Never attempt to win by force what can be won by deception.
Widely cited on the Internet as by Niccolò Machiavelli and from The Prince (16th Century), this very “Machiavellian” instruction is nowhere to be found in The Prince, but its very citation may qualify as Machiavellian.
On September 18, 1793, George Washington laid the cornerstone of the Capitol building.
It has grown, since.
On September 18, 1838, Richard Cobden established the Anti-Corn Law League, which proceeded to bring free trade to Britain.
Investigative reporter Lee Fang has learned that incumbents of both major parties are ignoring ethics rules in order “to use government money for ads clearly designed to influence voters.”
Back in the 1990s, I was shocked to discover that the average incumbent congressperson spent more using the franking privilege, government funding of “official” newsletters to constituents, than the average challenger spent in his or her entire campaign. In this video age, they’ve upgraded their bragging to living color.
Here is a bipartisan couple from the many examples Fang discovered:
Democrat: A taxpayer-funded ad aired by the campaign of New York Representative Tom Suozzi, talks about how “Tom worked across party lines to convince the president” to do something about the border.
Republican: A taxpayer-funded ad aired by the campaign of Virginia Representative Jen Kiggans, in which she boasts about her track record on issues pertaining to veterans and the military.
Fang has identified at least nine other culprits and put together a YouTube video compiling some of these taxpayer-funded ads. Everyone sees these as campaign spots — or “campaign-style ads,” as Fang also puts it.
The ads even say (for example, in Wesley Hunt’s video) that they were “paid for with official funds” from the office of the congressman or with “official funds authorized by the House of Representatives.”
These “official funds” are not voluntary campaign contributions.
Congressmen, you’ve been caught.
So stop.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and ChatGPT and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that’s the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn’t anybody laughing. I haven’t heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Chapter Five.
On September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States was signed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It should be noted, however, that the signatories did not thereby ratify their proposed new constitution for the union. The states had to ratify the document, which was done state by state. The document would not have passed enough states to take effect had not there been a promise to quickly pass a set of amendments, which became known as the Bill of Rights.
In 1849 on this same day in September, Harriet Tubman escaped to freedom in Philadelphia, but soon returned to Maryland to rescue her family. She made at least 13 trips into the slave-owning South to liberate more than 70 slaves before the Civil War — in which she served as a spy for the North.
Nevertheless, that giving is not always ostentatious. Sometimes it is surreptitious.
Or at least not ballyhooed.
Kamala Harris has taken up an old Democratic Party stalking point: soak the rich! Though she tries not to mention just how much money she and her fellow Biden Administration insiders have been giving to a few big corporations.
“Despite Harris’ rhetoric of fighting for the middle class,” writes Jack Salmon at Reason, “her policies have disproportionately benefited the wealthy and large corporations while leaving middle- and lower-income Americans behind. Far from soaking the rich, Harris’ legacy has been one of feeding them.”
Corporate subsidies have “exploded,” explains Mr. Salmon, going from a ten-year budget allocation of $1.2 trillion in 2021 to now surpassing $2 trillion.
Nearly doubled!
“The beneficiaries of this largesse are extremely concentrated,” Salmon notes, most of it going to “just 15 large corporations, seven of which are foreign.” Of course, a lot of this is under cover of “saving the planet” and fighting “climate change”: “Wind turbine manufacturers like General Electric, Vestas, and Siemens/Gamesa — who collectively produce 79 percent of all turbines — are among the biggest winners.”
Robbing from the few and giving to the many makes neither for good mathematics or a winning political strategy. Robbing from the many and giving to the few is what usually works. But if your appeal is to “the left,” you have to pretend to grab most from the super-rich few.
Your pals.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
L’homme doit être content, dit-on; mais de quoi?
Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?
François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Pensées, Remarques, et Observations de Voltaire; ouvrage posthume (1802), p. 232.
September 16 marks the Independence Days for Mexico (celebrating the declaration of independence from Spain in 1810) and Papua New Guinea (commemorating the exit from Australia in 1975).
The big news this weekend should have been SpaceX’s big accomplishment this past week. But talk of it has been oddly muted. Some have drawn political conclusions from the silence, such as Friday’s post by “DogeDesigner” on X (@cb_doge on Twitter): “SpaceX, an American company, just completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk, the farthest from Earth in over 50 years. Yet, no recognition or appreciation from the President. For [the] Democratic party, politics always comes first, not America.”
Elon Musk replied with a “Sigh.”
But in the Democrats’ defense, they have a whole lot to lose by saying anything nice about Elon Musk’s two outfits in question, X and SpaceX. Further, just maybe the president of the United States (Biden?) has been waiting for the mission’s completion.
Wait no more!
“Tech billionaire Jared Isaacman and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk in SpaceX-designed suits,” we read at Devdiscourse. “The Polaris Dawn mission tested new spacesuit technology in extreme conditions and conducted 36 experiments. This mission marks a significant milestone in commercial spaceflight and advances scientific knowledge for future space endeavors.”
The space walk occurred on Thursday, with all five crew members participating. The flight began on Tuesday. Splashdown of Polaris Dawn’s Dragon spacecraft occurred early Sunday.
Oh, and the new space suits look snazzy.
Paul Jacob has been following SpaceX for years here on Common Sense with Paul Jacob.
You can make the Ring an allegory of our own time, if you like: an allegory of the inevitable fate that awaits all attempts to defeat evil power by power. But that is only because all power magical or mechanical does always so work.
J. R. R. Tolkien, speaking on the central figure of the One Ring in his books The Lord of the Rings, in a letter to his publisher (July 31, 1947); published in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien(1981), Letter 109.