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From Brexit to Calexit

CalExit, Brexit, UKip, Nigel Farage, Euro, California, Arron Banks, secession

When last we touched upon the strangely over-the-top Californian reaction to the Trump presidency, the secession movement, I took the occasion to bring up the rather less radical separatists in the north. “Already 21 of the 23 northernmost counties,” I wrote, “have made declarations to form the State of Jefferson.”

But now there is a new wrinkle.

“Former UKip leader Nigel Farage and Leave backer Arron Banks recently helped raise $1 million for Calexit, which would split California into eastern and western regions,” we learn from the Daily Mail and the World Tribune. Banks, citing the high disapproval ratings Californians give their government, said that “he and Farage wanted to show people in California ‘how to light a fire and win’ the Calexit referendum.”

Their proposal is distinct from complete secession. It would amount to a California split, with the west coast (Los Angeles and north to the border) splitting off from the rest of the state. This would form an East California and a West California.

Politically, this might appease the conservatives and moderates who live in more rural east and Southern California, especially since they are coming to increasingly despise Left Coast “liberals” (read: progressives). Whom they not implausibly blame for ruining the state.

But it leaves some Jefferson secessionists stuck with those “liberals.” This, if an oversight, is a big one. Would this not doom the scheme?

While the failed initiative effort of 2014 to split the state into six separate states was far too complicated to wrap one’s head around, the new Calexit effort seems too . . . simple.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Legislating in the Real World

Steve Bannon, Trump, Freedom Caucus, big government, Ryancare, Trumpcare, Obamacare

Rolling back Big Government is not easy, especially when you are not that into it.

Robert Draper, profiling Steve Bannon in the New York Times, gives us a view into the mind of Trump’s right-hand man, who appears to think GOP insiders are obsessed with principles. “[I]t’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world.”

At best, this only fits the Freedom Caucus members, who killed RyanCare. But who is avoiding reality, here?

“Bannon clearly is not as familiar with the mindset of congressional Republicans as he imagines,” counters Jeff Deist, head of the “Austrian” Mises Institute. “They are primarily concerned with how the whole ‘repeal and replace’ debacle plays back home.”

Like Deist, I see the spectacular fizzle of RyanCare as evidence of the increasing irrelevance of Republican compromising. “The GOP is the party of trillion dollar military budgets,” Deist insists, noting that it “won’t even kill an openly cronyist program like the Export-Import Bank.”

If keeping Big Government secure is all Republicans can do, what use are they?

“All around us are the almost unimaginable benefits of markets, cooperation, and technology,” Deist explains, “yet somehow we’re naïve if we don’t want to funnel human activity through government cattle chutes.”

Bannon will not secure solid GOP support if he keeps pushing the usual establishment compromises while pretending they are either realistic or revolutionary. Freedom Caucus Republicans seem bent on doing something Republicans usually avoid: change “the real world” for the better by practically limiting government.

Not just in theory.

Bannon seems to have other goals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility subsidy too much government

TrumpCare Trumped

Trumpcare, Ryancare, healthcare, Obamacare, Freedom Caucus, socialism

It took awhile for the Obama Administration to accept the term “ObamaCare.” Nancy Pelosi was the initial driver of the massive scheme to permanently alter American medicine and insurance, and “PelosiCare” would have been a fit moniker for the wildly mis-named “Affordable Care Act.” But the administration put the whole of the new president’s political capital behind it, and the ACA went into law popularly known as “ObamaCare.”

The Republicans pledged to repeal it, from Day One. And repeatedly passed repeal bills, certain to be vetoed by the president named Obama. They needed a Republican in the White House.

Donald Trump ran, in part, on the promise of getting rid of ObamaCare. But upon taking the reins, two things became obvious: Republicans in Congress lacked the guts to repeal the ACA, and even lacked a coherent scheme to alter it.

The new president could hardly be expected to possess the plan they lacked, though on the campaign trail he suggested* the best approach: repeal, then open up insurance markets across state lines. The GOP Congress, on the other hand, was all promise and no clue.

So Speaker of the House Paul Ryan hastily cooked up what was to be the new TrumpCare — a ridiculous reform package with nothing much to say for it.

He failed to gain support from Democrats (of course) and Freedom Caucus representatives.

TrumpCare, trumped, became RyanCare. A failure.

The Freedom Caucus representatives? They breathe freely.

Sure, they “betrayed” the new president, “robbing” him of glory. But they also saved the country from a “reform” in many ways worse than ObamaCare.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It’s worth keeping in mind that Trump had been for socialized medicine before running for office. This is why there was no reason to expect policy leadership on his part.

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Accountability free trade & free markets moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics responsibility subsidy too much government

Trump Proposes a Budget

Trump, budget, spending, big government, entitlements, welfare, cuts, pig

Will Donald Trump, infamously successful businessman, actually do something about the federal government’s out-of-control deficits and mounting debt?

Economist Pierre Lemieux, writing in the Financial Post, finds some reason for hope in President Trump’s “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again”:

The proposal to eliminate funding for agencies like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities is welcome. Artists should be able to stand on their own two feet with the support of private sponsors and organizations, of which there are many in America. Lovers of concerts should finance their own passion.

Though Lemieux gives good reason to want to cut “official arts and humanities” subsidies even sans their budgetary implications, imagine the backlash from Democrats, the media and the whole collegiate sector!

Actually, the backlash has already begun.

Can united government under the GOP cut even these most obviously least necessary aspects of government subsidy?

I’m not holding any pockets of air in my two lungs.

“Many monstrous bureaucracies would be reined in,” Lemieux goes on, listing proposed cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (-31 percent), Department of Labor (-21 percent), and other departments of the so-called “discretionary” budget. But this is all small potatoes. “Really cutting federal expenditures would require reducing the welfare state — which Trump has no intention of doing.”

And the fortunes Trump wishes to throw at the military? No knack for parsimony there.

Though we can expect a little exceptional hack-and-slashery from Trump, Lemieux remains skeptical of any overall major effect.

Get used to ballooning debt.

Like you haven’t already.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism political challengers responsibility too much government

Dutch Election Oddities

Netherlands, Dutch, election, Geert Wilders, counting coup, party, parties, political, Freedom Party

There were many strange forces at play in the Netherlands’ elections on Wednesday. In my report, I concentrated on the biggest story, the possibility that Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party might take a huge number of parliamentary seats — though I quoted The Atlantic’s coverage predicting a narrow loss to Mark Rutte’s Liberal Party.

What I did not mention were some of the . . . oddities.

Did you know that Geert Wilders is the only official member of the Freedom Party?

Did you know that there is a 50+ Party in Holland — to represent folks . . . in my age bracket?

Irksome. A party organized just for an age group bugs me almost as much as the most extreme elements of Wilders’s anti-Islamism. But then, all parties bug me a bit, for the same reason the founding fathers desperately feared “factions” . . . that is, political parties. Factionalism turns government into tribal warfare, with legislation counting as . . . counting coup.

But no one in the Netherlands is asking how “bugged” I may or may not be.

The outcome of the March 15 elections? Labour lost the most, and the Freedom Party did not do as well as predicted . . . or feared. Instead of over 20 seats, it won 16, according to Bloomberg (quoting i & o research).

Here’s a not-so-odd oddity: I had to wade through quite a few reports on the election before I found any actual numerical results. The papers all seemed too busy gloating that the Freedom Party failed. I guess that counts as enough reporting. For them.

More evidence that we live in a post-fact society?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pictured: Ledger drawing of a mounted Cheyenne warrior counting coup with lance on a dismounted Crow warrior, 1880s.

 

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

DumpCare

healthcare, Trumpcare, Obamacare, medicine, costs, regulations, Medicaid, single payer

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan insists that his “TrumpCare” plan to replace ObamaCare will decrease medical insurance rates. Others argue that his American Health Care Act will increase those rates. Likewise, he expects it to reduce strain on federal budgets; others deny this outright. The “coverage” issue is just as contentious.

TrumpCare is a mess because it is isn’t “DumpCare.” What’s needed is not yet another regulation-plus-subsidy system. We need repeal and then . . . more repeals.

Unfortunately, President Donald Trump has never really been on board with this. He has promised that no one would lose “coverage,” assuming that “coverage” is “health care.”

It is not. State charity programs like Medicaid (upon which ObamaCare relied way too much) are merely ways to pay for services. Dumping a gimcrack payment system is not the same as decreasing medical services. “DumpCare” wouldn’t dump care, only insane government.

For example, we know that health care outcomes for poor folks without Medicaid turn out to be better than poor folks with Medicaid.* Increasing the number of people on formalized subsidy programs is no panacea.

Besides, ObamaCare severely under-delivered on “coverage.”

New programs, nevertheless, are traps, regardless of demerit: once you provide a benefit, folks come to rely on it and demand more — objecting when it’s taken away. Which is why few programs are ever repealed, despite failing to meet original expectations.

So far, the “small government party” hasn’t found the courage to actually limit government. Do Republicans really believe what they say, that fewer regulations and subsidies will lead to lower costs and better service?

It seems Republicans won’t take their own prescription.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Oregon’s 2008 Medicaid “natural experiment” provides reasons to question the merits of the program. As the initial, randomized, controlled study found, “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services. . . .”

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