Category: general freedom

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general freedom international affairs

Now and Then

Tibet, China, Dalai Lama

This March in San Francisco, hundreds of Tibetans and their supporters rallied to protest the government of China and to commemorate the Tibetan uprising of 1959.

“As we are in a free nation,” one of the protesters, Lobsang Chodon, told the Epoch Times, “we have the rights to rally and protest; we have the rights to parade and speak out. We can say whatever we want to say. So we have to speak out loudly for our brothers and sisters who cannot speak out. We will fight until the end, until Tibet is freed, until we can get back to our homeland.”

In March 1959, the Dalai Lama (born 1935), champion of the rights of the Tibetan people and autonomy for Tibet, was forced into exile by the Chinese Communist Party.

This had not been the plan. 

The plan had been to kidnap the Dalai Lama as he attended a theatrical performance at the invitation of People’s Liberation Army. The PLA’s invitation or demand that the Dalai Lama attend included an insistence that he not bring his guards with him and that no one be told that he would be leaving the palace.

The Dalai Lama accepted or pretended to accept the invitation.

Word of the danger spread rapidly. On the day that he was scheduled to travel, many thousands of Tibetans surrounded his palace before the CCP could get its hands on him. And the Dalai Lama managed to flee into exile.

I welcome these protests, for they remind us of a history we must not forget.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

Politicians Revolt Against Voters

Arkansas, citizen's initiative, voting, Democracy

“[C]urrently, in the state of Arkansas, out-of-state special interest groups that come to our state can try to change our laws and change our constitution,” Rep. Kendon Underwood, the Republican sponsor of House Bill 1419, testified “by just getting signatures from 15 counties.”

In the over 100-year history of citizen-initiated ballot measures in Arkansas, no initiative has ever qualified with signatures from only 15 counties. Zero. Moreover, to pass a statutory or constitutional initiative requires much more than merely gathering petition signatures; it mandates a majority vote of the people of Arkansas.

As for “out-of-state” special interests, the ballot issues referred by legislators last election received more such funding than the lone citizen-initiated measure. 

There’s more to unpack. 

“Changing” the state constitution is too easy? Well, HB-1419 hikes up the constitutional requirement that citizen petitions qualify in “at least 15 counties” to now 50 counties out of Arkansas’s 75 counties — a more than 300 percent increase. 

You read that correctly. Mr. Underwood’s proposes to amend the constitution with a simple statute. Textbook unconstitutionality. Yet, that statute has now passed both houses of the legislature and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will sign it.

In both 2020 and 2022, legislators placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to entice Arkansans to vote away their initiative and referendum power. Both times Natural State voters said no. One of the provisions defeated in 2020 would have increased the number of counties in which petitions must reach a threshold to 45.

After voters rebuffed legislators on those amendments, the politicians now decide to weasel their way around the constitutional restraint. 

My, they’re real politicians now!

Legislators also declared “an emergency” so HB-1419 will immediately go into effect, because there’s an urgent need “to enhance and protect Arkansans’ voice in the ballot initiative and referendum process.” 

Why not tell the Big Lie? They’ve told every other size.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom property rights Regulating Protest

Don’t Destroy Farmers

farming, Europe, climate change, global warming

It’s lucky that today’s anti-agriculture tyrants weren’t around when the Fertile Crescent was just getting going.

But they’re here now.

And they seem hell-bent on destroying farms.

That’s what thousands upon thousands of European farmers are saying, anyhow, and we should listen to them. After all, they provide the food we eat. We need to eat in order to survive. If we don’t survive, we can’t continue living. So, whatever we do, let’s keep the farmers.

But that’s not current policy, at least in Europe. In the Netherlands, Belgium, and elsewhere, powerful political interests continue their crusade to shut down thousands of farms in the glorious cause of pursuing “climate goals” which, they believe, by being achieved will enable the fine-tuning of the weather and the creation of the best environment.

Or at least to say they gave it the old college try.

“I want to have the possibility to continue my dad’s farm,” Brendt Beyens told the AP. “But right now I feel like the possibility of that happening is slowly shrinking and it’s getting nearly impossible.”

So once again, thousands of tractors are clogging the streets, this time in Brussels, the capital of Belgium (video of the protest is on Twitter). The farmers object to being destroyed. They have a point.

Nor is it just about the livelihoods of sodbusters. With food prices rising worldwide and the threat of serious famine looms in Africa and parts of Asia, it’s also about saving lives.

My advice for today is don’t destroy farmers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom

Sneaky Censorship

disinformation, disagreement, censorship

If our government tried to march all dissenters to jail — or hang them all — it probably couldn’t get away with it. Too many Americans still have enough sense of fair play and concern for individual rights to make such ugly expedients untenable.

Also, the First Amendment hasn’t been repealed yet. Oh, no! So the non-crime of uttering “misinformation,” “disinformation,” “hate speech” — that is, uttering disagreement — can only be thwarted indirectly.

One way is for government officials to get chummy with compliant social media companies and point them to utterances (posted comments, videos) to censor.

Another is to fund organizations with missions of defunding wrongthinkers.

The Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky reports on the taxpayer-bankrolled conspiracy.

Congress funds the State Department and “two State Department-backed entities,” including National Endowment for Democracy; which has in turn been funding a British organization called the Global Disinformation; which has a group called the AN Foundation that is also called Disinformation Index Foundation; which is sending blacklists of websites that supposedly purvey disinformation to American ad companies like Microsoft-owned Xandr.

The State Department, not constitutionally authorized to censor our speech, gave over $300 million (three tenths of a billion) to the Endowment in 2021.

Websites to be deprived — and that probably have already been deprived — of advertising dollars as ad distributors seek to avoid “risks that arise from funding disinformation” include the New York Post, Reason, Newsmax, The Federalist, American Spectator. 

No commie egalitarians; no woke websites.

All very roundabout and mostly under the radar. As intended.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom government transparency media and media people national politics & policies

The 2021 Spike

Covid, vaccines, side effects

The graph is startling. It shows VAERS reporting numbers in Florida from 2006 through 2022. 

VAERS is the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Little blips of data run along the bottom of the graph through 2020, a year in which there were 2466 reports of negative effects. 

And then came 2021, the year in which mRNA and viral vector vaccines were rolled out in the United States, pushed heavily by the federal government and All Responsible Opinion, subsidized per the dose to the drug companies, as well as by lifting the burden of liability for . . . adverse effects.

The number of Floridians reporting such adverse effects soon after taking the vaccines spiked to 41,473.

The next year it subsided a bit, but to an otherwise walloping high of 9,104.

“In Florida alone, there was a 1,700% increase in VAERS reports after the release of the COVID-19 vaccine, compared to an increase of 400% in overall vaccine administration for the same time period,” Florida Health tells us in the online “Health Alert on mRNA COVID-19 Vaccine Safety,” of February 15. “The reporting of life-threatening conditions increased over 4,400%. This is a novel increase and was not seen during the 2009 H1N1 vaccination campaign.”

“Just publish the data; give us the facts,” Dr. John Campbell stated in his online talk on the report. He’s appreciative of the Sunshine State’s newfound transparency: “Well done, State of Florida.”

But nearly all other governments have failed to acknowledge such data much less act on it “in meaningful ways”: “badly done, other 49 states. Badly done, the UK; badly done, Europe; badly done, Canada; badly done, New Zealand, Australia.”

Quite a spike in government “badly dones.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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O, to Oust!

Santos

Everyone seems to agree: newly-minted U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) — if that’s even his real name — is a cheat and a scammer who doesn’t belong in Congress.

Except, of course, Congress is exactly where you’d expect to find such a person!

Especially when voters don’t discover the truth about said candidate until it is too late.

“The constituents in NY-3 elected Representative Santos in part due to his biographical exaggerations and apparent deceptions,” complains Congressman Brandon Williams (R-NY).

Still, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) isn’t comfortable pushing to oust the fraudster — which would require a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives — without the Ethics Committee first finding sufficient official wrongdoing. Even given the fantastical pre-election fibbing, the Speaker points out that “the voters have elected George Santos” and “they have a voice in this process.”

Only that’s the problem. Voters don’t have a voice.

“There is no way for constituents to recall a member of Congress,” informs The Washington Examiner, “though they can be expelled in the House by a two-thirds vote. This action has only been taken five times in history, only against members convicted of crimes and only twice for crimes other than the treason of joining the Confederacy during the Civil War.”

Speaker McCarthy doesn’t speak for the voters in NY-3. Neither can two-thirds (or even ninety-nine percent) of Congress.

But Congress can and should let voters speak for themselves. 

And not just this once with Serial Liar Santos. Let voters conduct the official ouster whenever those citizens realize they’ve been had, whenever they determine that they have a turkey representing them.

Every member of Congress — Republican, Democrat or independent — should stop virtue-signaling with press statement pronouncements to the effect that Congressman Santos “should” resign. 

Instead, legislate for the people; give us the power of recall.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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