Paul’s discussion of Hillary Clinton’s ‘Russian Asset’ charge against Tulsi Gabbard expanded to include one of the most important fixes for our broken democracy:
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The Redistricting Solution
Author: Redactor
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Herbert Spencer
Perhaps the soul of goodness in things evil is by nothing better exemplified than by the good thing, justice, which, in rudimentary form, exists within the evil thing revenge.
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Continental Congress
On October 26, 1774, the first Continental Congress adjourned in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Exactly one year later, King George III of Great Britain went before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion. And one year later yet, to the day, in 1776, septuagenerian Benjamin Franklin (pictured, above) departed from America for France, seeking financial support for the American Revolution.
Even people who get their information only from major network news know that, in their mad rush to promise free health care, Democratic presidential hopefuls would raise taxes for nearly everybody including the “hard-working middle class.”
How do they know?
Because at least one of the eager promisers won’t give a straight answer.
Her name is Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Like Bernie Sanders (but not Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden) she is offering “Medicare for All,” which Fox’s Tucker Carlson calls straight-up socialism.*
George Stephanopoulos, Chris Matthews, and “other strident Democratic partisans” have been pressing her on the tax hike issue, and at the recent, fourth national primary debate, Warren continued to evade. Even Sleepy Joe knows that universal single-payer health care spending would require more taxes than can be squeezed out of the very rich and the big corporations (which Warren, Sanders, and other Democrats incessantly push). But Warren just will not say the words: yes, your taxes will go up. She continually feints to her follow-up argument, that since overall health care costs would [according to plan] go down, we would all come out ahead.
Tucker Carlson, citing an Urban Institute study, gives the answer the democratic socialists won’t: their promise would require spending 3.4 trillion tax dollars per year — $10 grand per person per year, including every child, retiree, and prison inmate.** Warren expects us to repress our common sense and believe that cramming all health care spending through the federal government will increase efficiency.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar has the right word for Medicare for All: utopian.
Noting that Obamacare failed to live up to its promises, Azar predicts the ultimate result, “Medicare for None.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* And not altogether implausibly, since medicine is a fifth of the American economy and (presumably) since socialism is an economy run by government.
** Tucker’s list.
Illustration from a photo by Gage Skidmore
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Max Stirner
On October 25, 1806, the German philosopher Max Stirner was born. Stirner was known for his radical individualism, which under the name of “egoism” became culturally chic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to Der Einzige und sein Eigentum, a major work that was famously attacked by Karl Marx, he translated Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and J.-B. Say’s A Treatise on Political Economy into German.
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William Graham Sumner
If I want to be free from any other man’s dictation, I must understand that I can have no other man under my control.
William Graham Sumner, “The Forgotten Man” (1883).
Civil asset forfeiture is one of those government practices that good people, when informed of it, often express, at first, incredulity. How can something like that exist in these United States?!?
Good question.
One reason seems to be that very incredulity. Normal Americans trust their government not to be evil. When shown that it regularly engages in actual highway robbery, then denial — ‘this cannot be happening.’
But it is.
Another reason it exists? It is so profitable.
For those in government, anyway. They get to fill their department coffers without having to ask for tax hikes. They — and by ‘they’ I mean ‘the police’ and government attorneys at state and local levels — just take the wealth.
Indeed, police routinely “keep whatever they can grab off anybody they arrest, claiming it’s all proceeds or property connected to criminal activities,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason, “and using it to line their own pockets. This incentivizes police to look for people who have assets that can be seized.”
In South Carolina, Shackford reports, police agencies “across the state had seized more than $17 million in assets across three years. In one-fifth of the cases, nobody was charged or even arrested for a crime.”
Fortunately, there is good news. “Circuit Judge Steven H. John has ruled that the South Carolina’s civil asset forfeiture regulations violate the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights of the citizens.”
Unfortunately, the fight against this evil practice is far from over.
But maybe the judge’s ruling will inspire citizens to petition their government and place politicians’ greed into check.
And might not this judge inspire other judges around the country?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Thirty Years’ End
On October 24, 1648, the Peace of Westphalia was signed, marking the end of the Thirty Years’ War.
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Rose Wilder Lane
The need for Government is the need for force; where force is unnecessary, there is no need for Government.
Our Constitution guarantees that each state of the union provide a republican form of government.
Does that mean that all that is prohibited is . . . monarchy?
No.
One very common form of modern governance is deeply anti-republican, requiring — at the very least — strict regulation to prevent it from usurping our form of government. And what is this dangerous variety? The kind an economist defined centuries ago: “We have an illness in France which bids fair to play havoc with us; this illness is called bureaumania.” He called it “government by desk,” or, “bureaucratie.”
Yes, bureaucracy.
You might think I’m about to launch into another attack upon the Deep State, perhaps in relation to the ongoing coup-by-desk of the Trump Presidency.
But no. Let us turn to the other Washington, the one with the capital named Olympia.
In that hotbed of politics-as-usual, the city government printed out and mailed — on the public dime — a pamphlet entreating voters to vote against I-976, a state-wide initiative that had been advanced onto the ballot by Tim Eyman* and hundreds of thousands of voter signatures.
Even if it had been a broadside for the initiative this would have been very, very bad.
In republics, those who inhabit public desks must not be allowed to hijack election campaigns from those who are, ultimately, in charge: the citizens.
And in Washington State by law: RCW 42.17A.555 broadly and strictly prohibits using public resources for campaigning.
Apparently, public servants in the Evergreen State (as elsewhere) do not see that they themselves can corrupt our form of government.
Which makes this government-printed pamphlet a very serious breach of law indeed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* You may remember me talking about Eyman before — often. I have called him the most effective limited-government activist in these United States. And it is from Eyman himself that I learned of this story.
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