Author: Redactor

Categories
election law judiciary regulation U.S. Constitution

Fifty Years After Buckley

campaign finance reform, consequences, Tufte inspired

Congress began regulating campaign finances in the 1960s.

In 1976, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Buckley v. Valeo reined in such regulation … in part.

This month, at a symposium marking the 50th anniversary of the ruling, John Samples — a former Vice President at the Cato Institute and currently a Member of Meta’s Oversight Board — compared what happened after the 1976 ruling to what might have happened had the ruling been better or worse.

The alleged point of campaign finance regulation was to “level the playing field.” The actual point, Samples observed, has been to “protect the political status quo” by making it harder “to spend enough money to effectively challenge congressional incumbents.”

In Buckley, the court ruled that contribution limits were indeed valid (they aren’t) for the sake of combatting corruption or the “appearance of corruption.” But it also ruled that limits on campaign spending are limits on speech, hence invalid — thereby saving democracy, argued former Federal Election Commission chair Bradley Smith, in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago: “The Buckley court understood that effective political speech requires resources.”

The Court also upheld compulsory disclosure of donors and donations. This led to chronic calumniation of donors, helping to poison public discourse.

Samples suggeststhat a more libertarian Buckley might have enabled major reform, even perhaps privatizing of New Deal and Great Society spending programs in the 1980s.

On the other hand, had the decision been worse, “validating spending limits” as well, Congress would likely have continued to hobble challengers. And thus, perhaps, prevented the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan and the emergence of a GOP majority in the U.S. Senate.

Unwarranted restrictions on freedom of speech should be removed completely. Substantially removed is better than not at all, sure. But now let’s finish the job.

Something Brad Smith’s Institute for Free Speech works on every day.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

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

Categories
Thought

F.W. Taussig

Human effort can not add or subtract an atom of the matter of the universe. It can only shift and move matter so as to make it serve man’s wants, — make it useful, or create utilities in it.

F.W. Taussig, Wages and Capital: An Examination of the Wages Fund Doctrine (1897), p. 3.

Categories
Today

Eighteen-fifty’s Compromise

Henry Clay, The Great Compromiser

On January 29, 1850, Henry Clay introduced the Compromise of 1850 to the U.S. Congress — which was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, designed to defuse tensions between slave and free states during the years leading up to the American Civil War. Produced by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican – American War (1846 – 1848).

The compromise included a provision approving California’s request to enter the Union as a free state; it also strengthened fugitive slave laws with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. In addition, the compromise

  • banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (while still allowing slavery itself to exist),
  • defined northern and western borders for Texas 
  • while establishing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be a free or slave state and established a territorial government for the Territory of Utah also with no restrictions on whether the territory would become a slave or free state.

Categories
insider corruption international affairs media and media people

Goofy Wig and All

James O'keefe, WEF, World Economic Forum, chemtrails, conspiracy

One of P.J. O’Rourke’s better books is Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut. My purpose in mentioning it is not to praise it but merely to adapt it for the James O’Keefe story, where middle age and guile and a bad haircut beat Creepiness and Guilt. 

“Disguised and undercover,” explains the O’Keefe Media Group article, “James O’Keefe embeds inside the World Economic Forum, slipping past armed security and exclusive guest lists to capture what the global climate elite say when they think no one is listening.” 

The bad haircut? A goofy blond wig that Mr. O’Keefe (1984– ) donned to fool the European bigwigs (er, elites). He looked like Andy Warhol as a special guest on “Sprockets.”

What did this subterfuge accomplish? “Posing as an employee of a fictional climate engineering firm, O’Keefe and the OMG team are welcomed into late-​night events, luxury hotels, and mountaintop forums where climate financiers openly discuss carbon taxes, geoengineering, and weather modification, commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails.’”

Yes, chemtrails!

I’ve been programmed to chuckle right now, hence that exclamation point.

Speaking of programmed — Grok gave me plenty of excuses to keep on chuckling. It also gave me the wrong URL for the O’Keefe Media Group (O’Keefe’s successor to Project Veritas) and words of wisdom like this: “If O’Keefe’s video shows attendees discussing it casually, it might be speculative chit-​chat rather than official policy.”

One thing Grok couldn’t understand is the “optics.” O’Keefe is not wrong to note that some of the WEFers cheerleading for BlackRock do indeed “look like Bond villains.” A conference where people enthuse about seeding the upper atmosphere with chemicals to cool off the planet? That should be the premise of the next James Bond flick.

Has weather modification actually been going on … for decades? 

I don’t know. But if these folks are talking about climate geo-​engineering, what wouldn’t they do?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

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

Categories
Thought

Grace Brewster Hopper

It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

An old saw often repeated by Rear Admiral Grace Brewster Hopper, computer scientist.
Categories
Today

Oil’s Well That Ends Well

On January 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s’ oil glut.

The deregulatory move had been begun by Democrats in Congress, but had been placed on a gradual schedule, and the whole effort clouded with President Jimmy Carter’s talk of taxing the “windfall profits” that would immediately result from lifting the regulations.

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment public opinion

ICE Melt in Minnesota

ICE, Minnesota, shooting, protest, riot, violence

Americans are strongly united against people being gunned down on our streets by federal agents. 

Saturday, the victim was Alex Pretti, a 37-​year-​old ICU nurse working at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. Pretti was an American citizen with a conceal-​carry permit. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino quickly informed the public: “During this operation, an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol agents with a 9 mm semi-​automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border Patrol agent fired defensive shots.

“The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID,” added Bovino. “This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

Had this farfetched narrative been even close to true, maybe we could partly reconcile the killing we witness relentlessly in cellphone videos. I like to reserve judgment until all the facts are in, but to me the videos don’t implicate Pretti as a “terrorist” in the slightest and leave little doubt that, in law enforcement lingo, this was not at all a “good shoot,” i.e. a justified use of deadly force.

Yesterday, President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he had a “very good telephone conversation” with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. “The president agreed the present situation can’t continue,” offered Frey.

This change is driven democratically: Republicans at the White House, in Congress and across the country know the voters will crush them if this continues through the fall elections. 

Now if voters can only unite on reform beyond merely stopping the shooting. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

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

Categories
Thought

Hans-​Hermann Hoppe

Egalitarianism, in every form and shape, is incompatible with the idea of private property. Private property implies exclusivity, inequality, and difference.

Hans-​Hermann Hoppe, Democracy: The God That Failed (2001), p. 217.

Categories
Today

American Conscription Ends

On January 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-​Volunteer Force.

Categories
ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies partisanship

Not This King?

imperial presidency, power, executive branch, Kings

“This is why more Americans today identify as an independent than a Republican or a Democrat for the first time in American history,” argued Sarah Isgur during a panel discussion on ABC’s This Week program, the day after another fatal shooting by ICE agents in Minnesota. “Because no one actually believes that either side believes what they’re saying.”

Isgur, a writer and podcaster for The Dispatch, has worked on both Democratic (2016) and Republican (2012) presidential campaigns and even landed a job at the Department of Justice during President Trump’s first term, only later to be fired. 

“Look, honestly,” Isgur continued, “if Barack Obama’s federal officers had killed a member of the Tea Party, who had shown up, who had a concealed-​carry permit, who was disarmed before he was shot, that [the protester was armed] would not be what the Right is saying.”

She went on: “And, frankly, the left was all for big executive power, as long as it was Joe Biden. They’re not ‘no kings.’ They just don’t like this king.”

Throughout President Donald Trump’s first term, I recall shouts that he had overstepped his authority under the law only to discover, oftentimes, that the power he was wielding had been bestowed upon our president by a feckless Congress. What I found even more disconcerting was that at no time did those complaining seek to limit these excessive presidential powers.

It appears, as Sarah Isgur suggested, that their concern was not with an imperial presidency, only with this current person as that imperial president.

“If you actually want to do something about the problems, both sides need to actually say, presidents shouldn’t have this power,” Isgur explained. “The federal government shouldn’t have this power.”

Wise government depends on limiting power … no matter who is president.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

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