Tag: spending

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Accountability media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

War on Page A‑10

war, news, newspapers, defense, spending, Iraq, bombs, drones, soldiers

War was once big news. Now? Not so much.

Which may be a function of the never-​ending War on Terror, no end in sight in Afghanistan and an Iraq War that is officially over … except for the fighting.

Last October, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein busied fact-​checkers by claiming the U.S. was “bombing seven countries.” True, declared PolitiFact: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen.

Yemen is better known after January’s raid that killed Navy SEAL Ryan Owens, wounded three other SEALs, and killed 14 to 25 Yemeni civilians, including children. Last week, during President Trump’s speech to Congress, Owens’s widow, Carryn, received a thunderous ovation.

But, as I argued at Townhall, “Ryan Owens and his widow and her three now fatherless children deserve more than applause.“ How about thoughtful policies and a Congress that holds the executive branch accountable?

Invading Iraq was a mistake. So was President Obama’s swerve over to destabilize Libya.

“We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10 thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves,” President Lyndon Johnson once said … right before he sent more American soldiers to Vietnam.

Consider that U.S. Special Forces were deployed to 70 percent of the world’s nations in 2016. And, in recent weeks, President Trump asked for a $54 billion increase in military spending, and we have learned of Pentagon plans to seek a “significant increase in U.S. participation” against ISIS.

We owe it to those in uniform to ask tough questions, including: Is what we’re doing really worth a single American life?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Further reading:

Reason: Is the Military Really “Depleted” After Years of Record-​High Spending?

The Atlantic: Fighting Terrorism With a Credit Card

The National Interest: America Is Never (Ever, Ever) Ending the War on Terror

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Fairy-​Tale “Free”

Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-​tale candidate.

Well, yeah.

Not “once upon a time,” but today …  the federal government’s public debt is in the double-​digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/​underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!

He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.

But the costs have to be paid.

And will be.

That’s the essence of common-​sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.

And those costs can be killer.

Far-​left-​of-​center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-​working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from … three pot-​of-​gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”

We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.

Bernie didn’t get that lesson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

 

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Republican-​Required Referendum

Politicians in a jar

Last November, Nevada Republicans scored a “stunning” political sweep. The party’s incumbent governor rolled up a 40-​point win, while the GOP gained majorities in both the Assembly and Senate — the first time Republicans have controlled all three since before the Great Depression.

At the same time, voters crushed a ballot measure to create a 2‑percent gross receipts tax on businesses taking in over $1 million, by a whopping 78 – 22 percent. Gov. Brian Sandoval ® and GOP legislators opposed the tax.

My tax-​fighting friend Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach, must be happy as a clam, living the easy life.

No?

Mere months after that vote, the solidly Republican state legislature passed — you guessed it — a gross receipts tax. And with it, for good measure, all stuffed into Senate Bill 483, the Republican majority also made permanent a whole slew of taxes passed as temporary measures back in 2009.

The total tax increase — ahem, to celebrate the Republican trouncing of Democrats — turned out to be the largest in Nevada history: $1.1 billion.

I wish this story of betrayal were shocking, not par for the course. But as we all know, the lack of surprise signals the depth of the problem.

Thankfully, Silver State citizens have what Ralph Nader calls the “ace in the hole”: statewide initiative and referendum.

Two referendum measures have been filed. One would repeal the gross receipts tax. The other, filed by Muth’s “We Decide Coalition,” places the entire billion-​dollar-​plus tax hike onto the ballot.

“It’s time for these elected elites to stop using Nevadans as ATM machines,” Muth recently wrote.

Yes, time for Nevadans to crank up the machinery of democracy … starting with 55,000 signatures on petitions for each measure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Politicians in a jar

 

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national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

That’s What They Want

More money for infrastructure!

The political class sings monotone, striking one note ad nauseam.

The song is “Money.”

One night an Amtrak train crashes, with fatalities; early the next morning a crowded chorus argues for amped-​up spending on “infrastructure.”

Sen. Bill Nelson (D‑Fla.) pled to the MSNBC lens, “Is it going to take more of these crashes and deaths to wake up the members of Congress who keep wanting to slim down the budgets going into infrastructure?”

Of course, no dollar amount is high enough that, if thrown at the problem, could guarantee no future accidents. Politicians want to toss the maximum moola at it, nonetheless.

Meanwhile, Baltimore smolders — and not because the Orioles won a World Series, but rather at the hands of rioters using protests sparked by the death of a man in police custody as their cover. To many, the tragic events call not so much for justice in court, or enacting law enforcement reforms, but for more “investment” in “urban areas” to solve the persistent problem of urban poverty.

“There’s been no effort to reinvest and rebuild in these communities,” President Obama claims.

Isn’t Obama the country’s head honcho? Did he not make any effort?

That’s funny, because an analysis by the Free Beacon finds that the City of Baltimore raked in $1.8 billion from the 2009 stimulus bill alone.

Doesn’t that count?

“Today, government spends 16 times more … than it did when the War on Poverty started,” wrote Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield in their Heritage Foundation paper, The War on Poverty After 50 Years. “But as welfare spending soared, the decline in poverty came to a grinding halt.”

But why quibble about results?

Just send more money.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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More money for infrastructure!

 

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ideological culture too much government U.S. Constitution

The 14th Amendment Escape Clause?

Just as Tea Party representatives begin to bring the Constitution back into vogue, primarily to curb the power and spending of Congress, an innovative interpretation of the 14th Amendment floats around the capital, finding enthusiastic supporters amongst advocates of never-​ending debt accumulation.

You see, Congress has limited the debt, by law, since 1917. And has raised that limit umpteen times (ten times this past decade). Now that Tea Party Republicans are using the debt limit to negotiate cuts in spending, the pro-​spending forces are becoming frantic.

And clever.

Some of them now argue that Section Four of the 14th Amendment would allow the president to raise the debt limit without Congressional permission. After all, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” 

At first blush this makes some sense, until one realizes that the 1917 law is, in fact, “the authorization” mentioned in the very clause — at which point the argument collapses faster than the integrity of politicians in closed session.

Still, the idea of the Executive Branch interposing between Congress and the people — like “state nullification” interposed, in James Madison’s very words, between the federal government and the people — is worth thinking about. And Congress could reinstate the president’s power to “impound” funds designated by Congress that he judges not authorized by the Constitution.

But you won’t find pro-​spending forces advocating that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Issue No. 1

It’s pretty clear that the big issue this election was spending. Not high taxes, or the lowering of taxes. Not war. Not illegal immigration. Not regulation. Not abortion. Above all these issues has emerged one supreme: high spending, over-spending.

According to increasing numbers of Americans, it’s the level of spending by government that must decrease. We must balance budgets. Soon.

One could play sloganeer and say “It’s the spending, stupid”; or, twist that, to say “It’s the stupid spending.” But however you formulate the problem, what the new Republican House must do is find a way to cut spending.

And, as I argued last week, it’s the House that has the constitutional duty to decide money matters.

But talk by the Republican hierarchy, about returning to 2008 levels of spending, will hardly cut it.

Indeed, that idea, of just returning to 2008 spending levels, seems to be a subconscious repudiation of the best thing that Republicans said on Tuesday, that “we’ve been given a second chance.” But to go back to 2008 levels merely takes government back to “before Obama,” and reflects an attempt to let themselves off the hook for the Bush-​era spending extravaganza.

There are reasons why I put so little hope in politicians as such, and more in the direct actions of citizens. Even the best politicians tend to lack real convictions.

If the GOP offers any hope, it depends entirely on continued pressure applied to them by the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.