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.

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.

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.

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.

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”.