What is the use of being elected or reelected, unless you stand for something?
Cleveland, grumbling to a friend, late in his term as 22nd President of the United States. See H. Paul Jeffers, An Honest President: The Life and Presidencies of Grover Cleveland (2000), p. 200.
“WOW, BLOOMBERG IS A TOTAL RACIST!” tweeted President Donald J. Trump.
He was reacting to a recording, recently unearthed, of Democratic presidential aspirant Michael Bloomberg speaking to the Aspen Institute in 2015 about his controversial “stop-and-frisk” police policy while mayor of New York City.
“Ninety-five percent of your murders, murderers and murder victims fit one M.O.,” Bloomberg told his audience. “You can just take the description, Xerox it and pass it out to all the cops. They are male, minorities, 16 to 25. . . . that’s where the real crime is.”
“And the way you get the guns out of the kids’ hands,” explained Mayor Mike, “is to throw them up against the wall and frisk them.”
Bloomberg has since apologized for targeting young male minorities to be regularly detained, searched, harassed and thrown into walls by police on the basis of nothing more than being young male minorities. Ultimately, a federal court struck down Bloomberg’s program as an unconstitutional mass violation of Fourth Amendment rights.
“We did it in New York, it worked incredibly well and you have to be proactive and, you know, you really help people sort of change their mind automatically,” Trump argued in 2016, floating a national roll-out and defending Bloomberg as “a very good mayor.”
Back in 2009, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Trump were together on something else: Bloomberg disregarding a campaign promise and defying two clear citywide referendums to run for a third mayor term.
“Well, I’m not a believer in term limits,” Trump said then, adding, “Michael is a friend of mine.”
Funny, asked about then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, Trump offered, “I think she’s a wonderful women,” but “she’s a little bit misunderstood.”
Not long after posting the racist-baiting tweet noted above, the president deleted it.
We understand.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On Feb. 12, 1986, Soviet human rights activist Anatoly Scharansky was released after spending eight years in Soviet prisons and labor camps. The amnesty deal was arranged at a summit meeting between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan. Scharansky had been imprisoned for his campaign to win emigration rights for Russian Jews — who had been forbidden to practice Judaism in the USSR.
On Feb. 12, 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded.
On Feb. 12, 1593, approximately 3,000 Korean defenders led by General Kwon Yul successfully repelled more than 30,000 invading Japanese forces in the Siege of Haengju.
“The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.”
Though skipping Iowa and New Hampshire, Michael Bloomberg’s advertisements are ubiquitous on television and YouTube seemingly everywhere in America.
“New Hampshire voters to Steyer: Make it stop!” reads a Politico headline sparked by that taller, poorer billionaire’s unbearable barrage of spots.
At Reason, Eric Boehm notes that Bloomberg and Tom Steyer — both very rich and both running for the Democratic nomination for the presidency — are proving that money cannot buy elections. “Given how Bloomberg and Steyer have struggled to gain traction despite their willingness to set fire to their respective campaign war chests, it’s a bit ironic to hear some of their Democratic primary opponents repeatedly bemoaning the influence of money in politics.”
But Senator Elizabeth Warren’s complaints about the two billionaires are almost certainly just playing to partisan prejudice, which has been seeded for years by the left’s relentless complaints about the Citizens United decision.
Eric Boehm argues that the reality is the opposite of the propaganda: overturning Citizens United would make it easier, not harder, for rich folks to game the system.
But in Free Speech America, the Bloomberg and Steyer advertising efforts are proving unimpressive. “While it is foolish to rule out any electoral outcome in a world where Donald Trump is president,” Mr. Boehm writes, “voters have responded to both Democratic billionaires with a resounding meh, and there seems to be little reason to think that will change next year, no matter how much money the two candidates pour into the race.”
You don’t eat spaghetti by pushing wet noodles. You gotta entice voters to slurp down your message.
Bloomberg and Steyer, the very soggiest of noodles, are living proof..
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On Feb. 11, 1990, after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela was released by South African authorities.
Mandela had joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1944, becoming deputy national president of the group in 1952. Arrested for treason in 1961, he was acquitted — but then arrested again in 1962 for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1964 on charges of sabotage. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison along with several other ANC leaders.
In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and began dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and in February 1990 ordered the release of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela subsequently led the ANC in negotiating an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. One year later, the ANC won the country’s first free elections, and Mandela was elected South Africa’s president.
There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.
Misattributed to John Adams.
But it is in the spirit of President Adams’s thought:
The consequences arising from the continual accumulation of public debts in other countries ought to admonish us to be careful to prevent their growth in our own.
John Adams, First Address to Congress (November 23, 1797).
A month ago, the U.S. drone strike against an Iranian commander in Baghdad sparked enough public concern over military conscription to overwhelm the Selective Service System’s website.
“With the ongoing military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan unlikely to end any time soon,” former Congressman Ron Paul writes, people are “right to be concerned about a return of the draft.”
“There is not going to be a draft,” SSS Director Don Benton emphatically declared. “At least, we don’t think so.”
The current context? Last February, a federal judge ruled male-only draft registration unconstitutional. On March 3, the Fifth Circuit will hear the government’s appeal of that ruling.*
A few weeks later, the National Commission on Military, National and Public Service will release their report to Congress on what to do with draft registration — jettison or keep and expand to young women — as well as the advisability of a year or two of compulsory government service after young people graduate from high school.
The issue is really very old unfinished business. “The U.S. draft proposal that no one supported,” reads the headline of a February 8, 1980, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation article on then-President Jimmy Carter’s proposal to register both men and women.
Back then, women were not permitted in combat units, and Carter’s proposal did not propose putting women into such positions. Still, as the CBC’s Washington correspondent at the time explained, “On Capitol Hill, the reaction was overwhelmingly negative.”
Especially because of a Catch-22. “Those who are for the draft are mostly against women being included,” he found. “Those who favor equal treatment for women are mostly against the draft.”
Nowadays, support for the draft is, if anything, even less enthusiastic.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* See National Organization for Men v. Selective Service System.
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The fundamental purpose of property rights, and their fundamental accomplishment, is that they eliminate destructive competition for control of economic resources. Well-defined and well-protected property rights replace competition by violence with competition by peaceful means.
Armen Alchian, “Property Rights,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics
See a recent article on Alchian by Peter J. Boettke, “Why Did Armen Alchian Have to Teach Economists About Property Rights?”
On Feb. 10, 1967, the 25th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified by Nevada, the necessary 38th state to do so. The amendment sets the process for presidential succession, and reads:
Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.