On May 9, 2020, the U.S. unemployment rate hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression. This was not caused by the boom and bust cycle, credit inflation followed by deflation, or sunspots. It was caused by the “15 days to flatten the curve” pandemic lockdowns that most states had started in March or April of that year and had continued well past the promised end date.
The constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men.
Friedrich W. Nietzsche, “On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense” (German: 1873; 1896), in The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings (1999), translated by Ronald Speirs.
Back then, Mississippi was ranked 50th in so many categories by which the states were measured against each other that the Magnolia State saved those inhabiting states near the bottom from occupying that un-coveted dead last place.
This was still the case in 2005, when Mississippi ranked 50th in fourth-grade reading scores. In 2013, Mississippi students climbed one rung, to 49th. Then things started to change.
“The transformation began in 2013 with the passage of the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, a controversial law that allows schools to hold back students who cannot read by third grade,” WAPT, Jackson’s ABC-TV affiliate, recently reported.
“The curriculum shifted from balanced literacy to a phonics-forward approach,” WAPT explained, “and the state invested millions into phonics-based instruction, strict accountability measures, and instructional coaches who work inside schools daily.”
Imagine going back to the way generations were taught to read and, lo and behold, it still works!!!
“Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed Mississippi fourth graders ranked 9th in the nation for reading scores and 16th in the nation for math scores,” the TeachMS website informs. “Since 2013, that same category of students ranks No. 1 nationally for gains in reading and math.”
“Mississippi has skyrocketed on national tests, while blue states lag,” acknowledged a New York Times account earlier this year, adding that “adjusted for poverty and other student demographics, Mississippi is No. 1 for fourth grade reading and math, and at or near the top in eighth grade, according to the Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank.”
Thank God for Mississippi.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Non è mai alcuna cosa sì disperata, che non
vi sia qualche via da poterne sperare.
No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope.
Niccolò Machiavelli, from The Mandrake (A.D. 1524), Act I, scene 1
On May 8, 1919, Australian journalist Edward George Honey (1885–1922) suggested, in a letter to a London newspaper, the idea of setting aside five minutes of silence to commemorate the fallen in the Great War. Using the pen name Warren Foster, Honey hoped to influence the ceremonies then in the planning for the first anniversary of the Armistice that signaled the end of the war on November 11, 1918: the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”
Just a few of the many examples reported by The Epoch Times:
Ohio. The elderly couple who paid off the mortgage on their home long ago but cannot now afford the property taxes is one reason that people are signing a statewide petition to eliminate local property taxes. It will take about 413,000 signatures, collected by a July 1, 2026 deadline, for the measure to reach the November ballot.
Florida and Texas. Legislators in Florida and Texas hope to limit the “flexibility” that local governments enjoy in how they raise revenue.
Minnesota and North Dakota. Lawmakers are pushing a cap on property tax increases tied to inflation and population growth. Voters would have to agree to any change in the cap. Recent school-board driven increases of 8 or 9 percent would be limited to 3 or 4 percent in typical scenarios.
Montana. Lawmakers want a two-percent limit on tax hikes for “local government spending but not for schools, which consume about 55 percent of property tax revenues.” A fatal flaw? Public schools are better at bloating costs than improving education.
The author observes that 46 states and D.C. already impose some sort oflimits on local property tax increases — though “their designs and restrictiveness differ widely,” adds the Tax Foundation.
Let’s improve those designs and increase the restrictiveness ASAP.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.
Polybius, The Histories, Book XVIII, Chapter 43.
On May 7, 1992, the State of Michigan ratified a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution, thereby fulfilling the terms of amending the document, adding it as the 27th Amendment.
The amendment had been written by James Madison. He had presented it as part of the original twelve amendments that became the ten making up the Bill of Rights.
It bars the U.S. Congress from giving itself a pay raise until after the next election, so that voters have a chance to decide whether those voting for the raise would remain in Congress to receive it.
To everyone . . . on the planet?
Do folks from other countries, who have come to America, legally or not, and reside in a community for 30 days, have a right to vote?
Well, they do under a crazy law in our nation’s capital. Even the ambassadors and embassy workers (and spies) that China and Russia send to represent their regimes, could, if they so desired, register and vote for the next mayor, city council-member and ballot measure in the federal capital . . . if those foreign nationals have been here (working for another country) for 30 days.
The far-left-of-sanity Democrats on the D.C. City Council passed it — without a popular vote.
At least in Los Angeles there will be a public vote — should the push by Democratic Socialists of America-backed Democrats on that City Council advance a measure to allow noncitizens in L.A., legally or not, to vote in local elections.
Citizenship seems a wiser qualifier at all levels of government.*
“Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections,” The Los Angeles Times reports. “However, states are allowed to set their own local and statewide election rules.”
Note that The Times does not inform readers that states, such as California, determine who is qualified to vote in federal elections in those states. Were California to allow noncitizens to vote in its state legislative elections — not too giant a leap from noncitizen voting in L.A. and San Francisco — those noncitizens would be legally qualified to vote for California’s representatives in Congress and the U.S. Senate.
The U.S. Constitution’s “Qualifications Clause” is clear.
This state “loophole” is something worth closing through Florida Rep. Laurel Lee’s constitutional amendment.
Locally, statewide, nationally: let the people decide.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* I serve as chairman of Americans for Citizen Voting. We have worked to pass Citizen Only Voting constitutional amendments in 15 states and to place these measures on six more state ballots this November. We now ask Congress to consider and propose a federal constitutional amendment, HJR 152, the U.S. Citizens Vote Amendment.
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Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium,
atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Publius Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae (A.D. 98), Chapter 30, conclusion.