Only in Washington
November 24, 2011
The sky is falling.
Well, at least if the pundits are to be believed. The so-called “SuperCommittee” didn’t turn out to be so super after all, and was unable to agree to budget cuts this week, so according to a previous decision (one now being protested by Republicans and Democrats alike, and one being correctly defended, at least thus far, by President Obama), automatic “cuts” will kick in.
What…you noticed the quotation marks around the word “cuts”? Pray tell, why are they there? Simple: because as we’ve known for some time, “cuts” in Washington aren’t like “cuts” in your household or mine. Yep, that’s right, they’ve done it again; Washington isn’t truly “cutting” anything by making these “draconian cuts”; they’re just decreasing the big increase in spending by a little bit. Graphically represented, here is what our paragons of courage have done:
Yep, that’s right; even with the “sequester”, the federal budget increases by nearly two trillion dollars in nine years’ time.
Thank goodness the Republicans on the SuperCommittee didn’t capitulate to the leftists on the committee and do something less—including raising taxes.
Telling the Truth Can Be Dangerous Business
September 17, 2011
True confession: my wife and I like the film Ishtar. Really like it, think it’s hilarious. Yes, that Ishtar, the universally-panned, some-say-most-awful-film-ever. We crack up at it. If you have two minutes, watch the trailer, and note the irony in Dustin Hoffman’s words at the end:
The signature song of the two aspiring songwriters (Hoffman and Beatty) was “Telling the Truth Can Be Dangerous Business”. Boy, can it ever. Fast-forward to the 2012 presidential race, and focus on Rick Perry. Full disclosure: Rick Perry is my guy. Is he a perfect candidate? Of course not; don’t bother telling me how awful his HPAV vaccination executive order was (it was horrible), and I don’t care that he endorsed Al Gore in 1988 (I used to wear a puka shell necklace, so can’t we all be forgiven an indiscretion here or there?).
A Brief Aside on How to Choose a Candidate to Support in the Primaries
Step 1: Determine who is, and who is not, an acceptable candidate; i.e., “can I vote for this guy (even holding my breath, if need be), or can I not? Going back to 2008, Rudy Giuliani, for instance, failed that test; under no circumstances would I have chosen him over the Libertarian candidate (I assume my readers realize that pulling the “D” lever is never an option). John McCain was, though I held my nose. This time around, practically every candidate on the Republican side is someone for whom I’d vote against The Anointed One, though I’m honestly not sure yet on Flip Flopney. He stretches my tolerance quite a bit.
Step 2: Support the most-electable acceptable candidate. That candidate, in 2012, is Rick Perry. In fact, despite Smokin’ Barry’s terrible approval numbers, I’m not convinced any Republicans could beat him except for Perry and Flopney (and I’m not totally convinced on the latter). The goal isn’t to score ideological purity points; it does no good to nominate a Ron Paul or a Michelle Bachmann who cannot win the presidency (and they cannot). Rick Perry, on the other hand, is eminently electable, one or two gaffes aside.
Now, back to our story. Americans,understandably, hold Congress in contempt. We are tired of politicians, we say, who cannot get things done that need to get done. We want ‘em to work together to solve the problems of this country, we say. Fine.
So Rick Perry has the courage to bring up one of our significant problems: Socialist Security. He (rightly) calls it a Ponzi Scheme (don’t like that characterization? Look up the definition. Socialist Security is textbook, at least as currently configured). He even questions its constitutionality (and that is a discussion worth having as well). He is adamant that those to whom promises have been made (read: seniors and near-seniors) must receive what they’ve been promised (that is only moral and fair). But he rightly says that we have a huge problem that needs fixing.
But remember our title: Telling the Truth Can Be Dangerous Business. Along comes politician Flip Flopney in the recent Republican debate, and he accuses Perry of “scaring seniors” (well, perhaps those unable to read or understand simple English, one would suppose). And a new poll suggests that Republicans aren’t sure what to make of Perry because he’s telling the truth about Socialist Security. We’ve known Socialist Security was a looming problem for at least a couple of decades now, but politicians fiddle, Rome burns, and we get nearer and nearer to Socialist Security insolvency. Look, maybe you don’t like what Rick Perry has to say about the subject; maybe his choice of words isn’t your cup of tea. I get it. But we had better find some leaders who are willing to “touch the third rail” pretty soon, instead of politicians who keep punting this particular football down the field every chance they get.
Look, I understand that Socialist Security is a program that is well-loved, and that despite its dubious constitutionality, it isn’t going anywhere. Libertarian Byron, meet Reality Byron. Fine. But for goodness’ sake, let’s at least fix it so that other concerns aside, it can function as one of the better government programs rather than as just one more that is going south. In order to do that, we have to make it a real part of our national conversation. And instead of criticizing leaders like Rick Perry who are plain-talking about it, let’s work together to get it fixed. Yesterday.
Here Comes “Big Chef”
April 20, 2010
Well, Americans haven’t been good little boys and girls lately—at least not good enough, gastronomically-speaking, and thus along comes “Big Chef” to not only monitor, but to adjust how we eat:
U.S. Plans Drive to Limit Salt in Food
And this will likely raise few eyebrows among a populace dulled to the gradual-but-steady encroachment of the government into our private, everyday affairs. Look, would eating less salt be a good thing for us? Probably…and it might save billions a year if we chose to do that. But isn’t that the key? In a free society, we make choices—and we live (and die) by those choices. But the contemporary liberal impulse is always to push “security”—let’s qualify that, liberalism’s definition of “security”, as in Socialist Security, etc.—at the expense of freedom. And we’ve grown accustomed to government providing all sorts of (imagined) security for us (beyond rational, Constitutionally-mandated forms of security, chiefly national defense and courts of justice). Because we’ve tacitly accepted such as government’s rightly-ordained role—and because the Chuck Schumer types are all-too-willing to acts as moral nannies (holding what Thomas Sowell calls “The Vision of the Anointed”)—we think little of this. “The government is just acting in our best interests”, many say.
And somewhere, the freedom-loving men and women who gave us this republic continue to roll over in their graves.
Chucky is at it Again
April 15, 2010
OK, so Spirit Airlines decided, last week, to do something which strikes me as decidedly dumb, at least from a PR standpoint: charge $45 per carry-on bag for its flights. The fact that Spirit plans to cut its fares by $40 will certainly be lost on travelers, and there is little doubt in my mind that this will be a PR fiasco predictable enough that one wonders what the powers that be at Spirit were thinking.
So what does New York Senator Chuck Schumer plan to do about it? Act as our nanny. Now, one of two things is happening: either Chuck lacks the most basic understanding of economics—as well as the most basic understanding of the role of our ostensibly limited government in our Constitutional system, or he is grandstanding in a shameless attempt to score political points among his constituents who are…shall we say, either Constitutionally or mentally challenged? I doubt that Senator Schumer is nearly that dumb, which leaves the second option as the obvious one: seizing upon what seems to be a dumb move by a corporation, Senator Schumer is grabbing the opportunity to make it look like he—and the Democrats—are really “on the side of the little guy”.
Rubbish. Aside from the fact that this doesn’t fall within light years of the government’s purview, what possible good could this accomplish (answer: zero)? Spirit has to make money to be in business, and it thought that this was a good way to make that happen. I think it’s a dumb marketing ploy—but in a free society, Spirit needs to suffer whatever costs a free people decide to exact upon the company for this decision. Don’t want to pay $45 to carry on a bag? Fly JetBlue. Fly American. Fly Delta. Vote with your wallet.
Same as a couple years back when the Schumer-types were all up in arms about banks paying ATM fees, suggesting that banks were “gouging” consumers by charging fees that some government wonks, in their infinite wisdom, decided were “too high”. Well, excuse me for living, but if a bank wants to charge me $50 per ATM fee, that’s none of the government’s business. None. Zero, zilch, nada. Why? Because I’m free. And because this is supposed to be a free country. And if my bank engages in practices I find not to be to my liking, I am perfectly free to do business with a different bank. I’ve done it before with banks, and I’ve done it with other companies, and I don’t need the government to be my nanny and make decisions of this nature for me. And if people don’t care enough about it to allow companies to get away with making these kinds of decisions, then as long as the government is making sure that there’s a level playing field for other companies to provide their services to me in a free market, then beyond that, the government should stay the heck out of it.
Not that I expect liberal do-gooders like Senator Chucky to understand that in this lifetime.
What Should Minimum Wage Be?
March 10, 2010
Zero, of course.
In a great article published yesterday by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution–which does seem to be diversifying a little bit to the right in its editorial page, a welcome change–Richard Burkhauser makes the point that if we are serious about reducing unemployment—particularly among the young and inexperienced, who if allowed to remain chronically un-and under-employed, will create all sorts of headaches down the road—then politicians need to revisit the 40% increase in the minimum wage passed in 2007. Well, duh.
Cutting the Basic Wage to Spur Jobs
It’s just common sense, so much so as to be, effectively, axiomatic: the artificial inflation of the cost of goods and services—which is exactly what happens with a “minimum wage”—messes up the economy. When government meddles in what ought to be private affairs—even when government does it with the best of intentions—the train goes off the tracks. It is so predictable as to be laughable that when employers are forced to pay employees more than the employees are worth, there will be less employees doing more work.
Progressive politicians don’t understand this—or if they do, they are simply evil people. Because it hurts everyone when the minimum wage is increased—everyone. The price of goods and services go up, and/or the quality of goods and services goes down, and/or the unemployment rolls increase. There’s simply no way around that, because to think otherwise is to subscribe to what I call the “Big Bag o’ Money Theory” about business: businesses have a big bag o’ money just sitting around collecting interest and dust, and it’s a bag o’ money that business ought to be sharing with others, so when the government passes silly laws to make businesses give more money to its employees, it’s as simple as digging into the big bag o’ money and divvying up “their fair share”.
And leprechauns will soon be flying out of…somewhere.
Want to put people back to work? At the very least, create a second minimum wage targeted at the young unemployed. Get ‘em working for, say, $5 an hour. They won’t get rich—minimum wage won’t make anybody rich, nor should it—but they’ll get working. And they’ll help business. And they’ll develop skills and prove their merit and all sorts of good things that are currently being blocked by this monstrosity we call “minimum wage”.
Stossel on Education
February 18, 2010
Public education doesn’t work. If that fact isn’t as plain as the noses on our faces, we’re ignoring reality. Before I go further, quick aside: I always, when I write on education issues, try to be careful to signal my profound appreciation for the many good public school teachers/administrators out there, who take their jobs seriously, who put their students’ achievement ahead of their own advancement, who sacrifice to help prepare kids for society. Among these are many fine Christians who see their calling as taking their faith into the classroom–muted as they are required to be about it. I salute them, applaud them, and appreciate them.
But they are fighting, I believe, a losing battle. And not to recognize that fact is to doom us to continue the failed educational policies of the past half-century.
The fact is that, as Stossel points out, the elitists in control, from Comrade Obama on down, see more government involvement in our schools as a good thing, when the facts at hand argue just the opposite. We spend more; we get no discernible results. Right now, we are spending a boatload of money on public education, with little to show for it; there is effectively no correlation between the amount of money spent on education and the results in the lives of the students (remember that the next time they want to raise your taxes to support education). As Stossel concludes, “choice works, but government monopolies don’t.” And he’s right.
Truthers, Birthers…and Racers
February 17, 2010
I think it’s time to introduce a new word into our political discourse to designate a very real, and dangerous, group of fringe wingnuts. We’ve got the “Truthers”, crazies who think that the U.S. government was behind 9/11. Incidentally, Glenn Beck did the citizens of Texas a real service this past week when he exposed a gubernatorial candidate–a Tea Partier, of all folks–as a “Truther”. Debra Medina, who has about pulled even in the polls with the sinking Kay Bailey Hutchison (thankfully, trailing Governor Rick Perry by a significant margin), told Glenn that, effectively, she hasn’t really weighed all the evidence, and thus hasn’t reached a conclusion, about whether or not the government was behind 9/11. Thanks for playing, Ms. Medina, but you’re a kook–even if you and I agree on a lot of Tea Party issues. If you are a “Truther”, or even if you entertain the possibility that they’re onto something, you scare Americans with a brain.
On the other side of the coin, politically, are the “Birthers”, folks who continue to press the idea that Comrade Obama wasn’t born in the United States. They produce “evidence”–equally spurious to that produced by the “Truthers”–to supposedly buttress their claims. They deserve to be dismissed as kooks as well.
But there’s a third category of people that ought to be placed alongside “Truthers” and “Birthers”; let’s call them “Racers”. Keith Olbermann goes to the top of the list of “Racers”, continuing to find racist motives behind the Tea Party movement, for instance, fabricating evidence from his own fertile imagination in the absence of anything approximating proof. I referred in a recent post to a professor at Atlanta’s Spellman College, who protested a pro-life ad (an ad condemning the genocide of African-American babies) as “racist”. Chris Mathews “forgot that Barack Obama was a black man” during the State of the Union. These folks find race in everything; these folks are convinced that racism underlies everything that people (well, conservative people) do. And so, to Olberclown and his ilk, the Tea Party has to be racist at root–ignoring mounds of evidence to the contrary and choosing to look through their pink-colored glasses and find what’s not there. Are there racists in the Tea Party movement? Certainly–just as there are racists in groups right and left all across American society. Is racism a genuine evil, a terrible scourge on this country? Absolutely. Is racism an issue in which America has made leaps and bounds of progress? Only a fool oblivious to the evidence would argue otherwise. But is the fact that many Americans are fed up with the economic agenda of the Bush/Obama administration (yes, you heard me) evidence that, because Comrade Obama is a black man, we’re racist? Preposterous–but not to the “Racers”. I propose we add that term to our political jargon, because “Racers” deserve exactly as much attention and credibility as “Truthers” and “Birthers”.
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
