“I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.”
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Author: Redactor
“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”
On May 10, 1768, John Wilkes was imprisoned for writing an article for The North Briton severely criticizing King George III. This action provokes rioting in London.
On May 10, 1773, the Parliament of Great Britain passed the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade. Resistance to the act led to the Boston Tea Party.
On May 10, 1775, a small Colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British.
On May 10, 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States. As the nominee of the Equal Rights Party she received no electoral votes. The first woman to receive an electoral vote came 100 years later, when Tonie Nathan, the vice-presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party, received a single vote from Virginia.
On May 10, 1940, Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, while the first German bombs of World War II were dropped on England at Chilham and Petham, in Kent, and Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg.
What do small businesses worry about the most? I mean, besides serving their customers?
Regulation — licensing in particular.
At least when rating government, owners of small businesses surveyed by Thumbtack.com indicated that “licensing requirements were nearly twice as important as tax rates in determining their state or city government’s overall business-friendliness.”
Yes, taxes are a burden. But regulations and licensing can be amazingly arcane and costly in many communities. Their burdens often kick in before you’ve made a dime, and, despite that, they can sneak up on you, with the heavy weight of bureaucracy descending like the proverbial brick ton.
Thumbtack’s page allows you to see how your state rates. Idaho and Texas come out on top, and my state, Virginia, is surprisingly good. “Blue states” (horrible term: sorry) tend to come out much worse. California gets a big fat F, scoring abysmally low in most categories.
No surprise: The most politically unrepresentative state in the union over-regulates!
Distrust the survey? Just talk to the owner of a small business — you’ll likely get corroboration. Tim Sutinen, a businessman from southwest Washington State, noted in his campaign for state office a few years ago that there were only a handful of licensed occupations in the Evergreen State during the economic downturn in the early ’80s. Now, a few decades later, there’s over a thousand occupations you need a license to work in.
No wonder the recovery stalls.
That’s not progress.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved the world’s first commercially produced birth-control bill, Enovid-10, made by the Searle Company of Chicago, Illinois.
On May 9, 1969, New York Times military correspondent William Beecher wrote a dispatch carried on the paper’s front page, “Raids in Cambodia by U.S. Unprotested,” which accurately described the secret B-52 bombing raids in Cambodia. During the next two years, many National Security Council staff members and reporters had their telephones wiretapped by the FBI in an effort to find out who leaked the information.
On May 9, 1974, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opened impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon. Months later, the committee voted to impeach Nixon on three counts.
“Sometimes it is to regain by the sword what had been unjustly taken from the rightful possessor: Sometimes to prevent impending dangers, which cannot be avoided by other means: But, for the most part, it is undertaken to gratify the ambition of a prince, who wishes to subject to his arbitrary will a people whom God created free, and to gain an uncontrolled dominion over their rights and property.”
Voters in yesterday’s Indiana Republican Primary made history. U.S. Senator Richard Lugar became only the second senator in history with 36 years or more of incumbency to be defeated in his own party’s primary.
It wasn’t close, either — State Treasurer Richard Mourdock trounced Lugar, winning three of every five votes.
During the race, Sen. Lugar’s residency problem became clear: he hadn’t actually lived in Indiana since 1976. Voters tend to dislike the same person wielding power for four decades and only visiting, now and then, the people he represents.
Nor did it help being tagged “President Obama’s favorite Republican.”
But more substantial issues also mattered. Lugar voted for the TARP bailout. He opposed full Second Amendment rights. He voted to raise taxes and jack up the debt ceiling even further.
That’s what the so-called “outside groups” like the Club for Growth told voters in their ads.
An article in the Indianapolis Star, “Outside money flows in to state’s U.S. Senate race,” informed readers that $4 million was spent by political groups not controlled by the candidates, and that 70 percent backed challenger Mourdock. But Lugar, the powerful incumbent, was still able to raise enough “inside money” to outspend Mourdock by nearly two to one — running nasty attack ads against the challenger.
Without the independent groups and PACs, Lugar’s insider funding and incumbent edge would have been a whopping four to one.
The ability of more voices to speak out helped make the challenger competitive against the incumbent.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Russell Means
“’Indian policy’ has now been brought down upon the American people, and the American people are the new Indians of the 21st Century.”
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AIM occupation ends
On May 8, 1973, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) surrendered to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890. Some 200 AIM-led Sioux had seized control of Wounded Knee, and traded gunfire with the federal marshals surrounding the settlement, resulting in two Sioux men being shot to death by federal agents and one federal agent shot and paralyzed. AIM-leader Russell Means began negotiations for the release of the hostages, demanding that the U.S. Senate launch an investigation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Pine Ridge, and all Sioux reservations in South Dakota, and that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hold hearings on the scores of Indian treaties broken by the U.S. government. AIM leaders and their supporters surrendered after White House officials promised to investigate their complaints. Russell Means and Dennis Banks were arrested, but on September 16, 1973, the charges against them were dismissed by a federal judge because of the U.S. government’s unlawful handling of witnesses and evidence.
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Setting the Policy
Vice President Joe Biden got the big headlines over the weekend, with his Meet the Press comments on same-sex marriage. He was quoted everywhere. There was much talk of how this fit (or didn’t fit) with the administration’s official ideology:
I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights — all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.
But immediately prior to the above, he said this: “I am vice president of the United States of America; the president sets the policy.”
And that’s where I begin to wonder.
It could be he’s only saying that he’s second banana in the administration (if even that high in the banana tree), and that he can’t speak for the top banana.
But too often, these days, when people talk about the president “setting the policy” or “making decisions” (remember George W. Bush’s self-description as “The Decider”?) they seem to suggest something approaching a dictatorship by the president. What the head man says goes.
That’s what Biden’s statement does more than imply.
According to the Constitution, on the other hand, Congress sets policy. Not the president. The legislative power is concentrated in the House and the Senate.
Biden’s kind of loose talk is an artifact of what’s called the “imperial presidency.” Leadership (and followership) of both parties have pushed it. It has a long history.
I don’t know about you, but it gives me a lot more concern than the idea of two dudes marrying.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.