Category: Accountability

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Accountability folly ideological culture national politics & policies responsibility

Politics as Painfully Usual

deficit, congress, budget, folly, Medicare, tax cuts, fiscal responsibility

The crazed nature of our leaders’ willingness to spend beyond revenue, and accumulate debt, is not limited to one party. Both Democrats and Republicans are responsible for their outrageously perverse fiscal policies.

Their irresponsibility hides in plain view, and can be seen in most of the major policy discussions of our time. Take two:

  1. the Democrats’ idea of putting every American on Medicare and
  2. the Republicans’ current tax reduction bill.

Though the Republicans often pretend to be all about something called “fiscal conservatism,” their murky tax plan is not fiscally sound. Not yet, anyway — after all, it is “evolving.”

And I expect it to get worse, not better.

“The current plan proposes about $5.8 trillion in tax reduction offset by about $3.6 trillion in base-broadening offsets, meaning that it would result in a $2.2 trillion deficit increase over the next decade,” Peter Suderman summarizes over at Reason.

They have a number of cuts in the works, but also plan to spend more on defense and the like. The debt would go up.

But if the Republicans are hypocritical and irresponsible, the Democrats add sheer insanity to their irresponsibility.

“Medicare for All” is pushed by Senator Bernie Sanders, who serves Vermont, where a similar universal system was enacted, only to be repealed after it proved unaffordable even with huge tax increases. All single-payer/socialized medicine proposals would require whopping tax increases to work, and the increases in spending would inevitably yield greater deficits.

Besides, Medicare is heading for financial Armageddon. Adding more burdens to a system that they cannot (or simply will not) now make solvent?

Only a politician could consider such a “solution.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Art by John Goodridge on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

Renewed Interest in Self-Service

Michigan, term limits, scam, reform

“Michigan’s strictest-in-the-nation term limits law will force nearly 70 percent of state senators out of office in 2019 and more than 20 percent of representatives,” reports the Detroit News, “a mass turnover that is fueling renewed interest in reform.”

What?!! Could term limitation laws actually make our poor underpaid and overworked politicians vacate their powerful perches . . . even when they don’t want to?

Heaven forbid!

Who could have foreseen this strange turn of events, whereby limits on the number of terms politicians can stay in office would mandate that politicians, having reached that limit, would be summarily cast out?*

Of course, that “renewed interest in reform” comes not from citizens, but politicians.

Oh, and powerful lobbyists and special interests.

The paper continues: “Term limits remain popular with the voting public, but critics say Michigan rules have thrust inexperienced legislators into complex policy issues they may be ill-equipped to address.”

Rich Studley, the Michigan Chamber of Commerce’s head-honcho, argues that “experience really matters.” His lobbying outfit, “an influential business group with significant financial resources,” is working to organize a ballot measure to weaken the limits it has long opposed.

“Any reform plan is unlikely to extend or repeal term limits,” explains the News, “but may instead allow legislators to serve longer in the House or Senate.”

Come again? If legislators could serve “longer” than currently allowed, that would clearly “extend” the limits.

I smell a scam swirling around Lansing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The “mass turnover” consists of 26 of 38 senators termed-out and 24 of 110 in the House. Yet, there were 25 senators and 34 representatives termed-out in 2010, and the state survived.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

Not So Bad, Communism?

New York Times, apologist, China, Soviet Union, communism, Walter Duranty

First the good news. The New York Times has repudiated Walter Duranty’s 1930s-era “journalism” for whitewashing — “underestimating” — the murderousness of Soviet Communism.

So that’s done, right?

Whatever its failings today, the paper will certainly no longer allow writers to use its august pages to discount blatant systematic evil.

Right?

But Helen Raleigh, a writer for The Federalist who is an immigrant from China, finds that the Times does indeed persist in glossing over the sins of Communism. In commemorating the centenary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the paper is “once again proving itself Communism’s greatest apologist” through articles variously arguing that “women had better sex under socialism to now claiming China’s Communist revolution taught Chinese women to ‘dream big’…”

As if, suggests Raleigh, Duranty’s ghost were still calling the shots.

In rebuttal, she recounts what so many people suffered under Communism, as exemplified by the fate of her Aunt San.

At age 15, her aunt was forced by Mao’s government to leave the city and work in the countryside, separately from her siblings, who were forced to do the same but in different villages. Cutting family ties was important “so people could devote themselves 100 percent to the Communist Party’s causes.”

Primitive farming, mandatory singing of gruesomely cheerful revolutionary songs, food rations, malnutrition, ritual humiliation, derailed education, derailed or extinguished lives.

Just a few of the standard ingredients of the totalitarianism that, according to the Times of 2017, taught women to “dream big.”

Which should remind us: despite only a few countries’ close ties to the doctrine — Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea — Communism’s threat to world peace, prosperity, and freedom remains big.

The Times must change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom incumbents term limits too much government

Keystone Correlation

keystone, term limits, FDR, Mugabe, Illinois, corruption

Ninety-three-year-old Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe with phony elections and brutal repression for the last 30 years. Conversely, only one president in U.S. history has served more than two four-year terms, and after that single exception a constitutional amendment was enacted, limiting the terms of future presidents to the traditional two terms.* 

Americans are better for the limited tenures; Zimbabweans worse for the longevity. 

Recently, Illinois was declared the most dysfunctional state in the union. Illinois also boasts the nation’s longest-serving — and by far the most powerful — Speaker of the House, Michael Madigan. What irony that incumbency should wreck the Land of Lincoln, when favorite son, Honest Abe, represented his Illinois district in Congress for only a single term and then stepped down as was the custom for the local party. 

In bankrupt Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, former Mayor Stephen Reed held power for 28 years (nearly as long as Mugabe and Madigan) during which time he managed to plunge the city into insolvency.

After leaving office, Reed also pled guilty to 20 counts of theft from the city. But was mysteriously sentenced to merely two years of probation.

“There’s no question that the city of Harrisburg was traumatized by power being concentrated in one individual for an enormously long period of time,” current Mayor Eric Papenfuse acknowledged. “I don’t think anyone wants to see that again.”

The Harrisburg City Council hasn’t taken any action yet, but there appears to be ample support for term limits across the board, including from council members.

Understanding the correlation between long-serving politicians and long-suffering constituents is the keystone to critical reform.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

*  Technically, a president could serve up to ten years, as the 22nd Amendment prohibits a person from being elected president more than twice or if the person has “held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President . . . more than once.”

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Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets too much government

Jonesing for Disaster

Puerto Rico, Jones Act, protectionism, hurricane, unintended consequences, folly

First, do no harm. Second, stop harming.

You might think that these would be the Two Commandments of Government.

But no.

Politicians make a good show of saving us, sure. Sadly, appearance alone suffices. For them. Much easier to announce a new program than get rid of a harmful old one.

Latest case? Courtesy of a storm and a new president, we now get to witness hurricane recovery mismanagement all over again, but this time outside the continental United States.

“The administration announced some bad news for Puerto Rico,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason. It will not, Mr. Shackford explains, “be waiving the Jones Act, which significantly restricts the ability of foreign or foreign-owned ships from bringing goods to Puerto Rico.”

The “unincorporated U.S. territory” that is the island must take its lumps.

The Jones Act* limits foreign ships port access . . . down to one. The mandate allowing port-to-port commerce only to American-manned ships is designed to save a few jobs and grease a few union wheels in the mainland.

And now, especially, that old, ongoing “centralized government planning for the benefit of a small group of powerful U.S. shipping interests” amounts to a real kick to a people already devastated by Hurricane Maria.

Closing ports to much needed help doesn’t help. An emergency order could suspend the ongoing harm of throwing roadblocks in the way of a swift recovery and rebuilding.

Or Congress could repeal the Jones Act entirely.

Neither is likely.

So the wounded Puerto Ricans — prior to the storm hobbled by years of territorial misgovernance — can expect more fake government help.

This is Common sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not to be confused with the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917, which set up territorial  governance of the island.

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Categories
Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Off the Field

Colin Kaepernick, football, flag, patriotism, Trump, free speech, NFL

At last Friday’s event to rally support* for Sen. Luther Strange, the Mitch McConnell-financed establishment candidate in today’s GOP runoff in Alabama, President Donald J. Trump veered — as he is wont to do — off topic: the NFL players refusing to stand for the national anthem.

“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners,” the commander-in-chief asked the crowd, “when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired!’?”

Trump’s trash-talking touched off bigger protests before Sunday’s games. Some argued the president was undermining freedom of expression. But, of course, the president was freely expressing himself.

And no doubt speaking for many others.

Polling conducted last year, after former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first took a knee during the pregame anthem — which started this trend — found a majority opposed to his actions.

“NFL ratings are down massively,” the President correctly remarked.

The National Football League’s television ratings dropped 8 percent last year, and so far 2017’s ratings are down an additional 15 percent. Moreover, in a massive JD Power survey, the protests during the anthem were the top reason given for not watching the NFL.

Of course, Kaepernick was making a political statement, not trying to maximize his dollar-value in the marketplace. The now mysteriously unemployed quarterback said a year ago, “If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right.”

Whether one agrees with Kaepernick or not, he is paying a steep price to make a point. Firing folks won’t silence the message.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

 

* The president oddly quipped of his Strange endorsement: “There is something called loyalty, and I might have made a mistake and I’ll be honest, I might have made a mistake.” Trump added that Strange and his GOP opponent, Judge Roy Moore, were “both good men” and he would campaign hard for either Republican.

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