Category: general freedom

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First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary

High Court Too Busy

California, gig, contractor, speech, censorship

What is the U.S. SupremeCourt thinking by refusing even to listen to arguments about the effects of California’s AB5 law, which effectively outlaws certain kinds of freelancing and gig work, on the right to speak out and petition in California?

The case is Mobilize the Message, LLC v. Bona. Plaintiffs were challenging the constitutionality of AB5 because it bans independent contractors from doing door-to-door canvassing for candidates or initiative campaigns yet allows independent contractors to do the same kind of work if they’re doing it as newspaper carriers or salesmen.

Of course, if AB5 were completely consistent in its assault on independent contractors, that wouldn’t make it any less injurious to political work and freedom of speech. But the separate and unequal provisions of the act do mean that political workers are being forced to abide by different rules than certain nonpolitical contractors.

That’s not right, not just.

As the Institute for Free Speech puts it, “The only distinguishing feature separating the two [kinds of contractors] is the content of the speech they are paid to promote, a distinction that is presumptively unconstitutional under the First Amendment.”

Lead counsel for the plaintiffs, Alan Gura, says that the Court’s decision will “price political speech beyond the reach of many citizens.”

What’s the deal, are the justices too busy? 

We’re all busy. 

On the other hand, they have a job. A lot of folks in California could use one, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

Dictators on Parade

Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, dictator

The day following Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s “successful” visit to China, wherein the Chinese rulers agreed to start talking to U.S. officials again — well, except on trivial military-to-military stuff like the PLA playing chicken with our fighter jets and naval ships in international waters — President Joe Biden made a whopping foreign policy faux pas: he told the truth. 

To a camera-less roomful of big Democratic Party donors out in California, the leader of the Free World called Xi Jinping, the un-term-limited totalitarian atop the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a “dictator.”

Xi is reportedly upset. 

“This threatens to reverse the recent efforts to improve U.S. ties with China,” CBS Mornings co-host Tony Dokoupil lamented. The Communist capo “might fit the textbook definition,” he added, “but you don’t often hear an American president use the term.”

Joe is not wrong. CCP-run China is a genocidal regime with zero respect for individual rights, human life, its word, the truth . . . need I go on? . . . threatening military invasion against its neighbors.

Yet, rather than the dictator label, what probably angered China’s Chief Butcher most was President Biden’s claim that Xi had been clueless about their spy balloon traveling across the United States — until the U.S. military shot it down.  

Nobody told him? Biden dubbed it “the great embarrassment for dictators.”

How does Biden know — from personal (wannabe) experience? Or from many corrupt dealings with Xi’s regime?

Let’s put our priority on military preparedness, rather than name-calling, but the first order of business in dealing with the Chinazis is not the relentless pursuit of “good relations.” 

It is remembering with whom we are dealing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

Wannabe Dictator

Joe Biden, dictator

The question posed in boffo episode four of Tucker Carlson’s new Twitter show is whether Joe Biden is a wannabe dictator, as asserted by a chyron that Fox News displayed for 27 seconds on the day his administration arrested Donald Trump: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” (Fox News hastened to apologize to the world and to fire the producer who so incontinently chyronized.)

Carlson spends a couple of minutes discussing absurd reactions to the brief-lived caption. But most of his satirical 13-minute monologue is about whether President Biden qualifies for dictator-hood.

Carlson suggests that you have to do much more than jail political rivals to qualify.

Dictators enrich themselves and their families, taking bribes or kickbacks from businesses or other dictators.

In a dictatorship, it’s no longer possible to fight the injustice of the system. If people “gather in large numbers to protest the rule of the dictator, they’ll be arrested by state security services even years after the fact.”

In a dictatorship, you can’t even complain from your home; unauthorized opinions on the Internet must be censored.

In a dictatorship, major mental or physical lapses by the Dear Leader would be routinely covered up by a compliant media.

A dictator would say your kids belong to him. But Joe Biden says your kids belong to all of us; we have joint custody.

It’s a litany that could be extended, and Tucker Carlson does so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture

Freedom Festival

https://thisiscommonsense.org/pdf/CS5994.pdf

“Should white people celebrate Juneteenth?” National Public Radio’s Destinee Adams asked last year at this time, before advising, “Just don’t interrupt Black folks who are just trying to have a great time.”

I like to see folks have a good time.

“Each year,” offers The Wayside Youth & Family Support Network in Massachusetts, “Juneteenth is a day for Black people to celebrate freedom.”

The article sports the headline, “10 Things We Want White People to Do to Celebrate Juneteenth.”

Sounds like there’s a test. 

In “The Caucasians’ Guide to Celebrating Juneteenth,” The Root claims, “we created a CRT-free educational curriculum to help colonizer Americans resist the urge to gentrify this celebration.”

“Hold up, white people,” urges The Root’s Michael Harriot. “Before hopping on the Juneteenth bandwagon, you first need to realize that you have no say in driving the narrative about this special day.”

Thank goodness I have my own commentary program. 

Juneteenth celebrates enslaved people in Texas being freed on June 19, 1865 — the very last in our country to be held in bondage. Now that’s cause for jubilation for every man and woman who breathes free . . . of every race.

How was that “peculiar,” perniciously evil institution of slavery stopped? To put slavery in its grave, more than 360,000 American men “gave the last full measure of devotion,” as Abe Lincoln put it, to the “cause.” 

These men, mostly white but of both races, deserve a moment on Juneteenth.

So do the abolitionists from Frederick Douglas and William Lloyd Garrison to John Brown and Harriett Tubman . . . and all those (white and black) who risked so much to run the Underground Railroad. And eternal thanks to the white juries who voted to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act, refusing to send slaves back. 

Slavery is forever deserving of condemnation, certainly. But Juneteenth isn’t about slavery; it’s about emancipation, the triumph of freedom.

At my shindig, anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom property rights

Guilty of Claiming Innocence

civil, asset, forfeiture, police, robbery

Some gangsters take it personally if you object to being railroaded. So they railroad you some more.

That’s what happened to Robert Reeves, a Detroit auto mechanic and construction worker. In 2019, Wayne County confiscated his Camaro after police saw him visit a site that supposedly contained stolen equipment. The police did not formally accuse him of the alleged theft or try to convict him of it.

Nevertheless, the county wanted Reeves to pay $900 to retrieve his car.

Instead, Reeves went to court to end what Institute for Justice, which has been representing him, calls a “seizure-and-ransom policy.”

Soon the county was accusing Reeves of made-up felonies of receiving stolen property and telling the court that he had no right to challenge its forfeiture policy while being accused of these felonies.

Reeves challenged the county’s dishonest challenge, and the court dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. Two weeks later, though, the county did the exact same thing, making the same fake charges and asking the same judge to dismiss the same case on the same grounds. The judge again refused.

Now, years later, Reeves is suing Wayne County for the way it further violated his rights when he challenged its initial violation of his rights.

Although this again makes Reeves a target, “Robert will not be silenced,” says IJ attorney Christian Lansinger, and the Institute will continue to hold accountable governments that seize the vehicles of individuals without evidence of wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom media and media people

People Lover

China, children, population

Steven Mosher loves people.

Mosher is a student of China who, according to the bio at his Population Research Institute website, pop.org, “has worked tirelessly since 1979 to fight coercive population control programs. . . .”

In 1979, the Chinese government let him pursue research in a village where he observed many instances of compulsory abortions under the country’s one-child policy. Some of the women were in their eighth or ninth month of pregnancy.

Perhaps the Chinese government expected Mosher to produce rosy-eyed, footnoted rationalizations of what he saw. When he published his unvarnished findings in a Taiwanese magazine, officials complained to the U.S. Embassy and to Stanford University.

Stanford appeased China by denying Mosher his PhD. I note the university’s injustice in part because Mosher tends to omit this detail. But it should not be forgotten.

Back then, he said he “did what was right to do. I told the truth.”

He opposes population control because, in his view, people are a good thing, not a bad thing.

This viewpoint is beautifully conveyed in a video on the pop.org home page, in which Mosher says that people “are the ultimate resource, the one resource that you cannot do without.” The Institute works to expose “the myth of overpopulation” and the violations of human rights that occur in the name of population control.

The prolific scholar argues that people “can become the agents of their own development without having to sacrifice their children in the process.”

My wife and I glad to hear it. We’ll let the kids know.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

Look Around

China, war, freedom, slavery

Yesterday marked the 34th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Not in China, where the Communist Party (CCP) has always clubbed down any public remembrance of the thousands murdered on that day by the bullets from the so-called People’s Liberation Army. 

While Hong Kong long witnessed massive June 4 vigils — even under COVID restrictions — that changed after the draconian National Security Law in 2020. Still, this year public silence required the Chinazis to arrest more than 30 Hong Kongers, some for “suspicion of carrying out acts with seditious intent.”

Seems our “leaders” quite quickly forgot about the Butchers of Beijing . . . and only now are waking up to the threat the CCP poses via their embrace of totalitarianism, their military build-up, the biggest since World War II, and their claims to Taiwan as well as the entire South China Sea.

“China has been bullying its neighbors for years,” explains Chris Chappell, host of China Uncensored on Rumble, before adding: “Now its bullying is coming back to bite it.”

Chappell notes that “[e]ven countries that kinda hate each other, like Japan and South Korea, have been teaming up because of the China threat.”

Mr. Chappell offers:

  • “Thanks to China, last year Japan announced a plan to double its military budget.”
  • South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol recently called Taiwan “a global issue” and joined President Biden in “[opposing] any unilateral attempts to change the status quo.”
  • “Australia is beefing up its military — specifically in response to China.”
  • “The Philippines . . . has moved back to closer ties with the United States, allowing the U.S. to expand its military presence there.” 
  • “India is also increasing its defense budget.”

This allied response has been spurred not by U.S. arm-twisting, but good old-fashioned fear. 

Chappell also applauded open collaboration with the U.S. and NATO by South Korea, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. But he dubbed NATO’s declaration of China as “a security challenge” “the understatement of the year.”

Attested by the weekend’s near collision of Chinese and U.S. naval vessels in the Taiwan Strait.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

Note: China Uncensored also plays on YouTube, but, as Chappell complains, “YouTube frequently demonetizes, suppresses, and secretly unsubscribes people from this channel.” 

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Fifth Amendment rights general freedom property rights

Government Greed Swept in Double-Header

takings, property rights, Supreme Court

Geraldine Tyler lived long enough to see the U.S. Supreme Court rule against those who robbed her. She is 94.

On May 25, 2023, the Court determined in a 9-0 ruling that Hennepin County, Minnesota, is not constitutionally entitled to pocket the entire sale-price value of a condo in massive excess of the property taxes that Geraldine Tyler owed on the property when the government seized it for unpaid taxes.

Including penalties and interest, Tyler had owed about $15,000. But after selling the condo for $40,000, the county government seemed to think that $25,000 was a reasonable brokerage fee.

Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented Tyler in the case, argued that the county violated the Takings Clause of the Constitution by taking private property for public use “without just compensation.”

The Court agreed, saying that exploiting the debt “to confiscate more property than was due” effected “a ‘classic taking in which the government directly appropriates private property for its own use.’ ”

The ruling also rejects the county’s argument that Tyler somehow forfeited her constitutional rights by failing to pay her property taxes.

The same day, PLF also won another huge victory in the U.S. Supreme Court when the Court ruled that the EPA does not have limitless authority to block property owners from building on their own land if the agency chooses to designate a soggy part of the land a protected “wetland.”

Two for two. Not a bad batting average.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom responsibility

Memorial Day 2023

Memorial Day, veteran

A day of reflection — and from a few years ago — “Honor and Horror.”

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First Amendment rights general freedom judiciary too much government

Hollowed-Out America

covid, freedom, hysteria

While Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s comments in Arizona v. Mayorkas are worth studying in full — the case is about immigration — his thoughts on the late pandemic panic stand out.

“Since March 2020,” Justice Gorsuch writes, “we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes,” and the judge goes through a long list of decrees, including:

  • Closing churches but not casinos
  • Threatening violators with both civil penalties and criminal sanctions
  • Surveilling church parking lots, recording license plates, and issuing warnings against attending even outdoor services.

And he adds that the federal government got in on the tyrannies.

“Fear and the desire for safety are powerful forces,” he notes. “They can lead to a clamor for action — almost any action — as long as someone does something to address a perceived threat.” Gorsuch acknowledges this is not exactly a revelation: “Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear.”

There is a deeper problem, though, for the “concentration of power in the hands of so few may be efficient and sometimes popular. But it does not tend toward sound government.”

All the way through the pandemic, and even now, we have been barraged by messages about “misinformation and disinformation” about the disease and the treatments (proactive and reactive) against it. And the people in power — bureaucrats as well as politicians — were called “experts” while actual experts (along with earnest amateurs) were hounded, their ideas suppressed. 

Now we know that much of what was then held as good information was in error, even lies. 

Very unsound governance: Gorsuch characterizes it “a shell of a democracy.” 

“Hollow.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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