Author: Redactor

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Common Sense

The Rest of the Story

One thrill of my lifetime occurred soon after I helped launch U.S. Term Limits in 1992, when radio commentator Paul Harvey phoned me to fact-check a story he was doing.

Harvey, king of radio back then, was a huge fan of term limits. And I was a big fan of him. I loved his quirky vocal mannerisms and the way he told us “the rest of the story.” Today, three years after his death, I’d like to bring you “the rest” of a few recent Common Sense stories.

I. “There is no Olympic medal for political dishonesty,” I concluded a recent commentary about a Missouri State senate race where the principled Ed Emery was wrongly and ridiculously smeared by State Rep. Scott Largent. “Let’s hope Show-Me State voters show Largent the agony of defeat.”

Well, voters did just that. In the August 7 primary, Emery narrowly defeated Largent.

II. Recall my rant on the California parks system apparently hiding $54 million from the department of finance?

With an investigation underway, the Sacramento Bee not only reports “a department that wanted to keep secret a reserve of its own special funds” and — surprise, surprise – the unauthorized use of those slush funds, but also “a springtime rush each year to spend money authorized by the Legislature to avoid having the funds return to the general fund.”

Seems the parks department may also have been dummying up million-dollar contracts to make funding look like it was spent when it wasn’t.

All while asking for donations from the public and closing parks.

III. Objected, I did, to the Obama Administration’s successful push to get a record number of people to sign up for food stamps. Others have objected to David Fowler, president of the Family Action Council of Tennessee, who posted on Facebook that we should follow the advice of the National Park Service — “Do not feed the animals” — noting that, “Their stated reason for the policy is because the animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Fowler was denounced for being insensitive, for calling poor people animals.

But aren’t all people animals?

We’re not potted plants.

And now you know the rest of Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Mark Twain

Patriotism is merely a religion – love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare.

In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the Throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.

The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek.

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video

Video: How to Deal with the Police

Some useful advice:

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Thought

President John Tyler

Popularity, I have always thought, may aptly be compared to a coquette — the more you woo her, the more apt is she to elude your embrace.

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media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

The A-Word

The n-word got dropped on MSNBC’s The Cycle this week. The show’s co-host [No First Name] Touré called Mitt Romney’s use of the word “angry” to describe some of the rhetoric coming out of the White House as “the ‘niggerization’ of Obama”:

“You are not one of us, you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.”

Naturally this led to a battle between Touré and conservative co-host S.E. Cupp. She took particular issue with the fact that Touré admitted that VP Joe Biden‘s “chains” comments were divisive, but is now calling Romney a “racist” for saying the Obama campaign is “angry.”

“Do you see how dishonest that is?” she asked.

Good question. But here’s a better one: Doesn’t talk of race and code-words obscure the real issue here, anger?

Romney shouldn’t be calling for the Obama administration to be less angry. He should be angry himself, and castigating the president and his crew for being angry at the wrong things.

We should be angry at the continuation of wars, foreign (the Middle East) and domestic (on psychoactive drug use), to the detriment of fiscal stability as well as our civil liberties.

We should be angry that the nation’s pension system has been systematically stripped of its surpluses for 77 years — by politicians in Washington.

We should be angry that federal (along with state) policy has interfered with medicine to such an extent that the most idiotic ideas around — nationalization/socialization — almost seemed plausible to a sizable minority of Americans.

We should be angry that the Democrats pushed through yet another expensive entitlement, “Obamacare,” while the rest of the federal government sunk further into insolvency.

And yes, we should be angry that our leaders can’t stick to decent issues.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies responsibility

A Loan of Common Sense

If you give something that belongs to you, without expecting to get it back, that’s giving. You just hand over a gift and forget about it. Perhaps you would appreciate a “thank you.”

If you lend to someone, you expect to be repaid. Those who don’t repay are called deadbeats.

If you mug somebody on the street and grab his wallet, you are stealing. You are then a thief, a robber.

That’s all straightforward enough. This is not: Say that you steal from the productive citizens of one country or countries (Country or Countries A) and give the dough to the fiscally irresponsible government of another country (Country B), and you call it a loan. But when Country B can’t pay the installments, it is provided another loan originating in the wallets of the very same Country A citizens from whom was extracted the original loan.

What is this? You are not only stealing, you are shuffling IOUs instead of getting repaid. You are also misrepresenting the nature of the transactions, for it is clearly a gift of stolen money and not anything voluntary, like a loan.

Bill Wilson, President of Americans for Limited Government, goes into a bit more of the nitty and gritty of Greece’s tricky tranche of “repayment” on its “loan” from the European Union, and relates it to the similar finagling here in the United States . . . which all rests on credit expansion by the Federal Reserve. “The eggheads in Washington, D.C.,” he says, offer only one solution: “just keep digging.”

But how deep? At some point it gets too hot down there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

William Henry Harrison

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

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Thought

President John Tyler

John Tyler, Trump, hated, leverage, elites, Ted Cruz, Paul Jacob, despised, term limits, unpopular

Patronage is the sword and cannon by which war may be made on the liberty of the human race.

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general freedom

Can Do America

Canning was revolutionary, in its heyday, soon after the process was perfected. Canned foods became an integral part of everyday American life. And still are: Canned soup, vegetables and beans, for instance — along with thousands of other items — still line the supermarket aisles, contributing to the quality of life in most American homes.

Home canning, on the other hand, became an even bigger deal early on, and during the Great Depression was the prime way many folks survived. At harvest time, housewives, grandmothers, and children — and even a few men — spent hours and hours canning enough fruits and meats and vegetables to carry the rest of the year.

But home canning went under a popularity eclipse with the rise of frozen foods and the improvements in mass production canning.

Now it’s back. Home canning is almost a craze, and has been since . . . the mortgage crisis implosion of 2008. It rocketed up 30 percent in the year immediately following. This is not exactly news. What’s news is that the trend continued, growing 10 percent the following year.

Hey, canning easy-to-prepare foods serves as insurance. Lose your income? Still have food. Lose the power grid in a possible future debacle? You still have food — and can heat something up with firewood or propane or . . . burning trash.

Or don’t heat it at all. Canned food is even good without re-cooking. I’ve had some exquisite home-canned foods, right out of the jar . . .

Tough times coming? We can meet them head on and survive. A “can” do attitude helps.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
political challengers too much government

Somewhere Short of Salvation

When I heard that Mitt Romney had chosen Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan to be his vice-presidential running mate, I thought, “Wow. It could have been worse.”

I like Paul Ryan. You know, for a politician.

Rep. Ryan, at least, appears to be serious about our country’s 16 trillion debt and the fact that yearly we’re still credit-carding a trillion more onto that tab. Ryan has crunched the numbers and written a budget blueprint that offers a more-or-less responsible way to restructure in-the-red programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security that drive the government’s debt.

The “professional left” will argue that Paul Ryan wants to throw grandma off a cliff by slashing Medicare, but I think the problem is that his budget doesn’t go far enough. Under Ryan’s own optimistic predictions of economic growth, his balanced budget is still a decade away. According to analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and others, the Ryan “Path to Prosperity” won’t bring the federal budget into balance for many decades – 30 to 50 years.

Which, the way Washington works, means never.

And that’s even before the plan goes through Congress, where far too few share Ryan’s hawkishness on budgetary matters.

Paul Ryan is a breath of fresh air compared to mealy-mouthed politicians such as Obama and Biden . . . and Romney. But even if the Romney-Ryan ticket wins, Ryan will only occupy what John Adams called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

Sounds like we’re still somewhere short of salvation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.