March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.
On the same date in 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful and the threatened coup d’état never took place.
[T]here are men who look upon social revolution as a kind of fairyland.
Yves Guyot, The Tyranny of Socialism, 1894
While one segment of the voting public regards President Donald Trump as a heaven-sent savior, a louder mob treats Trump as the Beast, a veritable Anti-Obama.
I am in neither tribe.
To me, Mr. Trump must be judged on what he does. Nominating Neil Gorsuch? A-plus. But The Donald has also reneged on a number of important campaign promises, not the least being his pledge to “eliminate the national debt in eight years.”
Sure, it was never quite believable. But is this administration even making progress?
If all goes according to the new plan, “the country would run a deficit of $631 billion in 2025,” writes Eric Boehm. That is not much of an improvement over Barack Obama’s final-year deficit of $666 billion.
Boehm’s Reason article is titled “Trump’s Budget Would Add $7.9 Trillion to the National Debt Over the Next Decade,” which gives a serious picture of Trump’s under-performance.
Now, you could react to the news and just say “less than $8 trillion — could be worse!”
But by accepting such a high number, we set the bar awfully low. It just isn’t serious.
And speaking of frivolity, it is “hard to take the president’s calls for belt-tightening seriously,” Boehm writes, “when the cuts only apply to some parts of the federal budget.”
You can guess which part of government is being given a free pass. Trump’s team is attempting to hide something: “spending increases for the Pentagon.”
Now, if American foreign policy were not the incoherent mess it is, we might make excuses.
But it is.
Serious Americans would exempt no part of the budget from intense scrutiny.
And real cuts.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, ending the long practice of bimetallism by placing the United States Treasury — and banking and currency — on the gold standard.
A journey of a thousand leagues starts with a single step.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Ch. 64, line 12
Simple pleasures are the best. So are simple questions.
Senate Bill 2306 in North Dakota “would make it easier for spouses of military personnel to transfer their existing occupational licenses for use in North Dakota, provided they are in good standing and licensed by a reasonable entity,” explains Rob Port at his SayAnythingBlog.
Occupational licensing has exploded, covering a mere 4-5 percent of occupations 60 years ago, but nearly 30 percent today. That’s a serious hurdle for folks trying to break into the marketplace.
Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, economist Daniel Mitchell calls licensing a “win-win” for politicians and interest groups that “get to impose barriers that limit competition.”
Not winning? Taxpayers and consumers, says Mitchell. “Or a poor person who wants to get a job.”
An Institute for Justice report released last November concluded that “licensing costs the American economy $197.3 billion” annually by “preventing people from working in the occupations for which they are best suited” and “forcing people to fulfill burdensome licensing requirements that do not raise quality.” Meanwhile, the health and safety benefits attributable to this licensing labyrinth seem scant.
A recent Grand Forks Herald editorial endorsing SB-2306 pointed to the state’s “more than 13,000 unfilled jobs, many of which require licensing,” arguing that “[o]ften, trailing military spouses are qualified to fill those openings, but because of the existing licensing process they are not able to immediately work.”
“[W]hy not make this sort of license reciprocity good for everyone moving into our state?” Mr. Port adroitly inquired.
Yes, Big Government: Tear down these barriers!
For all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad. His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.
Denis Diderot, “Refutation of Helvétius” (1773-76, published 1875)
On March 13, 1862, the U.S. federal government forbade all Union army officers from returning fugitive slaves, thus effectively annulling the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and setting the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation.
British freedom is eroding. The attack comes from two directions.
First, there is the over-bearing police-state style, surveillance-everywhere government.
Second, there is the increasing violence.
Thing is, the justification for Britain’s mass surveillance, as well as for strict gun controls, was to prevent crime.
Oops.
So of course the Labour Party “shadow home secretary” Diane Abbott points an accusatory finger at porn and video games. These two influences may be “desensitising young people to vicious behaviour.”
Well, porn and video games are changing our cultures, on both sides of the pond. But in America, at least, the crime rate for the past two decades plumetted while video games and Internet porn have become ubiquitous, explicit and . . . admittedly, appalling.
Look elsewhere for the crime uptick.
The Brexit fiasco, with the Tory government messing up implementation of the 2016 referendum results, has surely increased, not decreased, tensions all around, as has immigration policy, the collapsing National Health system, and much more. But worst of all? The nanny state, treating citizens as childish subjects. The police arrest people for nothing more than saying mean or just edgy things online.
If people cannot be free legally, they will take license — illegally.
Previously, we heard about a rash of acid attacks: acid thrown in the faces of pedestrians. More recently, the headlines are about stabbings — after years of knife control, of government crackdowns on even kitchen knives.
Ms. Abbott places the primary blame for rising crime not on the above, however, but on poverty and malfunctioning education. Not mentioned? The possibility that taking away British citizens’ rights of self-defense may have the perverse (unintended?) consequence of increasing offensive violence.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On March 12, 2009, financier Bernard Madoff pled guilty to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in U. S. history. One year earlier to the day, in the same city, New York, the state’s governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned a mere two days after reports had surfaced that he was listed as a client in a high-end escort/call-girl prostitution ring.