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Relevance: 56% Posted on: July 14, 2012
We’ve discussed the Stockton, California, municipal bankruptcy. It was brought about by a number of factors, but the highlights are (1) lavish and totally unsustainable public employee pay and benefits, and (2) the recession. Here is a detailed explanation from Vice Mayor Kathy Miller: This sort of disaster may be…
Relevance: 56% Posted on: May 31, 1999
Powerbrokers in the media have never liked term limits. Over and over they write that term limits are dead. Of course, the fact that they write about term limits again and again only shows the activity of the movement, and the ridiculousness of their claims. Roll Call, the Capitol Hill…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: August 30, 2012
“Democracy should be for everyone,” says Michelle Romero of the Greenlining Institute. That sounds right. She also argues that “California speaks 200 languages, but our initiative petitions speak only one. We can bring millions of voters fully into our democratic process, and it will only cost about a penny per…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: August 31, 2022
The state government of California spends a lot of money. But how much and on what? That information has, apparently, been a state secret. Until now. For years, a watchdog group called OpenTheBooks.com has been working to discover and disclose government spending in the United States. Its efforts were enabled…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: December 2, 2009
California voters love their state’s process for placing initiatives and referendums on the ballot. Legislators? Most take a much dimmer view. This year they’ve been blaming voters for spending the state into bankruptcy through the initiative. Additionally — and please hold your laughter — they claim that initiatives have tied…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: September 16, 2008
Some politicians are loathe to allow freedom of action even when they’re going out of their way to allow freedom of action. California Attorney General Jerry Brown doesn’t want the federal government to harass patients who use medical marijuana, or to harass those who provide it. To implement this laissez-faire…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: April 4, 2024
Could a barren, charred, devastated landscape be the actual intended goal? In California as in Washington, lawmakers and chief executives apparently have a long list of nice things to destroy and are crossing them off one by one, as if on the payroll of aliens from outer space wanting to…
Relevance: 55% Posted on: July 22, 2015
“The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 12.
Relevance: 54% Posted on: July 6, 2012
California's Democratic legislative majority is anything but lazy. On July 3, when most politicians had long-since left their posts to begin vacationing, California legislators kept their collective nose to the grindstone, busy trying to grind down the right of citizens to petition their government. Again. Last year, California's initiative process…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: August 30, 2016
“Marijuana is only legal for white people, in California,” explains Lynne Lyman of the Drug Policy Alliance. Talking with Zach Weissmueller, on reason.tv, she clarifies the situation regarding California’s currently legal medical marijuana, and why Prop. 64, a ballot measure sponsored by Californians for Responsible Marijuana Reform, is so necessary.…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: September 9, 2009
Could California’s budget crisis be solved by a triumvirate of Internet services, Craigslist, eBay and Twitter? Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is raiding the state’s storage sheds to sell off unneeded items on eBay and Craigslist. His signature on a California fleet car adds, it is estimated, $400 to its auction value.…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: May 6, 2020
Just get rid of it. The “it” is AB-5, the absurd new law attacking California freelancers. And those articulating the good riddance are the “151 Ph.D. Economists and Political Scientists in California” who have signed an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature. The lawmakers who…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: January 20, 2020
Eventually, champions of government intervention, of all forms of thwarting independent judgment and killing dreams, find themselves under assault. From the public. And you don’t need an economics degree to grasp why. Initially, an intervention prevents other people from pursuing projects, getting jobs, earning a living. Then, finally, government meddling…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: September 17, 2010
One goal of academic freedom is to protect inquiry from the guardians of orthodoxy, the machinations of those who resent any articulation of an alternate view. Administrators at UCLA don’t seem to be fans of this goal. James Enstrom has been at UCLA for 36 years. He lacks tenure, and…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: June 14, 1999
There's a big difference between "independence" and "arrogance." Our Founders wanted judges to be independent from politics and the other two branches of government. The judiciary could thus protect our freedoms and defend our Constitution against assaults from powerful politicians or even against majorities of the public.But being independent is…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: April 13, 2010
While Washington, DC, steps in to take over responsibility for determining just how much and what kind of medical insurance we should buy, the states march, instead, towards personal responsibility, defending a right to self-medication. More than a dozen states have enacted medical marijuana laws, in defiance of Congress and…
Relevance: 54% Posted on: August 23, 2021
“For weeks, legal scholars have debated whether the recall election of [California] Gov. Gavin Newsom could be found unconstitutional,” The Los Angeles Times reports, “if Newsom failed to realize a ‘no recall’ majority of the ballots cast and was ousted by a candidate who received fewer votes than he did.”…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: March 8, 2024
Republican Representative Kevin Kiley of California has introduced H.J. Resolution 116 to block “the rule submitted by the Department of the Labor relating to ‘Employee or Independent Contractor Classification Under the Fair Labor Standards Act.’ ” 116 is a legislative attempt to thwart legislation by regulators. Labor’s rule is modeled on…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: November 20, 2012
Two court cases come to our attention, courtesy of Cato’s Ilya Shapiro. Both involve the favoring of members of one group over another. The Sixth Circuit ruled that a voter-approved amendment to the Michigan state constitution outlawing racial preferences in college admissions would violate the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: January 13, 2017
It’s neither “iconic” nor “ironic.” “Storm fells one of California’s iconic drive-through tunnel trees, carved 137 years ago,” Travis M. Anderson’s title informs us. Calaveras Big Trees State Park is famous for its hollowed-at-the-trunk Pioneer Cabin Tree, a sequoia you have seen in hundreds of photos. It fell, almost certainly,…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: October 20, 2009
“Slow, corrupt and expensive is no way to run a state government.” That’s what Pittsburgh Post Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill wrote recently about the Pennsylvania Legislature. The state budget remains unset three months past deadline. O’Neill bemoaned that for the seventh consecutive year “America’s Largest Full-Time State Legislature has been…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: August 16, 2010
Democracy and constitutional rights fit together better than some people think. Most people don’t think of democracy as some hyper-pure system where two wolves and a lamb decide whom to eat for dinner. They envision a constitutional republic that protects fundamental rights while also democratically controlling government’s legitimate decisions and…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: January 5, 2023
What do California and Canada have in common, aside from bone-chilling temperatures? Well, the fact that they’re trying to chill the discourse of doctors. In California, a new law empowers medical boards to punish doctors who spread “misinformation” about COVID-19. The misinformative nature of a stated view about the pandemic…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: April 26, 2014
A man at a forum asks the operative question. Michigan’s ban on racial and gender preferences, upheld this week by the SCOTUS, was passed by voters in 2006 through a citizen initiative led by Jennifer Gratz, now leading the XIV Foundation, and Leon Drolet, a former state legislator and activist.…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: May 25, 2004
Paul Jacob Mention initiative, referendum, and recall to political insiders and you'll hear a one-word rebuttal: California! California politics is almost universally portrayed as, well, a little loony. California stands out from other states of the union, of course, for a host of reasons, from the sheer size and diversity…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: May 27, 2012
California politicians are at it again, as you can see on Townhall this weekend. And come back for the links: LA Times coverage Chuck Woolsy No on 28 Poll stuff Professional Politicians, Crony Capitalists Fleischman US Term Limits
Relevance: 53% Posted on: June 26, 2023
What is the U.S. SupremeCourt thinking by refusing even to listen to arguments about the effects of California’s AB5 law, which effectively outlaws certain kinds of freelancing and gig work, on the right to speak out and petition in California? The case is Mobilize the Message, LLC v. Bona. Plaintiffs…
Relevance: 53% Posted on: June 21, 2011
I’m traveling across California this week to raise awareness about a diaper load of legislation designed to restrict, thwart, inhibit, hamper, obstruct, impede, block and tackle California’s robust system of initiative and referendum. Politicians know they cannot abolish voter initiatives outright. They’d need voter approval. Instead, they seek to rig…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: October 29, 2020
Fighting racism should be at least conceptually easy. The California Assembly referred to Golden State voters Proposition 16, a constitutional amendment that would repeal a previous constitutional amendment voters had authorized in 1996, with Proposition 209. That amendment “stated that discrimination and preferential treatment were prohibited in public employment, public…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: December 8, 2010
The ugliest truth about California’s newest, gimmick-ridden budget, is that it doesn’t address the looming public employee pension issue. Adam Summers, a Reason Foundation policy analyst, gave some figures in the Orange County Register, explaining that these pensions have been “recently pegged at up to roughly $500 billion — roughly…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: April 29, 2019
California’s new top banana is playing politics the old-fashioned way: passing the buck. Last week Governor Gavin Newsom directed the California Energy Commission (CEC) to look into the state’s higher-than-average gasoline prices. “Independent analysis suggests that an unaccounted-for price differential exists in California’s gas prices and that this price differential…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: August 25, 2017
The proper study of mankind is books. Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow (1921), Ch. XXVIII.
Relevance: 52% Posted on: September 25, 2011
by Paul Jacob What fools we were to revolt against King George! Instead of installing a constitutional republic with democratic checks on government, we could have found a wise philosopher king or an enlightened House of Lords to make decisions for us. Instead of embracing universal suffrage and government by…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: March 4, 2024
In 2015, the Hillary Clinton campaign exhibited the hubris for which politicians have been associated since the dawn of civilization. Instead of relying on a strategy of promoting Hillary herself, Clinton insiders plied what they called “Pied Piper candidates,” Republican hopefuls who, they theorized, would shift mainstream candidates further “right,”…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: October 12, 2023
Why doesn’t California Governor Gavin Newsom care about kids? What is it with this “conservative”? Last week, Newsom coldly deployed his veto pen to deny to Golden State public high school students the sex subsidies — in this case, free condoms — that a solid majority of their state legislators…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: October 13, 2020
Expect a tsunami of lawsuits against state and local governments. The lockdowns, mask mandates, and other putative ‘mitigation efforts’ to combat the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 demand a deluge. The latest is Burfitt v. Newsom, filed in Kern County’s Superior Court of the State of California. “The legal complaint,”…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: September 28, 2010
D. Dowd Muska attacks conservatives and libertarians for so strongly supporting voter initiative and referendum. From the august pages of the Hartford Business Journal, he writes that we’re “hopped up on the false notion that elected officials respond not to voters but the dictates of liberal elites.” It all started,…
Relevance: 52% Posted on: October 22, 2009
Money. Politicians like to spend it. People — especially special interests — like to get it. And taxpayers really don’t much like having to pay for all that spending. So our representatives try to procrastinate their balancing of spending and revenue. How? With debt. Hence our yearly unbalanced budgets. At…
Relevance: 51% Posted on: July 25, 2015
“However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter three, p. 24.
Relevance: 51% Posted on: February 3, 2014
Why is schooling so expensive? Government makes it so. Take the recent example, in California, of “coder boot camps.” These are “schools” where computer coders receive training. We now learn that the Golden State’s education bureaucrats are cracking down on this unlicensed and unregulated form of learning. Unless they comply,…
Relevance: 51% Posted on: November 12, 2020
Californian voters have largely reversed an assault on “gig” workers in that state by passing Proposition 22. Prop 22 is a response to Assembly Bill 5, enacted in California in 2019. The idea was to reclassify many freelancers so that companies could no longer treat them as independent contractors. Instead,…
Relevance: 50% Posted on: June 7, 2012
After more than a year of big labor throwing industrial-size kitchen sinks at Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Republican governor became the first of the three governors in U.S. history to face recall and retain the office. Walker more than survived; he prevailed, beating his Democratic rival by seven percentage points, 53…
Relevance: 50% Posted on: July 23, 2015
“Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 14.
Relevance: 50% Posted on: August 23, 2017
“Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 14.
Relevance: 49% Posted on: July 16, 2018
Could it be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, may not be liberal enough? The San Francisco Democrat has ostensibly represented the Golden State in the United States Senate for the last 26 years. Before that, Feinstein spent eight years on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and then a…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: June 1, 2012
When California voters read Proposition 28’s ballot title, they overwhelmingly support the June 5th measure. Yet, once voters get more details as to what the ballot initiative really does, that robust support not only dissolves, it completely reverses. The Public Policy Institute of California poll shows 68 percent of voters…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 11, 2020
On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility. Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: July 10, 2012
On July 10, 1832, President Andrew Jackson vetoes the Second Bank of the United States, ending central banking in America until the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. On July 10, 1913, the record for the highest temperature in the United States is set in Death Valley, California, at…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 31, 2024
AB5 is the code name for legislation passed in California a few years ago to kill freelance work. Ex-freelancers hate AB5; employers who can’t afford to convert contractors into regular employees hate AB5. Unions, on the other hand, love AB5; lawmakers also love AB5. A California citizen initiative partly reversed…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: April 29, 2021
California State Senator Josh Newman has, for now, withdrawn a bill to let elected officials facing a recall see the names of petition signers so that they may be asked if they really mean it. The Democrat complains that critics call his bill “an attack on not just the recall…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: July 8, 2010
After World War II, European Social Democrats — the heirs of Karl Marx’s delusional vision — broke with their heritage. They rewrote their political principles, compromising. No longer would they go for socialism whole hog; they abandoned its key feature, the replacement of markets with total government control. This was…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: June 3, 2018
There can be no fanatics in the cause of genuine liberty. Fanaticism is excessive zeal. There may be, and have been fanatics in false religion – in the bloody religions of the heathen. There are fanatics in superstition. But there can be no fanatic, however warm their zeal, in the…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: December 6, 2012
In California and Rhode Island (to name just two states) cities are going bankrupt . . . or closing libraries and parks and cutting police and firemen to forestall going belly up. Meanwhile, they continue paying huge sums in employment benefits for folks who used to work at city hall,…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 11, 2021
On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility. Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 11, 2022
On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility. Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 11, 2023
On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility. Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became…
Relevance: 48% Posted on: January 11, 2024
On January 11, 1571, the freedom of religion was granted to Austrian nobility. Two years earlier, the first recorded lottery in England was held. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the eleventh day of the first month of 1759, the first American life insurance company was incorporated. On January 11, 1935, Amelia Earhart became…
Relevance: 47% Posted on: June 16, 2010
For the last week, I’ve had the arduous duty of traveling across beautiful Switzerland, studying their very robust system of voter initiative and referendum. An important issue came up: is so-called “direct democracy” good or bad for business, for economic growth? Years ago, a Swiss professor suggested that allowing voters…
Relevance: 47% Posted on: December 7, 2014
Over at Townhall.com, the politics of helping the poor meets some realities, including the politics of race and the adjudication of rights. Click on over. Then come back here for more reading. WhiteHouse.gov: FACT SHEET – Opportunity for all [sic] President Obama Launches My Brother’s Keeper Initiative to Build Ladders of…
Relevance: 47% Posted on: May 22, 2016
This week at Townhall, an expansion of Monday's Common Sense outing . . . to the outhouse. But whether the question is what is in and what is out, the reality is, WHERE and WHO must decide WHAT goes WHERE and WHY. Click on over. Then come back here for…
Relevance: 47% Posted on: June 14, 2013
Did it take courage to do what Bob Fletcher did? Fletcher was a California resident who died this June at the age of 101. The New York Times reports how he helped Japanese neighbors after the U.S. began interning Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast, a shameful policy adopted after…
Relevance: 47% Posted on: December 28, 2016
In the United States today, we have more than our share of nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H club — the hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history. Delivered in San Diego, California, by Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, September 11, 1970, as written by William Safire, speechwriter
Relevance: 46% Posted on: October 16, 2011
My week began with a celebration: The centennial of California’s initiative process. I wrote about it at Common Sense, the daily commentary I’ve penned since 1999 (you can sign up for the email version on the Citizens in Charge website). “The enormous impact of California’s initiative process can hardly be…
Relevance: 46% Posted on: September 28, 2016
California has become the 32nd state to stand up for the dying. Gov. Jerry Brown just signed the “right to try” law that the Goldwater Institute has been pushing. It allows diagnosed terminally ill patients with only a few months left to live to try “experimental” medications. These are drugs…
Relevance: 46% Posted on: July 30, 2021
Congress is about to make the lives of an awful lot of people an awful lot harder. So what else is new? But the legislation in play does seem new — in suddenness and scope. It would impose massive newfangled regimentation on how we make a living. And it would…
Relevance: 46% Posted on: March 21, 2015
I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and important of all our governmental problems, because it always has been with us and always will be with us and if we ever permit those liberties to be destroyed, there will be nothing left in our…
Relevance: 46% Posted on: January 15, 2024
I believe the preservation of our civil liberties to be the most fundamental and important of all our governmental problems, because it always has been with us and always will be with us and if we ever permit those liberties to be destroyed, there will be nothing left in our…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: March 14, 2012
Getting good estimates is not easy. Anyone who’s hired a contractor knows to make sure the estimates are sound by insisting that bidders stick to their estimates. This is not what happens in government, though. Projects almost always start out with a whopping figure for an estimate . . .…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: January 30, 2020
Progressives who lean socialist used to hide their worst intentions. Now they are letting it all hang out. There have always been overt socialists in the U.S., of course. They would sometimes protest the reluctance of fellow travelers to fully embrace socialism’s moniker. But the sentiment “Ah, screw it, let’s…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: January 19, 2022
It wouldn’t surprise me if Tiffany McHugh, former director of the Foothills Christian Church Preschool in San Diego, wishes now that she had been running a preschool in a slack state like Florida. Florida doesn’t penalize such malefaction. It doesn’t even prohibit it. Yes, things have gotten pretty bad in…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: November 6, 2014
As we make sense of this week’s sea change — of the Great Shellacking Democrats took on Tuesday — some caution is in order. In 2006, voters did not choose the Democrats because of what they were or what they promised, but because of what they weren’t: corrupt, clueless Republicans.…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: January 9, 2024
Not everything that we dislike should be illegal. Not everything that we like or want should be made mandatory. To most of us, this is common sense. We lack the totalitarian impulse. But every day, otherwise-inclined people, including lawmakers, notice another aspect of our lives that they decide must no…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: April 13, 2012
Yesterday, I explained how the official title for California’s Proposition 28 tricks voters who favor tougher term limits into supporting a measure that will dramatically weaken those limits. The title’s slipperiness is anything but accidental. It was designed to fool, hiding the fact that the measure doubles the time legislators…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: June 15, 2020
However hard they try, men cannot create a social organism, they can only create an organization. In the process of trying to create an organism they will merely create a totalitarian despotism.Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter three, p. 24.
Relevance: 45% Posted on: June 18, 2020
The nature of power is such that even those who have not sought it, but have had it forced upon them, tend to acquire a taste for more. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 12.
Relevance: 45% Posted on: July 17, 2017
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City's first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: July 17, 2018
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City’s first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: March 27, 2015
Which is worse, paying for stuff you use . . . or being constantly harassed for using it? One consequence of widespread failure to charge market rates for water turns out to be hyper-regulation of hydro-usage, and the penalizing — even criminalizing — of using “too much” H2O. To deal…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: June 27, 2016
Increasingly, folks in government balk at the commonsense requirement for transparency. They don’t like the basic idea of a republic, apparently — that we have rights; folks in government have duties. They are bound to serve us. And allow us to oversee their work. The latest bizarre attempt to wiggle…
Relevance: 45% Posted on: April 12, 2012
When California voters read Proposition 28’s ballot title, they overwhelmingly support the June 5th measure. That support radically dwindles when they learn more. The Public Policy Institute of California released a poll showing 68 percent in favor and only 24 percent opposed. Surveyed Californians were responding to the official ballot…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: June 13, 2020
Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter one, p. 14.
Relevance: 44% Posted on: December 1, 2015
If you try to compare those police who take people’s money and property through civil asset forfeiture laws to burglars, who rob folks in more traditional ways, you are just not being fair. To the burglars. The Institute for Justice recently released an updated Policing for Profit report showing that…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: August 9, 2023
Alabama recently passed a law to prohibit public agencies from disclosing information “that identifies a person as a member, supporter, or donor of a 501(c) nonprofit organization . . . except as required by law.” SB59 is comprehensive, stating that “notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary,” no public…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: February 1, 2018
It took me a moment. And I assure you, I wasn’t high. When I read that California State Treasurer John Chiang was considering a “marijuana bank,” my first thought was that he was talking about warehousing bud and leaf. Well, no. That would be stupid. So, maybe reporters and bloggers…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: July 17, 2020
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City’s first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: July 17, 2019
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City’s first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…
Relevance: 44% Posted on: July 17, 2021
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City’s first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…
Relevance: 43% Posted on: September 13, 2011
In their just completed session, California legislators expressed deep concern about transparency, democracy and good government. Sen. Mark DeSaulnier authored Senate Bill 448 to mandate “a little transparency” in the initiative petition process. The legislation would have forced citizens paid to circulate petitions to wear a sign on their chests…
Relevance: 43% Posted on: September 19, 2021
Paul Jacob offers a good rule of thumb to answer this question. Case in point? The California recall: https://youtu.be/r_LSYV7UOKE
Relevance: 43% Posted on: September 11, 2021
Ah, California, you keep us entertained. And not just Hollywood. This week, Paul Jacob concentrates on one disastrous policy and the judge who defended said policy against the clearly stated wishes of the Californians themselves. Also on the docket? A different judge actually helps Californians out: https://soundcloud.com/thisweekincommonsense/where-we-are-now This Week in…
Relevance: 43% Posted on: October 12, 2018
Two propositions on this November’s California ballot, Propositions 8 and 11, have found an opponent. “Both would have voters decide very narrow union-management conflicts in two relatively small medical service sectors,” explains Dan Walters, long the dean of California columnists. Unions are sponsoring Prop 8, which “purports to limit profits…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: May 13, 2012
On May 13, 1846, in a blatant attempt to grab territory, the United States declared war on Mexico beginning the Mexican-American War. On May 13, 1940, Germany invaded France as the German army crosses the Meuse and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill makes his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: August 16, 2017
The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior “righteous indignation” — this is…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: November 10, 2017
Symbols sure seem important in politics and government. I love the Statue of Liberty. Others may cherish the Lincoln Memorial and Mount Rushmore more. I’ve even heard people wax poetic on the images we find on our coinage. But what about “The Star-Spangled Banner”? The lyrics are not general at…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: October 7, 2016
On October 7, 1792, George Mason — "The Father of the Bill of Rights" — died. He had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and, at the time of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, had insisted on the addition of articles to solidify state's and individual…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: October 7, 2017
On October 7, 1792, George Mason — "The Father of the Bill of Rights" — died. He had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and, at the time of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, had insisted on the addition of articles to solidify state's and individual…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: October 7, 2018
On October 7, 1792, George Mason — "The Father of the Bill of Rights" — died. He had drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776, and, at the time of the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, had insisted on the addition of articles to solidify state's and individual…
Relevance: 42% Posted on: April 25, 2014
Some say a mighty enough earthquake on the San Andreas Fault could dump much of the California coast into the Pacific Ocean. Could the state’s perilous public employee pension problems cause even worse damage? State and local governments in the Golden State have underfunded their golden-parachute pension promises by a…
Relevance: 41% Posted on: October 16, 2023
Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder had a dream that ebony and ivory would live together in perfect harmony, like the keys on a piano keyboard. If the keyboard can do it, “oh Lord, why don’t we?” Agreed, let’s do that. But not everybody wants to. And out in California, it…
Relevance: 41% Posted on: July 17, 2015
On July 17, 1938, pioneer aviator Donald Corrigan took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn — New York City's first municipal airport — with a flight plan for a return trip to his previous disembarkation point, Long Beach, California. His official story was that he got confused after ten…