Tag: Obama

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

The A-Word

The n-word got dropped on MSNBC’s The Cycle this week. The show’s co-host [No First Name] Touré called Mitt Romney’s use of the word “angry” to describe some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House as “the ‘niggerization’ of Obama”:

“You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.”

Naturally this led to a battle between Touré and conservative co-host S.E. Cupp. She took particular issue with the fact that Touré admitted that VP Joe Biden‘s “chains” comments were divisive, but is now calling Romney a “racist” for saying the Obama campaign is “angry.”

“Do you see how dishonest that is?” she asked.

Good question. But here’s a better one: Doesn’t talk of race and code-words obscure the real issue here, anger?

Romney shouldn’t be calling for the Obama administration to be less angry. He should be angry himself, and castigating the president and his crew for being angry at the wrong things.

We should be angry at the continuation of wars, foreign (the Middle East) and domestic (on psychoactive drug use), to the detriment of fiscal stability as well as our civil liberties.

We should be angry that the nation’s pension system has been systematically stripped of its surpluses for 77 years — by politicians in Washington.

We should be angry that federal (along with state) policy has interfered with medicine to such an extent that the most idiotic ideas around — nationalization/socialization — almost seemed plausible to a sizable minority of Americans.

We should be angry that the Democrats pushed through yet another expensive entitlement, “Obamacare,” while the rest of the federal government sunk further into insolvency.

And yes, we should be angry that our leaders can’t stick to decent issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

How Not to Help the Poor

Q. When’s the best time to kick out the bottom rungs of a ladder?

A. After everybody’s climbed it.

So, when’s the best time to raise the minimum wage?

After everybody is being paid at a higher rate.

Contrary to innocent expectations, minimum wage laws don’t guarantee that people will be hired to work at or above the minimum. Instead, they prohibit businesses from hiring (or workers from accepting jobs) below the minimum rate. That is, rates are guaranteed, but the jobs are discouraged.

A recent push by House Democrats to raise the national minimum wage to ten bucks per hour was stalled by leadership. Left-leaning representatives cried foul. But a report in The Hill explains the reluctance: “Concerns about the economy have increased since last Friday, when a jobs report showed an anemic May during which only 69,000 jobs were added. A higher minimum wage could discourage employers from creating more jobs and that, in turn, could hurt President Obama in the election.”

It turns out that the more clever Democrats are considering, instead, a plan to slowly, gradually raise the rates.

This would mean fewer unemployed right away. The fewer people hurt, all the less likely that voters would put two and two together and blame them, and their minimum wage rate hike.

This is how politicians hurt Americans, most of the time: In increments small enough not to cause an uproar.

In this case, it’s the poorest who are hurt most, those who haven’t yet climbed the proverbial ladder. Democrats, ideologically blind to the results of their regulations, feel nothing.

Besides, they know that, in America, most poor folks don’t vote.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability

The Fickle Finger of Flexibility

President Barack Obama — love him or loathe him, give him his due: He sometimes speaks the truth.

At least, when he doesn’t know he’s being recorded.

During a meeting in Seoul, South Korea, President Obama asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev for “space” on missile defense issues between our countries, pointing out that, “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.”

Much attention has been focused on what this means for U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system. But let’s consider more generally this concept of “flexibility” regarding politicians.

“Where annual elections end, tyranny begins,” was a popular slogan in revolutionary America. The idea being that giving elected officials too long a leash, without an election in the offing, i.e. without the voters back home breathing down their necks, our representatives might sorta start forgetting to represent us and begin to represent themselves.

Our founders were not big fans of such flexibility.

Today, our elected “leaders” regularly attempt to distance their policy decisions from the elections where voters might make decisions of their own canceling out those decisions, or at least, tossing out the politicians who made them.

At our country’s founding, representatives were often officially instructed on how to vote regarding important issues. Today, most incumbents refuse to sign any type of pledge, saying it would tie their hands, denying them flexibility in solving problems.

Elections serve voters; flexibility serves politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies too much government

The Obama Betrayals

In one way, President Obama has had it hard: He inherited a mess.

In another, he has had it easy: His predecessor blew it big time.

As James Bovard put it in his 2004 book, The Bush Betrayal, “George W. Bush came to the presidency promising prosperity, peace, and humility. Instead, Bush . . . spawned record federal budget deficits, launched an unnecessary war, and made America the most hated nation in the world.”

The election of Obama turned foreign opinion around, but his actual policies have proved no advance over his predecessor’s.

Bush started the bailouts; Obama bailed out more.

Bush pushed through an under-funded entitlement, Medicare Part D. Obama leveraged his political capital to take an even bigger step towards socialized medicine.

Bush understandably undertook the Afghanistan venture — but the Iraq conquest and reconstruction betrayed his promise to forswear “nation-building.” Then Obama lingered in Iraq, upped the forces in Afghanistan — long after the rationale became murky — and also attacked a number of other countries, including Libya. So much for the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

But when it comes to America’s misguided War on Drugs, Obama has been especially disappointing. No-one really expected much of Bush. But Obama? He said he’d reverse policy at least vis-à-vis the states that voted in medical marijuana. Yet federal agents continue targeting medical marijuana growers.

We aren’t being served well by the presidents we spend so much time thinking about.

Could it be because they don’t really think much about us?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Obscene Green

I don’t know about you, but when I want to invest my money, I don’t go the Department of Energy for advice.

There’s a reason for this. At their best, bureaucracies “lumber on,” to quote one sociologist’s analysis. They are, “by their nature . . . fitted only for average requirements.” Picking long shots? Not their strong suit.

And a long shot is what the government’s investment in Solyndra surely was. The more emails that are released, the more obvious this becomes. Even savvy folks within the administration knew was that Solyndra was a bad deal.

Yet President Obama says it seemed like a “good bet” at the time.

Why?

Politics. He needed to look good, and the easiest garb to grab was the garb of “green.”

That is, alternative energy — which is said to be our future. Undoubtedly some alternatives will dominate . . . that is, ones found on the market. The great gales of destructive creation that is the market process will eventually solve our “energy problem” . . . if only to create a new problem, requiring yet another solution. (In real life, there are rarely “solutions,” only trade-offs.)

There is something obscene in Obama’s “good bet,” for he was betting with other people’s money. Confiscated money.

At the very least, such funds must be treated carefully, not gambled.

To spend otherwise is to sully, for temporary gain, a sacred trust.

Of course, Americans are so used to such trust being desecrated that, sadly, the Solyndra scandal doesn’t quite seem like the enormity it truly is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

Tire Trade War, Tiring

Political folly comes around, again and again, like a puncture in a rapidly deflating tire as you drive down the freeway. The end is never good.

President Obama and congressional Democrats pushed a tariff hike on China-made tires, up to 35 percent — and the WTO okayed it. They excuse their action because they wish to “retaliate” against China for its alleged monetary “manipulations” — manipulations that bear remarkable resemblance to our own Federal Reserve’s policies, by the way — which they say cause our current trade imbalance.

And, like non-economists everywhere, these buffoons judge the trade deficit a horrible thing. The fact that U.S. consumer’s get great benefit from lower-priced goods coming from China, and can — as a result of less expensive, Chinese-made tires – afford to replace their tires more often, thereby saving lives and health-care costs, doesn’t appear in politicians’ protectionist arguments.

It’s the economy that’s making our representatives stupid, of course. Blaming foreign competition is an easy out, when times get tough. It helps you avoid blaming your own country’s regulations, taxes, and (ahem) monetary policy.

This blame game is nothing new. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff was pushed through early in the Great Depression, and it made a lot of sense to . . . politicians.

But the the trade wars the infamous tariff engendered became a major factor in making the Great Depression so Great.

Our politicians, reviving tired old policies — regarding tires, no less — merely make matters worse. Greatly worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture U.S. Constitution

Potted Presence

The State of the Union Address has become political, said Justice Alito last week, so he will follow the lead of Justices Scalia and Thomas and not sit in Congress while the Commander in Chief intones his annual duty.

Last January, Alito objected to President Obama’s little stab at the Supreme Court when the prez decried the Citizens United decision. Obama said that the Court had “reversed a century of law” and would “open the floodgates of special interests . . . to spend without limit in our elections.” Alito mouthed the words “NOT TRUE.”

And Alito was right. The decision certainly did not overturn a century of law. Not even a teensy bit . . . Well, maybe a teensy-weensy bit, if we count Progressive’s wishes to run everything by bureaucracy and “experts.” (It’s worth remembering that Progressives had a populist wing, supporting initiative and referendum a century ago.) The Citizens United case was about the unfortunately successful censorship of a movie. About a Democrat, Hillary Clinton.

So you can see why politicians — especially, these days, some Democrats — might oppose free speech around election time. The better to control the opposition.

No wonder Alito won’t “be there in January.” He doesn’t want to serve as a “potted plant.”

Congress, of course, takes occasion to seem “potted” in another sense. Amidst congressional applause and shouts, there’s scant room for reason.

Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, merely sent his report to Congress. Obama should, too — and save Alito RSVP duty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
education and schooling

Diminishing Diminishing Returns

In late September, President Obama announced a goal. Noting that American students average out in the middle of the pack, vis-à-vis students worldwide, in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), he pledged to recruit 10,000 STEM teachers over the next two years.

This was put in proper context by Andrew J. Coulson, on a Cato website. He displayed two graphs. One compared employment rates versus enrollment rates in public schools. The enrollment rates have slightly risen since 1970, while the employment rate has skyrocketed. In the other graph, the inflation-adjusted cost of a K-12 education contrasts with achievement scores for reading, math, and science during the same period. The costs skyrocketed, while the test scores had barely moved.

Perhaps students should be encouraged to apply a little math to this.

From economics we have the concept of diminishing returns. For each expenditure of input, smaller increases are expected of output. So, if we’ve been increasing teachers and administrators during this period, but the scores have neither diminished nor increased, this suggests a number of things, chief being that, well, expenditure of funds on public schooling is not the chief variable in improving knowledge or achievement. Not now, anyway.

So why would we increase expenditures?

Could the expected returns be political rather than academic? Could President Obama care more about teacher union support, say, than what kids actually learn?

Far be it for me to suggest this. Let the data alone do that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

My Enemy’s Money

American democracy is uglier than necessary. We don’t have to talk so nasty about our opponents. Or their money.

The usual snipe about this process is that funders of “our side” (whichever side that happens to be) are Good and True and Selfless, while funders of the other side are Evil and Dishonest and Selfish.

So, Democrats decry — and often seek to regulate — the spending of wealthy conservatives and “major corporate lobbyists”; Republicans decry — and, perhaps less often, seek to limit — the spending of unions and billionaires such as George Soros.

Because organizations like MoveOn have been funded by Soros, they are said to be somehow less “legitimate.”

When it was discovered that the Koch brothers of Koch Industries had funded various “Tea Party” organizations to the tune of (it is said) many millions, Obama-hurrahing pundits and activists decried this, charging that it proved that there was no “grassroots” element to the movement. “Astroturf!” they cried.

All nonsense.

Now, Democrats from Obama on down claim that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money for ads. But Democrats haven’t produced a shred of evidence. It’s simply a wild accusation.

Look: It’s not tainted money when the other side gets it and you don’t. Or vice versa. Besides, rich people should be as free as less rich folks to give to their causes.

And perhaps we’d see less money pouring into politics from billionaires were campaign contributions for the rest of us less limited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

He Lies!

A congressman yells “You lie!” during a State of the Union address and everybody blasts him for lapse of manners, failure to respect the office of the presidency. Less objectionable, presumably, is the statement itself. For President Obama and members of Congress do fib, misrepresent, lie: About this, about that, about the other. About a great many things.

We can safely say, I hope, that it is wrong to deliberately misrepresent any proposed policy for the sake of fooling people into supporting that policy.

Yet there are politically interested persons out there, men of good will in their own view, who not only endorse lying to advance “just” political causes but who even publicly defend such lying. Political writer Matt Yglesias doesn’t lie himself, he stresses. It’s the politicians, the activists who should lie. Yglesias has declared, for example, that it’s swell for proponents of government-funded rail to supply “unrealistically optimistic” estimates of ridership in order to secure government funding.

If you habitually support policies that rob people of their wealth and freedom, I guess you might not hesitate to lie about what you’re doing. You might be quite eager to deceive as many people as possible as much as possible. To insist, for example, that Obamacare will “save money” and “reduce the deficit” and “enhance competition.”

Yglesias says it’s okay to fight “dishonesty with dishonesty.”

But if you have truth on your side, you really don’t need to lie.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.