Tag: Harry Reid

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency

The Dark Guardian of Opacity

Sen. Harry Reid has his reasons that reason does not know.

Well, Nick Gillespie of ReasonTV (and .com) doesn’t know them. But he has his suspicions.

While the House has passed the Federal Reserve Financial Transparency Act, aiming to audit the Fed, Senate Majority Leader Reid balks at bringing the proposal up to a vote in Congress’s upper chamber. (Gillespie says it won’t happen, not while Reid has his say.)

In the House, both parties supported the audit — a majority of Democrats, and all Republicans save one lone holdout giving a Nay vote. But Reid, whose commitment to corporatism and opacity is well known, presumably fears the upwelling of good old republican values in the Old Man’s Club that is the U.S. Senate — Reid’s romper room for so many decades.

Egads, he must be thinking, even Senators Elizabeth Warren and Rand Paul agree on the need for some sunlight into the dark corridors of America’s bank cartel.

And they don’t agree about much of anything!

Gillespie spells out the whys of transparency. He also explains the basic context: “The central bank is explicitly tasked with the fundamentally incompatible duties of conducting stable monetary policy, promoting full employment, acting as a lender of last resort, and regulating the banks it works with. Good luck with all that.”

Who needs luck when you have power? Some do benefit from the current Old Boys’ system. They’re just not the general citizenry. Or republican governance.

A free society would have a very different banking and monetary system. Adding transparency might begin the process toward such a system.

Next step? Boot Harry Reid out of his cushy position of power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

To Dream the “Impossible” Repeal

Senator Ted Cruz’s non-​filibuster filibuster, monopolizing the Senate floor for the ninth hour as I type these words, is easy to characterize — if you are Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.

Easy to make fun of, especially when the senator read Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham as a bedtime story for his children — via C‑Span.

It’s not a filibuster, since it stops no vote. It’s not even a speed-​bump on the way to a vote. It’s something of a demonstration by one senator and a few of his allies to highlight the dangers of the Democrats’ Affordable Care Act, and the necessity to repeal it. Marshaling emails, tweets, and open letters, Cruz hopes to pressure the unmovable Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obamacare.

The point is this: Attacking Obamacare can’t help but seem quixotic. Like Don Quixote tilting at windmills, we who want less government — who want to limit government — often find ourselves jousting with giants who don’t budge, or (ahem) budget.

So of course we do appear comic, now and then.

But there’s also a reason that when Broadway and then Hollywood turned Cervantes’ classic into a musical, Don Quixote became something of a hero. The dream of justice, of economy, of equality before the law, of humility before the forces of nature, and resilience before the hordes of delusional politicians, does seem impossible.

But not fighting it, whatever peaceful way we can, would be disgraceful.

Ted Cruz is heroic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

It’s the Season

Ho, Ho, Ho. It’s that time of year again. Shopping. Selecting the right gift. Thinking of those special someones.

Yes, it’s Omnibus Spending Bill time, the Satan Clause time of year, when politicians fill up the stockings of their naughty friends in the lobbying business, and give generously.

With our money.

This year, Harry Reid went all out. He pushed an omnibus spending package that included so many earmarks that Congress had to use its whole box of Crayons just to keep some order to the bill’s marked corners. Yes, there were over six thousand “special holiday gifts” for special interests. 

As I said, “Ho, Ho, Ho.”

That’s not an elfin chuckle, that’s a popular euphemism for what the politicians are who cooked up this list without checking it twice.

But an unseasonable gust took the wind out of Reid’s sails. Pressured by folks back home, the bill was soundly defeated. As Daniel Mitchell put it, it was the American people — not the special interests — who got the Christmas present:

[F]iscal conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Partiers have won an important battle, but this is just one skirmish in a long war. If we want to save America from becoming another Greece, we better make sure that we redouble our efforts next year. 

At last, special interests get a lump of coal. It’s something to celebrate. And repeat. Ho, Ho, Ho! Like that ol’ elfin chuckle.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Categories
Common Sense insider corruption political challengers

Vote Absurdly If You Wish

Today is Election Day, with primaries or runoffs in 12 states. Let’s hope at least a few incumbents fall, from both parties.

Most Americans would cheer that. But we’ll then hear TV talking heads and pundits in the press tell us how crazily we’ve voted.

In 1994, ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings condescendingly reported that “The voters had a temper tantrum last week.… Parenting and governing don’t have to be dirty words: the nation can’t be run by an angry two-year-old.”

Were our choice so limited, I’d say give the two-​year olds a shot.

Jennings’s snooty attitude has been echoed again and again this year. Mike Allen, Politico’s chief political writer, said after Utah’s Senator Bennett flamed out in a GOP convention, “There was no reason for his state to turn on him. Nobody delivers for Utah the way he does.”

Allen went on to rant about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s unpopularity in his home state: “Voters are not thinking … the idea of Nevada kicking out Harry Reid is absurd! He’s the #1 senator: #1 out of 100. Nobody delivers for Nevada like Harry Reid.”

Apparently, Mr. Allen knows best. Utah and Nevada voters? Fools, the lot of them — for not liking all the presents their big-​shot politicians delivered for them.

Common sense, on the other hand, has it that anyone who votes to please the Washington press corps is truly crazy.

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
government transparency

Grading the President

Barack Obama promised a new era of government transparency. He even pledged a fully transparent congressional debate on health care reform, telling us repeatedly that the negotiations would be televised on C‑Span.

Now in power, he’s forgotten that tune. But of course, that’s not up to him. It’s up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last week, she laughed at such transparency.

But Clint Hendler of the Columbia Journalism Review has graded the president for what he — not Pelosi or Reid — can deliver on transparency. Regarding state secrets, Hendler gives Obama a “D.” With Freedom of Information Act requests the administration has done better: Mark it a “B.”

I’ve talked before about problems with the recovery​.gov website. But what about data​.gov? By the end of the month there should be some meat on that site’s database bones, but a lot more work will remain. Call it a “D‑plus.”

Hendler gives an “F” to the White House’s routine — and utterly opaque — practice of concocting off-​the-​record background briefings. An “A‑minus,” though, goes for White House visitor records … despite a refusal to issue lists of visitors in the administration’s first seven months. Further, the White House reserves its right to hold back this info at any time.

The president’s grades sure aren’t that of an overachiever. Maybe he needs a tutor.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.