Tag: Chuck Schumer

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies too much government

Long Gone Rogue

Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow, deep state, Donald Trump

Back in the 1990s, we used to talk about “rogue agencies” of the U.S. Government. And for good reason: the Branch Davidian massacre and the Ruby Ridge fiasco were hard to forget.

After 9/​11/​2001, however, we cut the agencies some slack. Why? Their incompetence and our hope.

But it became obvious from the NSA’s illegal metadata collection program, as revealed by Edward Snowden, the core agencies of the military-​industrial complex do not like playing by rules that the American people have a say in.

How bad is it?

On New Year’s Day this year, Sen. Chuck Schumer was talking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about their favorite conspiracy theory. Maddow, as we all know, had gone Full Nutter on this “collusion”/“corruption” story, and Democratic politicians (along with nearly the whole of the mainstream news media) ran with the story for two years. Then, the Mueller report is “no collusion.”

But on that first Tuesday of 2019, Ms. Maddow was talking about Trump’s tweets which she characterized as “taunting” the CIA and other agencies obsessed with the “Russian hacking” angle of the brouhaha. And Schumer’s response? 

“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

We should take this as a signal. It is like making prison rape jokes. It says something about the situation: prison rape or Deep State machinations. And about the speaker: leveraging a rogue element as a threat.

No wonder many now think the Russiagate/​Mueller investigation was a “Deep State Coup” attempt.

A republic with rogue agencies is hardly a republic at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow, deep state, Donald Trump

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Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-​ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster. 

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.” 

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . .  . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters.… In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt. 

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions.  “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said. 

Yes. 

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

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national politics & policies too much government

A Fearsome, Fiery Cliché

Senator Chuck Schumer insists that it would be the height of irresponsibility either to freeze the federal government’s debt ceiling or “shut down the government.” Either action would risk “the credit markets losing some confidence in the United States Treasury” — tantamount to “Playing with fire.”

The opposite of his point appears closer to the truth.  Michael Tanner explains that “If the debt ceiling is not increased, the Treasury can prioritize interest and debt payment to avoid a default and essentially put the government on a stringent pay-​as-​you-​go basis.” Economist Robert Murphy adds that “even if the debt ceiling weren’t increased, the Treasury could still roll over its debt as existing bonds matured. The only thing the Treasury couldn’t do would be to issue more debt.”

The truth behind Schumer’s clichéd metaphor is this: He and his cronies have been “playing with fire” for a long time. And it’s worth noting that forcing the Treasury to switch to pay-​as-​you-​go would likely have the opposite effect on credit markets than he contends: When prodigal spenders cut up their credit cards and continue to pay existing bills, creditors tend to breathe a little easier.

But expect no such acumen from Schumer, who, in that same exhortation, lists the “three branches of government”: The House, the Senate, and the president. Apparently, he hopes to gain authority for his contentions by piling factual error upon cliché.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Carrying On About Carry-Ons

Poor Chuck Schumer. A vendor now charges for a service that it didn’t previously charge separately. So the senator wants to outlaw this.

“Airline passengers have always had the right to bring a carry-​on bag” without separate fees, Schumer fumes. It’s a “slap in the face to travelers” that some airlines now consider charging for carry-​on bags, a policy already in place at Spirit Airlines.

Horrors! The ugly spectacle of businessmen acting as if they … have the right to run their businesses freely, not merely as lackeys of congressional overseers.

Spirit, which is simultaneously reducing base ticket prices, says airplanes will empty faster if there’s less luggage looming overhead. I don’t like paying the fees, but airlines do have costs. And competition. An airline that kept heaping up fees until it was charging $1,800 per ticket wouldn’t get off the ground. Not if another airline was charging far less for the same journey.

The proper response to terms of trade that one dislikes is to complain to the vendor, take one’s business elsewhere, or both — not to decry any scrap of autonomy as a “loophole” in a regulatory regime not yet exhaustively draconian.

Yes, let airlines charge for carry-​ons. And let Schumer take the bus to and from DC. This will give him less time to pursue phony-​baloney crusades.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies

Democrats versus Majoritarian Tyranny

Senate Democrats are firmly against any attempt to circumvent the 60-​vote majority that Senate rules require to prevent a filibuster of major legislation. On principle!

Forget that the recent election of Republican Scott Brown deprives Democrats of their filibuster-​proof majority. Democrats won’t even consider trying to shunt that rule aside so they can foist Obamacare on us. No, no, no.

Of course, strangely, newspaper reports say they looking at doing just that. But I can prove otherwise. With evidence from five years ago. Here’s what Senator Obama had to say in 2005: “… prompting a change in the Senate rules that really, I think, would change the character of the Senate forever … Majoritarian absolute power.… and that’s just not what the Founders intended.”

Senator Schumer: “We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis. The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the ‘nuclear option.’ The checks and balances which say that if you get 51 percent of the vote, you don’t get your way 100 percent of the time.”

Senator Reid: “Mr. President, the right to extend debate is never more important than when one party controls Congress and the White House. In these cases, the filibuster serves as a check on power and preserves our limited government.”

Wow. Sounds like they really mean it. And they do, right?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Schumer Should Shut It

Government subsidies give government officials a license to order the recipients around: 

  • Spend on this. 
  • Merge with that. 
  • Get rid of this CEO. 

You take our money, you take our orders. Strings definitely attached.

But there are other kinds of bullying, often more subtle than formally enacted laws and regulations applied to otherwise independent firms.

Some government goons toss their weight around in the private sector entirely outside any legislative or regulatory process. How? By “conversing” with private firms about how they conduct business. 

Recently we witnessed Senator Chuck Schumer chatting with Time Warner Cable about its test of broadband metering in Rochester, New York. The cable company’s notion was to price different levels of service. Customers using huge amounts of bandwidth were charged extra for that extra usage.

In normal markets, buyers constantly communicate happiness or unhappiness with what sellers are selling, both verbally and through buying patterns. No politician had to chat with Coca Cola to convince it to bring back “Coca Cola Classic.”

But politicians like scoring political points. And companies subject to such persuasive efforts know that more than persuasion is involved. There’s also the threat of force if the company doesn’t knuckle under to the politician. So Time Warner dropped its price-​tier trial.

And we’re all just a little less free today than we were yesterday. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.