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Common Sense folly ideological culture porkbarrel politics

A Futility Triptych

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Port Angeles is a quaint town on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, in Washington State. It now sports three state-of-the-art wind turbines. Which were purchased with more than just generating electricity in mind.

“They were also meant to educate folks about wind power,” City Councilwoman Sissi Bruch said recently.

And the activists, politicians and bureaucrats responsible for the $107,516 purchase achieved that, surely. Just not the way they intended.

You see, based on current Bonneville Power Administration rates, the turbines — described by Paul Gottlieb of the local Peninsula Daily News as “windmill-like” — are expected to “produce $1.50 a month in savings.”

The city council members express regret about that, and admit these monuments to enviro-consciousness are a boondoggle. But they insist: they never expected the generated electricity to pay back the investment. From what I can tell, the generated electricity won’t even pay back their maintenance cost, though Mr. Gottfried did not clarify that in his Daily News report, mainly because the maintenance costs are as of yet unknown.

Further, as a result of Port Angeles’s wet, salty-air environment — they are located in a park by the Strait — they are not expected to last past 25 years.

But it gets worse! They are not even running yet. They await Underwriter Laboratories inspection and approval. They stand motionless.

Monuments to the futility of wind power.

OK, the futility of wind power in most locations.

The turbines do look cool. I like their vertical design. I merely suggest one alteration (for efficiency of message): the blades should be shaped as dollar signs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility The Draft too much government U.S. Constitution

For Genderless Freedom

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When President Obama announced last week that he wants my daughter to register for the draft — as a symbol of the nation’s commitment to gender equality and a “ritual of adulthood” — believe me, I noticed.

Sure, the symbolism rings hollow, I wrote at Townhall. The president is on his way out and Congress just agreed on a defense authorization bill blocking any Christmas-time sign-up of women by the festive folks at Selective Service.

Still, President O’s symbolism is all wrong.

Free societies don’t require the involuntary service of men and/or women for their defense, much less celebrate conscription as a secular rite. Our All-Volunteer Force is the most effective military in the world. Its leaders neither need nor desire to swell its ranks with draftees — even if, heaven forbid, a major war bubbles forth from all the foreign conflicts and interventions in which we’re currently engaged.

As for the “it’s just registration” argument, and promises by politicians that they don’t support a draft. Well, it’s registration for the draft. Per politicians’ promises, I rest my case.

Yet, this comment at Townhall called me back into service: “Has this author been against draft registration for the last 30+ years or is it just because his little princess might have to register? If men have to do it, so should women.”

With slight edits, I replied: “I oppose the draft on principle . . .  As Daniel Webster pointed out, government has no constitutional authorization to conscript citizens. The draft further violates the 13th Amendment. Conscription has been the hallmark of dictators and totalitarian regimes, not America. We’ve had a draft rarely in our history.

“In 1980, I refused to register for the draft when Jimmy Carter brought it back. Candidate Ronald Reagan said, ‘The draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending,’ and pledged to end registration as president. But Reagan reversed himself and prosecuted 13 of us who had spoken out against the policy and refused to register. I served six months in a Federal Correctional Institution (without being corrected) — the longest of anyone post-Vietnam.

“Here are the reasons I resisted at the time (1985) and a more recent reflection (2010).

“My daughter will make her own decision, and I’ll be supportive. But it is a terrible policy that will diminish our military defense, while also violating . . . ‘the very values our society is committed to defending.’

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Today, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, marks the 32rd anniversary of my arrest by the FBI for violating the Military Selective Service Act by refusing to sign a draft registration form.

 

Additional Information

Common Sense: Needless List

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone (2003)

Townhall: Americans Gung-Ho to Draft Congress (2004)

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

A Hailstorm of Orthodoxy

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Don’t worry, scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., informs us. He is doing fine — he has tenure.

It is too bad, though, that he no longer works in climate science.

He was drummed out of that endeavor by journalists, big-monied foundations, and the White House.

Climate Scientist

Are you skeptical? Well, drill down into the Podesta emails on WikiLeaks. There you can read infamous billionaire Tom Steyer gloating, “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538,” a popular website. Pielke has not been published there at all since 2014.

Pielke had made the mistake of publishing the results of his research. He claims not to be heretical on the main points of the current orthodoxy. But Pielke ticked off all the wrong people with his demonstration that the evidence did not back up the climate change movement’s much-repeated charge that the weather has gotten more traumatic as the planet has gotten warmer.

Pielke relates all this in a fascinating Wall Street Journal commentary, “My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic.” Pielke is actually somewhat philosophical about the political and foundational forces arrayed against him — expressing more dismay at his betrayal by journalists and academics.

“You should come with a warning label,” jested one journalist who had merely quoted him. “Quoting Roger Pielke will bring a hailstorm down on your work from the London Guardian, Mother Jones, and Media Matters.”

This “hailstorm” is more widespread and damaging than the results of global warming itself. It effectively distorts both scientific research and the news.

Thus, a political orthodoxy rides herd over public opinion. Over us. By squelching good journalism and honest science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

Crony Carrier

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Sure, I’ve complained about the over-the-top anti-Trump bias of much of the mainstream media (which may actually have improved Trump’s public standing). But, today, I enthusiastically celebrate that supercilious slant.

Why? Because it means much of the media amazingly finds itself on the right side, panning the recent deal to save 1,000 jobs at the Carrier Corporation.

Saving jobs is good per se. We want jobs to stay here in America. But, at what price?

Thus far, the deal remains secret, but according to Politico, “The agreement reportedly includes $7 million in state tax breaks over ten years offered by the Indiana Economic Development Corporation, a quasi-public entity that doesn’t require legislative approval for its deals.”

“Quasi-public entities” always make me queasy.

“Can American companies now merely threaten to go to Mexico,” asks Chris Rossini in the Ron Paul Liberty Letter, “in order to get a sweetheart deal for themselves?”

This special arrangement’s costs are not merely monetary: Special deals for some companies at the expense of others undermine the whole concept of equality under the law.

File under: crony capitalism.

Even the socialists at The Nation say the agreement “epitomizes corporate socialism at the expense of American taxpayers.”

“I certainly think that, if President Obama had done something like this, conservatives would have been freaking out,” argues Reason’s Peter Suderman.

Many are. Well, maybe not exactly “freaking out” — but vocally opposing the idea of the not-quite-yet-president picking winners and losers in the marketplace.

Crony capitalism didn’t make America great. Our revolution’s justification prompts the antithesis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets insider corruption national politics & policies responsibility

United States of Corruption

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When Hillary Clinton assured her insider sponsors (as we learned through WikiLeaks) that there would be a crucial difference between what she tells the people and what her actual policies would be, she was not merely admitting to a private and a public face.

The President is legally, and by honor, bound to serve the American people, not Goldman-Sachs. What she was confessing to was more than the mere appearance of a conflict of interests.

She boasted a plan of betrayal.

In that light, President-elect Donald Trump’s international business deals seem . . . what? His first diplomatic meeting — with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — included his daughter and partner-in-business Ivanka.

It seems to at least wander into conflict-of-interest territory, if not stake claim and hoist up a flag proclaiming Trumpistan America!

So I was very pleased, yesterday, when the President-elect vowed to step out from the running of his global business and branding empire.

Earlier, he had brushed off conflict-of-interest concerns, saying he could run his empire and . . . ours.

Apparently, his new White House appointees have convinced him that this business dealing while President was a huge problem. “I feel it is visually important,” he explained Wednesday morning, “as president, to in no way have a conflict of interest with my various businesses.”

Thanks, Steve Bannon?

Or, maybe, Mitt Romney, with whom he dined* the night before?

I hope Mr. Trump follows through with this, as well as distance himself from business partner Ivanka as unofficial policy advisor.

Americans did not reject Corrupt Hillary only to wind up with a Corrupt Trump set.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Diversity, Identity, and the Liberal Implosion

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“To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.”

Finally. Some sense from the New York Times.

Mark Lilla, in “The End of Identity Liberalism,” delivers a valuable lesson about political correctness — without once mentioning the term “political correctness.”

Now this is a lesson we can get behind.

The problem is “diversity.” The center-left became so obsessed with it that it helped sink the last election for Hillary Clinton, Democrats at large, and the coherence and legacy of President Barack Obama.

“However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt,” Lilla wrote in the Friday think piece, “it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own.”

Fixating on diversity of gender identity and racial make-up in business and government has scuttled the rights-oriented approach of the older liberalism.

Alas, Lilla is not talking about the liberalism of J.S. Mill or Lord Acton. He is talking about FDR.

But compared to today’s “identity liberalism,” FDR’s burdensome promises look like sheer genius. And Lilla understands at least one thing about diversity: “National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny.”

He does not bring up the real liberal message: that the way to find commonality is to avoid making government all things to all people. It is to limit its scope, instead, so the president of the United States isn’t every school’s bathroom monitor.

Perhaps an essay on The End to Hubristic Liberalism is required?

Another day. And probably another paper.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo by James Cridland on Flickr

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Prestige, Trump & the Media

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“Donald Trump’s election has really undermined America’s democratic prestige in China,” offered Claremont McKenna College Professor Minxin Pei on a recent hour of The Diane Rehm Show, public radio from our nation’s capital. When Pei added that it has “set back the prospect of democracy in China for years,” Mrs. Rehm let out an audible moan.

Then Diane asked her guests, “as members of the press” what they “make” of President-Elect Trump’s “rejection of his meeting with The New York Times.”

“It seems,” bemoaned James Fallows, the Atlantic’s national correspondent, “a continuation of his not having any normal press conferences, dealing entirely outside normal press channels and seeming not to recognize the legitimacy of this part of the democratic fabric.”

“I don’t know anything about the specific details about the New York Times meeting,” admitted the Financial Times’ Geoff Dyer. Still, that didn’t stop Dyer from announcing that, “But it’s part of a pattern . . . to a much more conflict-ual, antagonistic, almost bullying relationship with the media.”

Elizabeth Economy, with the Council on Foreign Relations, found it “disturbing” that Donald Trump thinks “he can be his own media, he can simply tweet out whatever he wants, he can make his homegrown videos and sort of impart his information directly to the American public, without the mediating influence of the media.”

Let’s welcome Elizabeth to America.

“We are all recognizing we’re on new terrain now and need to find some way to keep telling the truth, or our best approximation of it, in very different circumstances,” concluded Fallows ominously.

Trump, as you’ll recall, did wind up attending that meeting at The Times.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tyranny’s Days Are Numbered

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Fidel Castro, the Cuban dictator for half a century, died Friday night.

“Although Castro was beloved by a legion of followers,” The Washington Post acknowledged, “detractors saw him as a repressive leader who turned Cuba into a de facto gulag.”

Many on the American left — especially in Hollywood — have been surprisingly enamored of Castro, and the supposed “accomplishments” of better education and healthcare delivery in his socialist paradise.

I guess we must all weigh whatever policy advances were made against Mr. Castro’s faults.

As the New York Times detailed: “Foreign-born priests were exiled, and local clergy were harassed so much that many closed their churches. . . . a sinister system of local Committees for the Defense of the Revolution that set neighbors to informing on neighbors. Thousands of dissidents and homosexuals were rounded up and sentenced to either prison or forced labor. . . . jailing anyone who dared to call for free elections. . . . imprisoning or harassing Cuban reporters and editors.”

Fidel Castro’s death reminds me of Irving Berlin’s jazz tune about Adolf Hitler, When That Man is Dead and Gone:

What a day to wake up on

What a way to greet the dawn

Some fine day the news’ll flash

Satan with a small mustache

Is asleep beneath the lawn

When that man is dead and gone

Saturday morning, that news finally flashed for Cuban Americans in south Florida. Followed by jubilation. Horns honking. Smiles, cheers and songs. Jigs were danced.

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz — that dictator, the person who imprisoned and murdered many seeking freedom — is dead and gone.

For now, sadly, his brand of tyranny continues through brother, Raúl Castro. But its days, too, are numbered.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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In the Black

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“Black Friday,” reads a meme making the social media rounds. “Because only in America [do] people trample each other for sales one day after being thankful for what they already have.”

Thankfulness is vital, I agree. But I’ve been up at the crack of dawn to “cash in” on Black Friday sales, and I’ve never witnessed any violence of any kind. Not a smidgeon. Not that it doesn’t happen — we’ve all seen the videos. It just isn’t the usual experience.

In fact, the camaraderie of strangers is one of the endearing aspects of standing in line waiting for a big box store to open at some forsaken hour.

Trust me, I’m decidedly not an enthusiastic shopper, so participating in Black Friday wasn’t my idea. My youngest daughter wanted to experience it. And taking a businesslike approach to Christmas shopping, she needed the savings. I liked her interest and initiative and so I said, yes, to getting up at 5:00 am.

But after staying up late talking with friends and relatives, that early alarm hit hard.

What I liked, in order, were: being with my daughter, our sleep-deprived sense of humor, the rush of doing something new, and a comforting visit to Starbucks.

For years, I rode this father-daughter Black Friday fast lane. But not this year. At age 17 (her, not me), with her social life and work, she’s got better things to do than partake in dawn shopping raids.

Still, if she ever asks me to go with her on Black Friday, I’ll be up and at ’em, thrilled for the opportunity.

Why? I know what I’m thankful for. What really matters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thanksgivings, 1623 AD

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The Pilgrims we were taught about in school deserve a Paul Harveyesque “Rest of the Story” treatment. Most students were not told about how they tried communism before they wised up, though I actually had a teacher who made a point of it.

Yes, initially, the “community” owned everything, and all worked together for the greater good and the Glory of God.

Of course, it was a disaster.

The commune plan sparked sloth, shirking, family quarrels and resentment — with men regarding their wives’ work for others a “kind of slavery.”

And then near-starvation.

The solution? Privatize! They allotted land, setting “corne every man for his owne perticuler.”*

That worked well, but they still had to endure a late Spring drought, and things looked bleak. Then, after prayers and expressions of humility (as Governor William Bradford explained**), the rain returned:

It came, without either wind, or thunder, or any violence, and by degreese in yt abundance, as that ye earth was thorowly wete and soked therwith. Which did so apparently revive & quicken ye decayed corne & other fruits, as was wonderfull to see, and made ye Indeans astonished to behold; and afterwards the Lord sent them shuch seasonable showers, with enterchange of faire warme weather, as, through his blessing, caused a fruitfull & liberall harvest, to their no small comforte and rejoycing. For which mercie (in time conveniente) they also sett aparte a day of thanksgiveing.

So the most obvious political lesson to be drawn from the Pilgrim experience got lost in stories of rain and corn and Indians and such.

But it’s worth noting that Bradford wrote his discussions of communism — and how very wrong Plato and his ilk were — in his primary text, while his talk of the drought was an afterthought in his mss., and appears as a footnote in the edition I’ve consulted.

Both*** Plymouth stories deserve to be told.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*I wrote about this a few years ago, offering some of the juiciest quotations, in “Plymouth’s Great Reform.”

** Bradford’s History of Plimoth Plantation, available for free at Gutenberg.org.

***The traditional date for the first Thanksgiving is given a few years earlier, with Squanto showing up and helping them plant and all. However, Bradford’s memoirs do not use the term thanksgiving (or “thanks-giveing”) or even “thanks” in relation to the harvests of 1621 at Plymouth Colony. But there is talk of plenty of food, including that Thanksgiving specialty, the turkey:

And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter aproached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports.

 

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