Paul Jacob takes a break from a big project to bring you the truth about the news, expanding on what you have read on this website. He even offers a few pointers on how to get things done:
Author: Redactor
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Mercy Otis Warren
The rights of individuals ought to be the primary object of all government, and cannot be too securely guarded by the most explicit declarations in their favor.
Mercy Otis Warren, Observations on the New Constitution (1788).
“The Biden administration on Thursday said it would expand former President Donald Trump’s wall,” informs The Gray Lady, with a stiff upper lip.
And do it lickety-split: “Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall construction,” the UK Guardian headlines its report.
In fiscal 2023, government data shows 245,000 people entered the United States from this Rio Grande Valley sector.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated in the federal registry.
“Well, Mexico didn’t pay for the wall,” quipped the American Economic Liberties Project’s Matt Stoller, “Biden did.”
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the president had promised to the contrary during the 2020 campaign. Now Sleepy Joe’s administration has so awakened to the need for action on immigration that it argues for fencing off the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Endangered Species Act from getting in the way . . .
. . . of building that wall.
Fast!
The New York Times notes “intensifying” complaints coming from “Democratic leaders in New York, Chicago and elsewhere who say the influx is overwhelming their ability to house and feed the migrants.”
Want a nimble response to the border crisis?
Instead, we see a NIMBY response — from big-city politicians, as the buses arrive from down south.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Those animals which are incapable of making covenants with one another, to the end that they may neither inflict nor suffer harm, are without either justice or injustice. And those tribes which either could not or would not form mutual covenants to the same end are in like case.
Epicurus, Principal Doctrines (Robert Drew Hicks, trans.), no. 32.
At first blush, it seems like the most pointless political move ever.
When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) moved to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R.-Cal.) from his role as Speaker of the House, lots of eyebrows were raised, and at least one pair of lips was licked. But did it make any sense?
This has never happened before, a House Speaker ousted by his own party mid-session.
That’s not an argument against the move, though. It was Gaetz who had blocked McCarthy back in January, through more than a dozen votes, allowing the moderate Republican to serve only with explicit conditions. Gaetz now says that McCarthy has failed to meet those conditions. Arguably, that’s accountability in action. Good?
Or mere revenge? After all, McCarthy had just made a deal with a sizable number of minority Democrats to fund the government and prevent a federal shutdown — thus kicking the overspending/insolvency can down the road again. Gaetz and his closest colleagues in the House made the same deal with the opposition party, ousting McCarthy.
It’s a game of kick the can, however you look at it.
Gaetz argues that McCarthy did not do what was required to bring fiscal responsibility, such as un-package spending bills. “We told you how to use the power of the purse: individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis and,” explained Gaetz, “that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.”
But the deed is done. McCarthy’s out. Now, who to replace him?
Funny that no one mentions the wild plan to put Trump into the job — you know, the plan first floated after Election 2020?
It was such a snickered-at notion, just a goofy way of taking 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from Joe Biden.
Still, it was a plan. Only in the next few days and weeks will we learn if Gaetz really has one.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Algernon Sidney
That which is not just, is not Law; and that which is not Law, ought not to be obeyed.
Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government (1689), Ch. 3, Sect. 11.
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A Republic
On October 5, 1910, the Portuguese monarchy was overthrown and a republic declared.
The American political tradition is not communist. It is anti-totalitarian. So we don’t expect our political leaders to cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
One would never want the mayor of Podunk, let alone New York City, to attend a flag-raising ceremony to celebrate the 74th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, a brutal totalitarian dictatorship.
But that’s just what New York City Mayor Eric Adams did on October 1.
Now, Adams didn’t tell the Chinese Communist Party officials and others attending what a fan he is of the Chinese government’s wide-scale and unrelenting repression and murder, but his very presence implied acceptance of the Chinazi regime: Hey, you made it. Seventy-four years! Good for you guys.
A CCP-PRC ceremony conducted to commemorate the CCP founding of the PRC is not about being nice to Chinese people or celebrating a vague diversity. If you go there in an official capacity to glad hand Chinazi officials and wave the U.S. flag along with the Chinese flag, you are sanctioning the Chinazi regime. You’re telling everybody — everybody too busy to read news or history or investigative reports — that these rulers aren’t so bad.
“That flag is a flag of repression,” says Chinese dissident Zhou Fengsuo. “It’s the CCP flag of China. The day when they killed many of my compatriots on Tiananmen Square . . . that’s the flag they raised there to show their victory over peaceful people.”
Adams has provided another propaganda coup for the CCP, which enjoys racking them up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Adams
Metaphysicians and politicians may dispute forever, but they will never find any other moral principle or foundation of rule or obedience, than the consent of governors and governed.
John Adams, Novanglus; Or, A History Of The Dispute With America From Its Origin, In 1754, To The Present Time (Spring 1772).
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SpaceShipOne
On October 4, 2004, SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to fly into space, thereby winning the Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight.