In these troubled, uncertain times, we don’t need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone’s intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.
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Margaret J. Wheatley
Author: Redactor
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Abusing Kids to Save the Climate?
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Emancipation proclaimed
On September 22, 1862, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned, and the subsequent order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control.
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Reining in Big Government
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Santa Claus
On September 21, 1897, the “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” editorial was published in the New York Sun. Note how long before Christmas this is. The Christmas season has long been a long affair.
I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?
On Wednesday, the 16-year-old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement.
She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”
You know, for “real action.”
It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”
And then the non-scientist spoke . . . not very expansively.
Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.
Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing . . . exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On September 20, 480 BC, Greeks defeated Persian forces in the battle of Salamis.
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H. L. Mencken
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
Does the Federal Bureau of Investigation have a file on you?
Does it — or some other agency — have an active file on you?
If so, does it have good reason for such an investigation?
Well, refine that last question a bit: does the FBI have a good reason under the principles of a democratic republic, abiding by the limits set by the rights listed (and not listed) in the Constitution?
Eight years ago, the folks at AntiWar.com learned that they had been subject to FISA snooping and multiple “threat assessment” memos of the FBI. Eric Garris, founder, managing editor, and webmaster of the anti-war site sued, under the Freedom of Information Act, for discovery, and, under the 1974 Privacy Act, to have the memos expunged. On September 11, the court instructed the bureau to expunge one of them, mainly because no crime was under investigation.
You can read a good account of the story at The American Conservative, by Kelly Beaucar Vlahos. It is not a simple story. But the gist is that a journalistic enterprise was targeted for a spy operation because the American Deep State disagreed with — or just plain feared — the journalists’ policy of opposing never-ending war.
Never-ending war being, of course, the health of the ever-expanding state.
This may not unreasonably remind you of the Obama Era suppression of Tea Party activism via the Internal Revenue Service’s discriminatory doling out 501(c)3 statuses. But the FBI is even more ominous, as Angela Keaton, Director of Operations, acknowledged: “donors became scared.”
That is all the evidence we need to recognize how dangerous Deep State spying can be to the freedoms — political and personal — of Americans.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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First U.S. budget
On September 19, 1778, the Continental Congress passed the first budget of the United States.
Congress last passed a budget in 1997.