Happy Thanksgiving to all!
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual.
Henry David Thoreau
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Thanksgiving 2018
Author: Jim
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What Does Snowden Deserve?
Who is Ed Snowden? And what does he deserve?
On May 20, 2013, 29-year-old security specialist Edward Snowden flew to Hong Kong after leaving his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii; in early June he revealed thousands of classified NSA documents to journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill.
In late June, the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property, and the Department of State revoked his passport. Two days later, he flew into Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, to which he was restricted for over a month. Russia ultimately granted him right of asylum for one year, and has added extensions until 2020. Mr. Snowden is currently living in an undisclosed location in Moscow and continues to seek asylum elsewhere.
Though the United States Government still seeks his apprehension and prosecution, and politicians across the political spectrum have called him a traitor and worse, Mr. Snowden is far from universally reviled:
“He is a hero who exposed the most extraordinary violations of the Fourth Amendment in the history of the country.”
—Judge Andrew Napolitano
What Mr. Snowden revealed was a secret, illegal program undertaken by America’s Deep State. “It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional,” writes Paul Jacob on this website, “or me, but how a federal judge ruled.” And for this reason many defenders of the Constitution of the United States and of the American way of life dub Ed Snowden not a traitor or fiend, but patriot, whistleblower, hero:
“He has done a great service, because he is telling the truth. The American people are starved for the truth. . . . Essentially there is no Fourth Amendment anymore, and for somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort.”
—Ron Paul, former Congressman
Even some folks in government have acknowledged the importance of Snowden’s service to our country:
“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made.”
—Eric Holder, former Attorney General of the United States
The awesome power that Snowden revealed to us is truly astounding:
“When you are on the inside, when you go into work every day, when you go in in to sit down at a desk, you realize the power you have. You can wiretap the President of the United States. You can wiretap a federal judge. And if you do it carefully, no one will ever know because the only way the NSA discovers abuses are from self-reporting.”
—Edward Snowden
So, what does Ed Snowden deserve?
A pardon. And our thanks!
Paul Jacob has been on Ed Snowden’s side — and on the side of the Bill of Rights and citizen-controlled government — from the beginning. Help in Paul’s effort to promote our shared American ideas and show your appreciation by contributing to This Is Common Sense today. And for $10 show your appreciation for Ed Snowden with this simple and eloquent poster:
18″x24″ Edward Snowden Poster
$10 – Click to go to store page (FREE SHIPPING!)
Skeptical? Well, consider:
Mr. Snowden: Five Years a Fugitive
A Birthday Present for the Deep State
Journalists play different roles.
Too few report. Too many engage in elaborate apologetics for favored causes.
Like big government.
Take this headline: “Venezuela’s Crisis Is Rooted In Oil Prices — and Authoritarianism.”
Guess: reporting, or bending over backwards to save socialism?
The article’s summary of the decline and fall of Venezuela is accurate insofar as it indicates assaults on liberty, including nationalizations and monetary inflation. But neither “oil prices” nor dependence on oil spawned Venezuela’s crisis.
Every industry, city and nation will experience unfavorable markets, now and then. But what’s fundamental is their “antifragility.” And, news to journalists: socialist societies are fragile in ways that freer societies are not.
Suppose Venezuela had had a free market when oil prices dropped so precipitously. People would then have shifted, however grumpily, into enterprises now more profitable than drilling for and distributing oil.
It is no blunder to specialize, to exploit comparative advantages in knowledge, skills or resources, and to engage in local, regional or international trade. It’s fine even if an economy’s production and exports ends up being dominated by just one good. What matters is whether people are free or burdened by government controls. If the latter, how hard does government make it to cope with changing circumstances?
Unhampered market prices supply the information and incentives needed to adapt to all kinds of changes. But if an economy is chronically distorted and calcified by government controls, it becomes much harder to adapt . . . and much harder to survive.
Today’s journalists routinely adapt facts to story, rather than adjust stories to reality. Guys, give up the ideological apologetics. Go back to reporting.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The beginning of the end of actor James Woods’s time on Twitter likely occurred on July 20, 2018.
Only recently discovering a tweet that he posted then, Twitter has locked Woods out of a forum where his right-leaning messages have been followed by 1,730,000 people.
His delinquent tweet forwarded an image of giddily grinning guys promising to abstain from voting so that a woman’s vote would be “worth more.” Woods tweeted: “Pretty scary that there is a distinct possibility this could be real. Not likely, but in this day and age of absolute liberal insanity, it is at least possible.”
Twitter told the actor that if he agreed to the deletion of this fake-news tweet — simple enough — it would let him tweet once again.
Woods refuses.
“Free speech is free speech — it’s not [Twitter CEO] Jack Dorsey’s version of free speech,” Woods says. “The irony is, Twitter accused me of affecting the political process, when in fact their banning of me is the truly egregious interference. . . . If you want to kill my free speech, man up and slit my throat with a knife, don’t smother me with a pillow.”
There’s lots more where that came from, but you get the idea. I don’t, um, strictly agree with everything Woods says here. But I can only applaud the spirit of his refusal to submit to Twitter’s arbitrary standards of acceptable speech.
Oh, and one other thing: somebody tell Twitter that parodies are inherently fake.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Venezuela’s socialist economy has been collapsing.
No big mystery. If, out of hostility to capitalism, a society keeps destroying everything that production, trade, and prosperity depend upon, the economy suffers. The benefits of markets don’t flow no matter what.
One assault has taken the form of hyperinflation — runaway printing of currency, done in part to dissolve government debt. Many Venezuelans are resorting to barter. It’s easy to understand why.
Or is it? A Reuters reporter says that economists say that “the central bank [of Venezuela] has not printed bills fast enough to keep up with inflation, which . . . reached an annual rate of almost 25,000 percent in May.”
So go faster!?
Dude. Dude. The massive expansion of Venezuela’s money supply is what’s causing massive jumps in prices. Just like any other economic good, the medium of exchange is subject to the laws of supply and demand.
Other things being equal, enormously increasing a supply of a good will enormously lower its market value or price. Money, too, has a price — in terms of the non-monetary goods being bought. If the pre-hyperinflation price of a dollar in terms of bread is one loaf and the post-hyperinflation price is one bread crumb, you won’t reverse the decline by printing even more dollars or bolívars even faster.
If you’re ingesting poison, you can’t fight the effects by being poisoned more and harder. The very first thing to do is stop ingesting the poison.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The political case for the War on Drugs has always been intuitive. “Drugs are bad” has trumped practical concerns. But the actual, responsible case for the political crusade has depended upon some concept of “social cost.”
Now that marijuana is being legalized state by state, the case against the greater War on Drugs is being taken seriously — enough to rethink all varieties of costs. Indeed, many now see the opioid epidemic as being driven, in part, by the War on Drugs, and not just as an excuse for a stronger crackdown.
Nevertheless, coming to some accounting — especially “social cost” accounting — remains difficult. This is especially true so long as its effects on freedom and the rule of law do not get figured in.
Somewhat surprisingly, even the budgetary effects of legalization have proven a bit tricky.
So it is welcome to read Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron’s study of marijuana legalization as it has occurred in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. He compares results of legalization with the predictions he had made eight years ago, in a previous Cato Institute study. It turns out that while tax revenues are far greater than expected, law enforcement costs have not gone down.
“Early experience suggests that governments will reallocate rather than reduce those expenditures,” Miron writes. “That reallocation may be beneficial, but it does not have a direct effect on the budget deficit.”
On a federal level, though, we might expect greater savings. How? We could shut down whole bureaus.
Yet, achieving such savings would require progress on Washington’s biggest addiction: spending.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Studies cited:
Jeffrey Miron, “The Budgetary Effects of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Tax & Budget Bulletin, Number 83, July 23, 2018.
Jeffrey A. Miron and Katherine Waldock, “The Budgetary Impact of Ending Drug Prohibition,” Cato Institute white paper, September 27, 2010.
When life hands you lemons. . . .
Once upon a time, putting up a summertime lemonade stand was the American way for kids to learn about hard work, good will, and entrepreneurship. Almost every kid had one, making some spendable profit selling the nectar.*
Some of the youngsters grew up to become Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and, well, lemonade’s one heck of a gateway drink.
But then, along came “progress” — that is, mandates and regulations slapped upon businesses. And the hordes of regulators required to enforce the morass of rules — “swarms of Officers.”
Soon lemonade stands were vanquished from our neighborhoods.
And America was made safe (at long last!) for . . . inane bureaucracy.
“Reports of kids’ lemonade stands being shut down for breaking local health or permitting laws have long left grown-ups feeling sour,” today’s Wall Street Journal informs. But the story also details how “a growing movement of adults is fighting back.”
So, when government policies hand you lemons, what do you do?
Make a map of all the lemonade stand clampdowns.
“I think the Constitution covers [lemonade stands] as written,” Dave Roland told the Journal, explaining the map he and his wife Jenifer have produced. “But if there’s any doubt about that, let’s get it fixed.” The Rolands run the Freedom Center in Missouri, but theirs is a regrettably national map.
Last month, the popular lemonade maker Country Time started “Legal-Ade,” pledging to come to the defense of any kid “busted” for trafficking in lemonade.
Seriously.
“When life gives you arcane laws,” the company’s video says, “make lemonade.”
Taste the Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* The profit was made possible largely by pushing their costs off onto their parents. But isn’t that sorta what parents are for? And good lessons were still learned.
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The Socialist Pledge
What’s yours is mine, and what’s mine. . .
is mine.
Who spreads “fake news”?
Gossips, politicians, publicity agents, Twitter eggs, partisan bloggers, lying news journalists?
Or . . . the medium of communication they use?
Do envelopes, stationery, telephones, email, and messaging apps have moral agency?
And who commits the crimes that news (true or false) is used to rationalize?
A New York Times story discusses “How WhatsApp Leads Mobs to Murder in India,” which is like saying that civilization, flying lessons and boarding passes “led” terrorists to 9/11.
The Times reports that fake news about children being kidnapped — dramatized by doctored video clips and forwarded via WhatsApp, a messaging app — provoked anger and fear in many Indians. Some were then willing to attack anyone who “seemed” about to kidnap children.
In recent months, dozens of people have been murdered for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Without social media and the mega-popular WhatsApp, the murders probably would not have happened, at least not the way they happened. That seems certain. But this doesn’t mean that without WhatsApp, nobody in India would spread false stories or assault innocent people.
Mob violence in the country antedates the Internet.
Perhaps a thousand material circumstances directly or indirectly enable any particular act of wrongdoing. But no such prerequisites “lead to” anything without individual choices.
If someone pretends it’s okay to kill innocent persons — or persons whose guilt or innocence he doesn’t care to know — he, the killer, is the guilty party. The telecommunications network or messenger app used to provide grist for excuse-making is innocent.
Apps don’t murder people. People murder people.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The Cattle Are Restless
“There is one law for man,” goes an ancient saying, “another for cattle.”
Moo.
Glenn Reynolds, writing in USA Today, sees this principle in operation now, where the ruling class gets away with a whole heckuva lot while the rest of us do not: “Freedom from consequences: It’s the defining consequence of our modern titles of nobility.”
Reynolds cites Charles W. Cooke for the “titles of nobility” angle. Cooke, who hails from Britain but was recently inducted into American citizenship, has objected to the “grotesque’ American tradition of continuing to use a person’s former title in government service long after the officeholder has left the post.
“Throughout the 2012 election, Mitt Romney was referred to as ‘Governor Romney,’ though he had not been in public office for six years,” Cooke wrote. “One can only ask, ‘Why?’ America being a nation of laws and not men, political power is not held in perpetuity, and there is supposed to be no permanent political class.”
“Americans do not have rulers, they have employees,” Cooke asserted.
If you are like me, you have probably made this point umpteen times in the last few decades.
Reynolds goes on to make the obvious corollary: our public servants do not behave like our “employees.” They behave like our rulers.
Their class privilege is now deep into our law — even if some doctrines, like absolute immunity, were just invented by judges to protect prosecutors and . . . judges.
Maybe the first step to upend this would be to balk at ceremony. Our exes Jimmy Carter, the two George Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama should not be addressed as “President X.”
“Mister” will do.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
