On March 28, 1936, Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa was born. This recipient of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature ran, in 1990, for the presidency of Peru, but lost to Alberto Fujimori. His novels include La casa verde (The Green House), La guerra del fin del mundo (The War of the End of the World), La fiesta del chivo (The Feast of the Goat), and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which was filmed as Tune in Tomorrow.
It looks like an accident, and accidents happen, sometimes horrific ones. There’s a reason “thoughts and prayers” are mentioned at such times, all other talk seeming vastly inappropriate.
Nevertheless, President Joe Biden immediately promised that the federal government would pay to replace the bridge.
Eleven days earlier a more humdrum disaster gave us greater license to speculate. “Thousands of panels on a solar farm southwest of Houston, Texas, were damaged by a powerful hailstorm on March 15,” a Newsweek report informs us. “Aerial footage showed rows of cracked photovoltaic cells at the Fighting Jays Solar Farm near Needville in Fort Bend County. . . .” A vast array of solar panels, ruined by something not unheard-of in Texas: “baseball-sized hail stones” falling from the sky.
And seeping out of the panels? Toxic chemicals.
This is something that we, the voting public, must confront: the fact that most “green energy” replacements are fragile and often environmentally hazardous. Compared to natural gas they are ecological disasters.
While Joe Biden yammers about funding a new bridge, we need to force a more important conversation, about removing subsidies for pseudo-green alternative energy sources.
To save us from the poorhouse as well as from environmental disaster.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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“A suspicion of mine is that there are too many preachy females —
“‘Don’t drink beer. Don’t watch football. Don’t eat hamburgers. This is not good for you.’ The message is too feminine: ‘Everything you’re doing is destroying the planet. You’ve got to eat your peas.’”
Democratic Party strategist James Carville, explaining to the New York Times why the Democratic Party is losing the male African-American vote.
On March 27, 1901, American illustrator Carl Barks was born. After much struggles as an artist, he found a place within the Disney empire, creating the Donald Duck comic books and characters such as Scrooge McDuck. But he worked anonymously for most his career, with fans dubbing him The Duck Man and The Good Duck Artist before his identity was discovered.
He died in 2001.
Barrios, the president of D.C. Latino Caucus, was reacting to a federal judge’s ruling to toss out the legal challenge, brought by several city voters, to the D.C. Noncitizen Voting Act.
That underlying law, passed by the DC City Council in 2022, certainly puts the “more” into democracy, allowing anyone residing in our nation’s capital for 30 days, even if in the country illegally, to legally vote for mayor, city council and local ballot measures.
And I do mean “anyone.” China’s ambassador to the U.S. and other Chinese nationals working at their embassy are today eligible voters in Washington. Same for the FSB agents and other Russian nationals working out of their embassy.
Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson dismissed the lawsuit on the grounds that plaintiffs “were simply raising a generalized grievance.” She elaborated: “They may object as a matter of policy to the fact that immigrants get to vote at all, but their votes will not receive less weight or be treated differently than noncitizens’ votes.”
I object to her poor choice of terms. “Immigrants” have been voting in this country for the last century and hopefully always will: By becoming citizens.
The judge’s ruling also highlights that who votes is a pretty fundamental constitutional question, one that voters should decide.
Yesterday, Idaho’s legislature voted to place a Citizen Only Voting Amendment on this November’s ballot — joining Wisconsin, Iowa, and Kentucky, which have similar amendments on the ballot.
Certainly, yes, bestowing the vote on foreign citizens residing in the city for 30 days is an expansion of democracy. But sometimes more is less.
So, let’s ask voters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A period of about twelve years measured the beat of the pendulum. After the Declaration of Independence, twelve years had been needed to create an efficient Constitution; another twelve years of energy brought a reaction against the government then created; a third period of twelve years was ending in a sweep toward still greater energy; and already a child could calculate the result of a few more such returns.
Henry Adams, A History of the United States of America During the First Administration of James Madison(1890), Vol. II, Ch. VI: Meeting of the Twelfth Congress; 1921 edition, p. 123.
On March 26, 1991, local self-government in South Korea was restored after three decades of centralized control.
As does the administration’s ramped-up
The federal government has now attacked Apple. On anti-trust grounds. For being a monopoly.
The humor in this was noted by anti-intellectual property theorist Stephan Kinsella, tweeting on X: “‘U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly’ We grant you patent and copyright monopoly privileges and you use them to build up a monopoly? How dare you!”
Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute was less amused, and less concerned with Apple’s reliance upon intellectual property, which he claims is secondary to the company’s useful products: “The very notion that the government is trying to protect consumers in this case is preposterous. Apple is a success not because they are exploitative but because they make products that users like, and they like them so much that they buy
At issue is how Apple products work so well together but not so well with other manufacturers’ products. “The Justice Department calls this anticompetitive even though competing is exactly the source of Apple’s market strength,” insists Tucker.
Maybe it’s really about this principle: the government giveth; the government taketh away: blessed be the name of the Biden.
In full disclosure, I have an iPhone, which I hate, and a Microsoft Surface Book, which I also hate. I’m open to any of their competitors, which I might hate less.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.
H. L. Mencken, Damn! A Book of Calumny (1918), p. 40.
On March 25, 1965, civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., successfully completed their four-day, 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.