We can only choose between two kinds of life, the active and the contemplative.
Étienne Gilson, Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (1919; 1965), Introduction.
Author: Redactor
Categories
Ecuador, A.D. 1809
On August 10, 1809, Ecuadorians attempted independence from Spain with the Declaration of Independence of Quito, but failed with the execution of all the conspirators a few days less than a year later.
Independence was finally achieved in 1822.
The ongoing unraveling of fraud in the federal government’s welfare system, particularly involving medical subsidies, has gotten politically even more interesting. The egregious Ilhan Omar, Somalian America-hater and U.S. Representative from Minnesota, is now implicated.
Well, at least one member of her family is under investigation.
In Kevin Haggerty’s “Minnesota fraud scandal hits close to home for Ilhan Omar after probe implicates sister,” we learn that the “Squad member has herself been dodging probes related to billions of dollars in fraud in her adopted home state, especially involving her own Somali community. Now, public records have raised serious questions about Omar’s sister, Sahra Noor, and her link to an address shared by at least three Feeding Our Future convicts.
“It was at that Hyacinth Ave. address the incorporation records detailed, ‘Afraa opened a company called Sunrise Business Center, Inc. alongside Hanna Marekegn. Marekegn is directly involved in the fraud scandal, pleading guilty in 2022 to wire fraud for stealing $7 million. Marekegn claimed to be feeding 4,000 poor children a day. Instead she bought a mansion for herself, claiming she embodied the “American Dream.” Marekegn testified under oath that she falsely alleged racism to manipulate Minnesota bureaucrats to look the other way at red flags.’”
According to Benny Johnson, on X, “BREAKING: Ilhan Omar’s SISTER Has Been Linked to The ‘Feeding Our Future’ Fraud Scandal
Sahra Noor runs a business that received a $2 million earmark while her sister, Ilhan, was a state representative and she founded a USAID-backed consulting group that “has secured more than $20 million in funding for health initiatives”
Her company was registered at the same address used by key figures charged in the scheme.
70 have been convicted in the scandal.
This story, though not exactly new, has not become well known. It turns out that the Somali subsidy scam culture is a much bigger story than is widely recognized. For partisan reasons, no doubt, major news media outlets have not made much of it.
As is becoming clear, in this story and others, fear of being accused of racism is a good cover for all sorts of crimes and sins, not least of which is massive fraud.
Knowledge is indivisible. When people grow wise in one direction, they are sure to make it easier for themselves to grow wise in other directions as well. On the other hand, when they split up knowledge, concentrate on their own field, and scorn and ignore other fields, they grow less wise — even in their own field.
Isaac Asimov, The Roving Mind (1983), Chapter 25.
Categories
Gandhi & Yeltsin
On August 9, 1942, British forces arrested Mahatma Gandhi in Bombay, spurring the Quit India Movement into nationwide action.
In 1999 on this 221st day of the year, Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired his Prime Minister, Sergei Stepashin, and his entire cabinet.
Categories
How Socialism Works
The rise of “democratic socialism” in these United States has been of some concern here at ThisIsCommonSense.org. But it is not just in New York where this is happening. In Washington State, the socialists are on a legislative march, aiming to hobble markets with the ostensible goal of helping low-wage workers — but as noted by Paul Jacob last month, things are not going well.
That is, workers are taking the hit.
In addition to minimum wage hikes, there has been the imposition of a seemingly unconstitutional (or somewhat disguised) income tax.
Washington’s constitution, amended in 1930, requires that property be taxed uniformly and at no more than 1 percent of value. In 1933’s Culliton v. Chase, the Washington Supreme Court held that “income is property” under this provision — meaning any income tax is treated as a property tax and must be flat (uniform rate), not graduated. This effectively made a progressive income tax unconstitutional.
So a legislature-introduced graduated income tax has long been considered unconstitutional. Even when 70 percent of voters approved one in a 1932 referendum, the court struck it down in 1933.
The Democrats’ first major crack at the barrier was a 7 percent capital gains tax on profits over $262,000 (later indexed), enacted in 2021. Critics argued it was just an income tax by another name. But in March 2023, the Washington Supreme Court upheld it 7–2, ruling it was an excise tax (a tax on the transaction of selling), not a property tax. This opened a narrow door: certain taxes on income could survive if framed as excise taxes.
On March 30, 2026, Governor Bob Ferguson signed into law a 9.9 percent personal income tax on household earnings above $1 million per year. Since it leaves the first $1 million untouched, only earnings beyond that threshold would be taxed. Projected to raise over $3 billion annually, it is set to take effect January 1, 2028, first payments due in 2029.
Democrats argue that the 2023 capital gains ruling shows the current state Supreme Court is willing to revisit — and potentially overturn — the 1933 Culliton precedent. Their hope? The court will either distinguish the millionaires’ tax as an excise tax (like the capital gains tax) or simply overturn Culliton outright and allow a graduated income tax.
A lawsuit was filed almost immediately after the law was signed, led by former state Attorney General Rob McKenna, arguing the tax “flies in the face of the constitution, of precedent and of voter will.” Opponents also point out that Washington voters have repeatedly rejected income tax ballot measures.
Constitutional or not, the predictable capital flight is now well under way:
Washington’s anti-wealth, anti-capitalist resurgence is almost certainly going to receive further coverage in these pages. Just as it continues to destroy the prosperity of the state’s citizens. Socialism is a destroyer. It doesn’t work doing anything else.
Philosophy always buries its undertakers.
Étienne Gilson, The Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937), p. 306.
Francis Hutcheson, philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great influence on David Hume and Adam Smith, was born in Ireland on August 8, 1694. He died on his birthday in 1746.
Senator Rand Paul “has it in” for Fauci — said Dr. Anthony Fauci at last week’s Senate hearing.
The former director of the NIAID and former Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden made it sound like the Kentucky senator was trying to put him in prison. But what Dr. Paul asked of Dr. Fauci was an apology — not jail-time.
Why, though?
“If we don’t want this to happen again, him acknowledging that he was wrong to fund this research will be a word of caution and warning to the next generation of people to come through,” the senator told Mark Halperin. “And the debate will have ultimately been won on ‘gain of function.’
“The danger of it.”
The point, Rand Paul says, is to stop the madness of this type of research.
Earlier in the interview he had noted that scientists had warned that the results at the Wuhan Institute of Virology should not be published. It would be a blueprint, or recipe, for a never-ending biological warfare by terrorists.
The whole interview is worth listening to. Mark Halperin does what so few journalists do when confronting a contentious issue: formulate each question in epistemically sound terms, for clarity. “Is that an established fact in your mind, or do you need to know more?”
Here are some responses from Sen. Paul:
- Fauci was a long-time supporter and financer of gain-of-function research: fact.
- Fauci “was aware that they [the Wuhan researchers] were doing gain-of-function research” but Fauci would quibble over semantics, about the exactitudes of what qualifies as such: fact. (Fauci’s being evasive.)
- Fauci funded that research: “without question” a fact.
- Fauci lied about the wet market origin theory: fact.
There’s more. Let’s praise a journalist for asking clear questions and a politician for giving clear answers.
Especially about the coronavirus origin.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Illustration created with Nano Banana
See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts
It is worthwhile to remark that a product is no sooner created than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. When the producer has put the finishing hand to his product, he is most anxious to sell it immediately, lest its value should diminish in his hands. Nor is he less anxious to dispose of the money he may get for it; for the value of money is also perishable. But the only way of getting rid of money is in the purchase of some product or other. Thus the mere circumstance of creation of one product immediately opens a vent for other products.
Jean-Baptiste Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (1834, sixth American ed.), pp. 138–139.