We have nothing to fear from BIG GOVERNMENT!
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Category: folly
Let’s talk Turkey. Not the bird, the country. America has fallen behind in yet another category: preposterous promises by politicians.
It’s becoming clear that Bernie Sanders, Vermont’s independent “democratic socialist” U.S. Senator and now Democratic Party presidential contender, is a piker, a penny pincher, a cheapskate, a tightwad, a Scrooge. At least, by comparison.
It’s one thing to promise free stuff — say, zero-priced college for everyone! — but is the generous senator willing to give entrepreneurs $100,000 to start a business?
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu is.
Well, 100,000 Liras anyway.
In the run-up to Sunday’s Turkish election, the fearless leader of the Justice and Development Party announced his plan to subsidize new businesses.
And so much more. And why not? “Once you have a job, salary and food. What is left?” Davutoğlu rhetorically asked last week, answering, “A wife.” He told male citizens: “first consult your parents and, God willing, they will find you a suitable one. If they don’t, you can come to us.”
Meanwhile, no U.S. candidate proposes any government support whatsoever for men seeking wives. Or women seeking husbands … or wives. Or men seeking husbands. Etcetera.
No dating subsidy, either, or help with high wedding costs — not even a Costanza regulation to protect brides from the dangers of deadly wedding invitation envelopes.
Of course, government big enough to give folks everything they desire is also big enough to take everything — including free speech — away. This week, Turkish police stormed two “opposition” TV stations taking them off the air days before the vote.
That could never happen here, though … could it?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Government is so corrupt that its power to intervene in the market can be bought and sold by the rich…
…Therefore government should be bigger and more powerful.
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The experiment in legalized marijuana begun by citizens in the states of Washington and Colorado has, from the beginning, faced a huge obstacle: marijuana is still illegal, federally. State nullification of federal law is not merely “problematic,” it’s hard to “get away with.”
Take Colorado’s experience. The Centennial State, which has made the swiftest and most extensive progress regarding marijuana retail sales, has come up to an inevitable problem with the federal government.
Over banking.
Interesting Reason reporting tells us that “Marijuana-related businesses in Colorado are so profitable that the government doesn’t know what to do with all of the tax revenue they’re generating. But business owners face a more immediate problem: Where to stash their own profits when banks won’t take it.”
Congress has been very active making banking less and less private and less and less free for decades now, in part because of the War on Drugs. Existing banks refused to take new cannabis clients.
So a new credit union was formed, to handle the cash.
And now, NBC News tells us, our central bank, the Federal Reserve (dubbed by NBC “the guardian of the U.S. banking system”), said “that it doesn’t intend to accept a penny connected to the sale of pot because the drug remains illegal under federal law.” Which makes modern banking difficult, even for a credit union, apparently.
What are “weed” businesses to do … other than what they are doing, hiring security guards for all the cash?
Maybe Bitcoin will step in. Or old gold-warehouse banking, as was not unheard of even in the 19th century.
Or, maybe, the federal government will cease its over-reach?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In the words of Yogi Berra, the recently deceased baseball great: “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
We’ve followed the incredible case of Dr. Annette Bosworth extensively this year. She was convicted of twelve felony counts of petition fraud for circulating petitions that were signed at her medical office by patients (and her sister), while the doctor was in the Philippines on a medical mercy mission.
I don’t defend Dr. Bosworth signing that affidavit, stating that she witnessed those signatures, but I also don’t see criminal intent. Her attorney advised her it was lawful and all the signers were legitimate voters who truly wanted her to run for the U.S. Senate. Talking about felony fraud in such a case seriously misses the forest for the trees.
Bosworth wasn’t sentenced to prison time, thankfully.
But she lost her medical license.
Let’s hold people accountable, but not with an over-the-top vengeance likely to scare the average citizen away from political participation altogether. That’s been my message to South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley.
What about déjà vu?
Today, in a Pierre courtroom, Annette’s husband, Chad Haber, will be arraigned on felony charges for signing as the circulator on a petition with two signatures affixed when he was with his wife on that medical trip.
AG Jackley loudly proclaims that this is not his indictment; it was filed by a county prosecutor. But anyone who didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday knows how these things tend to work.
Haber challenged Jackley last election and the feud is well known and long-running. Being a prosecutor requires judgment, something Jackley lacks … as he will no doubt prove in court.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Congo-Brazzaville’s president, Denis Sassou Nguesso, is quite the statesman.
He’s actually done what many an illustrious American pol with an obsession about “campaign finance” would merely like to do, but cannot (that darn First Amendment!): prohibited all talk about politics prior to the next election.
Indeed, the government has shut down the Internet and cellular SMS services, simply to prevent undue influence prior to the upcoming votes. Democracy requires a veil of ignorance, we’re told, and Nguesso’s taken that august philosophical scheme to its logical conclusion: no information running through the information superhighway of the modern age … at gunpoint.
And like many a long-term American insider, he’s balking at term limits, too. He has served his legally limited two terms. So he and his fellow statesmen put a referendum onto the upcoming ballot to overthrow them.
Just so he can serve longer.
Think of the sacrifice! He really must be looking out for his earnest and ardent supporters.
But he didn’t stop there. To fulfill his mandate, and continue in office, he has to entreat the people to overturn Congo’s mandated retirement age. At 71, he’s now too old to legally run, even if he were a first-termer.
Trifecta! — a pol so insistent at continuing his life of never-ending public service that he fights against ageism, term limits, and the corrupting influence of free speech!
I’m sure he has many, many secret sympathizers in our Congress, and in the legislatures of our several states.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
