The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.
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Author: Redactor
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Yet Another Term Limits Scam
It’s like a matryoshka, the Russian wooden doll hiding another doll hiding another until you finally reach a black hole in the “inside.” That’s what the politicians’ referendum, Issue 3 — to more than double Arkansas’s legislative term limits — turned out to be: nearly endless nested scams.
Among other layers of the Issue 3 con game that not enough Arkansans stripped off before voting day, the measure narrowly passed last November pretended to be “setting” term limits as if anew. So maximum tenure in a particular legislative seat has now been stretched from eight to 16 years in Arkansas’s senate, six to 16 in its house.
In short, the worst has happened.
Wait. The worst?
Not exactly. It’s dolls within dolls: each one smaller, but each more of a “doozy” than the previous.
Now Arkansas incumbents and special interests want the amendment to be understood as something more than massively expanded tenure. They also want to re-start the term-limits clock. If they get their way, the 16 years a lawmaker may serve would start with the passage of Issue 3 just months ago, rather than the 1992 amendment.
State Senator Jon Woods (who helped craft the measure) asked Arkansas’s attorney general to “clarify” the matter.
Did this notion just occur to Woods, or was it part of his original scam, er, strategy?
The Northwest Arkansas Times called Woods’s rationalization for super-sizing already elongated term limits “hogwash.”
Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel agrees. His just issued opinion lacks the word “hogwash,” but denies previous-serving politicians 16 additional matryoshkas — er, years.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Camus
There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.
On January 8, 1790, George Washington delivered the first State of the Union address in New York, New York.
In 1835, on this date, the United States federal government achieved a zero debt for the first and only time.
In 1867, African-American men were first allowed to vote in Washington, D.C.
On January 7, 1940, the Finnish 9th Division completely destroyed the much-larger Soviet forces on the Raate-Suomussalmi road, in a crucial battle during Finland’s Winter War.
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Albert Camus
A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.
It’s fun to watch intrusive, abusive, and exclusive government operations fail. It’s instructive to see how they react.
Years ago, internationally renowned artist James Dupree purchased a large building in Philadelphia’s depressed Mantua neighborhood to renovate it not only into his studio, but into a place other artists could practice their crafts.
Sadly, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority (PRA) thought it should be taken from him and then transferred to a supermarket.
Dupree fought back. He got the Institute for Justice on his side and, after years of litigation, the PRA finally gave up, returning the title it had taken it had taken from him.
But with some final remarks from Brian Abernathy, PRA’s executive director, who thought it his mission to bring “healthy food” to the community:
Unfortunately, the legal costs associated with Mr. Dupree’s appeals make it impossible to continue. Despite all the work to date, PRA will end condemnation proceedings enabling Mr. Dupree to keep his studio. While we have explored the potential of building around Mr. Dupree’s property, a viable project under these conditions is not possible. In short, the inability to acquire Mr. Dupree’s property puts the prospect of bringing fresh food to this community at serious risk.
Nonsense. A successful artists’ complex is an asset to the health of a community, its economic health. And citizens, had they kept their community clean, and had the core city government helped keep it peaceful, would have eventually encouraged private expansion to serve local grocery needs.
Meanwhile, the PRA had not even lined up a business to put in the studio’s place. It was all speculation.
A “successful” PRA would probably have wound up with an empty lot.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Jan 6 Montessori
On January 6, 1907, Maria Montessori opened her first school and daycare center for working class children in Rome, Italy. In 1912 on this date, New Mexico became the 47th state of America’s United States.
In 1941, on January 6, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his “Four Freedoms” State of the Union speech, emphasizing vague “freedoms” that enabled government to usurp definable freedoms.
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Don’t Aid and Abet
Some countries are ratcheting up their regulation of foreign Internet companies. These efforts, a New York Times article explains, “increasingly” oblige firms like Google, Facebook and Twitter to mull “which laws and orders to comply with,” which to resist.
The juggling act is nothing new. Cyber-companies have always wrung their hands about which tyrannical demands to obey.
On the one hand, we have such praiseworthy examples as Google’s eventual decision, in 2010, to stop censoring its search results in China. In consequence, the Chinese government kicked Google off its Internet.
More recently, Turkey sought to prevent leaked documents from being distributed via Twitter, demanding that Twitter block posts providing access to those documents. When Twitter refused, the Turkish government blocked its service. But it then lost a court battle over the issue even as users found ways to skirt the ban.
Also heartening is the fact that, so far, American tech firms seem determined to reject a new Russian imperative that they store user information on Russian servers.
But the firms do sometimes obey demands — saying they must abide by laws that, however lamentable, are verifiably on the books — and such obedience does amount to abetting repressive efforts.
Here’s what I suggest, instead: always say No.
Never agree to help violate the rights of users, even if your services are formally banned as a result. Instead, use your ingenuity and resources to help people end-run the obstacles to free expression that governments keep imposing.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Camus
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.