Despite being outnumbered 16 to one, forces of the Old Swiss Confederacy proved victorious over the Archduchy of Austria in the Battle of Näfels, April 9, 1388.
On this date in 1991, Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.
Author: Redactor
The European Union’s censors are outraged that Elon Musk’s social media platform, Twitter-X, flouts their demands to gag users.
So they’re gearing up to fine X more than a billion dollars. The EU will also be demanding “product changes.”
Another EU investigation reported by The New York Times “is broader and . . . could lead to further penalties,” but amounts to the same thing: punishing Musk’s free-speech company for disobeying orders to prevent and punish speech.
All this is rationalized by a new EU law to compel social media platforms to police users. One would be hard put to find a clearer case of governmental censorship-by-delegation. It’s not even taking place behind closed doors, as was the case regarding the U.S. Government and Twitter before Mr. Musk bought the platform.
These European censors brag about it.
X says it will do its best to “protect freedom of speech in Europe.”
If push comes to shove and EU goons do not back down, what X should do has been indicated by the smaller platforms social media platforms Gab and Kiwi Farms.
First, refuse to pay a penny of any imposed fine.
Second, block access to X within the European Union, advising all account holders who try to log on why having an EU IP address is now a bad idea and why using a good virtual private network (VPN) to access X is now a good idea.
By disguising point of origin and encrypting traffic, a good VPN can help people living under tyrannical regimes like the European Union to evade censorship.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Fernando Pessoa
A metafísica é uma consequência de estar mal disposto.
Metaphysics is a consequence of not feeling very well.
Fernando Pessoa, Tabacaria (1928), trans. Richard Zenith.
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The 17th Amendment
On April 8, 1913, the 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was ratified.
Prior to this, senators had been appointed by state legislatures. It was John Dickinson of Delaware who suggested that the Senate be selected by state legislatures. “The combination of the state governments with the national government was as politic as it was unavoidable,” he argued. But as early as 1826, resolutions calling for direct popular election of senators appeared in the House of Representatives, but none succeeded. Following the Civil War, disputes among state legislators over Senate elections resulted in deadlocks, leaving some Senate seats vacant for long periods — Delaware remained without representation in the U.S. Senate for two years. In light of such problems, reformers in many states began calling for a change to the system of electing senators. In 1906, publisher William Randolph Hearst, a proponent of direct election, hired novelist David Graham Phillips to write a number of articles on the subject. Phillips’ series, “The Treason of the Senate,” portrayed senators as pawns of industrialists and financiers — with no small amount of hyperbole (to put it politely). The articles further galvanized public support for reform.
Senator Joseph Bristow of Kansas offered, in 1911, a Senate resolution to amend the Constitution. In two years the Constitution was amended.
A note of caution going into today’s subject: let us try to bite our tongues; no expressions of schadenfreude; no sarcastic “Boo-hoos” or the like.
The IRS has been grossly inefficient for a very long time, as now uncovered in a Department of Government Efficiency [DOGE] investigation.
Courtesy of Laura Ingraham, we learn that the Internal Revenue Service is “35 years behind” in its scheduled upgrades, and “already $15 billion over budget.”
“You’ve heard the sob stories,” says Ms. Ingraham. “And they are quite entertaining at times. But the [presumably non-Fox legacy news] media — they continue to spread this story: ‘DOGE is some dark and mysterious organization; you know, embedding itself into departments like some jack-booted thugs, just intimidating staff, threatening those that don’t comply.’ OK. We’re asking, what is the truth?”
So she interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant and Treasury’s DOGE adviser, Sam Corcos.
“We,” Corcos said, including himself in the IRS’s very “they” themness, “process about the same amount of data as a midsize bank. A midsize bank has 100 to 200 people in IT and a $20 million budget. The IRS? It has 8,000 IT employees and a $3.5 billion operations and maintenance budget. I don’t really know why yet.” But he does notice that 80 percent of that budget goes to “contractors and software licenses.”
“DOGE advisers have found billions in waste just by asking questions,” explains Ingraham’s report. Secretary Bessant blames the power of special “entrenched interests” that “keep constricting themselves around the power, the money, and the systems. Nobody cares.”
“Inertia” is also a word often heard on this subject.
Democrats have been complaining about the president’s cutting of the IRS budget, and number of employees. But if most of the force is just spinning gears, the cuts could hardly be said to hurt the “service.”
And you’d think that the most pro-government party in our political system would want this key function of government — everything rests on taxes, they admit — to be efficient, do the assigned jobs well.
But for some reason that does not seem to be the case.
Shocking, I know.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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George Mason
There is a Passion natural to the Mind of man, especially a free Man, which renders him impatient of Restraint.
George Mason, Letter to the Committee of Merchants in London (June 6, 1766).
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Prohibition Begins to End
On April 7, 1933, Prohibition in the United States was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2 percent alcohol by weight — eight months before the ratification of the 21st amendment, which repealed the 18th (or Prohibition) Amendment.
The enabling legislation was the Cullen-Harrison Act, which figured the low alcohol content as the excuse to get around the 18th Amendment’s prohibition of intoxicating beverages. The act passed Congress on March 21, 1933, and was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt the next day.
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Vietnam Goes No Tariffs?
News editors sometimes choose odd titles: “First country to cut tariffs down for US and awaits deal — Trump.” That is for a brief Oleh Velhan article from RBC Ukraine. OK: maybe something got lost in translation. But the article follows a theme from this week’s Common Sense commentary and yesterday’s update: Trump’s goofy schedules of tariffs and what to do about them.
Vietnam is ready to completely scrap tariffs for the United States. This may become possible after an agreement between the two countries, according to US leader Donald Trump and his statement via Truth Social.
Trump reported that he had held talks with the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, To Lam. According to him, Lam stated that Vietnam is ready to reduce its tariffs to zero.
“Vietnam wants to cut their tariffs down to zero if they are able to make an agreement with the US. I thanked him on behalf of our country, and said that I look forward to a meeting in the near future,” said the US president.
Oleh Velhan, Saturday April 5, 2025.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom and other countries are going the proverbial other direction, responding with a “list of 8,000 US products that could be subject to tariffs. This list includes various items, ‘from binoculars to bourbon whiskey.’”
Is that Trump wants? Retaliatory tariffs? That happened under Smoot-Hawley.
That is what economists fear: Like the McKinley Tariff of 1890 (which President Trump has praised), the Smoot-Hawley tax hike on goods coming into the country (which is what a tariff is, an international trade tax) to a whopping amount — higher than the nearly 50 percent tariff duty level of the 1890 effort. The Smoot-Hawley hikes have long been known to have factored in the Great Depression, with economist Thomas Rustici (see Lessons of the Great Depression, 2005) arguing that the influence was far more significant than previously thought.
An international war of tariffs, with each nation responding to others’ tariffs with tariffs of their own, is just not good for business. But as wars go, it is an extremely foolish one. A tariff chiefly harms consumers (economists like Milton Friedman tell us) in the national economy of the state that erects them: a tariff war is where each nation shoots itself in the foot, and retaliates for others’ self-harm by further harming themselves.
This was made clear by Frederic Bastiat, whom no one in power appears to have read.
But there is still the inscrutable Trump. If he likes tariffs so much, why does he want them for America but for no one else? That is the implication — right until he praises To Lam and Javier Milei for responding to his tariffs not as Britain is retaliating, or as the EU prepares to. If Trump is really after free trade, apparently he demands a special form of it: not unilateral but multilateral.
So why not just honestly aim for that?
Because it is not popular?
Still, his current strategy seems a bit like Cleavon Little’s strategy when a town turns guns on him: he points his own gun at his own head. But with Trump’s tariff hike policy, there’s less provocation.
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George Mason
Mr. Chairman — A worthy member has asked, who are the militia, if they be not the people, of this country, and if we are not to be protected from the fate of the Germans, Prussians, &c. by our representation? I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.
George Mason, June 16, 1788, speech to the Virginia convention held to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
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Salt Rebel
On April 6, 1930, Mohandas K. Gandhi raised a lump of mud and salt, declaring, “With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire.”
Thus began the Salt Satyagraha.