November 13 is World Kindness Day, which has been celebrated in various countries since 1998. It is not an official celebratory day of the U.S.A., nor of the United Nations. But individuals are free to be kind this day . . . or any day, for that matter.
We’re still unraveling the IRS’s prolific crimes.
I mean, those pertaining to its ideological targeting of conservative applicants for non-profit status.
I’m satisfied that the various individuals and organizations suing the IRS or publishing commentaries on this still-unfolding scandal (Day 552 now) will keep on keepin’ on. I’m a little worried, though, about Congress.
Granting that congressional investigators have been reasonably if imperfectly diligent, my hope is that they’ll prove even tougher in the coming session.
Some chairman must step down soon because of the GOP’s term limits on committee chairs; these include Darrell Issa of the Oversight and Reform Committee. TaxProf Blog’s Paul Caron, scandal tracker par excellence, says Issa’s successor should be one who “has done as much as anyone to shine a light on IRS abuse of the President’s philosophical opponents, both in hearings and behind the scenes.”
The man he means is Representative Jim Jordan. Long before we ever heard of pivotal IRS malefactor Lois Lerner, Jordan had been “seeking answers from the IRS’s tax-exempt organizations chief on political targeting allegations.”
Indeed, Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer for victims of the IRS, believes that without Jordan there would have been no Treasury investigation to get the ball rolling “and no public admission that, indeed, conservative groups were being subjected to unprecedented scrutiny and mistreatment.” (Plus, see the congressman’s recent press release lamenting a dismissal of charges against the IRS.)
I’m convinced; let’s have Jordan. And let’s pursue this investigation to the bitter end.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.
On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.
The contest? Uneven, in a sense. My side was outspent more than 17 to one.
But, in another sense, the odds were closer, maybe even on my side.
Well, our side.
That is, Liberty Initiative Fund, my 501(c)(4) outfit, was the largest contributor to a referendum campaign in Massachusetts.
In 2013, the legislature had passed a bill to turn a fuel tax of 24 cents per gallon into a more permanent rate structure, increasing the tax every year as the Consumer Price Index rose.
Citizens of “Taxachusetts” objected to the idea of automating tax hikes. Perhaps thinking about their wallets, they were hardly amused by their state government piling further taxes on whenever prices, including fuel prices, rose. It’s one thing to have to pay more when supplies get tight or demand bids up prices, making gasoline and diesel more expensive. But why pay extra to the government?
Automatically. Without a legislative vote on the record.
So citizens petitioned to have the law referred to a general vote. The measure became Question 1 on last week’s ballot.
It won with a 53 percent majority. The automatic tax hike was nixed.
So, who outspent us? Who wanted the permanent, automatic tax hike? The extra tax revenues, I wrote before the election, “are slated to go toward road construction and maintenance in the Bay State. And — surprise, surprise — the biggest opponents of Question 1 are construction companies doing business with the state.”
But, despite special interests dumping tons of money, citizens won.
The money spent by Liberty Initiative Fund was leveraged effectively. Because, on issues like this, siding with the people is no long shot.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.
It is a day of celebration for freedom lovers.
On November 9, 2014, Germans festooned the 15-kilometer path on which the Berlin Wall had once stood with 8,000 lighted helium balloons, which were then released into the sky. Reuters says that the release symbolizes the breaching of the Wall. I think of it as symbolizing how so many trapped souls could at last freely and individually ascend.
Twenty-five years ago, in culmination of a series of protests and negotiations, a half million people demanding freedom of emigration gathered at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin — some two years after Ronald Reagan had exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” On November 9, 1989, an official announced that refugees could freely travel directly from East Germany to West Germany. A barrier brutally dividing West from East Berlin since 1961 was finally torn down.
Soon the two halves of Germany were reunited. Not without problems. But certainly without the problem that faced them all during the Cold War — the risk of being shot and killed for seeking a better life.
Many of us grew up knowing no other world but one in which the Berlin Wall loomed.
It stood, marking the most visible portion of barriers that had persisted for decades.
Like Communism itself, the Berlin Wall seemed immovable. Yet ideas and choices are what created such a reality; so other ideas and choices could create something better. When prospects for freedom seem bleakest, that’s what we need to remember.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
On November 11, 1889, the State of Washington was admitted as the 42nd State of the United States.
In 1921 on this date, US President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
“We just thought it was something funny we could do,” Peregrine Honig says. “But it was so scary.”
Honig is part-owner of Birdies, an “intimate apparel apothecary and swimwear boutique.” The funny thing? Offer shorts with the letters “KC” and the phrase “Take the Crown” printed on them, to cheer on the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball’s World Series. The scary thing? The visit by two men who identified themselves as Homeland Security agents . . . who confiscated the underwear.
“I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside,” Honig told the Kansas City Star. “They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.” Although Honig had designed the shorts herself, not simply mimicking a KC logo, the feds said that the intersection of the K and the C in the design was enough to cross the line.
But hey, they were nice!
Apparently even somewhat abashed, like “kicking a puppy,” as Honig puts it; very nice as they took away the merchandise. Which I’m guessing — now stay with me here — was not a threat to national security.
What we have here is called overkill.
At worst this is a minor and inadvertent infraction of copyright law. What’s that worth? A phone call. A visit. Maybe a cease-and-desist letter.
So, do we file this under Silly? Or Ominous?
Or round-file it as just one more little example of the governmental excesses we’re supposed to accept as normal?
Though they lost in the seventh game of a first-one-to-four-wins series, I was rooting for KC.
Oops, did I just commit a crime? I mean I was rooting for K . . . C.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.