Author: Redactor

Hong Kong Help

“What can we do to help?” the woman asked after seeing the Acton Institute’s new documentary, “The Hong Konger.” The film tells the life of billionaire Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, the pro-democracy newspaper shut down by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong government.

Lai went from rags to riches in the city’s free enterprise system, but presently sits in a jail cell already convicted of a ridiculous fraud charge (for which he was sentenced to a whopping 69 months) and awaits trial for violating the totalitarian national security law that criminalizes anti-government speech.

This week, that trial was postponed until next September. A conviction could keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

What can we do?

Well, for Lai and the others: precious little, beyond prayers.

We should focus, instead, on what these freedom-fighters have done for us. Their agitation — culminating in the 2019 protests that brought millions (close to one of every three HK residents) into the streets to demand basic democracy and human rights — woke up the world to the threat posed by the Chinese regime.

Lai could have taken his wealth and left to sip Mai Tais on a sunny beach on the far side of the globe. The student leaders of the protests — the best and the brightest — likewise knew how long their odds were, how dangerous their stand.

Yet, Lai and the protesters stood up to the Chinazis anyway. Why? Because good people must stand up to evil . . . or evil wins.

We must also honor their sacrifice by preparing to protect ourselves, our freedom and all that we hold dear against this tyranny.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Matt Taibbi

The real problem Trump represented for elite America had less to do with his political beliefs than the unapproved manner of his rise.
Matt Taibbi, ”Will Twitter Become an Ocean of Suck?,” taibbi.substack.com (November 30, 2021).

Today

The Convention Parliament

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 16, 2022
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On December 16, 1689, England’s Convention Parliament began, not only transferring power from one king to another, but establishing procedures and rights.

First Amendment rights Internet controversy media and media people social media

Jack’s Right — Mostly to Blame

Post author By Redactor
Post date December 15, 2022
2 Comments on Jack’s Right — Mostly to Blame

The latest Twitter revelation has the same “feel of the truth” about it as the Elon Musk-instigated reporting of Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

What is it?

“Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has taken full responsibility for the social media platform’s many failings — admitting he ‘completely gave up’ pushing back against powerful activists in the company,” explains Lee Brown in The New York Post.

It is refreshing for someone at the commanding heights of the culture to accept blame, not spread it liberally onto others.

And to clear up loose ends of the mystery.

“The site’s former CEO took full ‘blame’ in a blog giving his ‘take’ on the ‘Twitter Files,’ which have exposed a series of extraordinary behind-the-scenes maneuvers buckling to political pressure, starting with censoring The Post’s exclusive exposes on Hunter Biden’s laptop.” Brown’s report goes on to say that Dorsey “now believes that Twitter should have stuck to three core principles, including keeping the company out of controlling posts and algorithms spreading them — and being “resilient to corporate and government control.”

Well, yes.

Dorsey was overwhelmed by a new investor bloc. “‘I planned my exit at that moment knowing I was no longer right for the company,’ he wrote of his resignation just over a year ago.”

The eagerness of the new investors and personnel to manipulate the system for their political causes — the covidian response and the Democratic Party — must have sure seemed insurmountable. And the legacy media’s full-court press, on top of fine-tuned interests of multiple agencies of the federal government, could only have made it worse.

But it’s not an excuse for cowardice, is it?

Still, it is more difficult to stand up against your side’s tyranny — especially when it’s making you rich in the process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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G.K. Chesterton

To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.
G.K. Chesterton, A Short History of England (1917).

Today

Rights, Wets, and Whites

On December 15, 1791, the United States’ Bill of Rights became federal law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

On December 15 in 1933, the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution officially became effective, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that had, by enabling the Volstead Act, prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol for any other than medical and industrial uses.

December 15 birthdays include that of Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad [pictured above], 1861, first Head of State of independent Finland, serving in this capacity first as leader of the Senate and then as Protector, or Regent. In 1930 he became Prime Minister, and in 1931 was elected President, leaving office in 1937.

During the Civil War of 1918, his anti-socialist refugee government, Valkoiset, or “Whites,” opposed the “Reds,” a Social Democrat Party faction, for control of the government as it transitioned from Russian rule as a Grand Duchy, to independent status.

He died in 1944.

free trade & free markets property rights too much government

First, Stop Doing That

If a government’s taxes and regulations are making shelter ever more expensive, what should that government do instead?

Stop pushing the disastrous policies, perhaps?

Unlike some other governors who shall remain nameless (one of them rhymes with “DeSantis”), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin understands that you don’t make things better by making them worse.

In August, Youngkin bluntly told a state senate committee that Virginia homes are too expensive and that a major cause is government interference with the market: “unnecessary regulations, over-burdensome and inefficient local governments, restrictive zoning policies, and an ideology of fighting tooth and nail against any new development.”

The many bottlenecks include low-density zoning rules that permit only a single house per property. Arlington County, Virginia, is one local government working to reform zoning so that more houses can be built on a property.

In November, Youngkin proposed a Make Virginia Home plan to unravel many regulations. City Journal notes that although the plan is “short on details,” it’s a good start.

Under the governor’s plan, the state would streamline environmental reviews, investigate how to liberalize the state’s building codes and land-use and zoning laws, impose deadlines on local governments to speed up approvals of development, and give local governments incentives to adopt their own market-liberating reforms.

This agenda is indeed only a beginning. But it does recognize a major cause of sky-rocketing housing costs and what must be done to begin to reduce those costs.

That’s just Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Matt Taibbi

Rather than it being speculative, now, we now know that the government is in the business of mass censoring, essentially.
Matt Taibbi on Glenn Greenwald’s System Update, on Rumble (December 13, 2022).

crime and punishment free trade & free markets too much government

“m” Is for “Misnamed”

What does Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s administration — more specifically, the state’s misnamed Department of Economic Opportunity (mDEO) — think it’s doing?

The town of Gainesville, Florida, has liberalized its zoning laws to legalize the construction of certain small apartment buildings.

Who knew that building any housing on property owned by developers or by persons letting developers build on their property was illegal to begin with? But better late than never, Gainesville.

Not so fast! says the reputedly pro-free-market but apparently also pro-central-planning DeSantis administration.

According to an mDEO lawsuit, it’s illogical “for the City to argue that by entirely removing the concept of lower density detached residential dwellings…it is doing anything more than helping provide housing to college students and higher income residents.”

Huh? Providing housing only for people who will use that housing! Via various voluntary market transactions!! Is there no end to human deviltry?

Of course, as Reason writer Christian Britschgi points out, increasing the supply of housing units of any type will tend to reduce the demand for all already-existing housing, lowering the rents of units, including low-end units, that developers may not be building at the moment.

I guess the folks at the mDEO aren’t especially ardent fans of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson.

And anyway, what about the inalienable right of anybody of any income level to make market arrangements to shelter themselves from the elements?

In the last few years, DeSantis has gained a good reputation, daring to resist the Big Government mob. Now he needs to resist that mob in his own administration.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

G.K. Chesterton

Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.
G.K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News (October 23, 1909).