Categories
Update

Milei Now

Readers of Le Monde got what most readers got, this week, about Argentinian President Javier Milei: “In Paris, Argentinian President Javier Milei seeks investors to support his country’s struggling economy.” But is that it? Is that all there is?

No.

The big story a week or so ago was Milei’s statements about the United Nations. Breitbart’s headline is worth clicking on: “Javier Milei Blasts U.N. as ‘Useless,’ ‘Arrogant Parasites’ at General Assembly.”

Milei organized his new condemnation of the United Nations into three separate categories: what the U.N. “should have done but did not,” what “should not have done, but did anyway,” and comments on the United Nations’ stance on the advance of artificial intelligence. President Milei also condemned the Islamic regime of Iran over its attacks against Israel, emphasizing that Argentina is still demanding justice over the two terrorists attacks the country suffered in the 1990s from Iran through its proxy terror group, Hezbollah.

The New York Times has something to say, and it may have been written by a human: “As A.I. Fears Grow, President Milei Pitches Argentina as a Rules-Free Haven.”

“On artificial intelligence, Argentina will stand at the forefront of freedom,” Mr. Milei told the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, while asserting the country’s “commitment to not preemptively regulate A.I.”

Mr. Milei, who has proposed creating “nonhuman corporations” run by A.I. agents, is seeking to lure foreign investments to build data centers in Patagonia. He also relentlessly posts A.I.-generated content on social media.

Reuters takes a step back and looks at the larger economic picture: “Argentina announces citizenship-by-investment program.”

Argentina will launch South America’s first citizenship-by-investment program, Economy Minister Luis Caputo said ‌on X on Friday.

Applications will open in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will offer citizenship through a non-refundable contribution of $350,000 or the purchase of an $800,000 public bond, the Economy Ministry said in a statement.

Maybe it is time to move to Patagonia? Make it a Giant move.

Categories
Thought

Virginia Woolf

My first assertion is one that I think you will grant — that every one in this room is a judge of character. Indeed it would be impossible to live for a year without disaster unless one practised character-reading and had some skill in the art. Our marriages, our friendships depend on it; our business largely depends on it; every day questions arise which can only be solved by its help. And now I will hazard a second assertion, which is more disputable perhaps, to the effect that on or about December 1910 human character changed.

I am not saying that one went out, as one might into a garden, and there saw that a rose had flowered, or that a hen had laid an egg. The change was not sudden and definite like that. But a change there was, nevertheless; and, since one must be arbitrary, let us date it about the year 1910. The first signs of it are recorded in the books of Samuel Butler, in The Way of All Flesh in particular; the plays of Bernard Shaw continue to record it. In life one can see the change, if I may use a homely illustration, in the character of one’s cook. The Victorian cook lived like a leviathan in the lower depths, formidable, silent, obscure, inscrutable; the Georgian cook is a creature of sunshine and fresh air; in and out of the drawing-room, now to borrow The Daily Herald, now to ask advice about a hat. Do you ask for more solemn instances of the power of the human race to change ? Read the Agamemnon, and see whether, in process of time, your sympathies are not almost entirely with Clytemnestra. Or consider the married life of the Carlyles, and bewail the waste, the futility, for him and for her, of the horrible domestic tradition which made it seemly for a woman of genius to spend her time chasing beetles, scouring saucepans, instead of writing books. All human relations have shifted — those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.

Virginia Woolf, Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown (1924).
Categories
Today

Declarations of Thanksgiving

On October 3, 1789, George Washington proclaimed Thursday November 26, 1789, a Thanksgiving Day. On the same date in 1863, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day.

Categories
crime and punishment Eighth Amendment rights regulation too much government

Fly the Cruel and Unusual Skies

Alaska, civil asset forfeiture, property, prohibition

Sometimes, cruel punishment is the usual, as in states like the People’s Republic of China. Everybody is a victim there. But entire ethnic or religious groups of people are routinely subjected to even more cruel tyranny than most Chinese people must put with.

If Americans aren’t yet in this situation — not for lack of trying by various local, state, and federal autocrats — one reason is that instances of cruel and unusual punishment can be fought in court. Which is what Ken Jouppi is doing with the help of the Institute for Justice.

What was Jouppi’s alleged crime? He let a passenger bring “visible” containers of beer on board his Cessna 206. Why is this a problem? The number of beer cans was 72, and the destination was a dry village, so you can imagine the horror involved!

The trial court determined intent as Jouppi being “willfully blind” to the contraband, but it may be that he just failed to leap into action when he noticed the beer . . . assuming he did. 

Jouppi was punished 13 years ago, a year after the “crime,” with three days in jail and a $1,500 fine. But that wasn’t good enough for the Alaska government, which tenaciously enforces local alcohol prohibitions — it demanded that Jouppi forfeit his $95,000 airplane. 

“Although that penalty seemed grossly disproportionate,” says Reason magazine, “the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines.” 

Yes, this is a case of civil asset forfeiture, covered here for decades now.

Will the U.S. Supreme Court see reason? Regardless of the outcome, the process has also been the punishment, one that is both cruel and all too usual.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Today

Stroke of Luck

On October 2, 1919, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson suffered a massive stroke, leaving him partially paralyzed, preventing him from reacting to the economic downturn following the Great War in a Progressive fashion — making his response de facto laissez faire. One insider, and skeptic of Progressive hubris, archly referred to Wilson’s incapacitation as “a stroke of luck.”

His successor in office, President Warren G. Harding, would go on to massively cut spending as well as taxes, and take on regulation as well. He also released Woodrow Wilson’s domestic war prisoners — ranging from journalists, ordinary folk to socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs — who had dissented from Wilson’s involvement in the war.

The Depression of the early 1920s, though as deep as the early 1930s, proved remarkably brief, thanks to Harding . . . and a stroke of luck.

On October 2, 1789, George Washington sent the proposed Constitutional amendments (the United States’ Constitution’s Bill of Rights) to the States for ratification.

Categories
Thought

Wharton

There are two ways of spreading light: to be
The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

Edith Wharton, “Vesalius in Zante (1564),” in North American Review (November 1902), p. 631.

Categories
crime and punishment prohibition regulation

Just Say Uncool

drug war, marijuana, prohibition, culture

Something curious has happened to the young, a new government report suggests: “the number of high school students who use marijuana has decreased by almost half — 44 percent — since states started enacting adult-use legalization.”

I’m quoting an article from September 22. In it, Marijuana Moment editor Tom Angeli repeatedly contrasts the decrease in teen cannabis use with the rise in state legalizations. “The new federal data, released on Monday, shows that 12.9 percent of high school students currently consume cannabis, which is defined as having used it at least once in the past 30 days. That’s down from 23.1 percent in 2011 — the year before the first U.S. states approved recreational marijuana legalization laws.”

Angeli reminds us of a standard argument against marijuana legalization: If marijuana is readily available, kids will increase usage of the ‘pernicious weed.’

Hasn’t happened!

But why?

It may be relevant to note that sexual activity among the young has gone way down. So has testosterone in boys; teen pregnancies are also in decline. 

Meanwhile, teen use of prescription drugs is way up. If your brain function is altered by one or more psychiatric medications, doctor prescribed, perhaps these compete with traditional psychoactive drugs, reducing demand.

Angeli insists, however, that “[p]rior research also suggests that marijuana use by young people has generally fallen in states that legalize it for adults.”

If this turns out to be true, we may have to accept his framing: a significant driver of drug use among young people is The Cool Factor, and legal drugs are not cool; prohibited drugs are. 

For decades, anti-drug activists used celebrities and cartoon characters to convince kids that “drugs aren’t cool.” 

Instead, legalization did the job.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Steinbeck

I have known many people to ask for advice but very few who wanted it and none who followed it.

John Steinbeck, The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957).
Categories
Today

Model T

On October 1, 1908, Ford produced the first Model T at a plant in Detroit. The auto could travel 40 miles per hour and ran on gasoline or hemp-based fuel. (As oil prices fell, Ford phased out the hemp option.) The Model T was the first car designed for a mass market, rather than as a luxury item. By 1927, Ford had built 15 million Model T cars — the longest production run of any car model until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

Categories
election law U.S. Constitution Voting

The Federal Law That Wasn’t?

citizen, noncitizen, voting, immigration, democracy, elections

For the last eight years, Americans for Citizen Voting, a group that I chair, has worked to give more than 40 million voters in 15 states a chance to decide whether to amend their state constitutions to say “only” U.S. citizens are eligible to vote in state and local elections.

In all 15 states, voters overwhelmingly passed the Citizen Only Voting Amendment.

This year, six more states — Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota, and West Virginia — have Citizen Only Voting measures on their ballot.

Throughout the course of these state campaigns, the media and many liberal Democrats have browbeat us that, “It is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections!” 

Of course, we were not talking about federal elections.

Now, increasingly, we are.

Indeed, there is a 1996 federal statute making it a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. But, as we have been warning, it is of dubious constitutionality.

Under Article 1, Section 2 (House), the 17th Amendment (Senate), and Article II (President), the Constitution gives the States the power to determine who votes in federal elections in that state. Qualifications to vote are thus state matters. 

Now, the Trump administration is prosecuting more than 30 cases of noncitizens voting under this federal law, causing at least five defendants to challenge its constitutionality.

“In Miami, U.S. District Judge David Leibowitz is presiding over the case of Chelsea Cox, a Jamaican citizen accused of voting in the 2020 federal election,” Reuters reported earlier this month. “In June, the judge said he wanted an independent assessment of the law’s constitutionality.”

In a friend of the court brief, Paul Clement argues that “history and precedent reinforce that citizenship is a voter qualification and one that is fully within the scope of states’ power over such matters.”

Clement, a well-respected former solicitor general, also indicated “a more permanent solution,” noting that Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.) has introduced a constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 152, to restrict voting in federal elections to only U.S. citizens.

Congressional Republicans, focused on the SAVE Act, failed to give a hearing or bring to a vote this, the only way to prevent states from allowing noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The 15 states that have already passed Citizen Only Voting constitutional amendments are: Alabama, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Wisconsin.

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