“Government should be set up so that no man need be afraid of another.”
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Author: Redactor
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McCarthy Announces
On Jan. 3, 1968, Senator Eugene McCarthy (D‑Minnesota) announced he would challenge incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson for the Democratic presidential nomination. In March, spurred by public opposition to Johnson’s escalation of the Vietnam War, McCarthy came within a few hundred votes of beating Johnson in the New Hampshire primary. At the end of March, Johnson withdrew from the race.
On Jan. 3, 1777, General George Washington evaded the numerically superior forces of British General Cornwallis dispatched to trap him in Trenton and went north to rout the British rear guard in the Battle of Princeton.
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On the Other Hand
To start off this New Year, I admit that I missed some very thrifty actions taken by elected officials in 2011.
Though I often commented on California legislators, regrettably, I failed to mention their frugality. Last May, they unequivocally said, “No” to Senate Bill 18, which would have cost $200,000 for enforcement of the legislation’s gift ban.
These eminent elected officials would doubtless like to have SB-18’s restriction on lobbyists and special interests plying them with free tickets to sporting events, rock concerts, and other expensive entertainment venues, but were unwilling to place the high cost of policing their behavior onto the backs of taxpayers.
Nor are politicians always careless with tax dollars. In Washington, D.C., Council Chairman Kwame Brown gets the city’s money’s worth.
He had the city order him a Lincoln Navigator, loaded with a DVD entertainment system, power moon-roof and polished aluminum wheels. But, when the vehicle and its $1,900 a month lease arrived, the interior was gray — not black as requested. Brown wouldn’t stand for being shortchanged. So, a new SUV was ordered, with both exterior and interior black. It was driven from Michigan to Washington for an extra $1,500.
The city was stuck paying two luxury vehicle leases, but it’s the principle that counts. Chairman Brown informed the Washington Post that dark interiors hold their value better.
This year, let’s acknowledge the good elected officials do and not just harp on the bad. After all, nobody’s perfect.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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NBC bans The Weavers
On Jan. 2, 1962, The Weavers, a folk music quartet, were banned from appearing on “The Jack Paar Show” by NBC, after the performers each refused to sign a political loyalty oath. One of the most significant popular-music groups of the postwar era, The Weavers career was nearly destroyed during the Red Scare of the 1950s, when Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were denounced as Communist Party members by an FBI informant (who later recanted). The entire group was placed under FBI surveillance and not allowed to perform on radio or television until the late 1950s. In 1955, both Hays and Seeger were called to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, where Hays took the Fifth Amendment, while Seeger refused to answer on First Amendment grounds – the first person to do so after the Hollywood Ten were convicted in 1950. Seeger was found guilty of contempt and placed under restrictions by the court pending appeal, but in 1961 his conviction was overturned on constitutional grounds. Seeger, who left the group in 1958, didn’t appear on television again until 1968 on the Smothers Brothers show.
“Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
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Frederick Douglass
“No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.”