Category: general freedom

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crime and punishment general freedom property rights

Rent-Free in Oakland

Covid, rental, eviction, moratorium

The city council of Oakland, California just voted 7-1 to end the town’s pandemic-rationalized moratorium on eviction for nonpayment of rent.

But it’s not over yet.

The moratorium will linger on until July 15. Three years is supposedly insufficient time for tenants to gird themselves to again honor the contract with the persons who provide them with shelter.

And then it still won’t be over.

The council’s slow-walk phaseout comes with a permanent new limitation on what landlords can do. This explains the lone dissenting vote, that of Council member Noel Gallo, who says that the rights of landlords are still being insufficiently protected.

As the text of the legislation passed by the council makes clear, its revision of the city’s “just cause” ordinance further violates the property rights of landlords. In part, the new ordinance provides that any failure to pay rent during the last three years which a tenant can plausibly attribute to the pandemic is sufficient to prevent an eviction, even if not relieving the tenant of the obligation to pay that rent.

Will the reprieve be too late and too little for property owners like John Williams? For the last three years, Williams has been stuck with a freeloading tenant who has been financially able to pay rent but who has refused to do so and refused to move.

The tenant, occupying half of the duplex where he also happens to live, owes him $56,000. And Williams is facing . . . foreclosure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

It’s Over But It Isn’t

Covid, emergency, Dr. Fauci

Is the pandemic over?

On March 29, House Joint Resolution 7 passed with a 68–23 margin in the Senate: 47 Republicans and 21 Democrats voting Yea. Earlier this week, Joe Biden signed it into law.

But, as The Epoch Times explains, that resolution “states that the pandemic national emergency ‘is hereby terminated,’” but “does not impact the public health emergency, which is still scheduled to terminate on May 11.” 

But that lag — why terminate one (“national”) emergency footing and leave the other (“public health”) to linger for another month?

It’s worse than that, though. Back in September, President Biden told 60 Minutes that the pandemic was over, noting then that “no one’s wearing masks; everybody seems to be in pretty good shape.”

The administration offers bureaucratic rationales for the lagtime. But its impact on you and me is said to be zero: “To be clear, [the] continuation of these emergency declarations until May 11 does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct with regard to COVID-19,” explains a January letter from the Biden administration to Congress.

Repeat that: the continuation of the emergency declarations does not impose any restriction at all on individual conduct. Which should have been true from the beginning, for the Constitution does not provide any powers to the general government over individuals on these matters.

Does public health really need another month of crisis . . . after acknowledging there isn’t a crisis anymore?

At least, there is a May 11th at the end of the tunnel.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Down-Shifted Demographics

gerontocracy, depression, young people

Until recently, the most obvious demographic trend has been the “squaring of the curve”: more people were hitting an apparently natural limit in their eighties and nineties, rather than dying off in their forties, fifties, and sixties.

Now, however, longevity stats are showing a new feature. A graph in a fascinating article puts it like this: “Americans die earlier than the English across the income distribution, despite typically earning significantly more,” with the article quickly clarifying the specifics: “America’s mortality problem is driven primarily by deaths among the young.”

The most vulnerable members of traditional society are newborns and the aged. But now it’s those reaching their alleged prime: “one in 25 American five-year-olds today will not make it to their 40th birthday.”

Is it COVID? No. This trend is older than 2020, and remember, in the recent pandemic it was the aged, not the young, who experienced higher rates of morality.

An article by Zach Rausch and Jon Haidt suggests that the problem may loom beyond America, for their work shows that “The Teen Mental Illness Epidemic Is International,” and I don’t think it is at all out of bounds to take higher youth rates of suicidality, desperate recreational drug use, and expressed anxiety and despair — and skyrocketing transgender rates, too — as stressors related to increased death rates. 

It is vital to study these things, for their main conclusion is startling and a general sign of deep cultural decay: “Teen mental health plummeted across the Western world in the early 2010s, particularly for girls and particularly in the most individualistic nations.”

We should ask ourselves: could this be related to the rise of a gerontocracy?

A society run by old people for old people may have nasty inter-generational side effects.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom insider corruption

If It Can Happen to Trump

freedom, law, justice

If it can happen to former President Donald Trump — something like the politically motivated ham-sandwich indictment issuing from an avid Trump-hating Democratic DA — can it happen to you and me?

It already happened to me. Fifteen years ago.

Handcuffs and leg-irons. Paul Jacob, Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson.

The Oklahoma Three. Indicted by an arch enemy of citizen initiative, Oklahoma Apparatchik and Attorney General Drew Edmondson.

No, we hadn’t robbed a bank or gunned down the sheriff.

We were accused of not following all regulations in conducting a 2006 petition drive in Oklahoma. The fictional charge: “conspiracy to defraud the state of Oklahoma.”

The possibility of ten years in prison hung over our heads for a year and a half. In all that time, the AG started but never completed a preliminary hearing after which a judge could decide whether the indictment had enough evidence to warrant a trial. (Because it didn’t.) Then, the federal 10th Circuit declared unconstitutional the law we had allegedly violated, residency requirements for signature gatherers. 

Gritting his teeth and with smoke pouring out of his ears, Drew Edmondson dismissed the charges.

If somebody with official power like Edmondson or New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg wants to wield it against you and is indifferent to the requirements of justice, he might just do that.

Can it happen to you? Maybe not. Keep your head down, never say anything somebody somewhere could dispute, don’t leave the house, always wear a disguise, never exercise your political rights in a way that might draw the attention of thin-skinned and scared denizens of the political establishment.

Do all this, and you’ll probably almost certainly be fine. Maybe.

Or just fight them anyway.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

Why We Fight

Biden, war, draft

A recent Senate hearing addressed a big problem facing America’s All-Volunteer Force (AVF): recruitment. 

The Army fell 25 percent short of its 2022 goal; the Air Force is 10 percent below; the Navy met its target for enlisted folks but not officers; and the Marines hit their mark but said “never before” has it been so challenging.

“The Pentagon has attributed its difficulties to a variety of factors,” reports The Washington Post, “including the nation’s low unemployment rate, school closings during the coronavirus pandemic that limited recruiters’ access to high school students and faculty, and a shifting culture in which more teens gravitate to jobs with work-life balance.”

As The Post paraphrased Army Undersecretary Gabe O. Camarillo, “the most significant barriers to service [include] fears of death or injury, suffering psychological harm, and leaving behind friends and family.” 

Indeed, what with possibility of overseas deployment and combat, the job of soldier certainly does not score well in the “work-life balance” category. While a sense of mission — and the country’s need — has helped spark interest in the past, that need has been blurred by a long string of misguided military adventures in recent decades.  

Sure, President Joe has repeatedly promised American military force in defense of Taiwan against repeated Chinese threats to invade.* But do young Americans perceive this as anything to them? Has the wokeness mission, stressed by the administration and the Pentagon and interrogated during the Senate hearings, occluded the more traditional sense of mission upon which the AVF has relied?

It’s time for Mr. Biden to speak to the people on the military’s core mission — including his promises, and those of other politicians. Asking them to keep his word. 

Plus, a personal presidential request might add an element of responsibility and accountability from the commander-in-chief to the soldiers recruited.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom

Assumptions Attack

police, general freedom

Officers of the law are suing a rapper because his house attacked them, invading their privacy.

The rapper, Afroman, known for songs like “Crazy Rap” — and now “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” about post-raid maintenance and the easy availability of lemon pound cake in his kitchen — claims otherwise.

The home of Afroman, aka Joseph Foreman, was raided by the Adams County sheriff’s office in August of 2022. They grabbed money. There was a paper warrant authorizing the action, but, he says, no actual justification, just “assumptions.”

He wasn’t home at the time. His family was.

Afroman admits to smoking blunts and said after the raid that he would have cooperated if asked about the contents of his ash trays. But he had no significant amount of marijuana in his home.

“You shouldn’t kick people’s doors down over speculation,” he said, “and you shouldn’t kick people’s doors down with an AR-15 over assumptions. You shouldn’t kick people’s doors down traumatizing kids over an assumption.”

The sheriff’s office found no evidence of “drug trafficking” and filed no charges.

Now officers are suing Afroman, who seems to be a plucky sort, for incorporating footage taken by his wife and security cameras during the raid into rap videos. The lawsuit says the video evidence is causing them “emotional distress, embarrassment, ridicule, loss of reputation and humiliation.”

Apparently, they were all just standing around minding their own business when this thing happened to them.

Countersue, Afroman.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

The Farmers Strike Back

Dutch farmers, strike, protest, global warming, climate

Dutch farmers are making progress.

As we’ve noted, farms in the Netherlands or any other European country should not be destroyed on the altar of cockamamie EU climate goals.

Dutch farmers have been calling attention to their plight by clogging the streets with tractors. What may have a longer-term salutary effect is the showing that their new party, BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer Citizen Movement), which didn’t exist five years ago, has made in the recent Dutch election.

The election had the largest voter turnout in 30 years, and the BBB are expected to secure 15 Senate seats with about 20 percent of the vote. While that may not sound like a lot if you’re used to a two-party system, but eighteen parties are represented in the Dutch parliament.

A Green-Labour alliance is also expected to win 15 seats. The ruling four-party coalition of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, all in favor of the assault on farmers, is losing eight seats and will have 24 seats.

Wopke Hoestra, a leader of one of the government parties, said that the BBB showing was “a landslide we haven’t seen for years.” His party’s traditional farmer support “has evaporated,” reports UnHerd.com.

Hoestra: “It is an extraordinarily bitter pill.”

Aw gee. The Dutch central planners have been trying to strangle agriculture and deprive Dutch farmers of their livelihood, and the farmers — along with people who eat stuff grown on farms — don’t appreciate it!

Perhaps alienating 100 percent of a major constituency doesn’t always pay off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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