Do not look at the liability behind that curtain! Or: Do not mention that we don’t know what the liabilities are.

Some things are too painful to report.

Apparently.

The folks who audit the Social Security Administration are late on a set of reports. The reports in question account for the financial and actuarial (un)soundness of Social Security, specifically on the (un)funded liabilities of the pension system and Medicare.

Unlike corporations, which are required to report to the IRS on March 15 each year, and individuals, who must report on April 15, there’s no set date for the trustees of our federal government’s biggest program to make its report. But in recent years the reports have been published early enough to allow summary by May. The last report summary we have is for 2009.

Why so late?

Could it be that things have gotten so bad that it’s difficult to figure out — and embarrassing to sign one’s name to — the actual financial situation? After all, this year Social Security ran out of money to write checks for its promised (and quite immediate) pay-outs.

Sheila Weinberg, CEO of the Institute for Truth in Accounting, writes that she heard the reports were late because “trustees wanted to include the effect the health care bill had on these liabilities.” Ms. Weinberg not unreasonably challenges this rationale. Wouldn’t Social Security’s liabilities have been worth knowing before Congress committed to more entitlement spending?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Like the medical insurance coverage you have now? Don’t worry, you can keep it under the new “health care” regime . . . Or so President Obama and his Democratic allies promised during the recent debates over reform of medical insurance and delivery institutions.

Now we’re now learning, per “internal White House documents,” that the insurance plans we were told would enjoy grandfathered protection under the new law won’t be immune at all. Looks like more than half of current company plans must be chucked by 2013.

We shouldn’t be surprised. Apparently, the goal has always been destruction of private insurance. But why? Well, so government can swoop in to “rescue” us after private firms collapse under the weight of all the new taxes and regulations.

The State of Massachusetts offers a preview of what awaits us. Insurance regulators there were recently warned by a department in charge of “monitoring solvency” that a new round of price caps on insurance rates would jeopardize private insurers’ solvency. Officials imposed the caps anyway. Now those private firms face losses that, if the price controls persist, can lead only to bankruptcy.

Despite all this, there is a way to keep your current health insurance coverage. All folks in Congress have to do is repeal their recent “reforms.” All you have to do is make sure they do.

To ensure that you have better options in the future? Well, very different reforms will be required. And repeals of different laws.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Suppose I say that the world will blow up tomorrow unless we shut down industrial civilization. I can’t really prove this. But, if you allow me certain unsubstantiated assumptions, that is what the extrapolations show.

Hey, maybe I’m wrong, but what if I’m right? To be on the safe side, all mankind better lapse into hunter-gatherer mode immediately.

If you’re not taking me seriously, well — me neither. But my unserious argument isn’t very far from the approach of certain environmentalist doomsayers, as unable to defend their theoretical house of cards as I am to defend mine.

Exhibit A: Australian journalist Andrew Bolt’s interview with a leading environmental alarmist, Tim Flannery. Bolt does his best to pin Flannery down with respect to some of the wilder claims that Flannery’s made in his career. But it’s no go.

When Bolt points out that Flannery once claimed that Australian towns like Brisbane might “run out” of water by 2007 or 2009, his interviewee first sidesteps the question and then says it’s a lie that he ever said any such things. So Bolt comes up with a quote from Flannery’s writing that belies the denial. Flannery now “responds” by noting variability in rainfall and trying to promote a lecture series.

And so on. Bolt is determined to hold Flannery to account for his alarmism; Flannery insists on persisting with flimsy flimflam.

Read the whole thing. It’s awfully illuminating. (And boy, do I mean “awfully”!)

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Businessmen tend to be extremely concerned about efficiency, even to the point of talking incessantly about things like “performance metrics.”

Bureaucrats? Not so much.

Indeed, the merest suggestion that a program isn’t cutting the mustard can bring on protests of outrage. John Payne, writing on The Lesson Applied, caught my attention to one such instance. Quoting from the Associated Press, he reveals the passion and “logic” of former “drug czar” John Walters:

“To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven’t made any difference is ridiculous,” Walters said. “It destroys everything we’ve done. It’s saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time.”

Payne’s no-nonsense response? “Yes, that is exactly what critics of the drug war are saying.”

Why did Walters take such umbrage? Could it be to intimidate us into not thinking about the evidence that drug-war critics present? Or questioning the logic of the whole program?

And the logic is a tad shaky: Allegedly to prevent some people from ruining their lives, we ruin those lives and many, many others.

Hundreds of thousands of people in prison. Billions in property confiscated without due process. Innocents shot in no-knock raids — including dogs, little girls . . . and the police themselves from innocent Americans defending themselves from seemingly anonymous attackers in the night.

Drug abuse can be very bad. I know. But Constitution-abuse can be worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The European Union is bailing out Greece. Fearing financial contagion, EU’s policy wizards decided to throw 100 billion euros at Greece, in tandem with demands for austerity.

New spending restrictions are tough enough to elicit the verdict of “savage” from Greece’s public employee unions. But are they “savage” enough?

The euros-to-the-rescue scheme occurred only after collapses of Portuguese and Spanish bonds. As mentioned last Friday, things aren’t good on Europe’s other southern peninsulas, either.

The “Domino Theory” remains a dominant metaphor. Once, we feared countries would fall like dominos to communism. Now, it’s like dominos into insolvency.

But propping up a tipped domino isn’t easy.

Drastic solutions, like expelling the duplicitous Greek nation-state from the EU? Not on the table. The apparent aim of the bailouts? Keep as many of the major players responsible for the fiasco in as good a shape as possible.

If, on the other hand, every politician were fired and every contract with unsustainable giveaways to public employee unions were dissolved as part of bankruptcy, might future policy makers be a little more cautious?

Meanwhile, the dominos keep falling. The day after announcing the bailout, the euro plummeted.

My question: What happens when “too big to fail” is applied not to a tiny country like Greece, but to the good ol’ US of A?

What if we’re too big to bail out?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.