Category: general freedom

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

The Last Shall Be First

Iowa Speech

The Iowa house has acted to make it easier for persons in the state to speak without getting sued into oblivion.

By a 94-1 vote, representatives passed House File 177, an anti-SLAPP bill that provides for prompt dismissal of lawsuits intended to intimidate people into silence rather than to redress wrongdoing. (A SLAPP is a “strategic lawsuit against public participation.”)

The bill seeks to protect “the exercise of the right of freedom of speech and of the press, the right to assemble and petition, and the right of association.”

One lawmaker behind the bill, Republican floor manager Steven Holt, said that he made it a priority after the Carroll Times Herald was litigated into penury for reporting on the case of a local married police officer, Jacob Smith, who had pursued inappropriate relationships with teenage girls.

Just before the paper published its findings, Smith resigned from his job. Then he promptly sued the Herald for libel. The reporting would make things tough for him, he attested.

The suit failed, but not before a year in court that cost the small-town newspaper about $140,000 in legal fees and related expenses. (The paper has launched a GoFundMe campaign to recover this amount.)

David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, says that if the anti-SLAPP bill is enacted, “Iowa would leap from last to best in the nation at preventing frivolous lawsuits from threatening free speech.”

Let’s hope that all other states then play catch-up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom international affairs

Censorship Rerun

Disney, China, Fox, censorship

The Disney company, old chum of Chinese tyranny, is at it again.

In November 2021, Disney hid from Hong Kong viewers an episode of The Simpsons that mentions the Tiananmen Square massacre in a way not laudatory of the Chinese government. Disney had recently acquired 20th Century Fox, now called 20th Century Studios, which produces The Simpsons.

And now Disney has removed an episode from its Hong Kong platform because it refers to “forced labor camps” in China.

Let us not say that The Simpsons is just a cartoon.

Everything you could want to know about the evils perpetrated by the Chinese government, as established by eyewitness accounts and other documentation, is available in many videos and articles and books. But not everybody reads Steven Mosher or BBC backgrounders on the detention and murder of the Uyghurs.

When a cartoon character says “Behold the wonders of China. Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones, and romance,” a viewer not yet acquainted with China’s policies has two options. He can let the words slide by unheeded, or he can make a mental note to find out what the cartoon is talking about.

I don’t want a world where such opportunities for enlightenment in our most popular cultural products are routinely squelched — in Hong Kong or anywhere else — by the likes of Disney, an entity whose controlling officers are much more concerned to rationalize, hide, and accommodate tyranny than to expose and counter it.

With the Chinese Communist Party pushing Disney to censor, why don’t we pummel Disney in the pocketbook from the freedom side?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom local leaders term limits

Political Babes

Robert Dover , Nebraska, term limits

Robert Dover is a freshman state senator in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature, appointed last year by the governor to fill a vacancy. Dover says that learning the ropes at the capitol has been like “drinking from a fire hose.”

I sure hope he’s found the bathrooms. 

But have no fear: This rookie has already overcome that lack of experience, sponsoring a constitutional amendment, which faster than a Nebraska minute has 40 of 49 state senators enthusiastically signed on. 

What has folks at the capitol so excited? His amendment, LR22CA, would dramatically weaken their current term limit by giving legislators an extra term, so they can serve 12 years, before taking a break, and not be limited to just eight.

“Dover,” the Nebraska Examiner informs, “said he quickly learned how term limits were a bad idea after talking with legislative veterans, state agency heads and lobbyists.”

“Everyone I talked to said it was a horrible thing,” he offered. “To a person, they said (term limits) took away from the consistency at the Capitol.”

By which he means, the senator elaborated — and as the Lincoln Journal Star reports — maintaining “the right relationships between senators or interest groups to strike compromise.” 

Yes, indeed: the longer politicians stay in office the more they do “compromise” with special interests. 

“Dover said he understands term limits ‘are very popular’ among the electorate,” the Journal Star noted. Apparently, he just doesn’t get that those are the folks he is supposed to work for. 

The senator complained that Liberty Initiative Fund, my organization, is sending postcards to voters across the state to inform them about his bill, calling our effort “a waste of money.”

That tells me it is money well spent. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Term limits have a long history of battling the political establishment in the Cornhusker State, which I wrote about back in 2011.

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Detonators in Place

rent control, good intentions, government regulations

You must place explosives a certain way when demolishing a building to avoid damaging surrounding structures. But if you just want to destroy, you can forget about such precautions.

Could this be the perspective of those demanding national rent control?

They forget — or ignore — the destruction of living space inflicted by incentive-incinerating rent controls in places like New York City and Santa Monica.

Rick Moran perceives that President Biden is making a “first move toward a radical national rent control law,” telling agencies to find ways to stop rent increases. Biden is doing so at the behest of 50 congressional communists who have implored him to take executive action to save tenants from rising rents.

According to their letter, “rent is too high and millions of people across this country are struggling to stay stably housed as a result.” Meanwhile, landlords are “increasing the rent for their own profit . . .”

Profit? In a market economy? 

Rising rents! Caused by . . . ?

But if you just want to “solve the problem” and have been trained to be heedless of the destruction regulation can cause, you needn’t think about cause and effect — who did what and how and why. In the interventionist mentality, when oil or food or housing prices zoom upwards, only one cause is possible, and it has nothing to do with politics and policies already in place.

Even if the government’s central banks have been zanily pumping up the supply of money and credit while city and state bureaus have been going all-out to hamper and halt production.

That single cause, they contend, can only be the grasping, grabbing, profit-seeking capitalists. You know. The bums who make their riches (when they do) by supplying us with what we need.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture international affairs

Brilliant Billionaire Buffoon

Bill Gates, China, authoritarianism, Covid, human rights

“[China’s] portion of the global economy and their portion of the global population match exactly,” Bill Gates informed his audience at Australia’s Lowy Institute. “Countries like Australia, U.S., we have per capita GDPs five times what the Chinese have, so we have a disproportionate share of the world’s economy.”

Funny that no one made a citizen’s arrest of the world’s fourth richest man, who, when it comes to personal wealth, is disproportionately disproportionate. But maybe the crowd has the respect for what people produce and earn that Mr. Gates appears to lack.

Gates main point was that China’s rise has been “great for the world.” 

While I’m not rooting for the Chinese people to be impoverished, I note that Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Taiwanese and dissident Chinese aren’t exactly singing the Chinazis’ praises.

. . . except when Uyghurs are forced to sing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda songs in those re-education camps.

Australians are also well aware of China’s ugly behavior, having suffered under punishing economic sanctions ever since the Australian government suggested an international investigation into COVID’s origin and the CCP’s cover-up.

“Gates also leveled criticism at China,” explained Fortune: the billionaire “philanthropist” 

  • admitted that China is “not a democracy,” 
  • rebuked the country for not getting people vaccinated faster and 
  • referred to it as an “outlier today in terms of that level of wealth and still being as autocratic as they are.” 

Actually, “autocratic” is the nicest term available for such a regime. 

Bill Gates is a brilliant businessman, a billionaire many times over, but a complete buffoon (at best*) for failing to even mention the crimes against humanity being committed by the CCP government. 

When he thinks about world governance, now we know what he doesn’t think about.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “Evil” is another explanation I’ve heard, but I’m not making that case here.

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folly general freedom ideological culture

The Wreckage of Racism

racism, environment, science, The Washington Post,

In the “urban forests” of our nation’s capital, several abandoned autos have been discovered. Which can mean only one thing: racism. 

“Deserted cars may be driving a type of racism,” The Washington Post headlined its take.*

The paper introduces readers to Nathan Harrington, executive director of the Ward 8 Woods Conservancy, who has discovered four decaying automobiles in those woods. 

No one knows how the cars got there. 

All that is known is that their presence is, well, racist. 

Blacks make up 87 percent of Ward 8’s population, one of the most heavily black areas of the city. “Advocates,” explains The Post, “call this neglect of Black neighborhoods ‘environmental racism.’”

An assistant professor of sociology and environmental studies at Boston College is offered to explain that, as The Post paraphrases, “environmental racism is linked to ‘racial capitalism’ — the idea that the economic value of a person is based on their race.”

And to think I was worrying that those rusting vehicles might be leaching dangerous elements into our environment!

“It’s deliberate inaction on the part of the agencies that control that land,” complains Harrington. Believable enough, on the surface, but we are presented with no specifics as to who has refused to help.

Nor are we provided any evidence that this failure of the DC government, if it even is one, can legitimately be ascribed to racial bias.

 The District of Columbia’s mayor happens to be black, as are eight of 13 city council members.

When four rusted-out cars in the woods become front-page fodder to focus on systemic racism, it seems things are looking up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This punny headline adorned the dead-tree edition. Online, the article’s headline is: “‘Environmental racism’ and the mysterious cars rusting in D.C. woods.”

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First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

It’s His Party

censorship, First Amendment, free speech

If you’re a fan of freedom of speech, you’re probably also a fan of the First Amendment of the United States’ Constitution.

Unfortunately, governments keep trying to evade it.

When their censorship can’t itself be evaded, often the only thing to do is go to court. 

Merely showing a copy of the Constitution to the offending officials rarely suffices.

That’s why Kells Hetherington teamed up with the Institute for Free Speech to overturn a Florida statute requiring that “a candidate running for nonpartisan office may not state the candidate’s political party affiliation.” In a 2018 campaign for Escambia County School Board, Kells had been fined for calling himself a “lifelong Republican” as part of his candidate statement on the county’s website. In a later campaign, he kept silent to avoid another fine.

The Institute points out that in violating the First Amendment rights of candidates, Florida’s don’t-say-party law has especially hurt challengers. It has deprived them of a valuable shorthand way of indicating the tenor of their political views, a shorthand that incumbents have many more ways of communicating to voters outside the context of campaign statements.

Kells and IFS have won. Late last year, a district judge in Florida ruled that the First Amendment does indeed protect his right, as a candidate, to mention his political party.

Kells says that “hopefully, this will never happen again to any other candidates.” 

In any case, it’s clear that the Institute for Free Speech will never be out of a job. That First Amendment won’t enforce itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

How Congress Works

Congress, pawns, power

“Who knew that our time-tested and powerful democracy could not survive a few days of debate and disagreement on our most important questions?” asked journalist Glenn Greenwald weeks ago during the House voting for Speaker.

“To hear establishment mavens all tell the story,” he pointed out, “the failure of Congress to smoothly and swiftly and immediately elect a speaker that’s been preordained — with little debate (as it usually does) — has put the U.S. Government on the verge of collapse.

“Apparently, a healthy democracy requires that everyone march in lockstep, follow orders from on high, and never question anything,” he added sarcastically. 

Greenwald is onto something.

“One of the dirty secrets of how Congress works in the modern era,” he explained, “has been that actual members of Congress, your representatives, have very little power — almost none. They’re more like little, tiny chess pieces moved around for a tiny coterie of party leaders.

“It’s a dynamic that has turned Congress into a profoundly anti-democratic institution,” noted Greenwald. “And it’s one of the main reasons why we get so little reform and so much corruption out of [Congress].

“Many Americans remain convinced that the two parties can’t agree on anything . . . can’t make anything happen, when in fact they’re making a lot happen.” Such as making “tens of trillions of dollars fly out the door.”

Mr. Greenwald blames “a small handful of omnipotent party leaders, from each party, who are willing to play the game, join hands and ensure that totally insulated from election outcomes and public debate, the Washington consensus churns on.”

What to do? Greenwald did not mention term limits. But I just did.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Inherent Racism of Racism

CRT, race guilt, racism

New Hampshire bans public school teachers from telling kids they’re inherently racist or oppressive because of unchosen traits like skin color.

Some lawmakers want to overturn the ban.

The debated law, Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education, is imperfect. But we live in a world where some taxpayer-funded educators, inspired by noxious doctrines like critical race theory, are eager to accuse students of being inherently racist or sexist or oppressive.

Obviously, though, moral wrongdoing is something chosen. One doesn’t commit it merely by having a certain hue, gender, or ancestors.

So how can one reasonably object to a provision stating that “No government program shall teach [that] an individual, by virtue of his or her age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, [etc.] is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously”?

The law itself stresses that it’s not to be interpreted as prohibiting discussion of “the historical existence of ideas and subjects” like racism. Nevertheless, critics falsely claim that the law bans classroom discussion of racism as such. And their repeal bill, HB61, seeks not to perfect the current law but to repeal all sections “relative to the right to freedom from discrimination in public workplaces and education.”

New Hampshire lawmaker Jim Kofalt rightly reminds proponents of HB61 of the vision of Martin Luther King, a future where his children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Playing With Fire?

Taiwan, war, China

In merely the last month . . . 

Belligerently attempting to enforce China’s illegal claim to virtually the entire South China Sea, a People’s Liberation Army jet intercepted a U.S. Air Force reconnaissance aircraft over international waters, coming within 20 feet, forcing the U.S. pilot to take evasive action to avoid a crash. 

And a war.

Which China’s continually threatened invasion of Taiwan would definitely precipitate. The sort of military assault that the PLA practiced this week, Reuters reported, sending 57 aircraft and four ships into “the sea and airspace around Taiwan, focused on land strikes and sea assaults.”  

Yet talk of a deadly conflict with China is not limited to Southeast Asia.

“Is India Getting Ready For A War With China?” was the headline of Peter Suciu’s 19fortyfive.com story last month detailing a clash between these two nuclear-armed, billion-plus-people nations sharing a disputed 2,100-mile border.*

The good news? The world may be waking up to the enormous threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. 

Japan has announced it will double military spending — and deploy U.S. tomahawk missiles “capable of striking targets deep inside of North Korea and China.” To better counter the Chinazi threat to itself and neighboring Taiwan, the Japanese also have made “path-breaking” agreements to cooperate with the U.S. and the United Kingdom.

Take a smidgen of comfort, too, in the recent Center for Strategic and International Studies’ war games, which saw Taiwan, Japan and the U.S. “rapidly cripple the Chinese amphibious fleet” in beating back a Chinese invasion of the democratic island nation.

In renewing “its longstanding threat to attack Taiwan,” the CCP warned that foreign countries were “playing with fire.”

Correction: we’re no longer just “playing.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

* CNN explained that the tensions between the two countries increased “sharply in June 2020 when hand-to-hand fighting . . . resulted in the deaths of at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers in Aksai Chin-Ladakh.”

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