Author: Editor

Categories
general freedom too much government

No Transplants for the Unvaxxed

organ transplant, socialized medicine, Covid

Because of a rare but dangerous side effect, heart inflammation, Scandinavian countries are now discouraging the use of the Moderna vaccine in younger people.

We’ve seen other reports of severe illness and even death because of, or at least soon after, COVID-19 vaccinations. But we’re assured that serious side effects are so rare and the vaccines so effective that the wisdom of getting vaccinated is self-evident.

But what’s more evident? They’re forcing you. 

If you’re “vaccine-hesitant” for any reason — even if you’ve already got immunity because of a COVID-19 infection — too bad. A public-private partnership to mandate vaccination is already costing many people their jobs.

Now it’s costing people a chance for a kidney.

So ordains University of Colorado Hospital, whose Kidney Transplant Coordinator, Katie Harmann, tells Leilani Lutali that she “will be removed from the kidney transplant list” until she is vaccinated.

Note that the opportunity is not being withdrawn because the prospective recipient is sick with COVID-19 and therefore is about to kick the bucket anyway. The hospital is treating the patient’s assessment of her own risk as irrelevant.

Lutali says, “I feel like I’m being coerced into not being able to wait and see [whether the vaccine is the right thing to do], and that I have to take the shot if I want this life-saving transplant.”

This is the reality of rationed care in a largely socialist medical system.

And this is what Democrats lust for, even demand; and it is what they are working mightily to ensure — that our current messy, mixed healthcare system will soon become even more bureaucratic and restrictive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

Government Loves Anarchists?

antifa, violence, anarchy

Some of my best friends are anarchists. But theirs is a curious anarchism, for unlike the caricatures of anarchists of old, who — theorizing that since, in their minds, all states are illegitimate, they had free rein to shoot, bomb and monkey wrench the State and its supporters — my anarchist friends are friendly and non-violent. 

They know they cannot achieve the kind of peaceful, stateless-but-lawful society they want with destruction.

Today’s best-known anarchists, however, aren’t like my friends. They are “Antifa,” and believe in initiating force. Together with Black Lives Matter, these “anarchists” upped the level of chaos to fever pitch during the months leading up to last November’s presidential election.

And they haven’t exactly stopped.

What do they hope to accomplish?

Well, don’t ask the FBI. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t keep track of them. 

Spencer Brown, writing at Townhall, explains: “In a congressional hearing last week titled ‘Confronting Violent White Supremacy (Part VI): Examining the Biden Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy,’ FBI Assistant Director of Counterterrorism Timothy Langan said that the Bureau doesn’t consider Antifa to be an ‘organization,’ and as such does not have specific information on the group’s activities.”

This is how the FBI and the left in general can say that the biggest domestic terrorist threat is “right-wing extremism.” 

The idea is, apparently, if you don’t look at the data — even define it out of existence — you cannot report on it!

Why would the FBI join Democrats in averting their eyes from anarchist (as well as Marxist and racist) violence?

Perhaps the de facto policy at play here is anarcho-tyranny, where the government lets violent crime run rampant. Why? So government actors can leverage chaos and public anxiety to increase government size and scope.

Do politicians and functionaries use Antifa “anarchists” to increase their power?

Never let a crisis go to waste.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

John Stossel

There’s no business that’s too small for government to torture.

Categories
Today

Buchanan & Vidal

On October 3, 1919, James M. Buchanan was born. Buchanan would develop the theory of “Public Choice,” and receiving the 1986 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work. His books include Cost and Choice, The Calculus of Consent (with Gordon Tullock), and The Limits of Liberty: Between Anarchy and Leviathan. Some of his most interesting research was into the realm of constitutional theory and practice.

He died January 9, 2013.

In 1925, on this date, Gore Vidal was born. Vidal would go on to become one of the leading post-WWII liberal essayists as well as a major novelist and screenwriter. His most famous novels include Burr, 1876, and Lincoln, installments in his American history series; his collection of essays, The United States, was one of his many bestsellers. Vidal was an elitist who expressed sympathy for populism and socialism, but also was a radical civil libertarian, and may occupy the extreme of the “liberal” quadrant in American political ideology: great on personal liberties but quite bad one market/property liberties.

He died on July 31, 2012.

Categories
Today too much government

Blasphemy? Independence?

Botswanans celebrate their independence from Great Britain with an official day on September 30.

Also, September 30 has served as Blasphemy Rights Day since 2009, when it was initiated by the Center for Inquiry.

Categories
Thought

Lord Acton

The history of institutions is often a history of deception and illusions; for their virtue depends on the ideas that produce and on the spirit that preserves them, and the form may remain unaltered when the substance has passed away.

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877).
Categories
Today

Congress Adjourns

On September 29, 1789, the first Congress of the United States under the new Constitution adjourned.

On the same date in 1881, economist Ludwig von Mises was born in Lemberg, Galicia, of the Austria-Hungary Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine).

Categories
deficits and debt folly national politics & policies

Catastrophic! Calamity! The Debt

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.)

“Once again, the stability of the U.S. financial system is at risk,” warned CNN State of the Union host Jake Tapper, “thanks to political brinksmanship in Congress.

“If lawmakers do not act, the federal government will shut down this week. And, next month, the Treasury secretary says, the U.S. will not be able to pay its bills . . . which . . . could be catastrophic for the U.S. economy.”

Incredulous, Tapper further bemoaned, “that has not convinced a single Republican lawmaker to get on board to raise the debt ceiling.”

But he made the mistake of inviting retiring U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) on the Sunday program.*

“[O]n combining the debt ceiling increase or suspension with the continuing operations of the government,” Toomey declared his vote is NO. 

“And there is no calamity that’s going to happen, Jake.”

Toomey explained that “after Republicans vote no, Chuck Schumer is going to do what he could have done months ago, what he could have done weeks ago, what he could do tomorrow, and that is, he will amend the budget resolution so that Democrats can pass the debt ceiling all by themselves.”

Noting that Democrats were “in the midst of an absolutely unprecedented, very damaging spending spree on a scale that we have never seen,” Toomey emphatically refused to “authorize the borrowing to help pay for it.”

Over the weekend, a Washington Post editorial attacked Republicans for being “unwilling to lift a finger to avoid financial calamity,” while excusing Democrats. 

“For their part,” The Post justified, “Democrats . . . want the same political cover they gave Republicans during Mr. Trump’s presidency by raising the debt limit in a bipartisan fashion.”

The nation’s newspaper of record in full-throated advocacy of political cover.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Sen. Toomey has been a stalwart term limits supporter in Congress. He leaves having kept a pledge to serve only six years in the House, left the Congress for six years before winning a Senate seat and now stepping down after two terms in the U.S. Senate.

PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Today

SpaceX

On September 28, 2008, SpaceX launched the Falcon 1, the first private spacecraft to go into orbit around planet Earth.

Categories
First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Unmasking the Mask Debate

Covid, mask, UV light, disinfectant

Sometimes things are complicated.

Many factors matter when deciding whether it makes sense to wear a mask to fend off infection. Let alone whether it’s okay to compel others to do so.

Now add another question: whether it is ever okay to deliberately suppress discussion of these subjects.

I’ve talked about all this before. But on those occasions I could not yet point you to a lengthy Heartland Institute post by James Agresti on “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Masks, and the Deadly Falsehoods Surrounding Them.”

Once disparaged as ineffectual except maybe for hospital workers, the power of masking up was later drastically oversold by policy makers.

Agresti aggregates evidence indicating that COVID-19 is spread mainly by fine aerosols that can stay aloft a long time and easily penetrate most masks. But the evidence for mostly aerosol rather than big-droplet transmission was ignored or downplayed by the WHO and CDC for over a year.

Agresti also argues that trials of the effectiveness of masks in preventing infection are “inconclusive” with respect to N95 masks in clinical settings. And that these studies show no statistically significant benefits for any masks in “community settings.”

To combat aerosolized COVID-19, he recommends more extensive indoor use of UV disinfection systems.

Lots to talk about. Experts familiar with the research that Agresti canvasses often disagree. How about it, big-tech social-media firms. May we discuss?

Or must we stick to received dogma regardless of observations and logic?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

mask1 / mask2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts