A news buffet

IN GERMANY, an unemployed person is listed in a government database. Prospective employers can browse the database looking for someone who might be qualified to work for them. Because of the growing strain on Germany’s generous unemployment benefit system, the laws have been revised to require that a person accept a job for which they are qualified, or else lose their unemployment benefits. So far, so good – right?

There’s a wrinkle. Germany legalized prostitution recently, so brothel operators are perusing the unemployment database looking for qualified employees. One “employer” found a 25 year-old former waitress, and decided she was qualified to work for him.

Now the former waitress is being threatened with a loss of benefits because she won’t take the job. A Hamburg lawyer said "There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry…the new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits."

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job center when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" a brothel owner asked. In economics, that is called “The Law of Unintended Consequences.” I just call it one more in a long list of reasons to look at what Europe is doing, and do exactly the opposite.

THE IMPERIAL Wizard of the U.S. Senate, former KKK member Robert Byrd, is touting a copy of the U.S. Constitution that you can get from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. According to an Associated Press report, Senator Byrd “accuses Republicans of threatening to ‘undermine the system of checks and balances described in the Constitution and the fundamental rights we hold dear’ by changing the rules governing confirmation of judges.”

Perhaps Byrd, who claims to carry the constitution with him everywhere he goes, should actually take it out of his pocket and read it. Nowhere does the constitution even mention the “filibuster” – the tool Democrats are using to block Bush judicial nominees. The filibuster is a Senate rule, not a constitutional construct. And the rules can be changed by a simple majority of senators. So for Sen. Byrd to accuse the GOP of threatening to “undermine the system of checks and balances described in the Constitution” is not just demagoguery, it is a blatant lie. No one has used obscure procedural rules to quell minority uprisings more often or effectively than former Majority leader Byrd.

Payback is, well, you know.

For the record, I don’t want the Senate to change the rules. The filibuster is an effective tool that the minority can use to oppose the majority will, and that is, after all, part of what makes our system of government unique. The filibuster has served the Senate – and America -- well.

The arguments for preservation of the filibuster are strong, and do not need to be propped up by lies. The GOP remembers 40 years of minority status, and the Democrats are learning how it feels.

Perhaps Sen. Byrd is banking on the woeful state of civics education to help him pull this one off. After all, there are a lot of folks who actually think the phrase “separation of church and state” is in the constitution too.

THE IDEA of private investment accounts for Social Security may be a hot topic today, but it’s not a new idea. In fact, the plan to make private accounts a part of the overall scheme has been around for years – first promoted by a popular president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. That’s right, it was FDR who said, "I am greatly hoping that repeated promises of private investment and private initiative to relieve the government in the immediate future of much of the burden it has assumed will be fulfilled."

According to an article in OpinionJournal.com, President Harry Truman’s Treasury Secretary, while still serving in Congress, said, "Many of us think the
time will come when the voluntary annuity plan, which rounds out the security program for the aged, will be written into law."

So what we have today is a Republican president, aware of significant problems looming on the horizon, proposing a plan similar to that which Democrats had formerly hoped to see made part of the Social Security system. Now, for some reason, that’s a bad thing. It’s so bad that armies of activists are mobilizing to defeat the program, though this particular plan protects current retirees, gives imminent retirees the hope of a solvent system, and offers young workers a future where paychecks don’t get confiscated to provide care for the elderly.

The only alternative offered by the opposition is a postponed retirement age for my generation, and higher taxes for the younger. That’s nothing to look forward to, for us or them.