Tag: government

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Accountability general freedom national politics & policies responsibility too much government

It Didn’t Last

September 11, 911, unity, U.S., trust, confidence, government

“September 11 is one of our worst days but it brought out the best in us,” proclaimed Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander.

Today is the 16th anniversary of that terrible day … arriving as Hurricane Irma smashes into Florida and with fresh memories of so many acts of kindness and heroism by first responders and minuteman citizen volunteers alike rescuing folks from the recent flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey.

“These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat,” then-​President George W. Bush told the American people that frightful evening. “But they have failed. Our country is strong. A great people has been moved to defend a great nation.”

He was correct about the people of this country. All kinds of folks stepped up in a myriad of ways to help. 

But what about the government?

Well, the “public’s trust in government,” according to Pew Research, “which was mired in the 30% range through much of the past decade, doubled in the wake of the attacks.”

That uptick wasn’t to last. Public disgust with the federal government reverted to form. By 2015, reports Pew, “Only 19% of Americans today say they can trust the government in Washington to do what is right ‘just about always’ (3%) or ‘most of the time’ (16%).”

What happened?

Well, have you met the Washington politicians?

And can our country really be “strong,” as Mr. Bush declared, if government cannot earn the trust of even one of every five Americans?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

ObamaCare’s Casualties

healthcare, Obamacare, TrumpCare, ACA, Affordable Care Act, Healthcare reform, government, socialism

We all know the truth: Partisan “warfare” yields the usual war casualty, truth itself. Now, because of the increasing weight of federal government presence in healthcare markets, partisan untruth incurs medical costs. 

Take the goofy Republican plan(s) to “repeal and replace” ObamaCare — pushed with so many half-​truths and downright lies that one wonders where to begin. But before die-​hard Republicans get too incensed about this judgment, let’s note that the supporters of the mis-​named “Affordable Care Act” are no better.

Probably worse.

“Fact-​checking,” writes David Harsanyi on the media mishandling of ObamaCare, “has evolved from an occasionally useful medium to an exercise in revisionism and diversion.” Journalists now seem more like spin doctors. 

And their patient? The reputation of ObamaCare’s namesake.

One journalist, for example, insists that “Obama didn’t lie or ‘mangle facts’ or mislead anyone,” Harsanyi writes.

What does this journalist claim Obama did in repeatedly promising “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”? 

Well, “he gave a ‘misguided … pledge.’ The word ‘misguided’ intimates that Obama wasn’t misleading anyone on purpose.”

It helps the former president save face if he accidentally got us in this fix. He had the best intentions, you know.

Worse yet, as both sides snipe about these little untruths, they lose sight of the biggest truth, which I wrote about this weekend: that “government-​run” means “government-decided,” and that, in turn, means 

government deciding matters of your life and your death.

It would be helpful if our leaders took this all a bit more seriously, daring to speak truth … to us … as well as to themselves and each other.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Minimal Use of a Finger

Seattle, distracted driving, texting, overreach, government, freedom, eating, drinking, liberty

Drivers in Washington State have a new law to … swerve from?

“New distracted driving law starts Sunday, July 23,” the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) tweeted last week. “The law forbids,” Washingtonians were told,  “virtually all use of handheld gadgets such as phones, tablets, laptop computers and gaming devices while driving.”

The idea is to prevent accidents. Though distracted driving’s danger has been contested, texting while driving certainly seems a kind of crazy. 

Thankfully, it’s possible to talk “hands free.”

Which, it turns out, the new law does allow. Drivers may activate and de-​activate hands-​free devices (and apps) with the “minimal use of a finger.” 

Eating and drinking while driving are also disallowed, but those are “secondary offenses,” which police are not allowed to pull you over for.

At this point, another meaning of “minimal use of a finger” may occur to some readers. What starts out as secondary offenses have been known to be upgraded, legally and practically, to primary offense status.

Does a shiver runs down your back?

Yet another rule! More fines! 

More interactions with police. 

And if all this doesn’t feel “police state‑y” enough for you, there is argument in Seattle about whether pedestrians should be prohibited from “distracted walking.” 

Yes, some are actually considering that. 

I’m reminded of an argument against socialism: government-​run enterprises tend to be run “ruthlessly and with special attention to prosecution (and overburdening) of the poor.” Why would anyone want such techniques writ society-​wide, in every sector?

Meanwhile, we apparently must live and drive with more rules and more fines and more harassment.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Big Libertarian Questions

Charlie Gard, Nigel Farage, National Health Service, government, control

“This raises some very big libertarian questions,” said Nigel Farage yesterday. 

About what?

The “rights of parents against the state.”

The outspoken Brexit supporter and former leader of the UK Independence Party was referring to Charlie Gard, the sick, dying 11-​month old British baby, whose parents sought to take to the United States for an experimental medical treatment. But the hospital and the British government pooh-​poohed any likelihood of success and said, “No.”

That’s when Charlie’s parents went to court, fighting for seven months for the right to simply try to save their child’s life. Now, after those months of delay, even that remote medical hope has faded away.

“Even today,” explained Farage, “the hospital and the state are saying to these poor parents, ‘Oh, no, no, Charlie can’t die at home. He’ll have to die in our hospital.’”

The judge in the case called it “absurd” to suggest that little Charlie was a “prisoner of the National Health Service.” But not free to leave the country or even the hospital, that’s precisely what this poor child has become.

“There was a case four years ago of a little kid, Ashya King, who had a brain cancer,” Farage noted. “His parents wanted him to go to Prague for a revolutionary new treatment that the doctors here said wouldn’t work. The boy went. It worked. He’s now cancer free.”

Those parents were briefly imprisoned … for saving their child’s life.

It appears that single-payer makes the government the single-decider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

The Worst Is the Enemy of the Cure

Obamacare, healthcare, single payer, Ryancare, Trumpcare, government, Affordable Care Act

You’ve heard the adage: “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” This can be true in politics, where opposing an ameliorating reform because it is not ideal means, sometimes, getting stuck with unmitigated policy disasters.

But there’s a corollary: in politics the worst is likely to emerge … when practiced compromisers succumb to fearing the best, because unpalatable, or perhaps not in line with political interests.* Trying to avoid the “best is the enemy of the good,” we’re left with the outrageously awful.

Cures worse than the disease are not uncommon. The Democrats’ “Affordable Care Act” (ObamaCare) was a clumsy, badly drafted hodgepodge designed to fix problems by doing the opposite of what made sense.

And it immediately started having ill effects, pushing up costs for many, many health-​care and medical insurance consumers.

No wonder Republicans ran year after year promising repeal.

But now that Republicans have the chance for a real cure, they’re chickening out. The Senate just debuted their ObamaCare replacement. And Senator Rand Paul (R‑Ky) calls it “worse than ObamaCare.”

Why worse?

Because Republican politicians are better at promising than delivering. Fearing how those who directly benefited from ObamaCare might squawk, and how badly the GOP would be treated in the media because of this, moderates went with what they know: snake oil. 

Fortunately, Rand Paul’s opposition may kill the bill. If one other senator joins Dr. Paul — and Sen. Susan Collins (R‑Maine) who announced her opposition for other reasons — in not voting for the monster, it will not pass. 

Which is great, because going for a cure worse than the previous cure leaves us all with the worst possible outcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Like many cures. Politicians these days no longer have the knack for the necessary “spoonful of sugar” to help medicine go down. They prefer distributing just sugar pills.

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free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility

Mr. Jetson, Call Your Office

robot, machinery, Ludd, Luddites, anti-technology, socialism, efficiency, government

Increasingly, people are worrying about robots.

They’re taking our jobs, we’re told. Soon, all we’ll have left are robots. Massive unemployment!

While some find this scenario utopia and bliss,* it sounds dreadful to me.

Silver-​plated lining is, I doubt it. This kind of worry about technology making laborers obsolete has been around at least since Ned Ludd, who broke factory machinery to save jobs back in 1779.

How is this next wave of technology any different? If technology destroyed jobs on net, we’d all be unemployed now.

Economist Deirdre McCloskey takes this historical view. Writing in Reason, she says today’s high-​tech “innovations have actually raised real wages, correctly measured, because a human supplied with a better tool can produce more outputs. And the point of an economy is production for consumption, not protection of existing jobs.”

We’ve always been losing jobs. And new ones are created. Our worry shouldn’t be the jobs lost to new tech, but the lack of new ones coming into existence because of the oldest tech of all: government.

But you know what industry is least resistant to jobs vanishing to robots? Government itself. Sure, some reductions in public sector jobs have occurred, mainly as a result of decreased revenues in the recent “recession.” The job losses there have not been filled by robots, though. Permanent employee positions have been destroyed … too frequently replaced by outsourced consultants.

Could robots replace large swaths of public employees? Maybe that wouldn’t be good, actually. The worst-​case scenario might be this: government becoming efficient.

We don’t want bad and efficient government.

Kludge may be better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Some even see in this development a sort-​of science-​fiction rationale for making socialism at long last plausible — robots as the new slave class; all the humans in the leisure class! Yeah, right.

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