Author: Redactor

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Today

Scharansky freed

On Feb. 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win the right for Russian Jews, forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR, to emigrate.

On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.

On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.

Categories
ideological culture

A Right to Sport?

One of the reasons many of us find pleasure in sports is that it provides respite from life-and-death issues like politics.

But there is no respite: the current Winter Olympics now going on in Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia, has been ultra-political from the get-go. Russia’s chest-baring potentate, Vlad “The Impulsive” Putin, has spent billions to showcase Russian greatness, and will spend billions of taxpayer rubles more.

But amidst talk of terrorism and toilets, undrinkable water and unthinkable discrimination, you will probably be the very opposite of “shocked, shocked” to learn that the Olympic Charter promotes something as odd as this:

The practice of sport is a human right. Every individual must have the possibility of practicing sport, without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.

David Howden, at the Mises Institute’s Circle Bastiat, directs our attention to the peculiar framing of the issue of access to games and entertainment competition in terms of rights, which are not

founded on any rigorous analysis, but rather represent preferences. (The preferences of the United Nations, incidentally.) Perhaps the more dangerous problem is that the past century has seen such an inflation of human rights that each one’s value has diminished significantly.

My take’s slightly different: Human rights get cheapened when equated with mere entertainment — or other benefits provided by governments.

But there’s something like a right to sport within the right to pursue our happiness.

Despite Sochi’s broken toilets and the modern Olympics’ long history of politicians pursuing power, the words of our Declaration of Independence come to mind when I see a skier turning flips through the air on a big jump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets too much government

Startling Subsidy Success

“Moving on from unfulfilling jobs, thanks to health-care law,” was the gleeful headline* on the story spoon-fed to The Washington Post by Families USA, a pro-Obamacare group that maintains a “database of people who have benefitted” from the law (a pretty easy gig, no doubt).

Polly Lower quit her job and says, “It was wonderful.” She didn’t want the job anymore, because she went from “doing payroll, which she liked, to working on her boss’s schedule, which she loathed.”

Take this job and . . .

Eddie Gonzales-Novoa left a job making $88,000 annually, because he wanted to help a cancer-surviving relative start a website for others battling the disease. Now he makes very little, but has more rewarding employment.

Well, if they can afford not to work or to make less in order to do what they want, good for them!

But, if you pay taxes (anyone?), it might not be so good for you. Under the Affordable Care Act, both Eddie and Polly are getting their health insurance subsidized by the taxpayers.

Gonzalez-Novoa’s job change is easy to sympathize with, but why should “the taxpayers” pay for the bill? Might not they have similar dreams of their own to finance?

Lower not only didn’t like her job, she was better off without one — so she receives even more in Obamacare subsidies. She told the Washington Post that she has “adjusted well” to not working.

Sadly, the Post offered no report on how well the taxpayers are adjusting to continuing to work to pay these new subsidies to others.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Print headline was different than online headline.

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Today

Mandela released

On Feb. 11, 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was released by South African authorities. Mandela had joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, becoming deputy national president of the group in 1952. In 1961, Mandela was arrested for treason, and, although acquitted, was arrested again in 1962 for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1964 on charges of sabotage, convicted and sentenced to life in prison along with several other ANC leaders.

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and began dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.

Mandela subsequently led the ANC in negotiating an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One year later, the ANC won the country’s first free elections, and Mandela was elected South Africa’s president.

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Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

Our theory is so little opposed to practice that it is nothing else but practice explained.

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media and media people

The Most Loathed Lobbyist

Michael Needham is a lobbyist. At least, he was called a “conservative lobbyist” repeatedly during his recent appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Now, I don’t have anything against lobbyists, per se. We have the right to petition government, as individuals, or for businesses, civic leagues, unions. Disagree with a group? Balk at a group’s influence? Well, when millions and billions are handed out — or taken away — through programs, taxes and regulations enacted on any given day in Washington, a company neglects to hire the eyes and ears and mouth of a lobbyist at its own risk. How can we begrudge them their defense?Mike Needham

On the other hand, the right to plead for special favors doesn’t justify our government doing the bidding of those special-interest pleaders.

“The problem,” Needham explained, is “33,000 lobbyists” that mostly work to preserve the “status quo in Washington D.C.”

NBC’s Andrea Mitchell snarkily shot back, “And how are those lobbyists different from you as a lobbyist?”

Unfortunately, he didn’t get a chance to answer: time ran out.

Allow me.

Needham heads up Heritage Action, a 700,000 member grassroots “lobbying organization” that advocates for conservative policies promoted by the Heritage Foundation.

He is not asking for a bridge project, a tweak to the tax code, a money-making regulatory advantage. He is advocating for what he and thousands of Americans believe is the right set of general policies for the country.

I don’t always agree with Needham or Heritage Action, certainly, but it’s sad to see him slapped with the misleading “lobbyist” label — for the more you lobby for the public interest, the more loathed you are in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Today

25th Amendment ratified

On Feb. 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, setting the process for presidential succession, was ratified by Nevada, the necessary 38th state to do so.

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Thought

Frédéric Bastiat

Road-makers and Obstructives working together on the most friendly terms possible, under the orders of the same legislative assembly, and at the expense of the same taxpayers, the one set endeavoring to clear the road, and the other set doing their utmost to render it impassable.

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Today

Paine born

On Feb. 9, 1737, Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England. Paine would come to America in 1774 and by 1776 publish “Common Sense,” urging American independence. The pamphlet sold more copies than any book save the Bible.

Paine lived in France for most of the 1790s, becoming deeply involved in the French Revolution. He wrote the Rights of Man in 1791, a defense of the French Revolution. Despite not speaking French, he was elected to the French National Convention in 1792. But in December of 1793, Paine was arrested and imprisoned in Paris – then released in 1794.

Paine returned to America in 1802, after becoming notorious due to publication of The Age of Reason, his book advocating deism, reason and freethinking, against institutionalized religion and Christian doctrines. When he died in 1809, he had been ostracized for his ridicule of Christianity.

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links

Townhall: Obama Promises Accountability, Stop Laughing

Over at Townhall this weekend, the subject is one we have tracked closely here at Common Sense. The IRS appears to have been captured by the Democratic Party, and now serves not the citizenry but that wing of government. Click on over, but come back here for source material. And consider sending links to your friends on Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter. Just how bad our current batch of politicians are needs to be more widely known.