Category: folly

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crime and punishment folly too much government

Ban These Energy Bans

Colorado, Climate, energy, oil, drilling

Several bills pending in the Colorado legislature target the state’s oil industry.

State Senator Kevin Priola, responsible for two of the bills, says he’s acting to stop climate change. To prevent the mass extinction of species, he claims.

One of his proposed statutes would outlaw new oil wells in Colorado after 2030. Another bill would, among other things, outlaw fracking from May through September unless drillers use special hard-​to-​get electric equipment. The same bill would also direct an agency to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled.

Another lawmaker’s bill would make it harder to produce new wells.

Priola explains that since 50,000 wells already operate in Colorado, his legislation would not much impair production. But Dan Haley, president of Colorado Oil & Gas Association, observes that the highest production of oil wells comes in their first 18 months. Within two years of the 2030 ban, then, the state’s oil industry would sharply decline.

We’re seeing this more and more. Bans and plans to ban gas-​powered lawn mowers, gas-​powered cars, gas, coal, oil. Lawmakers working to shut down civilization. Not all at once, but via ever faster and bigger Interim Steps.

Don’t they see that they too will be harmed when things are no longer permitted to function? Do they imagine that if they achieve all their industry-​killing dreams, all the food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication will continue just as smoothly and abundantly as ever?

Don’t they think about the day after tomorrow?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly national politics & policies

Sympathetically Diminished

senile Joe Biden, memory, guilt

“I’m sympathetically diminished.”

That’s how legal analyst Jonathan Turley described President Joe Biden’s “victory lap” over news that special counsel Robert Hur would not charge Mr. Biden with felonies for his “willful” mishandling and disclosure of classified documents. 

You see, in the special counsel’s “searing” 300-​plus-​page report, one reason for not prosecuting Sleepy Joe is that investigators found our president’s “memory was significantly limited.” In interviews, Biden couldn’t “remember when his son Beau died,” CNN explained, “nor the years he was vice president.”

Sure, it’s hard to testify about past criminal willfulness if one cannot remember the past. 

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him,” the special counsel points out, “as a sympathetic, well-​meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Ah, our 81-​year-​old commander-​in-​chief! Where did I put those nuclear codes?

Mr. Biden is “someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.”

Yes, I certainly have my own misgivings about our commander’s … er, cognitive skills. How can a man incompetent to stand trial possibly be competent to preside over the federal government?

Biden’s personal attorney Bob Bauer and White House counsel Richard Sauber expressed their own doubts “that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate.”

“Appropriate”?

They claim “a lack of recall” is “a commonplace occurrence among witnesses.”

If not leaders of the free world.

Is our major party choice for president going to be between a sitting chief executive who cannot be charged for criminal conduct because he is “not all there” and one who can be and is being prosecuted, strangely disadvantaged by his pre-​octogenarian mental acuity?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture nannyism

The Wider Conversation

Richard III, acting, art, theater, wokeism, woke culture

“There can be nothing about us without us.”

That’s the clever slogan of the Disabled Artists Alliance, which last week tweeted a complaint about the casting of Richard III by Shakespeare’s Globe.

They weren’t complaining, as a naïf might suspect, about an actress playing the king.

Oh, no.

“We,” the signed letter explained, “are outraged and disappointed by the casting of a non-​physically disabled actor in this role, and the implications this has not only for disability, but the wider conversations surrounding it.”

Michelle Terry, the Globe’s current artistic director, cast herself as Richard. Daring move? An advance for her “gender”? You may find the choice forced, or kind of dumb, but on the London stage it may seem like turnabout as fair play. In Shakespeare’s own time, men and boys often portrayed women and girls on stage. So the acting profession has a long history of making do with less-​than-​convincing performers in roles. 

The Disabled Artists Alliance wants us to side with disabled actors, as a class, even if, as has been noted, past disabled players of Richard III had not suffered from the precise disability of the historic English king: scoliosis.

The idea is that a disabled actor has more relevant “lived experience” to offer to the role than a healthy actor.

Yet, that’s just one element of the character. Why not look for actors with the same moral defects? There’d be plenty.

Or choose a royal. For the relevant experience.

Isn’t Prince Harry out of work?

Next up: Flat-​earthers complain about the name of the theater wherein the scandal occurs: the Globe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom ideological culture

Comic-​Book Isms

equity, equality, communism, egalitarianism, nanny state

“This is crazy,” says Reardon Sullivan, former chairman of the Montgomery County Republican Party.

He means the way Montgomery County has been selling vendor space at a comics convention, MoComCon, being held January 20. The county is charging vendors in a way that has nothing to do with what is being sold but that county officials call “inclusive” (having learned that this adjective transmutes any evil).

If you belong to a favored group, you get a special rate. Nonindigenous straight white males pay $275 per table or, with electricity, $325. But if you’re a woman or favored minority, the price per table is $225 or $250.

Sullivan says that as a black person who grew up in Montgomery County, he finds it “truly insulting to say that a seller who’s black or BIPOC is disadvantaged. All we ever want is a level playing field.” (“BIPOC” is kitchen-​sink code for “black, indigenous, and people of color.”)

Sullivan has the right spirit but errs in suggesting that the only thing members of currently favored groups (“we”) want is a level playing field.

One can hope that this is true of most members of these groups.

But if white guilt or white male guilt were the only impetus propelling affirmative action and other forms of race-​based or sex-​based preferential treatment — if, like Sullivan, all intended beneficiaries regarded such policies as condescending, destructive lunacy — these policies would be dead and buried by now.

As they should be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom regulation

There Ought Not Be a Law

toys, gender neutral, regulations, authoritarianism

Not everything that we dislike should be illegal. Not everything that we like or want should be made mandatory. 

To most of us, this is common sense. 

We lack the totalitarian impulse.

But every day, otherwise-​inclined people, including lawmakers, notice another aspect of our lives that they decide must no longer be free. If they can’t fix our bad thinking — by sending us to reeducation camps for summary brainwashing — they can at least regiment our conduct.

The latest victims of this totalitarian impulse are owners of big stores that sell toys. Often, toys for boys are in one section, toys for girls in another. Barbie dolls are not on the same shelf as firetrucks and water pistols.

It’s a great hardship — supposedly — for a little girl who likes fire trucks or a little boy who likes Barbie dolls to cross the aisle to the opposite-​gender toy section.

Enacted in 2021 and taking effect in 2024, California’s new law says that “keeping similar items that are traditionally marketed either for girls or for boys separated makes it more difficult for the consumer to compare the product and incorrectly implies that their use by one gender is inappropriate.”

So the new law compels stores with at least 500 employees to “maintain a gender-​neutral section” that is so labeled. First violation, $250 fine. Further violations, up to $500.

There ought to be a law making such laws illegal. 

A constitution, maybe? 

Meantime, the affected stores should sue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly individual achievement

Theseus’ Ship Sure Rocked and Rolled

Ship of Theseus, identity, The Guess Who

It couldn’t have happened to a better-​named defendant.

The Guess Who, a Canadian rock band, has continued over the years from its late-​60s/​early-​70s heyday. Or hasn’t. 

Depending upon your ontology.

Yes. Theory of being.

The original band, known best for the hit “American Woman,” was originally made up of Randy Bachman, Burton Cummings, Jim Kale, and Garry Peterson, and became one of the first big Canadian exports to American and world popular music. But Bachman left in 1970, at the peak of the band’s fame — to create Bachman-​Turner Overdrive — and lead-​singer Cummings left five years later. Now these two are suing Kale and Peterson and the corporation that is the band itself.

According to The Rolling Stone, they call the “current lineup a ‘cover band’” and object to the band’s usage of photos from its classic period to, in the words of the suit, “give the false impression that Plaintiffs are performing as part of the cover band.”

Wikipedia says the band broke up in 1975, but was revived by Kale and Peterson.

Now, this is none of our business; we can hope the courts adjudicate it justly. But because it reminds us of the Ship of Theseus, discussed as a thought experiment by Plutarch and Thomas Hobbes, it’s hard to let this one go. An old ship has its planks and other parts replaced piece by piece, over time. Is the all-​new ship the same as the old? 

Obviously, Bachman and Cummings don’t like being treated as so much old lumber. Regardless, wouldn’t there be an estoppel motion, or something like that, preventing litigation over the haecceity of a band named “The Guess Who”?

These eyes expected them to share the band, if not the land.

This is Common Sense — and I’m … Guess Who.

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