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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies

Banking on Clinton

Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, corruption, crony, presidential race, two-faced, 2 faced, illustration, Common Sense

I’ve been tough on Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vermont Senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate. Why? Because socialism is — to quote a current GOP candidate — “a disaster.”

But I appreciate his campaign for showing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what she is, the ultimate establishment insider.

Even while, as SNL parodied, she seeks to co-opt Sanders’s progressivism.

Nowhere is Hillary’s have-it-both-ways mode of operation more obvious than in regard to Big Finance. She attacks the big banks, promoting her “very aggressive plan to rein in Wall Street.” Yet, she is supported politically and has been enriched personally by Wall Street firms. In 2014 and 2015 alone, Mrs. Clinton was paid $11 million dollars for speeches to various groups, including these financial interests.

On the campaign trail, Bernie has been calling on Mrs. Clinton to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms:

She gets paid $225,000 for a speech. Now you know that is a lot of money for an hour speech. . . . It must be mind-blowing speech, it must be a Shakespearean speech, it must be a speech that could educate and enlighten the entire world.

An anonymous attendee of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs has characterized her remarks as “far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” Another said making the transcript public “would bury her against Sanders.”

Understandably, Hillary refuses . . . until every other living person who has ever spoken a word to anyone on Wall Street does so first.

At his rallies, Bernie now throws his empty hands up into the air to release his non-existent speech transcripts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, corruption, crony, presidential race, two-faced, 2 faced, illustration, Common Sense

 

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folly general freedom ideological culture meme national politics & policies too much government

One-Party Socialism?

Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism, Che, democracy, meme, illustration, Common Sense

As the President of the United States noodles around Cuba, opening up relations and trade for the first time in half a century, one obvious obstacle to progress sticks out: Fidel Castro is still alive, and his brother, Raoul, still runs a one-party state.

It is worth reminding Americans how desperately socialism in Cuba requires repressive one-party rule. Sometimes folks forget. As Bernie Sanders pushes a “democratic socialism,” we should wonder where he and his Sandernistas stand on Cuba’s brand of socialism, i.e. without the democratic part.

Months ago, an old 1985 video surfaced of Bernie Sanders, then mayor of Burlington, Vermont, back from trips to Nicaragua and Cuba. Frankly, I agreed with his opposition to U.S. intervention in Central America. But Bernie also praised the Cuban government, asserting that Cubans were not “against Fidel Castro” because “he educated their kids, gave their kids health care, totally transformed society.”

He did not mention what Fidel didn’t give, indeed, would not allow: opportunity, progress, autonomy, freedom, democracy . . . the list is long.

Cubans who speak out are arrested, imprisoned.

Bernie did add: “Not to say Fidel Castro and Cuba are perfect.” But failed to make any mention of the total political repression of democratic activity.

The necessity of violence to establish socialism should be obvious. Even Bernie’s so-called “non-violent” supporters engage in raucous, invasive protests against Trump, and litter Twitter with indecent talk of assassinating the Republican front-runner.

What would they do with official power?

Are they committed to democracy as a process, really? Or to their programs alone?

Programs that rely upon mass expropriation and strong-arming governance. No matter what Sanders says about “love.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialism, Che, democracy, meme, illustration, Common Sense

 

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free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Socialist Stasis, Disturbed

Cuba, stasis, Obama, visit, illustration

As the President of the United States treads ground previously trod by such a personage nearly ninety years ago — Calvin Coolidge was the last U. S. Commander in Chief to make the trip to Cuba — we are understandably inundated with coverage.

Obama’s Cuba trip is Big News.

We see that Cuba is backwards — it is socialist, after all, so no surprise there — but slowly opening up to American travel and trade. The nation’s voluntary sector squirms under the omnipresent, oppressive feet of its regulators.

What we see now is the result of socialist repression. Cuba shows, perhaps, socialism’s best-case-scenario result, stasis. The island dystopia is in many ways a time capsule. Some of its current charm is that stuck-in-timed-ness.

But there is also endemic hopelessness in the country. The people are held back. Infantilized. Ruled.

And there is no disputing the fact that this is all the result of an excess of socialism. As I have argued before, the old standby, the Blame the US Embargo ploy, is one that socialists wield with devastating results — to their own ideology. Socialism is the suppression of free trade; pure socialism abolishes all trade, along with all private property. Blaming an embargo shows how important private property and capitalism itself are to socialism’s few successes.

Barack Obama is, right now, demonstrating the best case against socialists in his own party, by opening up Cuba to the wonderfully corrosive processes of the market.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Cuba, stasis, Obama, visit, illustration

 

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meme

BernieBot Logic: Bernie Likes Free Markets!

Bernie Sanders, Berniebot logic, Bernie is not against free markets, meme, Common Sense, mixed economy, democratic socialism

Bernie is not against free markets.

He only wants to loot them and control them.

But they will still be free!

Click for large resolution version of this image:

Bernie Sanders, Berniebot logic, Bernie is not against free markets, meme, Common Sense, mixed economy, democratic socialism

 

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Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Peace Dividend

legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

Has the War on Drugs actually, finally, made some progress?

Well, yes . . . but, really, no.

“Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn’t,” explains Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, “taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels’ profits.”

Certainly “legal marijuana” is not the drug war. It’s that war’s antithesis.

Let’s recall, too, that legalization didn’t come about after five decades of drug war failure because politicians came to their senses, admitted their mistakes and advocated a different approach.

Instead, frustrated citizen leaders teamed up with successful entrepreneurs to launch ballot initiatives, allowing voters to directly decide the issue.

Domestic production isn’t driven merely by Colorado, Oregon, Washington State and the other Washington, the nation’s capital, where voters fully legalized possession. Marijuana for medical use is legal in 23 states, including California, where most domestic marijuana is grown. In these states, pot is widely prescribed.

Thus, a quasi-legal domestic marijuana industry was created. Lo and behold, now pot produced in the good old USA is outperforming pot grown south of the border.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acknowledges that U.S. marijuana is being illegally smuggled into Mexico. (Maybe the smugglers will pay for the wall.)

On the other hand, what does it matter that the Mexican drug cartels are losing market share to non-violent American businesses?

Well, those cartels have waged a war with the Mexican government killing more than 164,000 citizens between 2007 and 2014. Less profit to fuel the Mexican drug lords in that bloody war is more for our peace and security.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

 

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general freedom individual achievement U.S. Constitution

The Ruins

Volney, Jefferson, translation, Alien and Sedition Act, John Adams, Ruins of Empires

We have just learned something interesting about the nastiest presidential election in American history.

No, not this year’s. It’s not the nastiest . . . yet.

It is about the election of 1800, when Thomas Jefferson beat back the Federalist Party and its Alien and Sedition Acts.

The Federalists made much of fears that the freethinking Jefferson would suppress Christianity. Some folks are said to have buried Bibles in their backyards, for safe keeping.

Overkill, sure. Jefferson was quite earnest in his support for religious freedom, as he famously wrote to the Danbury Baptists. (Jefferson garnered overwhelming Baptist support.) But he was a freethinker.

So much so that, in the year leading up to the big race, Jefferson translated all but the last chapters of C.-F. Volney’s The Ruins of Empires. This secret was uncovered recently by Thomas Christian Williams, who found in the Boston archives of the Massachussetts Historical Society many chapters of The Ruins, in English, in Jefferson’s hand. Williams wrote up his discovery in the March 2016 issue of The Skeptic, Michael Shermer’s journal.

The Ruins — once infamous, now almost forgotten — is mostly devoted to advancing a very deep view of the importance of limited government. Only the last few chapters, which Jefferson left to somebody else to translate, engage in a skeptical account of religion.

But note: Jefferson thought enough of Volney’s book to translate it himself, putting his political career at risk.

Oh, it also turns out that the Comte de Volney’s very presence in 1790s’ America served to spark the widespread panic about French spying . . . and thus President John Adams’s Alien Friends and Alien Enemies Acts!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Volney, Jefferson, translation, Alien and Sedition Act, John Adams, Ruins of Empires

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Inch, Meet Mile

NSA, surveillance, 1984, Big Brother

Give ’em an inch, they will take . . . a continent.

When Edward Snowden broke the secrecy of the NSA’s illegal surveillance on innocent Americans, many folks (especially those in government) said the snooping was OK, because

  1. it is necessary for our security, and, besides,
  2. the collected data would only be used against terrorists, as supervised by the FISA courts.

Well, it is now known that, whatever “a.” may be, “b.” is a dead letter, swept away by broken promises and a new information practice.

Yes, the National Security Agency now shares its (unconstitutionally obtained) information with various and sundry government agencies, for a wide variety of purposes.

Last week, Radley Balko noted in the Washington Post that “the ‘sneak-and-peek’ provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy.”

That didn’t take long, eh?

Many of us have opposed the NSA’s data collection on American citizens because we believed the data would not continue to be used just for the alleged purpose they were collected.

It is not a “slippery slope” argument so much as an “inch-mile” one. Government tends to grow, in size and especially in scope.

And usually at the expense of our freedoms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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NSA, surveillance, 1984, Big Brother

 

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national politics & policies political challengers

Voting and How

Trump, Rubio, Kasich, election, primary, illustration

Some “ifs” for today.

If I were a Republican and if I were voting in Ohio or Florida, both winner-take-all on the Republican side, and if I wanted to stop Donald Trump, I’d vote for Kasich in Ohio — or, were I a Florida resident, for Rubio.

If I were for Cruz, I might prefer that both Governor John Kasich and Senator Marco Rubio drop out. But on reflection, I don’t think so. Trump picking up 165 delegates in two fell swoops probably cannot be made up at this point, even one-on-one.

So Sen. Marco Rubio was probably wise last week to acknowledge what seems the truth: “John Kasich is the only one who can beat Donald Trump in Ohio. If a voter in Ohio is motivated by stopping Donald Trump, I suspect that’s the only choice they can make.”

Of course, Mr. Rubio wants Kasich voters in the Sunshine State to likewise switch to him, because, “I’m the only one who can beat Trump in Florida.”

A spokesman for Gov. Kasich of Ohio was having none of it: “We were going to win in Ohio without his help, just as he’s going to lose in Florida without ours.”

Still, a Kasich super PAC is robo-dialing Ohio voters with the news that Rubio suggests they vote for Kasich.

We can outsmart ourselves sometimes with strategic voting, sure. As a general rule I prefer to vote for the person I think is best. But sometimes there are elections wherein the word “best” just doesn’t seem to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump, Rubio, Kasich, election, primary, illustration

 

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Sanders Didn’t Say*

Bernie Sanders

What can we make of the leftist hatred of the Koch brothers, David and his elder brother Charles? For their support of libertarian and Tea Party causes, and a few Republican candidates, the left doesn’t just demonize them, the left singles them out.

I suppose a reasonable person could blanch at rich people giving money to political causes . . . if they objected to all super-rich donors.

But that’s not what’s happening here.

Leftist hatred of the Kochs is especially weird, considering that Koch causes include gay marriage and opposition to war in the mid-East. And yet it’s the Kochs who get called out . . . by Bernie Sanders, who wants to mobilize “millions of people to say ‘enough is enough — Koch brothers and millionaires can’t have it all.’”

Sanders didn’t say, “Soros and millionaires cannot have it all.” Leftist billionaire George Soros gives millions to organizations working to turn the U. S. into a European-style “social democracy.”

Sanders didn’t say, “Bloomberg and millionaires cannot have it all.” Super-rich statist Michael Bloomberg has spent fortunes to undermine the Second Amendment and make America more of a Nanny State.

Sanders didn’t say, “Steyer and millionaires cannot have it all.” California billionaire Tom Steyer sure spent a lot of money to raise taxes and elect Democrats.

Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed socialist now running for the Democratic presidential nomination, is blinkered: others are greedy; his side is pure.

Enough is enough — what’s important to Sanders is that his opponents be silenced by government order. There’s nothing democratic about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Bernie Sanders

 

* This “BEST OF COMMON SENSE” column is reprinted from April 30, 2015. It has a strange relevance now that left-of-center pressure groups, a few of them funded in the past by billionaires not named Koch, have gotten themselves in the news for “protests” designed to take away the free speech rights (and made a mockery of “peaceably assemble”) of people they do not like. Please also see Paul Jacob’s Townhall column this weekend.

 

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First Amendment rights general freedom individual achievement obituary

A Life Too Short

ElizaBeth Garrett

One lesson from the classic film, It’s a Wonderful Life, is that “Every man’s life touches so many others.”

Every woman’s life does, too.

On Monday, I was stunned and saddened to read in my morning paper that Cornell University President Elizabeth “Beth” Garrett had died, barely a month after being diagnosed with colon cancer, at only 52 years of age.

“Being the first woman president of Cornell, just as I was the first woman provost at U.S.C., puts me in the position of being a role model — not just for young women, but also for men,” she told an interviewer.

While at the University of Southern California, Beth “was the driving force behind the Initiative and Referendum Institute becoming part of USC,” according to my friend, Dane Waters, founder of the Institute.

I met her in the late 1990s. While we certainly were not in full agreement politically, my respect for her intellectual honesty grew and grew. She produced top notch research on the initiative process

And she cared. Years ago, when the Oklahoma Attorney General unsuccessfully sought to persecute myself and two others, Beth Garrett, an Okie native, reached out to lend her moral support.

Reason magazine mourned her passing by calling her “a staunch defender of free speech on campus.”

“There isn’t any idea that ought not to be tested and questioned,” Garrett once told students. “Because that’s how we get closer to the truth. . . . So if you disagree with someone, the answer isn’t to shut them down.”

Beth Garrett lived a wonderful life, leading by example. We’ll miss her.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ElizaBeth Garrett

 

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