Tag: control

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initiative, referendum, and recall subsidy

Subsidizers May Be Checked

Ohio, referendum, control, stop, emergency button,

“FirstEnergy Solutions might not want to spend its bailout money just yet,” warns a story in Crain’s Cleveland Business. 

At issue? A possible statewide referendum on House Bill 6.

HB6 would, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “gut Ohio’s green-energy mandates and set up customer-funded subsidies to nuclear and coal power plants.” It passed the majority Republican state House “thanks to key support from several House Democrats.”

Passage of HB6 through both houses of the Ohio Legislature and its signature by Governor Mike DeWine would force Ohio ratepayers to fork over roughly $150 million in subsidies to FirstEnergy Solutions for its two nuclear power plants.

Except for one thing — in Ohio, voters possess a powerful political weapon: the referendum. 

Already a diverse coalition of opponents to the bill has formed Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts, filed a referendum and kicked off a petition drive that has “until October 21, 2019, to collect the 265,774 required signatures.”

“HB6 has created some strange bedfellows,” the Plain Dealer notices, including bringing together “environmental groups, the fossil-fuel industry, renewable energy companies, and some small-government activists” in opposition.

“Many of the forces that fueled the Trump presidency, before 2016 — I’m talking the Tea Party and others — could be supportive in undoing this bill,” explains Paul Beck, former chair of Ohio State University’s political science department. “And so could people on the left. You may find an incredible divergent group of people aligned with each other.”

“Liberals hate that it subsidizes dirty coal plants,” reports Crain’s. “Many conservatives hate that it picks winners and losers by subsidizing one industry over another.”

Thankfully, the fate of the giveaway rests in the hands of Ohioans, not their subsidy-loving representatives.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Ohio, referendum, control, stop, emergency button,

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meme too much government

“I’ve Got a Plan for That.”

Elizabeth Warren, plan, central plan, nanny state, control, puppet,

“If you start from a belief that the most knowledgeable person on earth does not have even one percent of the total knowledge on earth, that shoots down social engineering, economic central planning, judicial activism, and innumerable other ambitious notions favored by the political left. “

—Thomas Sowell

Categories
general freedom media and media people nannyism too much government

When Push Comes to Nudge

Ireland, global warming, authoritarian, totalitarian, control, climate,

Ireland’s prime minister — or “Taoiseach” — is enthusiastic. “Speaking at the launch of the Climate Action Plan in Grangegorman today,” the Independent reported last week, “Mr [Leo Eric] Varadkar said the government would establish a Climate Action Delivery Board in the Department of the Taoiseach to oversee its implementation.”

The plan will deeply affect “almost every aspect” of Irish life. “The Government plans to force petrol and diesel cars off our roads,” the Independent elaborates, “introduce new buildings regulations and change the school curriculum in a bid to counteract climate change.”

Though the scope of the effort is breathtaking, Mr. Varadkar pretends he is being oh-so-humble and cautious, “nudging” citizens rather than going for a “coercive” approach.

Typical politician’s whopper, of course. Higher taxes on fuel and plastics, banning oil and gas boilers in new buildings, forcing private cars off city roads — this is all force.

Pretending otherwise is something akin to a Big Lie.

And all in service to the cause of reducing “greenhouse gas emissions by two per cent a year each year for the next ten years.”

Varadkar says he is doing it for the young and at the behest of the young . . . who have been propagandized to believe “that the world will be destroyed in a climate apocalypse.”

Well, the Taoiseach didn’t use the word “propagandized,” and insists that disaster is “not inevitable, it can be stopped, action can be taken.”

But Ireland’s contribution to the planet’s “greenhouse gases” is negligible. If all the Irish held their breaths and keeled over for the cause, they wouldn’t make a carbon dioxide burp of a difference.

It is a power grab. Not anything like a “nudge.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

Ireland, global warming, authoritarian, totalitarian, control, climate,

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An Important Distinction

regulations, rule of law, control, freedom

A “rule of law” is based on general principles, and makes room for — or, better yet, is based upon — the protection of individual rights.

It used to be common to say, “a rule of law, not of men”; it was even as common in political oratory as was spouted out over drinks at the Rotary. But as the modern Regulatory State has grown in scope and power, most folks seem to have lost track of the notion. It is now not even a cliché. Few even of our most educated folks can explain this idea. Vast swaths of the mis-educated public appear not to “get” the idea of limiting government to the enforcement of a few general principles; instead, they cry for more “regulations” (along with additional spending and maybe even a whole new division of the executive government) every time a crisis, tragedy or atrocity occurs.

So we are left with a political culture in which the words of Tacitus seem to a majority as implausible at best, evil at worst: “The more the laws, the more corrupt the State.” Contrary to today’s trendy prejudice, we do not need “more laws” — edicts legislated by representatives, or regulations concocted by bureaucracies — we need Law.

As in, “a rule of Law.”

straw, regulations, law, punishment, punish, authoritarian society

Are you truly free?

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general freedom ideological culture Popular too much government

Who Benefits From Our Fears?

fear, children, dog walking, freedom, security, control

“Think of the children!”

I have daughters. And neighbors, nephews, nieces, cousins, friends with children. And friends who used to be children. But when the command to “think of the children” is screamed out by freaked-out paranoiacs demanding more laws, more punishments, more prison time, more surveillance — and consequently less freedom — I try to think responsibly.

As did one Corey Widen, when she “let her 8-year-old do the most normal, cheerful thing in the world — walk the dog around the block.” Lenore Skenazy tells the tale in Reason. “After the girl returned home, the doorbell rang. It was the police.”

Someone in Widen’s Wilmette, Illinois, community had seen the child and dog walking around “unsupervised” and called 911.

The thing, there was no lack of supervision, here. The child was supervising the dog.

What could be more natural?

The neighbor could have walked outside and smiled at the kid and talked about the dog and, in general, been a good neighbor.

Think of it as a peaceful order of supervision.

Instead: in came the police.

Then, after the police let it go, the Department of Children and Family Services stepped in to “investigate.”

Because nothing says DANGER more than a kid walking a dog.

Skenazy notes that this attitude is commonly justified by crimes against kids. And yet, Ms. Skenazy notes, crime in Wilmette has gone down dramatically over the years. As it has most elsewhere.

The culture has become more paranoid.

Who is served by this?

Authoritarians. Haters of freedom. Demagogues.

Certainly not kids, for kids cloistered from simple responsibilities cannot grow up to take on real responsibilities.

Think of the . . .  future adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Driven to Sanity

Washington Post, economics, economy, control, government, limited

Having the federal government centrally plan the economy is “a huge waste of everyone’s time and resources” states an amazingly common-sensical Washington Post editorial.

“In a well-functioning modern economy, businesses are generally free to buy and sell the things they need, absent a compelling public need for government intervention,” the editors further expound.

Hmmm, a capitol-town rag that regularly extols the virtues of big government regulation of everything now notices the importance of freedom.

Of avoiding, especially, a system where bureaucrats and other government bullies micromanage commerce.

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,” Thomas Jefferson wrote long ago, “we should all want for bread.”

And aluminum.

“Worse,” the Post argues, the system “also politicizes — and, indeed, corrupts — economic life. Companies that feel threatened by any particular tariff exclusion request have the right to present their objections to the Commerce Department, meaning that each decision represents a high-stakes competition for federal favor between at least two companies with every incentive to influence it through lobbying, campaign contributions, you name it.”

Correct. It seems we may have Donald Trump to thank for opening the Post’s eyes. 

“[T]he way to get ahead in Mr. Trump’s economy,” those editors conclude, “is not making better products for the people, but making better connections in Washington.”

Tragically true.

But, sadly, true long before Mr. Trump entered the White House. No new powers have been given to Trump. 

Let’s drain the stinking Washington swamp. Let’s end the corrupting influence of a regulatory state run amok. Let’s limit the power of the people wielding political power.

How?

Free the markets!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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