Category Archives: Op-Eds

Op-Eds

Roast Beef (or Wolfing Down the Faux Outrage)

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Comedy and tragedy masks from the Princess Theatre, Decatur, AL image by Marjorie Kaufman

It’s tempting to refer to the fallout from Michelle Wolf’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner monologue as virtue signaling (“the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group”) but that gives it too much credit. There’s a lot more noise than signal involved. The only real signal here seems to be that some people either can’t take a joke or won’t pass up an opportunity to feign outrage.

Most of the post-dinner heartburn centers around Wolf’s pokes at White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. From some accounts, one might reasonably assume that Wolf simply took the stage, said a bunch of mean things about Sanders, and walked off to mixed moans and applause.

In fact, Wolf spent about a minute and a half, out of nearly 20, on Sanders. Oddly, I have yet to hear any conservatives complaining that Wolf (by way of putting recent misogyny scandals in perspective) called out the late  Senator Ted Kennedy as a murderer, or slammed the Democratic Party for perpetually stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.

I watched the monologue (twice — the first time I forgot to time Wolf’s remarks on Sanders) and found it incredibly tame by comparison to a Friar’s Club Celebrity Roast, or to any random five minutes from the oeuvres of Gilbert Gottfried, Sarah Silverman, or Doug Stanhope.

As one honest conservative commentator, Katherine Timpf, points out at National Review, there’s plenty of hypocrisy on both sides: Those who gave Donald Trump a pass on his ugly jabs at Rosie O’Donnell and others lack standing to whine about Wolf’s meanness, and vice versa. And at least Wolf has the excuse that she’s a working comedian, not a president or presidential candidate.

Was she funny? That’s in the eye of the beholder, but it’s the only worthwhile question to ask about a comedian and her routine. I thought Wolf landed a few fun punches, but I’d be disappointed if I had paid  a cover charge to watch this particular set at a comedy club. TV means I didn’t have to spring for a ticket or gag down the rubber chicken dinner, so I got my money’s worth. And I never turn down an opportunity to listen to put-downs of politicians and their flacks.

Perhaps the best  example to follow here is that of Sarah Huckabee Sanders herself. At The Daily Caller, Benny Johnson relates that after sitting through the scorching from Wolf, Sanders attended an MSNBC after-party (she’s obviously a glutton for punishment), all smiles, instead of crying in the beer that the dutiful daughter of a Baptist preacher probably doesn’t drink.

It’s good to see that SOMEONE can take a joke.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Op-Eds

Social Security is the Titanic. 2022 is the Iceberg. Anybody See a Lifeboat?

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Titanic Eisberg
Titanic Iceberg (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 2022, Social Security’s trustees report, the US government’s retirement income program will begin paying out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenues. By 2034, a year short of its 100th birthday, Social Security’s $3 trillion in reserves will be gone. Benefits will have to be cut by nearly a quarter. And it’s all downhill from there.

Those projections assume no substantial changes in the structure of Social Security: No payroll tax increases, not raising or eliminating the salary cap on which  those taxes are paid, not raising the retirement age or slashing benefits, before the dreaded day arrives.

Such assumptions are fairly safe because most politicians aren’t even willing to re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Too risky career-wise. Older voters guard their retirement benefits jealously. Younger voters already consider themselves over-taxed. Better to just pretend the iceberg isn’t there, maintain full speed ahead, and hope to be voluntarily retired (with a sweet congressional pension, of course) before Social Security sinks beneath the cold waves.

Whether or not one supports the original logic of Social Security (I don’t), American demographics since the end of the Baby Boom boil down to fewer children per family combined with longer life expectancy. Or, to put differently, fewer young workers paying Social Security taxes to support more retirees for longer. That can’t and won’t continue in the same direction forever.

Everything eventually comes to an end, and Social Security won’t be the single historical exception to that cold hard fact of reality. The big question is whether it winds down in the least damaging way or catastrophically implodes (cue images of the elderly living on cat food and so forth).

The first step in winding down Social Security is to set an age cutoff — if you were born after a particular date, you will neither pay Social Security taxes nor collect Social Security benefits. People who never get on the Titanic don’t have to worry about flotation vests and lifeboats.

The second step is for politicians to stop making promises that can’t and won’t be kept. Legislate those inevitable future benefit cuts now instead of later, so that Americans above the “no taxes/no benefits” age but still well short of retirement are forewarned and can adjust their plans for the golden years.

Presumably nobody wants the elderly to starve. Continuing to pretend that Social Security has an eternal future guarantees that they will.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

California Secession: A Good Start

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On April 23, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla approved language for a 2020 ballot proposal submitted by the Yes California Independence Campaign. The proposal will — assuming the campaign can collect and submit signatures from 365,880 registered voters by October — kick off a process already widely known as “Calexit” (after the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” from the European Union).

That process entails three parts: Asking Californians (in 2020) if they want to “discuss” secession; if yes, asking Californians (in 2021) if they want to secede; and if again yes, asking 2/3 of both houses of Congress and 3/4 of the state legislatures to pass a constitutional amendment allowing California to leave the United States.

Whether or not that last step should be necessary is debatable, but seeing as how the last American secession resulted in a four-year war and a million dead, getting buy-in from DC and the other states might be the wisest course. Either way, if Californians want to go their own way, they should be free to do so, as should other existing states and even smaller areas and groups.

As an independent nation, California would boast the fifth largest economy in the world, and would rank 36th in population (by comparison to the world’s 196 existing countries) and in the top half by area (it’s larger than Hungary, Greece,  or Portugal). It has its own coastline (but its secession would still leave the US with access to the west coast via Oregon and Washington). It has its own border with a country other than the US (Mexico). It relies on other states for energy and water, but making that trade international rather than merely interstate doesn’t seem like an insuperable problem.

In short, California looks like an excellent test case for independence. It mostly has what it needs to function on its own.

As for relationships with other states and with a national capital 2,375 miles from its own, it’s far from obvious that the people of California have so much in common with the people of Texas or Florida or New Hampshire or Wisconsin that all five states need a government in common.

Ultimately, political government itself is the problem and a system of market anarchy or panarchy (competing “public service” providers within the same geographical area) is the solution. Until we can feel our way to such an arrangement, peaceful secession, decentralization, and devolution are probably the best outcomes we can reasonably hope for.

 

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY