photomontage, collage, illustration, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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folly ideological culture meme nannyism national politics & policies political challengers too much government

All Those Egos, One Basket

progressivism, meme, progressives, magic, Paul Jacob

In Tuesday night’s debate, Democrats  put all their egos in one ideological basket: progressivism. Even Jim Webb managed to sound progressive … until he identified his prime personal enemy — the man he shot in wartime.

Bernie Sanders once again insisted on lecturing Americans on what it means to be a “democratic socialist.” Martin O’Malley relentlessly pursued an impossible dream, 100 percent carbon-​free electric production by 2050 — far enough off to avoid any possible accountability. And Hillary Clinton said that, sure, she’s a progressive, “a progressive who likes to get things done!”

But what has she “got done,” ever?

It was her secrecy regarding the initial health care reforms back in her husband’s first term that helped spark the firestorm of opposition that led to the Revolution of ’94, and to the triangulating successes of the master of manipulative compromise, Bill Clinton. His was not a “progressive era,” though Democrats still use the 1990s as proof that their (“our”) policies “work.”

With exception of Bernie on gun control and Hillary on foreign policy and spying (Snowden gave out secrets to the enemy: traitor; she gave out who-​knows-​what via her insecure email server: blankout), the spend-​spend-​spend mantra of progressivism, mixed with “fair taxes” (higher tax rates) on the top 1 percent, was not challenged on the stage.

How far would they go to close ranks? Bernie sided with her regarding “your damned e‑mails.” That’s so ideological as to eschew any consideration of character or loyalty or trust.

Quite a revolution … in the party.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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progressivism, meme, progressives, magic, Paul Jacob

 

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folly national politics & policies political challengers

Tonight’s Permitted Debate

democratic debate, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Tonight, the Democratic Party holds its first presidential debate of this cycle. Finally! It’s one of only six total throughout the entire campaign for the party nomination.

And all the other debates will be on weekends, with much lower TV viewership.

What does it suggest when a political party wants to minimize rather than maximize the degree to which the public gets to see its candidates and hear the party’s message?

“[I]t seems infelicitous,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “for Democrats to be embroiled in a very public fight in which party leaders are increasingly being accused of limiting the exposure of the candidates to voters.”

Is Supreme Democratic Party Commander Debbie Wasserman Schultz afraid that familiarity will breed contempt?

As party chair, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally decreed that debates shall be limited to just six. She also warned that “candidates will be uninvited to any debates if they accept invitation to any debates outside the 6‑debate schedule.” (Meanwhile, Republicans are holding nine presidential debates, but likewise, dictatorially, blocking participation in additional debates.)

Wasserman Schultz, facing protests and heckling, claims her only aim is to prevent the debate schedule from getting “out of control.”

Or out of her control, perhaps?

Presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called it a “rigged process,” asking, “What national or party interest does this decree serve?”

The limited debate schedule serves as a huge advantage for frontrunner Hillary Clinton by limiting the breakout opportunities of her opponents.

But, at least tonight, all the world’s a stage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-​million-​dollar no-​bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-​compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding …

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government … beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

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Common Sense

Weekend with Bernie: Sanders’ Eleven

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Bernie Sanders has a horde of helpers. Consider the attached visual meme; “Occupy Democrats” seem to have captured Bernie’s philosophy: spend and meddle.

All of the spending in the first item of Bernie’s 11-​Step Economic Plan are best directed at the state level. Bernie voters should wonder: why haven’t politicians in the states kept up infrastructure?

There are reasons why some of us want to privatize more infrastructure: more responsible upkeep.

Bernie's PlanOh, and why hasn’t the doubled amount spent on public K‑12 schooling in my lifetime led to better schools or better-​educated grads?

Just let that one hang there, and then contrast it with the disaster the feds have made of college costs while trying to “make college more affordable.”

Expanding Medicaid in one plank, and making “healthcare available to all,” in another, I take as repetition for emphasis. But the fact that Bernie’s backers want to expand spending in programs that recently have seen dramatic expansion — Social Security (in the form of radically increased rates of disability retirements), Medicaid (Obamacare), and food stamp participation (SNAP) — even while the programs lurch into insolvency, along with the whole federal budget, sends up a red flag … for irresponsibility.

Then there’s all the fiddling with free employment contracts that they pretend helps the poor, but can’t: unionization, raised wage minimums, and “equal pay” … for, presumably, unequal work, since we already have laws enforcing equal pay for equal work.

Several points are vague enough that, as stated, I could jump on board: I, too, want to reform the tax code and … “close corporate loopholes.” So does, famously this week, Donald Trump.

But what I mean by this and what progressives like Sanders mean? Big differences, I suspect.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

 

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folly ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Fiorina Fires Back

Fiorina, employment, HP, CEO, Hillary Clinton, Barbara Boxer, jobs, Presidential, collage, photomontage, illustration, JGill, Common Sense

Politicians love talking up job creation. Presidential candidates, especially, pretend to a Svengali-​like virtuosity in producing paychecks and, if only handed the keys to the White House, creating — presto! — a bunch more.

This year, Republican Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-​Packard, has been repeatedly attacked by Democrats, democratic socialists and her Republican opponents for firing 30,000 workers during her tenure running the company. As if she did so out of meanness.

Sunday, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd went at her again.

“I find it very rich,” Fiorina fired back. “Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, all the Democrats who are attacking me, they’ve never created a job, they’ve never saved a job, and their policies destroy jobs, including Mrs. Clinton’s latest position on Keystone Pipeline.”

Mrs. Fiorina offers context for her “failure”: “I led HP through a very difficult time. The NASDAQ dropped 80 percent. Some of our strongest competitors went out of business altogether, taking every job with them.” As she sees it, her team “saved 80,000 jobs. We went on to grow to 150,000 jobs. We quadrupled the growth rate of the company, quadrupled the cash flow of the company, tripled the rate of innovation of the company. And went from lagging behind to leading in every single product and every single market. I will run on that record all day long.”

I’m not endorsing Fiorina, either as candidate or as CEO. Just sayin’ that those attacking her on 30,000 jobs don’t know anything at all about actually creating even one real one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense First Amendment rights folly national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Speech

Donald Trump, free speech, law suit, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

What is free speech? Is it what presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to squelch?

Last week Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-​and-​desist letter to the Club for Growth. The Club, a well-​known 501©4 limited government advocacy group, has put out a number of public service messages (“ads” as they witlessly call them in the politics biz — they are in truth anti-advertisements) criticizing Trump for past high-​tax/​tax-​hike stances.

“Rest assured,” the lawyers wrote,

we will not sit idly by and allow special interest groups and political action committees like yours to defame Mr. Trump and cause damage to his reputation and business interests by intentionally disseminating libelous statements you fully know to be untrue and, even worse, continue to purposely mislead the American people for your own financial gain. Toward that end, Mr. Trump has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt to your defamatory Attack Ads.

The lawyers, like Trump himself, must know that the case has zero merit. As Jonathan Adler explained in his coverage, what we have here “is commonly known as a SLAPP suit — a suit that’s designed to shut people up. ‘SLAPP’ stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and the idea is that well-​financed plaintiffs can use lawsuits, and the threat of suits, to discourage speech that they don’t like.”

These days, abridgments of free speech typically come from government coercively stamping out peaceful speech.

Meritless lawsuits, and their threat, are another and quite distinct anti-​free-​speech affront.

Would you trust anyone who employs such a method?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Fairy-​Tale “Free”

Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-​tale candidate.

Well, yeah.

Not “once upon a time,” but today …  the federal government’s public debt is in the double-​digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/​underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!

He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.

But the costs have to be paid.

And will be.

That’s the essence of common-​sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.

And those costs can be killer.

Far-​left-​of-​center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-​working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from … three pot-​of-​gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”

We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.

Bernie didn’t get that lesson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

 

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Accountability Common Sense government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Walker vs. Union Power

Taxes Make Us Strong

Governor Scott Walker, who is running for the U. S. Presidency, has cooked up a white paper on the subject for which he is nationally known: labor relations. It’s a doozy.

His main points are:

  • Reduce the power of union bosses by eliminating the National Labor Relations Board.
  • Eliminate big-​government unions.
  • Take “right to work”
  • Protect state employees’ First Amendment rights.

And that’s not the whole of it. Some of his points are worth quoting at length, including this:

On Day One of my administration, I will put in place accountability and transparency rules. I will require online disclosure of union expenditures, including revealing the total compensation of union officers, itemizing union trust fund expenditures, increasing reporting requirements for local affiliates of government employee unions, and restoring conflict-​of-​interest reporting requirements.

Walker’s is not a detailed, in-​depth policy paper. It’s a list of goals, really. It does not address how he would accomplish this, if elected. It’s obvious that many (perhaps most) of these reforms would require congressional compliance and even legislation.

Yet by focusing on the inordinate power of government workers’ unions, Gov. Walker advances what many of us were hoping for when we first heard that the surprisingly daring, surprisingly successful Wisconsin governor would make a bid for the top spot in the federal government. Something needs changing.

And that something is the general purpose for government: what and whom government serves, other than itself, and how.

Or, in Walker’s words, “commonsense reforms” to narrow “the federal government’s role.…”

He says let’s close “special-​interest loopholes … once and for all.”

Is that possible? It’s worth a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Taxes Make Us Strong

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Trump Blot

Trump Blot, collage, photomontage, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

I’m almost professionally required to say something nice about Donald Trump — because mainstream media feel professionally required to ridicule him. So here goes: he’s doing us a great service in his presidential run.

Trump’s sort of a bung puller; he’s unstopped the cork of polite political society, and shown the massive voter dissatisfaction by giving more realistic voice to just how stupid government is. “Really stupid!”

But, beyond that, where does he stand? On too many issues, that’s murky. For economist David Henderson, a friend of mine from way back, this shows promise.

Henderson is a free-​market economist. He’s not into the whole warfare/​big stick bullying that some conservatives channel from the first Progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, writes Henderson, stands out, by not having “foreign policy advisers.” Which Henderson regards as “refreshing, given the hawkish views of the vast majority of his Republican competitors.”

Henderson also acknowledges Trump’s downsides, including “Trump’s claim, in 2011, that the U.S. government, having won the war in Iraq, should have taken their oil.” This nationalist plunder idea is evil on its face. And disturbingly retro, harkening back to the days of rapine and pillage.

Understandably, Americans fixate on the man’s “charisma.” Should that make us comfortable? Of Max Weber’s three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and rational-​legal), charismatic is the least predictable, least stable. People will follow too far those they love too much. Or find too entertaining?

Trump serves, for now, as a sort of Rorshach inkblot test. What you see depends on your hopes, fears, or the context of Trump’s candidacy, as you understand it.

For my part, I don’t see an accountable proponent of responsible, limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump Blot, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon