When I used to speak of the lunatic fringe, I didn’t know I was going to be head of it.
Oscar Levant, The Memoirs of an Amnesiac (1965).
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Oscar Levant
Author: Redactor
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The Slave Trade Banned
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.
This was not a ban on the slave trade as such, of course, but of the buying of slaves from sources overseas.
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The August Workings!
“Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money,” Representative Thomas Massie tweeted last week, “to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices.”
Sounds nasty when he states it like that. He could have said Congress has valiantly kept litigation from disturbing the august workings of the world’s greatest deliberative body!
But seriously, Massie tells the truth and offers a challenge: “Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives? I do.”
He refers to the names of the accused in Congress. The ones bailed out of criminal and civil action, along with public obloquy, to the tune that only two-digit millions can play.
Amusingly, Representative Massie compares and contrasts congressional hanky-panky and hush-money payments with those of former and future president of the United States, Donald Trump. “The allegation is that President Trump paid $130,000 of his own money but here in Congress we have . . . there may be some on this dais!” The “some” are the bailed-out accused harassers whom Massie works with every day.
Imagine the love Massie must feel from his fellow brothers and sisters in Congress Assembled, with his demand for complete transparency.
Years ago I quoted CNN on the hush-money issue. “The current system in place does not require the [Office of Compliance] to make public the number of sexual harassment complaints, number of settlements reached, the dollar figure of those settlements or which offices are being complained about. Congressional aides say this is giving unintentional cover to the worst offenders in Congress.”
I questioned whether that was “unintentional.”
It’s not called “hush money” because it brings things out in the open!
Were I the twice-impeached Donald Trump, I’d bring up that $17 million every time I addressed Congress. After all, Trump paid for his own . . . alleged . . . indiscretions.
Our representatives have made us pay for theirs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dorothy L. Sayers
A human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
Dorothy L. Sayers, Are Women Human? (1938).
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Bricked for the Taxman
On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.
This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.
New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”
“Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country,” ABC News tells us, “leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest.”
Germany’s three-party coalition government, led by “center-left” Chancellor Olof Scholz, fell apart when he fired the “pro-business” party’s biggest name in the government, Finance Minister Christian Lindner.
Musk wrote a piece for Welt am Sonntag in which he expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland, which is considered “far-right” for opposing Die Grünen, the (“pro-business”) Freie Demokratische Partei, and Scholz’s own Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” asserted Musk*.
“The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote,” explains ABC, “that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.”
Musk must mean “a right” as in manners, not in law. In a free country, anyone has a legal right to speak up and comment on government.
But what is the significance of the editor who quit? She has every right to work only with news outfits that marginalize the AfD as promoters of “anti-democratic” ideas. Hers is a matter of strategy: shunning, marginalization — no-debate/no-cooperate — are what she thinks journalists must marshal against the “far right.”
This journalist’s political tactic mirrors Germany’s practiced politics. ABC News explains that the AfD’s polling strength doesn’t much help its candidate, Alice Weidel, to “becom[e] chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.”
The non-cooperation strategy goes full anti-democratic when election results are suppressed. In Romania, for example, elections have basically been overturned because of how “far-right” they are.
All very anti-democratic, these “democrats.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* To be clear, his piece was published in German, of course, and above I’m quoting the English translation.
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Oscar Levant
Strip away the phony tinsel of Hollywood and you will find the real tinsel underneath.
Oscar Levant, as quoted in Theodor Reik‘s Jewish Wit (1962), p. 104.
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A Woman at the Bar
On December 30, 1919, Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, admitted its first female bar student.
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Reasonable Seasonal Grievances
Senator Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) has published his annual “Festivus Report” on federal government spending, and it doesn’t look good. The federal debt is on a multi-trillion-dollar spree, yet politicians keep throwing money around:
- Ghost Towns on the Government’s Dime: The federal government spent $10 billion on maintaining, leasing, and furnishing almost entirely empty buildings
- A Pandemic Plunder: A Florida man stole $8 million in COVID-19 Relief funds to buy an island and more
- Your Tax Dollars at Play: The Department of the Interior (DOI) spent $12 Million on a Las Vegas Pickleball Complex
- Taxpayers Fund a Disinformation Index: The Department of State (DOS) wasted $330,000 to fund censorship of non- liberal and conservative media
- Hold on to Your Steering Wheels: The Department of Energy (DOE) spent $15.5 billion to push Americans toward electric vehicles they don’t want
- The Influencer Effect Hits Foreign Policy: The Department of State (DOS) squandered $4,840,082 on influencers
- When Bailouts Go Bust: The United States Department of the Treasury (USDT) granted a failed trucking company a $700 million pandemic-era loan
- Flocking Together! DEI Takes Flight: The National Science Foundation (NSF) spent $288,563 to ensure bird watching groups have safe spaces aka “Affinity Groups”
- Interest-ingly Wasteful: Americans are paying $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 on the interest on Uncle Sam’s Credit Card
- Because Who Needs a Secure U.S. Border, Anyway? The Department of State (DOS) spent $2.1 million for Paraguayan Border Security
These are just a few highlights. Read the full report for more juicy boondoggles and drunken-sailor prodigality.
“This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12,” explains the senator. “That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.”
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Oscar Wilde
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.
Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891).