Individualism . . . means neither egotism nor isolation. It means voluntary beneficence and public spirit, as against all attempts to enforce these by penal laws. It means voluntary cooperation as contrasted with the forced cooperation of the State.
On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.
Not “desperate” to lower gas prices, mind you — which have hit $5 a gallon, a double-digit increase from last month — but to “address” the resulting “voter frustration” from high prices.
After all, there’s an election in November. Suddenly, this crisis could affect important people in Washington!
“Biden officials are taking a second look at whether the federal government could send rebate cards out to millions of American drivers to help them pay at gas stations,” The Post reports. This generous brainstorm was previously rejected because “shortages in the U.S. chip industry would make it hard to produce enough rebate cards.”
America 2022 isn’t even technologically capable of giving money away.
Administration experts also worried “the idea could backfire by further pushing up prices by adding to consumer demand.” Oh, didn’t Congress repeal the laws of supply and demand?
Someone “familiar with internal administration discussions” offered that the administration was looking at “telling governors to lower or waive their gas taxes.”
“Other proposals floated by policy experts include suspending the Jones Act,” notes The Post story, “which would reduce shipping costs and make it cheaper to get gasoline from the Gulf Coast to the Eastern Seaboard.”
That act should have been repealed years ago.
“They’re fighting about narrative rather than fighting about substance,” offered an unnamed outside economic adviser, “because realistically, what are they going to do?”
They could open up energy markets, of course — approve gas pipelines rather than blocking them, perhaps.
Could? Should? Yes. Will?
Not Biden!
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.
On the 20th of June in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Oliver Ellsworth moved to confine legislative powers to two distinct branches, and to strike the word “national” from the document. Edmund Randolph of Virginia had previously moved successfully to call the government the National Government of United States. Ellsworth moved that the government should continue to be called the United States of America.
The final wording eventually became “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.”
And, yes, the word “national” does not occur anywhere in the Constitution.
John F. Kennedy authored the Encyclopædia Britannica’s article on Ellsworth. This was Kennedy’s only contribution to the encyclopedia.
Paul Jacob makes the case for a smart electorate, and — just for Father’s Day? — talks about his mother:
Socialism is essentially inimical to family life, which it regards as a bourgeois institution — to use its own favorite anathema. Socialism would make motherhood a State business or profession, would pay women for this sexual function, and deprive fathers of all status or recognition.
Joseph Hiam Levy, The Outcome of Individualism, Third Edition (1892).
“Juneteenth” (a portmanteau of June and nineteenth) also known as Freedom Day, Jubilee Day, Liberation Day and Emancipation Day, is a holiday celebrating the emancipation of those held as chattel slaves in the United States. Originating in Galveston, Texas, it has been celebrated annually on June 19 throughout the United States, and on June 17, 2021, it was made into an official national holiday when President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law. It is commemorated on the anniversary date of the June 19, 1865, announcement of General Order No. 3 by Union Army general Gordon Granger, proclaiming freedom from slavery in Texas.
In June, 1941, Czech economist and politician Václav Klaus was born on the 19th (he died in 2011); other June 19 births include Salman Rushdie in 1947, Kathleen Turner in 1954, and Laura Ingraham in 1964.
Our politicians, they lie to us. But Paul Jacob has noticed something: the people are catching on!
“Right now, there is agreement, sort of, on both sides, or maybe even all sides, that . . . people are successful now not because they’re good, but because the system is rigged. . . .
“The difference is that the Left looks at a rigged system and says we need a bigger system.”
Andy Levy, February 20, 2016.