Common Sense with Paul Jacob - Presented by Think Freely Media

White Rose

On February 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister, were arrested at the University of Munich for secretly (or not so secretly) putting out leaflets calling on Germans to revolt against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.

In the previous year Hans had founded a group of students, who called themselves “The White Rose.” The group wrote and distributed six leaflets aimed at educated Germans. The leaflets made their way across Germany and to several other occupied countries. The Allies later dropped them all over the Third Reich.

Free to Advise

New York, law, lawyers, guilds, AI, labor, licensing

People should be free to talk to each other about whatever they want as long as they’re not thereby conspiring to rob and murder and so forth. They should even be able to give advice.

Including legal advice.

New York State disagrees.

The Institute for Justice is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let the non-lawyer volunteers of a company called Upsolve keep giving advice to people facing lawsuits to collect debt.

As IJ explains, New York State is trying to “protect people from hearing advice from volunteers” who have relevant training. The point is that the First Amendment “doesn’t allow the government to outlaw discussion of entire topics … by requiring speakers to first obtain an expensive, time-consuming license.” (That Upsolve’s advisors have relevant training is relevant but also superfluous. Even untrained talkers have the right to talk, obviously.)

In 2022, a federal district court agreed with the plaintiff that its volunteers have a First Amendment right to speak and let Upsolve operate as litigation continued. Then a court of appeals ruled against Upsolve. Now IJ and Upsolve hope that the U.S. Supreme Court will step in and put an end to the nonsense.

We know what this is about: politicians catering to lawyers who don’t want less expensive sources of legal advice out there competing for customers.

It’s certainly not about protecting those who would have one fewer resource to turn to were this one taken away.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags AI, guilds, labor, law, lawyers, licensing, New York

Thought

Marshall McLuhan

Only puny secrets need protection. Big discoveries are protected by public incredulity.
Marshall McLuhan, Take Today: The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 92.

Today

Jefferson vs. Burr

On February 17, 1801, a tie in the Electoral College between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr was resolved when Jefferson was elected President and Burr Vice President by the House of Representatives.

free trade & free markets regulation too much government

A Great Un-Finding

In 2009, President Obama and the EPA decided that the will‑o’-the-wisp of fine-tuning the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere fell under the agency’s purview. They introduced a not-so-thin wedge to pry open a vast new province of regulatory oppression.

Obama had sought congressional legislation, but Congress had balked.

So he proceeded without any new laws; or rather, as so often happens, told an agency to issue new laws. (According to one explanation of the difference between laws and regulations, regulations are rules to implement laws. This doesn’t cover the case of regulations or “findings” that are tantamount to new laws although no elected representatives passed them.)

“Health” was at stake, the tyrants declared.

The flourishing of industrial civilization, and thus of human beings, are also matters of health. But no matter.

One consequence of the EPA’s newfound authority was the issuance of other dire “rules,” like the Biden-era mandate that most American-made vehicles be electric by 2032.

Now things may change.

Bigly.

President Trump has ordered the EPA to un-find its 2009 “finding” that it has blanket authority to regulate human emission of greenhouse gases.

The change will be challenged in court.

The Trump administration doubtless expects — perhaps even wants — the litigation. A favorable Supreme Court ruling would block the EPA from re-finding its finding during future administrations. Then legislation — actual, congressional — would be the only way to reimpose the craziness.

A circumstance in which the people might have a say.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags carbon emissions, climate change, EPA, finding

Thought

Miranda July

Common sense and the truth should feel authorless, writ by time itself.
Miranda July, “The Shared Patio,” in Zoetrope All-Story (Winter 2005).

Today

Silver Coinage

On February 16, 1878, the Bland-Allison Act, which provided for a return to the minting of silver coins, became U.S. law.

Update

Oregon Medicaid Fraud?

Defrauding the welfare state is not just a Minnesota practice. A developing story about a vaporous business near Portland, Oregon, linked to Medicaid fraud, kidnapping and torture, Venezuelan gang activity, and a pastor serving East Africans in America:

Oregon Roundup Foundation reported last summer OHA paid Uplifting Journey $2.3 million in drug and alcohol treatment Medicaid reimbursements for reported dates of service from April 15, 2024 to March 14, 2025. In January of this year, Washington prosecutors charged one man who allegedly lived in a Lake Oswego, Oregon house operated by Uplifting Journey with kidnapping, torturing and attempting to murder a Seattle area woman. Prosecutors allege another man living in the house participated in the crimes, but has not been apprehended.

Oregon Roundup Foundation reported last week Arizona pastor Theodore Mucuranyana, accused of laundering millions originating from a $60 million Arizona Medicaid fraud ring, co-signed for Uplifting Journey on a lease for a house to serve as a residential treatment facility in Gresham, Oregon in November 2024. Mucuranyana pastors the Hope of Life International Church, which caters to east African congregants in the Phoenix, Arizona area. The Arizona Attorney General alleges Mucuranyana funneled some of the fraudulent proceeds to an entity in Rwanda.
Jeff Eager, “Health Authority withheld plea for “scrutiny” of Uplifting Journey” (December 14, 2025).

The same reporter appears to be alone on the coverage (it’s hard to find anyone else). His last relevant post on his Substack site was in early February, basically informing us of the latest. The upshot? Little due diligence had been done by a government eager to give millions out in grants:

Oregon Health Authority chose to forego criminal background checks and site visits when it approved Uplifting Journey LLC to receive Medicaid reimbursements and subsequently paid the company at least $2.3 million, according to an agency spokesperson. One Uplifting Journey owner, Espoir Ntezeyombi, is a business associate of a man charged by Arizona’s Attorney General with orchestrating a $60 million Medicaid fraud scheme, an Oregon Roundup Foundation investigation found.…

Uplifting Journey told OHA it would provide services at an address on N Broadway in Portland. An August visit during business hours showed the office apparently closed, with a paper sign on the door and mattresses and full plastic trash bags in the space. Because OHA chose the lightest level of scrutiny for Uplifting Journey, OHA was not required to conduct a site visit of the Portland location.
Jeff Eager, “OHA: No Uplifting Journey Background Checks” (February 3, 2026).

The story has its lurid elements; nevertheless, those elements have yet to entice much press notice. That Pastor Theo Mucuranyana linkage — the headlines almost write themselves! It’s almost as if the old days of Yellow Journalism — where Story was All — have been replaced with the present days of propagandistic pfiffle … and nothing but the pfiffle. If the news doesn’t serve the State and its ever-metastasizing growth, then the news remains unstated.

Thought

Bismarck

Mein lieber Professor, ein solcher Krieg hätte uns wenigstens 30,000 Mann brave Soldaten gekostet, und uns im besten Falle keinen Gewinn gebracht. Wer aber nur ein Mal in das brechende Auge eines sterbenden Kriegers auf dem Schlachtfeld geblickt hat, der besinnt sich, bevor er einen Krieg anfängt.

My dear Professor, a war would have cost us at least 30,000 brave soldiers, and at best we should have gained nothing by it. Besides, anyone who has once looked into the glassy eyes of a dying warrior on the battle-field would think twice before beginning a war.
Minister President Otto von Bismarck, of Prussia, remarks of June 1867 defending provisions of the Treaty of London (May 11, 1867), as quoted by Wilhelm Görlach in Prince Bismarck: A Biographical Sketch (1875), p. 13.

Today

Remember the Maine

On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine, a battleship, exploded in the Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 260 American sailors. An official U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March 1898 that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly blaming Spain. Nonetheless, Congress declared war and, within three months, the U.S. had decisively defeated Spanish forces. On December 12, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed between the U.S. and Spain, granting the United States its first overseas empire with the ceding of such former Spanish possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.