An individualist is a man who says: ‘I’ll not run anyone’s life — nor let anyone run mine. I will not rule nor be ruled. I will not be a master nor a slave. I will not sacrifice myself to anyone — nor sacrifice anyone to myself.’
Ayn Rand, Textbook of Americanism (1946).
On February 11, 1812, Governor Elbridge Gerry signed into law a plan to redistrict Massachusetts so that the Federalists would lose votes. The new Republican districts were said to be in the form of a salamander, so Gerry was accused of “gerrymandering” — the epithet deriving from his name and a salamander, which some said was the shape of the districts he had drawn up to favor his party. A cartoon gerrymander map was published in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812, with the salamander more in the mythical draconic form than the natural amphibious form.
One story discusses the pilots’ longtime concerns about safety problems specific to Reagan National. But the decrepit state of air traffic control afflicts every airport.
John Tierney outlines some of the problems.
Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation, who has been pushing for reform of U.S. air traffic control for five decades, thinks now something may happen.
“The public and opinion leaders now know a lot more about the FAA’s shortcomings,” he says. “With DOGE and the Trump administration shaking things up, perhaps the time for real reform has finally arrived.”
Let’s hope accountability has safely landed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Flux and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
On February 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified. Submitted to the states on July 6, 1965, by the 89th Congress, it was adopted on the day the requisite number of states ratified it — the 38th, which was in this case Nevada. The Amendment deals with presidential disability and succession in cases of emergency or inability to perform the constitutional duties of the office.
The text reads:
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department [sic] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.
Transparency in government may be reaching a new venue: “Elon Musk is rumored to be spending $40 million of his own money,” explains Anthony Gareffa of TweakTown, “on five commercials during one of the most-watched events in the world — the Superbowl — highlighting U.S. government waste that DOGE has found.”
According to Michael Flores the number is four: “At the Superbowl in 2025 Trump is embracing new tech which has been blocked before. Musk is delivering four ads to the Superbowl about what he discovered in the Treasury files. Just before the game begins.
“These ads will also be shown in the stadium.” And Donald Trump will be in the audience, in the stands. Flores claims to be floored by this: “No matter who wins the games, this is history they will write about for centuries to come.”
In an email letter, Flores goes further: “Nothing in American politics will ever be the same again. We are talking about theft so ingrained in the system that they didn’t even try to hide it. But how they did it is now mapped out by computers. How long they did it is mapped by computers. Money that could have helped the poor. Could have paid for Social Security for years.”
Will this really happen? See for yourself: “The game is scheduled to begin at 6:30pm Eastern Time, on February 9, 2025, at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana. . . . The game will be televised in the United States by Fox and streamed on Tubi.”
The game itself pits the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Chiefs are favored — but it may be the Democrats who lose big. Democrats and their elaborate ways to give their causes taxpayer money.
What is called the Progress of Civilization has been marked and conditioned at every step by an extension of the opportunities, a greater facility in the use of the means, a more eager searching for proper expedients, and a higher certainty in the securing of the returns, of mutual exchanges among men.
On February 9, 1991, voters in Lithuania voted for independence from the Soviet Union, eleven months after independence from the Soviet Union had been declared on March 11, 1990. Just over 93 percent of those voting voted in favor of independence, while the number of eligible voters voting “yes,” was 76.5 percent, far exceeding the 50 percent threshold. Independence was subsequently achieved in August 1991.
Government by executive order is as far from democratic as you can get — and quite unconstitutional. So at first blush, this does not look like a good sign:
“The orders, which Trump critics say greatly exceed his constitutional authority,” explains NBC News, “range from tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, to pauses on foreign aid and crackdowns on illegal immigration to bans on transgender people serving in the military and the use of federal funds for gender-affirming medical care for minors.”
But there is another way to look at it, as Paul Jacob argued on Wednesday: “If the net effect of Trump’s barrage of executive orders and DOGE edicts is to reduce government burdens, is it really the kind of tyranny we must freak out about?”
The general effect of governance since the world wars and the Great Depression has been an increase in federal burdens on individual citizens, businesses, communities, and the states themselves. Lost in the workings of an increasingly imperialistic nation-state, the original idea of a federal republic got lost. The growth of “Deep State” institutions — a permanent administrative state combined with corporate contractors (“the military-industrial complex” of Ike’s warning) engaging in secrecy and lies — has changed the complexion of the existing constitution, no more astounding than in the way it uses taxpayer money to influence taxpayer opinion for political effect.
This excresence became painfully obvious this last week when the Department of Government Efficiency uncovered the quasi-secret subsidies of the USAID programs to mainstream American news-and-opinion media, Politico being just the tip of the iceberg.
Trump’s (and Elon’s) activities, to the extent that they diminish government power or reduce the amount of wealth redistributed from some groups of people to others, is better defined as the opposite of tyrannical.
But of course, to the extent the executive orders increase state power, and without congressional sanction, then that is very much going in the wrong direction.
Still, the upshot must be this: we do not live in a constitutionally ordered free society; precipitous action that returns us to such an order are not so much tyrannical as liberating.
To judge the general tenor of these orders, properly, consulting a good compendium, such as NBC’s, has to be a good start.
But the idea that Trump and Elon are not doing what they are elected to do, but that they are, as Senator Elizabeth Warren puts it, “seizing power from the American people,” does not seem a good interpretation of recent political trends.
And the idea that the American people have been in charge but are not now is preposterous.
Senator Chuck Schumer’s charge is even more bizarre. “Before our very eyes, an unelected, shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.” DOGE may be hostile, but it is out in the open — not shadowy at all — and not so much taking over federal government as shutting down parts of it.
“What’s funny about this claim,” counters Bridget Phetasy, “is that an unelected shadow government just ran this country for four years while they hid the fact that the elected president was barely functioning . . . and shamed Americans for pointing it out.”
En effet, l’histoire n’est que le tableau des crimes et des malheurs.
Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.
Voltaire, L’Ingénu, ch. 10 (1767).