Tag: reform

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Accountability deficits and debt international affairs

The Shock of Surplus

Rooting for Argentina and President Milei

The current president of Argentina is an avowed “anarcho-capitalist.” He isn’t really — but close enough for government work.

It’s more accurate to say that Javier Milei is a capitalist and libertarian. He has taken on the job of extricating the Argentinian economy from the mire of socialism and corruption — unleashing outlawed market processes.

He seeks to do it not by pushing for micro-changes around the edges of the margins of government spending and intrusions but by figuratively wielding the chainsaw that he literally wielded during his election campaign.

One sign of the success of his “shock therapy” cited by The New York Sun is the “first budget surplus in more than a decade.” A monthly surplus of almost $600 million is the first surplus since the summer of 2012.

But, the Sun quickly adds, Milei’s various radical proposals still face an uphill battle in the legislature. All those people who created the mire are still around.

There are hopeful signs. The lower chamber has already passed a preliminary or framework agreement to make various basic reforms. These include privatizing of currently state-operated companies, deregulation, and revamping of criminal and environmental laws.

The lawmakers “chose to end the privileges of the caste and the corporate republic, in favor of the people,” Milei says.

Meanwhile, though, egged on by unions, thousands of Argentinians have taken to the streets in a general strike to protest the reforms. Milei can win, but it won’t be easy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PREVIOUS COMMENTARIES ON JAVIER MILEI

Milei Defends Capitalism
January 24, 2024

Market Rents Work in Argentina
January 23, 2024

Milei’s Chainsaw
January 6, 2024

To End the Great Declension
December 13, 2023

The Outsider Who Won
November 20, 2023

The Ultimate Outsider
October 24, 2023

Two Libertarians, North and South
September 19, 2023

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Accountability ballot access Voting

Time and Money

voting, democracy, elections

The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, expects the state government to automate voter registration by the 2024 election. This will “save taxpayers time and money.”

Unless they opt out, prospective voters are to be enrolled when they get a state ID or a driver’s license at the DMV.

According to the Libertarian Party of Pennsylvania, it will also make it easier for “uninterested, uninformed people to wield political power.” And perhaps also make it easier for ineligible noncitizens to vote — folks whom most Democrats, at least, strongly suspect would be more likely to vote Democrat were they somehow enabled.

It’s not fair to noncitizens, however, to register them without their consent and to send them the instruments of casting a ballot, when doing so is illegal and could ruin their chance to become citizens.

And registering and confusing immigrants has been happening in Pennsylvania — under a less lax system.

Shapiro pretends that security will be improved thereby, too. Automating voter registration adds “important levels of verification to the voter registration process.” But Pennsylvania doesn’t need to register people automatically to require a photo ID for registration or voting. (Which it doesn’t, currently; a paycheck or utility bill suffices.)

Political figures often complain about the expenses involved in special elections, recall elections, citizen initiatives, and other paraphernalia of democracy that cater to motivated, informed, active citizens — it is almost as if they regard this kind of voting as coming at their expense. It does not take long dealing with incumbent politicians to intuit that they would rather we just accept everything that they do without demur.

Freedom, democratic institutions and their safeguards, sound electoral procedures, voting machines, getting to the voting booth — even acquiring, filling out and mailing absentee ballots — all such things cost time and money.

We’d save time and money by not eating, too. But that’s hardly a triumph of economy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

Into and Out of the Muck

Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, debate, prosecuter, criminal justice, reform,

Yesterday I referenced “pigs flying” . . . and Icarus’s waxed-wing fail. 

Today, it’s just about the muck.

Now, I am on the road and definitely not catching every word of the Democratic debates. But amidst much nonsense and embarrassment — and there was a lot of it, from what I can tell, not excluding the much-googled New Agey blather of Oprah’s favorite guru, Ms. Marianne Williamson — one exhange stood out: Representative Tulsi Gabbard’s takedown of Kamala Harris’s shockingly punitive and ugly career as a prosecuting attorney.

Now, Rep. Gabbard snuck in her attack* on Harris in place of answering a question about Harris’s own sneak attack, in the previous debate round, on former U. S. Senator and Vice President Joe Biden’s 1970s’ opposition to mandatory bussing. Gabbard ably shifted away from dealing at all with Sleepy Joe — who is a buzzkill and soon-to-be buzzard lunch. She deflected, addressing, instead, a real issue, Kamala Harris as callous crime-fighter. 

This shows that Gabbard is developing real politicians’ chops — if you cannot carefully answer a question different from the one asked, you aren’t a true [sic] politician in America.

After the debate, the two candidates took further whacks at each other. The Jezebel article I consulted used the metaphor of “wrestling match” rather than my pigs-in-muck figure, but we are talking about the same thing.

But note, Rep. Gabbard is always calm and well-spoken. She seems able to descend into the muck and coming out without too much stink.

Does this give her an advantage over Donald Trump?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president. But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite, but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana: she blocked evidence . . . that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so; she kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California. . . .” etc.

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Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, debate, prosecuter, criminal justice, reform,

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ideological culture term limits

Hating the Senate

House, Democrat, John Dingell

The longest-serving politician in Congress — ever — thinks he has the perfect reform to put American government back on track.

Former House Democrat John Dingell wants to abolish the Senate.

According to him, the United States should go unicameral.

The ancient bicameral tradition — which goes back to Sumer — is so old hat. He thinks that, these days, “in a nation of more than 325 million and 37 additional states, not only is that structure antiquated, it’s downright dangerous.”

Dangerous? Well, he has always hated the Senate. He sees it as a place where “good bills go to die.”

His new book explains this at length, but I confess: it would go against my principles to put any money into that man’s pocket by buying The Dean: The Best Seat in the House (2018). He almost personifies everything I’m against. His very career is an atrocity. In 1955, John Jr. took over the House seat from his father, a 22-year incumbent, and then six decades later, in 2015, basically bestowed it on his wife.

That’s 86 years and counting.

How many times did he swear to uphold the Constitution? And yet he doesn’t seem to understand that Article V, governing the amendment process, establishes one specific limitation: “no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.”

Jettisoning the U.S. Senate would seem to be such a deprivation.

The opposite of this Dingelldorf reform would be more in keeping with the spirit of our system: term limits.

To keep anything like a John Dingell Sixty-year Stretch from ever occurring again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

South Africa, land, expropriation, reform, genocide, refuges, media, racism

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.”

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously . . . genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history.

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-11.”

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Categories
general freedom incumbents local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Democracy — or Too Much Government?

Democrats, Republicans, reform, democracy, primary, primaries, presidential

The Democratic Party’s Unity Reform Commission met last week to concoct measures to pull the party from the brink of madness and oblivion.

The commission’s main recommendation? Limit the role of “superdelegates” in the nomination process.

Great — a first step I’ve long advocated. But the whole system needs more serious reform.

Jay Cost covered some of the problems associated with the parties’ candidate selection processes, yesterday, in the online pages of the National Review. Unfortunately, he went off the rails about an alleged “trend toward an unadulterated democratic nomination process,” which he regarded as a “major mistake.”

He misdiagnosed both the problem and the Democrats’ proposed cure. Neither is “too much democracy.”

America’s partisan voters keep selecting bad candidates because the major party duopoly is a rigged game — designed and regulated by incumbents for incumbents to solidify a protected class of insiders.

Which voters understandably seek to overthrow on a regular basis.

The problem is the whole primary process, which is faux-democratic, a clever ruse to prevent real challengers from emerging, forcing effective politicians through the two-party mill.

To make things more democratic — to add effective citizen checks on power and privilege — the parties need to be completely divorced from official elections. That is, junk the whole primary system, making the parties bear fully the costs of their own selection processes. Further, the general elections should be thrown open to a wider variety of parties and candidates, with the voting system itself reformed to avoid the sub-optimal results of our first-past-the-post system.

The problem with our politics isn’t “too much democracy” so much as “too much partisan government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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