Category: general freedom

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom tax policy

Voting for Audits

IRS, tax audit, taxes

Eighty-seven thousand new IRS agents!

What could possibly go wrong?

In a bill passed and signed last August, “$80 billion worth of new funding over the next decade” was shoveled at the Internal Revenue Service “so it could” — as a recent Reason article summarizes — “hire 87,000 new workers, purportedly to better target millionaire and billionaire scofflaws.”

The assurance that the new investment in personnel would not be directed towards “those making under $400,000 annually” was, as Reason’s Liz Wolfe makes clear, “not provided within the text of the actual bill.”

Ah — political promise over actual law and all bureaucratic experience. The IRS, you see, prefers to focus its audits on the lowest income earners, who were audited more often than millionaires.

Why? Well, the key is one feature of the tax code: the earned income credit. Which, it just so happens, is easy to get wrong. And upon which lower-income workers have come to rely.

The other reason is even more basic: “given a dearth of experienced auditors not likely to be fixed soon, the agency would rely on the easiest and least time-consuming types of audits.” Which are conducted through the mail. Easy. Cheap. And annoying.

Even with more IRS auditors with more experience, this path of least resistance — these earned income credit audits — will likely get the most use.

The reasons behind the reasons? Why were Democrats so eager to increase the ranks of tax collectors? Sure, Democrats love taxes. But like most tax hikers, they promote the idea that others will pay all those taxes; they promise to stick it to the rich . . . while ever-so consistently missing the mark and whacking the poor and middle classes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Midjourney and DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom international affairs

What Is and Is Not Sinister

China, authoritarianism

“Is this just human stupidity?”

I asked that, last week, regarding the flourishing of the Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2 in China. The Communist-run country is undergoing a huge spike in infections, millions of infections, after years now of totalitarian tracking and quarantine protocols.

I had mentioned the regime’s lack of interest in encouraging the growth of natural immunity, in its various forms. Instead of helping people cope with the new disease, the Chinazis thought they could corral their society to prevent the spread.

That broke down completely, this winter.

But was the quarantine policy and its breakdown just plain old stupidity? Folly in familiar forms?  “Or is it something more sinister?”

Well, yesterday Dr. John Campbell focused his regular online talk on how the totalitarian quarantines fell apart.

The Chinese infection rate had been relatively low — to the extent that we can trust statistics from a lying regime — because of the thoroughgoing nature of the quarantine policies, which immiserated millions, and caused numerous deaths, just as lockdowns would do in almost any society.

While acknowledging the protests that swept China, Campbell argues that a bigger factor in ending the policy was the fact that many Chinese were bribing officials to obtain negative results on the mandatory tests, thereby gaining license to go about as normal. And spread the disease — quite rapidly — in a low-immunity society, low in part because the CCP chose the Zero COVID policy . . . rather than a strategy of a freer society.

Still, in China and America, the totalitarian itch remains. The dream of zero transmission seems “rational” to many people, especially those who demand that The State solve every problem. It hasn’t worked anywhere, though. 

And not just due to the chronic bribery and corruption fostered by authoritarian societies, but because isn’t good medical or political science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom Second Amendment rights

Concealed Carry and the Careful Criminal

prison, TLC, 2nd Amendment

Crime is the most basic of problems. But across the political spectrum we see different strategies. 

On the right, the go-to solution has always been to ramp up policing, to make the basic function of the state — crime-fighting — stronger and more effective. 

On the left, a leading idea has been to disarm the populace so people cannot do as much harm, and also to “rehabilitate” troubled folks with government TLC.

I grew up in the ’70s, when the failures of benevolent leftism (which we called “liberalism”) were becoming clear. So there was a reaction: Lock more people up.

That reaction fizzled in recent years, and, perhaps not wholly coincidentally, crime on a city-by-city case, as well as nationally, has increased. 

Nevertheless, during this period another policy has gained a huge momentum: instead of disarming the populace, arm them!

How’s that going? The most recent case study is in Maine, which in 2015 allowed permit-less concealed carry of firearms.

“While rates of violent crime increased nationally from 2015 to 2020,” writes Steve Robinson in “Maine Crime Fell Following 2015 Repeal of Gun Control Law” (MaineWire, December 29, 2022), “the rate of violent crime in Maine fell steadily beginning in 2015, after a slight increase from 2014 to 2015, according to data collected by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.”

Robinson notes that while the Maine experience doesn’t prove that “an armed society is a polite society,” it falsifies, quite clearly, the catastrophic predictions made by gun control advocates back in 2015.

I hazard it does much more. It shows that distributed power (in this case, firepower and defensive capacity) in the peaceful population is a separate, non-left/non-right solution to the age-old problem of crime.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

It’s a Heroic Life

movie critics, It's a Wonderful Life

“An icon with such well-established status is an irresistible target,” The Bulwark’s Claire Coffey writes about the holiday season favorite, It’s a Wonderful Life, “and the competition to come up with the definitive contrarian takedown of the film is now a Christmas sub-tradition in its own right.”

Last year, I had to correct Washington Post columnist Monica Hesse, who belittled protagonist George Bailey as “the tortured Boy Scout-type,” arguing that Mary, his wife, was “the real hero.”

One of the nicest things about the movie is that mythical Bedford Falls has a lot of ordinary heroes . . . just like in real life. And Mary is right at the top of the list. But with her husband George, whom she dearly loves, not instead of or as his chief competition. 

“George Bailey Isn’t the Hero of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” insists the headline to Mickey Randle’s recent column at Collider, where we learn that “many of [George’s] responses to hardship” are “less than admirable.” I don’t know about “many,” but George does throw something of a tantrum upon discovering that his business will go bankrupt and he likely end up in prison. 

Hate me if you must, but I might throw a momentary fit, too, at that set of circumstances.

“Mary bears almost identical burdens,” notes Randle, “and always responds productively.” Of course, even Mary gets angry in one scene and smashes one of her favorite records. Apparently, this wonderful woman is not perfect. Who knew?

Randle concludes by calling the movie “significant because of its observations on gender,” suggesting: “We just have to remember to see things from Mary’s perspective.” 

But can anyone who knows Mary claim that George is not a hero from her perspective?

One major point of attack on the film has been the idea that, if George “had never been born,” the sweet and beautiful Mary would certainly not be “an old maid,” as depicted. Granted, her being single would not be for lack of trying by every able-bodied, cisgendered male person in Pennsylvania. But in her piece at The Bulwark, Coffey gets this right by noticing, “Mary could marry any man in town. She doesn’t want to. She wants George.”

Seems to me the criticism is intended to obscure the powerful moral of this movie: that good guys and good gals are winners, not losers. And that two people in love and committed to doing what they think is right are as unconquerable as anything this world has ever known. 

When push comes to shove, I put my faith in that tantrum-throwing George Bailey and the record-smashing Mary Bailey . . . working together. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
education and schooling general freedom

In the Name of Equity

equity, egalitarianism, collectivism

Last year, I noted complaints by Virginia officials about the high proportion of Asian students attending Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. These students studied too hard, supposedly.

Now we learn that TJ High administrators have been conniving to prevent students who won National Merit awards, issued for excelling on the PSAT, from being informed of this. Principal Ann Bonitatibus and another official, Brandon Kosatka, have been memory-holing the notifications for years.

You can’t report having won a National Merit award on a college application if you just don’t know.

The policy is consistent with the Fairfax County school district’s ugly new Harrison-Bergeronesque ideal of “equal outcomes for every student, without exception.”

Kosatka told a parent that the idea was to “recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements,” a nonsensical proposition. Individuals don’t just sit around being themselves; they do stuff. Kosatka also said that the principal didn’t want to hurt the feelings of non-winners of the Merit awards by acknowledging winners.

Bonitatibus and Kosatka should be fired — at least. Their job is to help students achieve, not to undercut them.

We’ll never rid the world entirely of resentment against achievement — or, for that matter, the benefits that flow from achievement. But we can teach kids that the proper response to disappointment at doing less than their best is to resolve to do better at the next opportunity. 

And to be inspired — not, heaven forfend, demoralized — by the heights that others do achieve.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom international affairs

The Zero Tolerance Policy That Failed

China, covid, authoritarianism, zero tolerance

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, China’s behavior has been . . . opaque. Unhelpful. Suspicious. The Chinese Communist Government may have been involved in the creation of the virus, but, if so, 

  1. it was likely created with the help of Fauci and U.S. taxpayers, and
  2. could have been deliberately or accidentally leaked to the Wuhan population. In any case,
  3. the lack of transparency early on meant a worldwide spread of the contagion. 

That latter neglect may be especially galling to all of us outside of China, but it was no comfort inside China either, since as the disease hit the Chinese their leaders quickly resorted to nazi-like tactics. Most specifically, the government stuck to a Zero-COVID policy, which was astoundingly cruel and totalitarian.

That policy has been shown to have zero efficacy. “As many as 37 million people are contracting COVID-19 in a single day in China,” The Epoch Times informs us, “according to leaked minutes from a meeting of the country’s top health body confirmed by multiple news outlets.”

What’s gone wrong? Well, “the regime’s stringent zero-COVID policy has left the Chinese public with little natural immunity against COVID-19’s highly contagious Omicron variant, which appears to be spinning out of control in the country.”

Alas, both in China and in the West, the notion of natural immunity was evaded. America’s government-funded experts have discouraged discussion of it, and the Chinese rulers thought it more important to prevent any form of spread. Hence totalitarian lockdowns.

All pointless, now, as hospitals and morgues are flooded with COVID patients from a weakened populace.

Is this just human stupidity? Or is it something more sinister?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing (coming soon)

Illustration created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom too much government

Impending Gifts

Santa, New York, regulations

Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, denizens of the Sort-of-Great State of New York!

It is certainly a time to be jolly. For some time now, Santa and his legislative elves have been striving to give you and yours an ever more overbearing medical regime. 

Take a gander at some of the goodies that have been proposed in the Empire State’s Legislative Workshop:

  • A416 would let governors or health officials detain persons “afflicted with a communicable disease” as long as a state of health emergency has been declared.
  • A279 would institute a statewide vaccine database. If you’re vaccinated, you’ll be in the database unless you make a point of requesting otherwise (who knows, maybe even then).
  • A8398 would eliminate many religious exemptions from compulsory vaccination and limit the ability of local governments and private organizations to issue medical exemptions.
  • A02240 would mandate flu vaccines for children in daycare.

Santa sure has been working overtime the last couple of years.

Will such bills, lapsed at the moment, soon see the light of day? Let’s hope! You people of the State of New York really need this kind of bounty. Especially if you’ve been suffering any delusions about the propriety of independent judgement and personal discretion in such matters.

Did I say Santa? Maybe I meant the Grinch. Or Krampus. The real Santa would be putting moving-expense vouchers in everyone’s stockings to help them get the heck out of this beleaguered state.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2, John Tenniel, JG

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom social media

The Big Ask

Adam Schiff, liar

With Twitter in the news, and revelation after revelation coming out about how governments and politicians used the social media giant to skew public opinion with algorithmic fiddling and outright bans, let’s not forget Facebook.

Adam Schiff hasn’t.

Last week, the Democrat Congressman from California, together with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), sent what amounts to an open letter to Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nicholas Clegg, urging Meta to maintain its commitment to keeping dangerous election denial content off its platform.

These Democrats worry that Facebook — Meta’s most successful product — might “alter or roll back certain misinformation policies, because they are temporary and specific to the election season,” say Schiff and Whitehouse.

Rollbacks on censorship, they say, “would be a tragic mistake. Meta must commit to strong election misinformation policies year-round, as we are still witnessing falsehoods about voting and the prior elections spreading on your platform.”

Why “must” Facebook continue to patrol its platform, striking down or underplaying “unfounded election denial content”?

Schiff and Whitehouse assert that Donald J. Trump spreads “the Big Lie” and it would be a huge mistake to allow that lie to air on their platform. They don’t want Trump allowed back on Facebook.

It’s been just weeks since Trump was permitted back on Twitter, where he has not taken up his old hyper-posting habits. Trump’s so far confining himself to his own “Truth Social” platform.

But as far as “the Big Lie” goes, would Schiff & Co. argue that The Epoch Times should also be censored? After all, in its coverage of this issue, by Frank Fang, the concluding section of the article was devoted to showing that Trump’s “Lie” might be in parts, uh, true.

Would Democrats ask Meta to suppress The Epoch Times, too?

Censorship is a hard habit to break.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2 and CrAIyon

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Common Sense general freedom international affairs

Hong Kong Help

Jimmy Lai, Hong Kong, freedom

“What can we do to help?” the woman asked after seeing the Acton Institute’s new documentary, “The Hong Konger.” The film tells the life of billionaire Jimmy Lai, the owner of Apple Daily, the pro-democracy newspaper shut down by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong government. 

Lai went from rags to riches in the city’s free enterprise system, but presently sits in a jail cell already convicted of a ridiculous fraud charge (for which he was sentenced to a whopping 69 months) and awaits trial for violating the totalitarian national security law that criminalizes anti-government speech. 

This week, that trial was postponed until next September. A conviction could keep him in jail for the rest of his life.

What can we do?

Well, for Lai and the others: precious little, beyond prayers. 

We should focus, instead, on what these freedom-fighters have done for us. Their agitation — culminating in the 2019 protests that brought millions (close to one of every three HK residents) into the streets to demand basic democracy and human rights — woke up the world to the threat posed by the Chinese regime.

Lai could have taken his wealth and left to sip Mai Tais on a sunny beach on the far side of the globe. The student leaders of the protests — the best and the brightest — likewise knew how long their odds were, how dangerous their stand. 

Yet, Lai and the protesters stood up to the Chinazis anyway. Why? Because good people must stand up to evil . . . or evil wins.

We must also honor their sacrifice by preparing to protect ourselves, our freedom and all that we hold dear against this tyranny. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

PDF for printing

DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Fourth Amendment rights general freedom tax policy

Not Inadvertent

political donations, IRS, government surveillance, privacy

Maybe we can put a stop to the assault on the privacy of donors to political causes.

By “we” I mean The Buckeye Institute and the Institute for Free Speech, who have teamed up to challenge “a decades-old law that forces the IRS to demand that nonprofit charities hand over the private information of their largest donors every year.”

The IRS itself admits that collecting this personal data “poses a risk of inadvertent disclosure.”

Also a risk of fully advertent disclosure. 

The IRS has often been used to harass the political enemies of federal officials in a position to tell the agency what to do.

Buckeye Institute President Robert Alt reports the Institute’s own experience as Exhibit A. In 2013, soon after it had urged Ohio to reject Obamacare-inspired efforts to expand Medicaid, the Institute was subjected to an IRS harassment-audit.

The specter of this investigation was a scary one for the Institute’s major donors, who reasonably assumed that the audit was retaliatory. They worried that if their own names came up during the audit, they too would be subject to IRS attention. Many donors drastically scaled back their giving so they’d be less of a target; others stopped donating altogether.

Prospects for the Institutes’ litigation are good. The U.S. Supreme Court determined in a 2021 ruling that the government must at least consider “the potential for First Amendment harms before requiring that organizations reveal sensitive information about their members and supporters.”

Anonymity in political activism has a long American history — from the start, actually.

It’s what democracy looks like.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E2

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts