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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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July 15, 2005 Bob Geldorf and the superstars who recently held Live 8 concerts across the globe made a lot of noise. Live 8, the sequel to Live Aid, sought to enlist our support in pressuring the G-8 nations to spend whatever it takes to end poverty in Africa. But the quiet truth rarely got much notice. You see, a cure for poverty has already been found. Yes, a cure! Freedom. And by freedom I mean the rights to private property, to buy and sell, to compete for business. Free markets and free individuals -- speaking, trading, praying, working, with maximum freedom and minimum regulation from their government. Unfortunately, the cure is too rarely prescribed. In the cruel history of our species, those wielding political power commonly doctor up the laws favoring themselves rather than the general interest of the people. Africa is such a place, sadly . . . poor precisely because of the many despots in power. The Live 8 campaigners are right to demand western governments end the agricultural subsidies that hurt African farming. But the rest of the Live 8 agenda rehashes the same old snake oil: the West, they say, with wealth produced by our free market economy, must bail out countries in Africa, where government corruption and tyranny make progress impossible. Giving more aid to tyrants will never end poverty. Africa needs freedom, pure and simple. Next campaign? Call it Liber 8. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
July 8, 2005 I'm not a gambler. At cards, I'd rather bet with matchsticks than real money. But I do make investments. That's my sort of gamble. This came home to me while reading a strange piece by Ronald Bailey, on Reason Online. He wrote about a bet that an MIT climatologist made. This Richard Lindzen -- a pretty smart fellow -- has caused quite a stir. He bet that in 20 years global average temperatures would be lower than they are now. Then James Annan of the Frontier Research Center for Global Change challenged Lindzen to put real money into the bet. Unfortunately, the two couldn't quite come to terms on the odds. Bailey likes these bets. More scientists in the public prediction biz should put their money where their mouths are, he thinks. James Annan agrees, citing "the famous bet" between eco-doomsayer Paul Ehrlich and savvy economist Julian Simon. Simon bet Erhlich that a bundle of commodities of Ehrlich's choosing would decrease rather than increase in price over a given time. Simon won. It'll be interesting to follow the global warming debate as it hits the odds makers. But I bet we can do better than this kind of betting. It seems to me, if you believe that the globe is going to warm significantly, and that the oceans are going to rise, you'd be buying up hills and mountains -- and not invest in Florida, the least elevated state of the union. So, I'll be really worried about global warming when I hear that the price of high ground is steeply rising while beach prices drop. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
July 1, 2005 Canada is not a communist country. Really, it's not -- except when it comes to medical care. Canada is the only industrialized country that prohibits citizens from privately contracting for medical care. In other words, no matter how much money you can afford to pay -- no matter how much you've saved, no matter how much you might be willing to pay for private insurance -- you're stuck in the public health care system waiting and waiting and waiting for care. (Or coming to the U.S.) How long are the waits? In mid-June, in a case brought by a doctor and a patient, Canada's Supreme Court found that the evidence "shows that delays in the public health care system are widespread, and that, in some serious cases, patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care." The court thus concluded that Canada's invasive, idiotic, and communistic outlawing of private medical care is unconstitutional. Thus far, the ruling only applies in the province of Quebec, but it will likely be expanded through other lawsuits in other provinces. As the doctor that sued asked, "How could you imagine that Quebeckers may live and the English Canadian has to die?" Enter Prime Minister Paul Martin, who sees it differently. He said the ruling only shows how urgent it is "to strengthen the public health care system." He added, "We are not going to have a two-tier health care system in this country. Nobody wants that." Well, nobody except the people dying for lack of care . . . or almost any Canadian with a lick of sense. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
June 24, 2005 What do Beijing, China, and Portland, Oregon, have in common? Urban congestion. It's much worse in Beijing . . . but Portland's traffic congestion isn't getting better. Both in Beijing and in Portland, the culprit is easy to see: economic progress. People getting richer, building new homes, adding to the city population and the number of automobiles. In Beijing, no one wants to stop the progress. Can't say that about Portland, though. Everyone in Beijing knows that the solution is more roads. In Portland, lots of influential people think roads are the wrong way to go. Portland politicians want, instead, to go back to what Beijing once was: a centralized city with buses and bikes and pedestrians. They see cars and more roads and decentralized sprawl as the enemy. Fortunately, at least one Portland group, the Cascade Policy Institute, fights the nonsense that's making Oregon less and less livable. Institute president John A. Charles, Jr., sets the record straight. "Urban planners," he writes, "have long claimed that you 'can't build your way out of congestion,' but the data clearly show that new roads make a difference." A new study, Charles explains, "divided cities into three categories: those with low, medium and high levels of road-building relative to increases in daily miles traveled. Only the cities that aggressively built roads during the past 20 years were able to keep congestion levels down." Beijing's new drivers are saddled with a corrupt bureaucracy that steals money instead of building roads. In Portland, it's maybe worse. They're stuck with ideologues who think their job is more congestion. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
June 17, 2005 House Speaker Dennis Hastert and I have something in common. We were both born in Illinois -- he in Aurora and I in Evergreen Park. These days, non-profit groups in Aurora are probably glad it worked out this way. Since 1999, when Hastert became Speaker, they've been showered with federal dollars. Hastert's district has gotten seven times what the average congressional district would get in earmarked spending. I haven't steered one federal dollar to Evergreen Park. John D. Scofield, a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, defends congressional earmarks for local projects, saying that congressmen "know the needs on the ground." He didn't say it, but they also know their own political "needs" in the district, and pork spending wins them friends -- and votes. The trouble with pork is not that the recipients can't use the money. It's how the money gets there -- through Congress. Scott Lilly, a former Democratic chief of staff on the House Appropriations Committee, complains that "the big hogs" -- such as Hastert -- "are getting a disproportionate share" of the pork. That's the usual battle in Washington: which bandit will make off with the most. Our system of citizen control of government has been turned on its head. We are taxed most by the politicians furthest away from us. Then they use our tax money to root and slop around in our local affairs. The answer is for Washington to take a lot less. Then let Aurora, lock, stock, and pork-less barrel pay its own way. That goes for every other city, including Evergreen Pork. I mean Park. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob
June 10, 2005 Remember that old Steve McQueen movie, "The Blob"? Well, government is like the Blob. It grows and grows, gobbling up everything in its path. Truth is, our inability to control government growth is more frightening than any scary movie. The consequences can be disastrous for our pocketbooks and for our freedoms. Just as there was an antidote for the Blob, there is an antidote for ever-expanding government. It's called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR for short. Colorado voters put TABOR in place in 1992, and it has kept government spending from mushrooming out of control there while returning billions of tax dollars to the people. But now the legislature has placed Referendum C on this November's ballot, asking for a $3 billion dollar tax increase. Politicians of both major parties and a cabal of special interests will try to convince voters that government spending going up 7 percent is just not enough. I doubt that Colorado voters will fall for it. Meanwhile, other states have noticed TABOR's benefits. Ohio activists are petitioning to place a similar measure on their ballot this November. Unfortunately, in Nevada, Senate Joint Resolution 5, modeled after the Colorado Taxpayers Bill of Rights, was defeated. The Las Vegas Review-Journal editorialized that TABOR represents "a modest effort to handcuff the metastasizing Nevada bureaucracy at a time when lawmakers routinely approve budgets that increase state spending by more than 20 percent every two years." The editorial went on to advise Nevadans to use the initiative to put it on the ballot. Good advice. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
June 1, 2005 In sports, it would be a scandal were one team (let's call them the Incumbents) to write the rules under which they and their opponents (say, the Challengers) played. It would be even worse if the Incumbents, after each season, went back to re- rigging those rules. Yet, that's American politics today . . . now that the First Amendment has been nullified by Congress's Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly known as McCain-Feingold. The First Amendment reads, "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . ." But today, incumbents in Congress decide by law how much individuals may give to candidates. And how much Political Action Committees may give. And how much you may give to a PAC. And whether non-profit groups may mention a candidate's name or even show the bum's likeness anywhere close to an election. (They may not.) Further, Congress takes upon itself supposedly "tricky" issues like how to silence 527s, or whether blogs should be regulated. Or churches. Of course, money and speech -- like water -- are known to find their way. Thus, the congressional assaults on political speech can never cease, and Congress never rest. Which is why the high court actually encouraged the incumbents in Congress not to stop with McCain-Feingold, but continually to tinker with the election laws to drive out any "outside" or "unregulated" new money or speech that makes it through the current maze. In sports, this would be a scandal. An outraged Congress would even hold hearings! In politics, it is business as usual. This is Common Sense. Im Paul Jacob.
May 27, 2005 Have you noticed all the news stories about dinosaurs and fossils and new species and all? With increasing frequency scientists are unearthing new species, both living and dead. Not long ago we read about a new kind of monkey. I recall a shrimp found living in the deserts of Idaho, of all places. Skeletons of a recently extinct hominid line were discovered in Indonesia. And now Utah has a new dinosaur. They found hundreds of fossil skeletons of this new long- deceased species. I haven't read the paper today -- there may be a new discovery. But these discoveries got me thinking. According to prominent scientific prophets back in the '70s, we were supposed to have run out of fossil fuel oil some time ago. And yet we haven't. New sources are being found. Further, I recently came across something that knocked my socks off. In Russia, scientists have been long developing a very old theory of the origin of petrol: the abiotic theory. Petroleum, this body of scholarship insists, is not formed from decaying biomass. It is, instead, a natural product of the earth's mantle, not a "fossil fuel" at all. This is so "out there" that it could just fizzle as another junk science heresy. Or it could explode, making the creation/evolution controversy seem like my kids' squabbles at breakfast. What if major petroleum source discoveries were reported as often as dinosaur digs? What if our biggest problem became too much oil, not too little? In any case, let's keep reading the Science section of the paper. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
May 22, 2005 The most serious problem facing South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is a school system that ranks near the bottom nationally in virtually every educational category. So Governor Sanford put forward a bold plan, called "Put Parents in Charge," to enable universal school choice. The plan encourages more private investment in education and allows parents throughout the state, of all economic means, to have greater choice about their kids' education. While 66 percent of citizens support the idea, it has been opposed from day one by the state's education establishment. So last week legislators killed the bill for this session, siding with the politically powerful education establishment rather than the people. A Greenville News editorial summed up what many legislators were arguing: "South Carolina needs a small-scale school choice initiative." This is par for the course. If you can't argue against the reform, just try to weaken and marginalize it. But the Governor will be back -- and not with some small-scale window dressing. Undaunted by the House vote, Sanford stated, "School choice has proven to work everywhere it's been implemented, providing opportunity for kids who take advantage of it and improving public school performance at the same time . . . Despite a lot of accusations from folks who would rather things stay as they are, at no time during this discussion was anybody able to refute that. We're going to keep pushing." You can't keep a good man down -- or his bold plan to "Put Parents in Charge." This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
May 13, 2005 How dangerous is big business? How effective can small government be? Take the case of college student David Zamos. He bought the latest upgrades to Microsoft's Windows and Office software from his university's computer store. But he soon realized he'd have to reformat his hard drive to install the software. That seemed a bother. So he returned the software unopened. Unfortunately, the store wouldn't take it back, and later on, Microsoft itself refused to give a refund. So Zamos offered the unused merchandise for sale on eBay. And then got sued. By Microsoft. For copyright infringement. The gist of the long story? Thirty-seven filings, back and forth, between four lawyers from the multibillion dollar company and a student whose income that year was less than four thousand dollars. Microsoft scored a high point in absurdity by accusing Zamos of unfair competition, saying that his $143.50 eBay profits forced the company to sustain "substantial impact." Zamos did his research and fought back. It seems that Microsoft routinely sues all sorts of people for this kind of thing; most simply cave. But Zamos knew he was in the right. Further, he wasn't greedy. He just asked for an apology -- and the costs of all of his Xeroxes. Microsoft privately settled rather than make a public apology. This story underscores the need and effectiveness of a rule of law. It wasn't big government that stopped a big company's over-reach. It was just one innocent man and a simple court of law in Akron, Ohio. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
May 7, 2005 The Internet is amazing. It's an elaborate network based on a few rules and protocols. And it's growing far faster than the productivity of any nation on the planet. Or even the growth of government under our spendthrift united government in America. That's some growth. So, how is the Net's growth managed? Well, piecemeal, for the most part. There's no over- arching plan. But the rules need updating every now and then. In a fascinating article on the BBC's website, readers can learn how a scarcity of something called IP numbers might be a problem. But the good people at the Internet Engineering Task Force have a solution, a new protocol called IPv6, which will not have any limit on the lengths of IP addresses that each computer on the Net has. So the 4 billion limit under the current system will become, under IPv6, no limit at all. The BBC describes the task force as "a large international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers working on the evolution of the net's architecture and the way this information is sent and received." The article doesn't mention government once. Apparently, this crucial group doesn't need a big role for government. Which is good, because our government is having some really big problems coordinating to balance budgets, or keep Social Security solvent. It's good to know that the amazing Internet will continue to grow, and meet its next crisis without most netizens even noticing that there was ever a problem. Go, IPv6! This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
May 1, 2005 The death tax is a live issue. The Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council is just one group fighting it. Citizens can go to sbecouncil.org and sign an online petition. From that site one learns that the current death tax is slated to expire in 2010. But, like the mad slasher in a teenage horror flick, the tax is fated to rise again the very next year. The House has passed a repeal bill. Let's hope the Senate kills it once and for all. Now, some people deem the death tax the best tax. What rights to property can the dead have? Why build up a class of inheritors who can coast through life without working? Ignore the rather ugly class envy, here. Ask, instead, why the general community deserves an individual's wealth, after his or her death, and not that person's selected inheritors. Wealth is usually the result of hard work and intelligence that the community had little to do with, though community boosters often like to usurp credit. The most important things the community and its government can give a business -- peace and security and a legal system -- are nothing more than what any person deserves. There's no special claim. As for class, well, consider what the death tax does. It forces many inheritors to sell off family businesses to pay off the tax. This penalizes privately held businesses, giving yet another advantage to public stock companies. In a world where people worry about mom and pop businesses, supporting the death tax makes no sense. It's also called an inheritance tax, but there's a better term: the death-to-small-business tax. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
April 15, 2005 There's a so-called Law of Unintended Consequences that describes the negative results of well-meaning interventions in the affairs of men. However, If you know whats going to happen, can consequences ever be unintended? I think we all know the basics: if you punish a behavior, you discourage it, and if you reward a behavior, you encourage it. I'll tell you what made me put on my economics hat today. A new European Union regulation is forcing airlines to pay passengers if a flight is delayed. Just delayed. Not as a matter of agreement between customer and vendor but as a matter of law. A single flight delay can now cost an airline hundreds of thousands of dollars. Now, delays usually have causes, including safety- related causes. So this regulation punishes airlines for safeguarding passengers. You can predict what the consequences will be. Recently a British Airways plane was in the news after its pilot decided to fly across the Atlantic with a busted engine. Otherwise the airline would have had to pay over the $280,000 to compensate the passengers. I'm not saying the pilot shouldn't be blamed for making a bad decision here. But a regulatory regime that punishes businesses for exercising reasonable diligence bears blame too. And there's another unintended consequence to this over-regulation. This, of course, is just the sort of "innovative" rule that an American politician would look at and say, "Hey, why aren't we doing what the sophisticated Europeans are doing here? We have flight delays!" It sounds like crash and burn to me. This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
The opinions expressed in Common Sense are Paul Jacob's and may not necessarily represent the position of U.S. Term Limits or the U.S. Term Limits Foundation. Paul's daily commentaries are heard on radio stations nationwide and on the Internet. To subscribe to Common Sense or notify them of an email address change, send a message to subscribe@termlimits.org or by signing up at the Common Sense home page: http://www.termlimits.org/Press/Common_Sense/ Copyright (c) 2003, 2004, & 2005 by Paul Jacob and reprinted with permission. |
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