Category: responsibility

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national politics & policies Popular responsibility U.S. Constitution

Congress’s King

King of Diamonds, King Donald, Donald Trump, trade, tariff, power,

Politics today reveals a troubling dialectic.

Thesis: President Trump boasts that he is going to unilaterally “do something” as if he were Emperor, not President. 

Antithesis: Then comes pushback from political opponents and the media, castigating our current commander-in-chief for imagining himself a lawless dictator. 

Synthesis: This is soon followed, however, by the discovery that the president does have such awesome power. 

Legally.

In our constitutional system, can a president can just wake up one day and slap tariffs on imports? Well, numbskulls in Congress passed a law handing the president that specific power.

When President Trump declared an emergency to re-direct money, appropriated by Congress for different purposes, toward building the Wall, many argued that the president cannot usurp Congress’s undisputed power of the purse. True, but irrelevant. Congress had indeed delegated all these undefined and largely unchecked “emergency” powers to the prez.

Last week, as the trade war with China was coming to a boil, Mr. Trump tweeted, “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing . . . your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.”*

I thought, “Does Trump really think he has the legal authority to order all U.S. businesses to leave China?”

Yes . . . and apparently he does. It’s called The International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

“One of the enduring phenomena of the Trump era,” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck told CNN, “is going to be the list of statutes that give far too much power to the President, but that many didn’t used to worry about — assuming there’d be political safeguards.”

Or that “the right person” would always be in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Note that Mr. Trump did not order the companies to leave, but did assert his “absolute right” to do so.

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King of Diamonds, King Donald, Donald Trump, trade, tariff, power,

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Categories
crime and punishment moral hazard responsibility

Reforming Crime, Not Criminals?

fare evasion, fare-jump, crime, Washington, DC, D.C.

“The D.C. Council gave final approval this week to a measure decriminalizing Metro fare evasion,” The Washington Post reports, “paving the way for fare-jumping to become a civil offense punishable by a $50 fine in the District.”

Talk about stopping crime “in its tracks.” Jumping the turnstile won’t be classified a “crime.” Problem solved.

Nassim Moshiree, policy director for the local ACLU, declared it “a significant victory for criminal justice reform here in the District.”

Jack Evans argued, unsuccessfully, that scofflaws will quickly figure out the “civil citation . . . is largely unenforceable.” He added, “We have a big problem with fare evasion at Metro.”

Non-paying riders cost the bus and subway system in the nation’s capital $25 million annually. The worst bus route “has had 560,000 incidents of fare evasion since January, nearly 37 percent of its 1.5 million trips,” informs the Post.

Metro officials complained “that lessening the penalties would only exacerbate the problem and lead to more crime,” but supporters of the change posited that “decriminalization was an important step toward addressing disproportionate policing of African Americans who use the transit system.”

In recent years, according to a Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs report, “91 percent of Metro Transit Police citations and summons for fare evasion were issued to African Americans.”

“I’m sad that’s Metro’s losing money,” offered Councilmember Robert White Jr., “but I’m more sad about what’s happening to black people.”*

Penalties can be too severe or too severely applied. And enforcement can be racially biased. But stealing transportation services is a crime. Pretending otherwise is not a victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Is “that’s” a typo? Did the councilmember say, “that”? All I know is the quotation as I have it here is exactly as it appears online, in both text and headline, and also as it appeared in the dead-tree edition delivered to my home.

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Categories
education and schooling ideological culture moral hazard responsibility too much government

An Expert Explains Failure

ladder, education, success, poverty, racism, schools, charter

The failures of the public high schools in the District of Columbia go on an on. It is quite a scandal, as I explained this weekend at Townhall.

And yet some “charter schools that serve large populations of children from low-income families,” notes the Washington Post, after providing much detail about the massive failures, “recorded big increases in scores.”

What hint about improving education does that fact give?

Well, Kevin Welner, a professor who heads the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, has an interesting thought: “People want to read into these test scores lessons about what the schools are doing. But these scores, even the growth scores, depend a great deal on students’ opportunities to learn outside of school. If we address the poverty and racism, then we will see these test scores increase.”

Hmmm. Let’s review: (a) the problem is at home and (b) it cannot be overcome by the schools. Moreover, the esteemed professor perceives the cause of these detrimental home environments to be “racism and poverty.” 

Once upon a time, public education was proclaimed to be the great equalizer, allowing the disadvantaged to climb the economic ladder, and, if not wipe out poverty completely, to certainly dramatically reduce it. 

Now, we discover from a certified education expert that we had it backwards.

So maybe it is time to chuck the whole experiment and just try to educate kids.

Not “save” them, or society.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
national politics & policies responsibility too much government

The Problem with Public Accounts

Social Security, savings, socialism, public accounts, Chili

President Trump’s promise not to cut one dime from Social Security and Medicare doesn’t square with the fiscal cliff these programs are headed for. To save the system, benefits must be cut, taxes must be raised, or both.

Or else replace the system.

No wonder, then, that John Stossel insists we “Fix Social Security Before It Goes Broke,” and rescues a decades-old proposal: “private accounts,” which he says “would certainly pay retirees more than Social Security will ever pay.”

In Chile, where they have tried this, private accounts have worked out pretty well, contributing to the once-impoverished country’s rise to “the richest country in Latin America.” 

Had the United States adopted such a system, at Social Security’s inception, the amount of capital flowing into projects big and small would have not merely prevented the stagflation of the Seventies and brought us almost unimaginable wealth, it might have turned political eyes towards accountability, prudence and stability.

But, because Social Security was set up as a Pay As We Go system, we paid . . . and the money went.

It got so messed up that by the 1980s Ronald Reagan charged Alan Greenspan with “fixing” it. That “fix” mainly meant increasing taxation. The decades of revenue surge over outflow was spent by Congress for war and handouts. And now we’re reaching a repeat of the late 1970s’ Social Security insolvency.

Meanwhile, Chilean leftists “hold street protests against private accounts,” Stosssel reminds us. “They’re angry because capitalists get a slice of the pie.”

Back in the USA, Democrats demand that more benefits be wrung from Social Security. Are they dead set on proving why socialism doesn’t work?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom responsibility too much government

No Other Options?

Washington D.C., metro, repairs, closed, government, waste, efficiency, accountability

Long I have criticized the Washington, DC, Metro — the transit authority in our nation’s imperial capital — most recently in March. But I am foursquare in support of the government body’s recent hazard warning: “Only take Metro if you have no other option.”

Good general principle.

But what’s the particular occasion? There will be “Major 24/7 Construction Activity” for 15 days in mid-August. The service is advising usage of buses and even freely-provided shuttle services to compensate for commuters stuck in the repairs.

Christian Britschgi, writing at Reason, actually dared ride one embattled line. He found what you might expect: a long history of lazy, perverse incompetence at Metro, bordering on corruption. When concrete started falling from the ceiling at one station in 2016, “an internal investigation . . . uncovered Metro safety inspectors at the station had taken to just cutting and pasting positive evaluations from prior year reports instead of actually checking for damage in some hard-to-reach areas of the station,” Britschgi explains

This is the kind of thing you expect to find in government. Why? Because we don’t allow government projects to go under, even after repeated and massive failures. Ignominy.

Should we be shocked, though? No. Spectacular non-success is close enough for government work. Markets work better because of important communication via profit and loss. Without that stick of loss, governments just take our taxes as their carrot. 

Not a whole lot rides on actually serving riders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Trump Trade Enigma

Trump, worship, trade, trade war, tariff, free trade, trade deficit

President Donald J. Trump, former “reality TV” star, often seems merely to skirt reality.

“Our trade deficit ballooned to $817 billion,” President Trump exaggerated to the “men and women of U.S. Steel” last week. 

“Think of that. We lost $817 billion a year over the last number of years in trade,” he went on. 

“In other words, if we didn’t trade, we’d save a hell of a lot of money.”

This is the sort of dopey bunk a drunk at a bar might say, after the fourth shot had obliterated any remnant of economic understanding from his synapses.

But the president said this in Granite City, Illinois, in front of cameras, a live mic, and a cheering crowd.

And yet, as I wrote yesterday at Townhall, Donald Trump is now explicitly aiming at a worldwide free trade policy, negotiating to break down trade barriers and get rid of subsidies on . . . well, “non-automobile industrial goods.”

I’m almost afraid to ask him why not all industrial (and, for that matter, agricultural) products. Could one expect a coherent answer from someone who does not understand that an $817 billion “trade deficit” means that we, the consumers of the United States of America, got stuff from each billion spent? Each dollar?

And yet, if he pulls off worldwide free trade agreements — for whatever reason — he may almost be worth the attention that Bussa Krishna, of the southern state of Telangana, India, gives him.

The man set up a shrine to worship Donald Trump.

I will never do the same. But I’d tip my hat to almost anyone who fosters trade, and the peace and progress trade brings to the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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