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initiative, referendum, and recall partisanship

Against Fairness?

Virginia, voting, districts, democracy, language, fairness

I’m against fairness?

Nah, it’s just Democrats who think that, because I won’t vote for their proposed constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to redraw my state’s congressional districts. 

The official question on the April 21 ballot reads: “Should the Constitution of Virginia be amended to allow the General Assembly to temporarily adopt new congressional districts to restore fairness in the upcoming elections, while ensuring Virginia’s standard redistricting process resumes for all future redistricting after the 2030 census?”

What, exactly, is “fair” about this amendment? 

“If approved, Virginia’s 11 districts would likely go from six Democratic to five Republican leaning seats to 10 Democratic seats and one Republican seat,” explains WJLA, ABC’s Washington, D.C., affiliate. “The new map would draw heavily blue urban areas in Northern Virginia, with rural Republican areas far away.”

Democrat House Speaker Don Scott argues that “levels the playing field.” 

Well, it would be a fairer map if the commonwealth’s electorate were comprised of 90 percent Democrats and less than 10 percent Republican voters. Yet, in 2024, Democrat Kamala Harris garnered just 51 percent of Virginia’s vote for president. Even in last year’s blowout gubernatorial election, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won only 58 percent. During that campaign, Spanberger expressed skepticism of this district map . . . but then, as governor, signed on. 

Democrats, always selective in applying “fairness,” are outspending Republicans “by about 14 to 1 on advertising” and holding the vote for this constitutional question early, in April, with low voter turnout expected — for the first time in state history.

In the minds of Democrats, this maneuver is fair because President Trump has urged Republican states to engage is such partisan redistricting. That’s their case.

But arguments in favor of a measure do not belong in the wording voters see on their ballot as they make their decision. 

That’s unfair.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: In the quoted ballot question, emphasis added.

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Thought

Javier Milei

I have nothing against artists. I had a rock band myself. My problem is that if you need a government subsidy to make art, you’re no longer an artist — you’re a public employee.

Javier Milei, president of Argentina, in conversation.
Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall international affairs

Alberta Shrugs?

Alberta, Canada, Ottowa, secession, nationalism

Political dysfunction is not limited to the United States of America. 

Take Canada. Things have gotten bad enough there that one province is taking measures to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them” with the folks running everything from Ottawa.

“While Canada’s new prime minister jets off to Davos to click glasses with his fellow globalists over at the World Economic Forum,” Dr. Steve Turley explained a few months ago, “back home, tens of thousands of Albertans are lining up in the freezing cold for a chance to vote their province out of the country. The length of the lines are astonishing. Thousands are showing up at high school gyms and community centers all across Alberta with one message: ‘We’re done; we’re leaving.”

Yesterday, this new Alberta First-like movement achieved a new milestone — or so says a “leading figure in the Alberta separatist movement,” according to Matthew Black of the Edmonton Journal.

The claim is that “separatist canvassers” have exceeded “the required 177,732 signatures and expect to far surpass that number before the May 2 deadline.”

Alberta’s secession is going to the ballot. 

Will the voters choose yes?

Secession is a messy, difficult business. But it’s easier in Canada than in, say, the United States (where it led to war). So we will see how the people of the province really feel about how horrific the government in Ottawa really is.

Just remember, this is not out of the blue or crazy or unthinkable even in the U.S. The more dysfunctional federal — “central” — governments get, the more they risk being abandoned by political entities “below” them.

You might think this would incentivize politicians to listen to constituents in the hinterlands, but . . .

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Alberta, Canada, Ottowa, secession, nationalism

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Shaw

Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it divine revelation.

George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), #39.

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Today

Noodles Fooled?

On April Fools’ Day, 1957, the BBC offered for viewers of the current affairs program “Panorama” the infamous spaghetti harvest report hoax.

By sheer coincidence (?), one definition of “noodle” is “fool.”

Categories
international affairs national politics & policies

What, We Worry?

foreign policy, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barack Obama, China, technology

For many decades, U.S. presidents have cited national security as a reason for this or that exercise of power . . . and spending. 

Watching CBS’s 60 Minutes two weeks ago, it became painfully obvious that “national security” are simply two words our past leaders spat out when politically convenient and not at all a concept to which they have paid serious attention.

The first story in the popular TV news magazine’s March 22nd episode concerned rare earth metals. 

“Right now, China holds a near-monopoly over these strategic metals that are key components in so much that makes the modern world go: smartphones, robotics, EV’s; also fighter jets, drones and radar technology,” explained correspondent Jon Wertheim. “That is, China controls materials essential to America’s ability to wage war.”

Quite a problem, especially considering that China is our most powerful and aggressive adversary. 

Shipbuilding, or the lack thereof, was the subject of the segment that followed. 

“The war in Iran is highlighting the importance of ships — not just warships but cargo vessels — like those carrying oil or gas trapped near the Strait of Hormuz,” Lesley Stahl reported. “But American shipbuilding is in shambles, due to decades of shortsighted policies and neglect.

“Our submarine building program is sluggish. And our commercial shipbuilding is nearly extinct,” she continued. “China makes roughly 1,000 cargo ships a year. The U.S.? Maybe three. The Trump administration has called this a national security crisis.”

Had presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama been awake and competent, and not lapdogs for Beijing, I wonder what they would have called it. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tom Paine

When the Truth deigns to come, her sister Liberty will not be far.

Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1795).

Categories
Today

The Bangorian Controversy

On March 31, 1717, a sermon on “The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ,” by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.

The sermon’s text was John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and from that Hoadly deduced — supposedly at the request of King George I himself, who was present in the assembly — that there was no Biblical justification for any church government. Hoadly identified the church with the kingdom of Heaven, noting that Christ had not delegated His authority to any representative.

King George’s preference for the Whig Party, and for latitudinarianism in ecclesiastical policy, is widely thought to have been a strategic maneuver to degrade church power in political government.

Categories
Internet controversy litigation

Sony’s Scam Scuttled

Supreme Court, copyright, censorship, free speech, property

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) can’t be forced to deprive customers of Internet access on the basis of an unverified complaint about copyright violation. And can’t be held liable for refusing to kill a customer’s access.

The ruling holds that a service provider “is contributorily liable for a user’s infringement only if it intended that the provided service be used for infringement. . . .”

The plaintiff? Sony. 

The defendant? Cox Communications. 

According to the ruling, Sony “alleged that Cox contributed to its users’ infringement by continuing to provide Internet service to subscribers whose IP addresses Cox knew were associated with infringement.”

Of course, Cox cannot “know” that a user had infringed some copyright merely because it got an automated notice that a user had done so. Cox is just an Internet service provider, not a judge, jury, or hander-out of penalties for unestablished crimes.

Had the high court ruled otherwise, the consequences would have been dire.

“Under the legal standard the labels wanted,” Reclaim the Net observes, “an ISP that received enough of these automated complaints and didn’t disconnect the account could face catastrophic financial liability. A Virginia jury bought that theory in 2019 and hit Cox with a verdict of over $1 billion.”

The decision bodes well for rulings on other attempts to transform ISPs — or PC operating systems, satellites, or any other gateway to modern life — into instant wielders of crippling punishment . . . no trial, no judgment, no justice allowed. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Anatole France

Si 50 millions de personnes disent une bêtise, c’est quand même une bêtise.

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Anatole France, as quoted in Listening and Speaking : A Guide to Effective Oral Communication (1954) by Ralph G. Nichols and Thomas R. Lewis, p. 74.