Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power.
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Barbara Jordan
Author: Redactor
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Martha and Rose
Martha Wayles Skelton Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, was born on October 30, 1748.
On the same date in 1968, American journalist, novelist and author Rose Wilder Lane died. Lane is perhaps best known, today, for her editorial work — some say “ghost writing” — of her mother’s Little House on the Prairie books for children. Her non-fiction The Discovery of Freedom was published in 1943, the same year as a similarly themed book, The God of the Machine, was published by her friend Isabel Paterson.
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Politicians Not Voters
“Breakthrough coalition working on expanding term limits,” hollers the Lansing City Post headline.
“Michigan’s legislative leaders,” the capital-based paper informs, “are working on a term limits expansion deal for state lawmakers . . . . The conceptual plan, which won’t be finalized until December, would be that lawmakers could serve a combined 20 years in both the House and Senate before they would be broomed from office.”
Yes, you heard that correctly: the legislative bosses want a new term limits law allowing politicians to serve 20 years in a single seat.
Twenty years is no term-limit. It’s a cushy retirement plan.
In unsurprising bipartisanship, Michigan’s NPR affiliate reports that, “Senate Democratic Leader Jim Ananich (D-Flint) says lawmakers from his party could get on board.” The Democrat added, “[W]e’re not big supporters of term limits in the first place.”
The other big news is that the scheming is no longer confined to politicians and their cronies over at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce — the business lobby that for three decades has curried favor with lawmakers by conspiring to undo the state’s voter-enacted term limits. Now, also plotting behind closed doors with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Republican House Speaker Lee Chatfield is the progressive, union-funded Voters Not Politicians group.
“He and the speaker have found a willing partner in VNP,” a spokesperson for Shirkey acknowledged.
Unlike the unpopular Chamber and politicians, Voters Not Politicians sports a shred of grassroots credibility, having led a successful 2018 ballot initiative on redistricting.
But that shred will last only until Michiganders find out that Voters Not Politicians has sadly morphed into Politicians Not Voters.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Emma Goldman
To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.
Emma Goldman, My Disillusionment in Russia (1925).
On October 29, 539 BC, Cyrus the Great entered the city of Babylon as conqueror. His general policy of religious toleration would be extended to the Jews, who were not long after allowed to return to their homeland.
On the same date in 1923 AD, the Ottomon Empire’s dissolution marked the start of the Turkish Republic.
“You shouldn’t accept any money from a Super PAC,” former Vice-President Joe Biden claims he advised his presidential rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, “because [if you do] people can’t possibly trust you.”
Now it must be impossible to trust Mr. Biden.
“Joe Biden is apparently dropping his long-held opposition to the creation of an outside group,” the media tepidly informed last week, “that would supply an infusion of money to benefit his campaign.”
That is: the dreaded Super PAC.
In his 2017 book, Biden claimed he would not have accepted such “outside” support had he entered the 2016 contest — even though he “knew there was big money out there for me.”
Why not? “[I]n a system awash with money,” the former VEEP wrote, “the middle class didn’t have a fighting chance.”
What changed? Now this drowsy Democrat actually needs campaign cash!
“Biden has struggled to raise money, and last week, his campaign reported having $9 million on hand,” reports The Washington Post, “roughly a third as much as some of his top Democratic rivals.”
Necessity is the catalyst of hypocrisy?
“As president, Joe Biden will push to remove private money from our federal elections,” his campaign explained. “He will advocate for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end the era of unbridled spending by Super PACs.”
Your private money and mine has as much right to engage in federal elections as Mr. Biden does. And I’ve warned many times about the free-speech repealing amendment the doddering Democrat frontrunner is pushing.
There may be worse things than hypocrisy, but there are few things worse than opposing First Amendment rights.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thucydides
When one is deprived of one’s liberty, one is right in blaming not so much the man who puts the shackles on as the one who had the power to prevent him, but did not use it.
Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 1, 69.
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Statue of Liberty
On October 28, 1886, in New York Harbor, the Statue of Liberty was dedicated by President Grover Cleveland, despite the fact that the monument was not a federally funded project.
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‘Medicare for All’ Flaws
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Reagan and Goldwater
On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan delivered a speech on behalf of Republican candidate for president, Barry Goldwater, thereby launching Reagan’s political career. The speech came to be known as “A Time for Choosing.”