On January 24, 1732, French playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier, and revolutionary (both French and American) Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was born. He proved instrumental in securing armaments for the America Revolution, but remains best known for his three “Figaro” plays, Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable.
The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.
U.S. Senator Tom Coburn would easily win a third term in 2016, if he chose to run. But just as he stepped down from the U.S. House after three terms, after having pledged to do, so he is stepping down after winning two terms in the U.S. Senate.
Coburn had affirmed his commitment to serve no more than two terms before winning re-election in 2010. But now he has announced that he is leaving at the end of 2014, two years early.
He was recently diagnosed with prostate cancer, but says “this decision isn’t about my health, my prognosis or even my hopes and desires. My commitment to the people of Oklahoma has always been that I would serve no more than two terms. Our founders saw public service and politics as a calling rather than a career. That’s how I saw it when I first ran for office in 1994, and that’s how I still see it today. I believe it’s important to live under the laws I helped write, and even those I fought hard to block.”
Expect to hear from Tom Coburn after he leaves office. A prominent former office-holder can easily exert influence on public policy debate if that is what he wants to do. And Coburn rightly observes that many Americans “with real-world experience and good judgment” can fill either his shoes directly in Washington, or make their voices heard in other ways.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In comparison to the French Revolution, the American Revolution has come to seem a parochial and rather dull event. This, despite the fact that the American Revolution was successful–realizing the purposes of the revolutionaries and establishing a durable political regime–while the French Revolution was a resounding failure, devouring its own children and leading to an imperial despotism, followed by an eventual restoration of the monarchy.
Whatever one makes of the direction Egypt is headed, the most ominous headline I’ve seen, recently, is the one that is ostensibly optimistic: “Egypt: 98.1% of voters approve constitution.”
That was in USA Today.
It is not, of course, believable.
What do more than 98 percent of America’s voters agree on?
Transplant that radical supermajority to Egypt, where politics is often deadly, a coup recently took out the biggest faction — and with it, the previous working constitution — and where the major faction is associated with terrorism and street violence, and we are to expect a consensus like this?
The title defeats itself, undermines itself.
It might as well have said, “This Title Is a Lie,” except without the paradox.
Then again, with only 38.6 percent of voters going to the polls, that 98.1 figure takes on a new meaning. Could it be that, of 38.6 percent of eligible voters actually voting, the ones who did show up were nearly unanimous in their support of the new regime?
More likely, but still not likely at all.
Revolutionary politics is an ugly business. And what we are to make of what’s really happening in Egypt is beyond my ken. I just know that 98.1 percent of Egyptian voters do not approve of the constitution.
But if this kind of nonsense gets reported with a straight face in America, it should make us more circumspect about the other information we receive about conflicts overseas.
I’m 98.1 percent confident of that opinion. At least.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A magazine profile of President Barack Obama has set the commentariat a-talking.
On racism, the president says that “some” folks hate him because he’s black; and others support him because he’s black.
Wow. What was obvious in 2008 seems . . . painfully obvious now.
Similarly, the prez ’fessed up (again) to his past marijuana use — and his long-term tobacco habit. He uttered the word “vice.” He noted that marijuana doesn’t seem any more harmful than alcohol . . . which implies that the prohibition of marijuana makes less sense than the once-prohibited but now-legal hootch.
A reasonable opinion. Held, before President O’s pronouncement, by a clear majority of the public . . . not as radical, but as obvious.
So why make such a big deal about these statements? Because of previous taboos? It’s not as if Obama took leadership on any of these ideas, moving them from “horrors!-false” to “blah-true.”
Years ago, the movie Bulworth featured Warren Beatty as a senator who, all the sudden, started blurting out things he believed to be true, but which were not usually said in public. It was a comedy. (Your tastes and appraisals may vary.) The prez comes off as nowhere near as outrageous (or straightforward) as the Beatty character, though he, too, has rapped in public.
But perhaps we grade on a curve. A president speaking obvious truths is memorable not because the truths are daring, but because of the novelty: a politician has deigned to acknowledge truth.
File the brouhaha under O, not for Obama but for Obvious.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 22, 1920, American pundit and author Irving Kristol was born.
Food is a product of supply and demand, so try to figure out where the supplies are fresh, the suppliers are creative, and the demanders are informed.
Some things about government are eternal.
The latest New Jersey scandal a-brewing has it that Hoboken’s mayor was informed her city was to be denied federal aid following Hurricane Sandy unless she went along with a real estate project favored by Governor Chris Christie.
Shocking, but hardly . . . unheard of. Back in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt distributed disproportionate “stimulus” funds to swing states for one reason: re-election.
Corruption is ancient.
Christie’s staff seems, well, merely a bit more honest than usual. For modern America. Take the “Bridgegate” scandal: Trying to “hurt” a mayor by shutting down bridge lanes to his city, thus severely inconveniencing the mayor’s constituents? This sort of pettiness in policitics is common, with one difference: Most players disguise the pettiness.
So how does the continuing scandal of misgovernment usually get hidden? Dishonesty? Evasion?
Or, just ideology?
In several cities throughout the United States — Portland, Oregon, in particular — top metropolitan bureaucrats have deliberately developed policies that make automobile traffic more congested. Why? To encourage ridership in public transportation, which is considered (for ideological reasons) somehow better. Thus billions are spent on infrastructure supporting light rail, which take lanes away from car drivers, and move fewer people at greater inconvenience.
So why is that policy not itself a scandal?
The intent of Chris Christie’s aides was, obviously, base and petty and wrong. And actionable.
The ideology driving today’s anti-automobile agenda, on the other hand, is said to be noble and altruistic. Even though the harms to the public in terms of hours lost in frustrating commutes far exceeds the recent New Jersey scandal.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On January 21, 1950, Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury, with Whittaker Chambers being the main witness in Hiss’s prosecution. Chambers confessed to having been a Soviet spy, and accused Hiss as an accomplice, which Hiss denied to his dying day. Chambers wrote a fascinating memoir about all this in Witness.
Today is economist Tyler Cowen’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Tyler.