Author: CS Admin

Armed Americans

Scared? “July 4 terrorist attack on U.S. soil a legitimate threat, officials warn” — headlines the Washington Times.

Scared now?

Last weekend on Fox News Sunday, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mike McCaul (R‑Tx.) expressed his extreme concern that “Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States … and then activate them to do whatever they want to do. Whether it’s military installations, law enforcement or possibly a Fourth of July event parade.”

Michael Morell, former CIA deputy director, told CBS This Morning, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re sitting here a week from today talking about an attack over the weekend in the United States. That’s how serious this is.”

In the last three weeks, the FBI has arrested ten U.S. citizens allegedly plotting attacks here — in solidarity with the Islamic State.

Just a week ago, I suggested we dump the Department of Homeland Security and start anew, because the DHS bureaucracy is hardly the best way to organize government to stop terrorist attacks.

Yet, no matter how well organized, government cannot possibly stop every act of violence.

While contemplating the Independence Day prospect of lone-wolf lunatics or homicidal decapitators and suicide bombers organized “at lightning speeds,” a thought came to mind: We had better depend on ourselves.

If those who will heed “the siren calls” of the Islamic State do get past Homeland Security and our alphabet quilt of security agencies, let’s do everything we can to make certain they still have to face us, armed Americans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags CIA, Homeland Security, Islam, terrorism

crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Marauding Cops

Policemen who perpetrate acts like those I am about to describe should be imprisoned.

That’s not an anti-police statement, it’s a pro-law-and-order one. Anybody who vandalizes the property of innocent people and pointlessly terrorizes them, whether flashing a badge as prelude or not, should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and punished.

Santa Ana police raided a medical-marijuana dispensary, a legal business in California. Why? Solely because it lacked a license.

Techdirt.com, which has videos of the raid, suggests that although “having the proper paperwork in place is important” — and it sure seems to be if not-being-raided is also important to you — the shop was in line to get the license. The process had been bogged down by local politics.

Nevertheless, officers on site “treated this lack of proper paperwork like it was the Zeta Cartel operating under its nose. The video captured by the dispensary’s cameras shows heavily-armed cops — some wearing ski masks — smashing through two doors and yelling at the peaceably-assembled customers to lie on the floor.”

We then see the jolly officers sampling the shop’s foodstuffs, playing darts, and ripping cameras off the wall.

They missed a couple. (Hence Techdirt’s extensive video coverage.)

Motive? It seems apparent that they engaged in all this abusive authority-flaunting just because they could.

And there is no real doubt that they knew what they were doing was wrong, and they knew that we would know. That’s why they went for the cameras.

Just like any gang trying to get away with something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Drug War, law, marijuana, police, police abuse

general freedom ideological culture responsibility

Gases and Masses

For once, The Washington Post headline actually reflected the commentary: “America is the worst polluter in the history of the world. We should let climate change refugees resettle here.”

Michael B. Gerrard, associate faculty chair at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, presents a gloomy, doomy picture of earth 85 years from now.

“Toward the end of this century, if current trends are not reversed,” he writes, “large parts of Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Vietnam, among other countries, will be under water.”

And we need somebody to blame. Today.

Step forth, America!

“[I]ndustrialized countries ought,” Gerrard argues, “to take on a share of the displaced population equal to how much each nation has historically contributed to emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing this crisis.”

The World Resources Institute places responsibility for 27 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions between 1850 and 2011 on us. Therefore, the U.S. must care for 27 percent of the world’s climate change refugees … eight decades from now.

It’s only “fair,” according to the dean, that “The countries that spewed (or allowed or encouraged their corporations to spew) these chemicals into the air, and especially the countries that grew rich while doing so, should take responsibility for the consequences…”

Especially?

Is Gerrard battling so-called “carbon pollution” or … wealth?

I have a simpler plan, one not based on collective “justice” — fantasies of what whole nations somehow “deserve.” People should be free to move where they think they will be better off.

Will that still be America?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags blame, global warming, immigration

folly nannyism national politics & policies

Doom Fails to Arrive on Schedule

Post author By CS Admin
Post date June 26, 2015
2 Comments on Doom Fails to Arrive on Schedule

Doom is not always bad. I’d appreciate the doom of nonsensical doomsaying, for instance… although I doubt that that glorious day will dawn anytime soon.

Equally unlikely is an apology from ABC and Chris Cuomo for pitching, back in 2008, a muddled ABC special, “Earth 2100,” about all the disasters expected to arrive by 2015, among other years.

The idea? Forecast the harm inflicted by allegedly man-made global warming and collateral calamities, via the scientific methodology of being safely vague or just making stuff up. One way the network secured data was to ask viewers to pretend they’re in the future and then “report back.” (Well, it was 2008, a more primitive era. They did things like this back then.)

Here’s a sample of what ABC purveyed as possibly impending:

“Temperatures have hit dangerous levels.” (Time for air conditioning and/or heat!)
“We’ve got more people, less and less resources. That’s a recipe for disaster.” (Let markets be fully unfettered so we can be sure to get more and more instead!)
“It’s June 8, 2015. One carton of milk is $12.99.” (Unless that’s a big carton, no. Try $3 or $4 a gallon.)
“We’re going to see more floods, more droughts, more wildfires.” (Good work, Nostradamus!)

We still get storms. (Always had ’em; always will.) And inflationary Fed policy and other bad governance still swirl on the horizon. So let’s have shelter, fire departments, umbrellas, and market-friendlier policies; and let’s not reside on hurricane-prone beaches.

Thanks for the heads-up, Chris.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags disaster, Doom, global warming, inflation, population, weather

folly general freedom government transparency national politics & policies too much government

Safety, Savings and Symbolism

Post author By CS Admin
Post date June 25, 2015
2 Comments on Safety, Savings and Symbolism

How can the U. S. save $2.5 billion a year, reduce the federal workforce by 4,000 hires, and engage in a symbolic act of undoubted patriotism, all at the same time?

Get rid of the Department of Homeland Security.

Matt A. Mayer, a former DHS employee who claims to have “written more on DHS than just about anyone,” writes in Reason that dismantling DHS would increase co-ordination and decrease inefficiencies.

Since DHS was put in place, in 2003, to increase governmental co-ordination in the face of terrorist threats, Mayer’s charge that it serves the opposite cause should … give us pause.

Establishing the DHS didn’t get rid of turf wars. Why would it? It increased the turf rather than merely reroute chains of communication and command. All other agencies still exist. Extra turf exacerbates co-ordination difficulty.

And then there’s what state and local law enforcement faces: “the multi-headed hydra.” The federal operation remains fragmented, which “only ensures that key items will fall through the cracks between these departments, whose personnel spend far too much time fighting each other for primacy than they should. Our enemies couldn’t ask for a more fertile environment within which to attack us.”

I added the italics, for emphasis.

Ever since Jimmy Carter ran for the presidency on consolidating bureaucratic departments in the nation’s capital, but delivered, instead, new departments, the “logic” of adding new bureaucracies onto old has proven to be the “easy answer” for insiders. But a transparent failure, for everyone else.

So, start over. Get rid of the inefficient monster.

And take heart: republics don’t have “homelands”; empires do. Let’s stop playing the wrong game.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags law, National Security Agency, NSA, police, terrorism

Common Sense

Bribing a Legislature

Just when big government boosters in the Evergreen State thought it was safe to raise taxes, Tim Eyman and the group Voters Want More Choices have returned to the streets with Initiative 1366.

When his previous and similar effort, I‑1325, fizzled last year, opponents were ecstatic, celebrating Eyman’s perceived obsolescence. Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Joel Connolly wrote a year ago that, “the promoter may finally have exhausted his 15 years of fame.”

Eyman appeared down and out. Enemies rejoiced. And yet, a year later — just weeks before the deadline to turn in petition signatures to put issues on this November’s ballot — it appears Eyman’s latest initiative will easily qualify.

So now opponents squawk about all the money he has raised, and are back to hilarious and hyperbolic hyperventilating:

Tim Eyman “belongs in a trash bin”;
“I want Tim Eyman to die in a f — ing fire”;
I‑1366 is a “destructive, hostage-taking initiative” and “”

If this be blackmail, make the most of it: “This measure would decrease the sales tax rate unless the legislature refers to voters a constitutional amendment requiring two-thirds legislative approval or voter approval to raise taxes, and legislative approval for fee increases.”

You see, the court will not allow the people to set a two-thirds vote mandate on the legislature. But the people can cut the sales tax. So I‑1366 would cut the sales tax by a penny … unless legislators do the right thing and give the people a vote on a constitutional amendment to establish the two-thirds legislative vote or a vote of the people to raise taxes.

Clever. That is how you deal with rogue insiders.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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