Category: general freedom

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general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Doctor Dead End

Anthony Fauci, covid, vaccines, masks

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only holds a smoking gun, he’s standing over the corpse and sniffing the barrel, grinning like a cartoon villain.

Last week we considered the gross indecency of this director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force funding Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab to do more research on bat coronaviruses — to the tune of “Six Million Dimes.”

And now that a Boston group has publicized its gain-of-function research, we should ask ourselves: is Fauci involved in this, too? The answer is: YES — to the tune of $2.5 million!

This group of researchers, jiggering with a bat virus and the Omicron variant’s version of the infamous spiked protein, made a new iteration that killed 80 percent of infected mice. Success? What?!? 

We had been told that gain-of-function was against policy.

But that wise policy is no match for Fauci’s mania.

Wait, you cry, at least they developed the vaccines! 

Well, to what purpose?

A few weeks ago, in a European Parliament hearing, a Pfizer bigwig admitted that when the multinational introduced its anti-COVID mRNA “vaccine,” it had not even researched the ability of the jab to reduce transmissibility of the virus. 

“We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market,” Pfizer senior executive Janine Small explained. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.” 

Clear? As mud?

This is a scandal . . . except . . . not according to FactCheck.org, which states that “nobody claimed the vaccines — Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s — were tested for transmission prevention before they hit the market.”

But even the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s fact checkers admit that “some officials have overstated the transmission protection provided by the vaccines.”

Chiefest of these is Fauci, who said last year that by getting vaccinated we “contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus.”

Fauci, at the top of the Big Gov/Big Pharma dung heap, is himself a dead end — to responsible medicine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Tyranny Without Limits

Hu Jintao, President Xi Jinping, China

This weekend, at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), a unanimous vote of elite communist party officials gave President Xi Jinping his third five-year term.

But the story that made the headlines focused on the physical removal from the main chamber of Hu Jintao, the previous Chinese leader (2003–2013), on the final day. No one is sure what it means, but we cannot unsee the pattern.

“In 10 years of ruling China, Xi Jinping has expunged political rivals, replacing them with allies,” notes The New York Times. “He has wiped out civil society, giving citizens no recourse for help but his government. He has muzzled dissent, saturating public conversation with propaganda about his greatness.”

The Times forgot to mention the genocide against Uyghurs or the full extent of CCP censorship or repression or the stepped-up harassment and threats to invade democratic Taiwan, but the article does convey that Xi is a thug of totalitarian proportions. 

“What is happening is potentially very dangerous,” Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political scientist at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, argued back when the limit was repealed, “because the reason why Mao Zedong made one mistake after another was because China at the time was a one-man show.” 

Those “mistakes” cost millions of Chinese their lives. One-man totalitarian rule is bad news for everybody everywhere. Xi’s personal power makes China more repressive at home as well as more dangerous and aggressive abroad. 

“For Xi Jinping, whatever he says is the law,” Lam added. “There are no longer any checks and balances.”

Lam meant internally, but, for better or worse, we are likely to see what checks and balances and defenses there are outside of communist-run China. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom too much government

Ian and the Scurvy Knave

Florida, Texas, roofer, licensing, hurricane

Don’t help people after a hurricane! 

Not if you live in another state and there’s no time to lose but . . . you’re licensed only in that other state.

Now, before you declare Houston-based Terence Duque an innocent victim because he was arrested for not being Florida-licensed, let’s take a cold hard look at the facts. Duque is licensed in Texas, has operated a successful roofing business since 2008, is rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau, is called a “preferred contractor” by Owens Corning.

Sounds okay, right?

But hold on. After Hurricane Ian smashed Florida a few weeks ago, what did this scurvy knave do?

Shamelessly and with constructive purposes aforethought, Duque offered his services to residents of hard-hit Charlotte County, Florida!!!! No, seriously. Simply because homeowners had had their roofs ripped up, Duque offered to repair them!!!!! Yet this man calls himself a roofer!!!!!!!!!

Arrested by the Charlotte County sheriff, who says “I will not allow unlicensed contractors to further victimize [sic]” hurricane victims, Duque is charged with “conducting business in Charlotte County without a Florida license.” He faces one to five years in jail.

He says he thought he’d been allowed to help Floridians because licensing regulations had been loosened due to the emergency. 

No.

Justin Pearson, an attorney with Institute for Justice, says Duque was punished for “doing the right thing.”

The right thing??? The man was honestly trying to help people recover from a terrible personal setback and fully qualified to do so!!!!!!! Look at the facts!!!!!!!!!

Throw away the key?

This is, er, Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

Partisan Police State Tactics

FBI

We must take the initiative to change things if we don’t like the way things are. If you’re a congressman, this means — sometimes, at least — investigating horrific conduct.

The September 23rd raid of anti-abortion activist Mark Houck’s home should evoke bipartisan dismay. But only Republicans seem to be looking into the FBI’s recent arrest of Houck and the ludicrously heavy-handed tactics used to apprehend him.

In 2021, Houck had pushed a pro-abortion activist away from his son, whom the activist had been harassing, in front of a clinic. Houck’s action was allegedly a violation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. The alleged victim sued.

Last summer, the case was dismissed on a local level. But that determination was blithely ignored by our ideologically compromised FBI, which sent dozens of agents to swoop down on Houck and terrorize his family.

U.S. Representatives Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, both Republicans, sent a letter asking for documents related to the raid and arrest.

According to the letter: “Several recent actions by the department reinforce the conclusion that the Justice Department is using its federal law-enforcement authority as a weapon against the administration’s political opponents….

“We write to conduct oversight of your authorization of a dawn raid of the home of a pro-life leader, in front of his wife and seven children, when he had offered to voluntarily cooperate with authorities.”

Such a letter requesting accountability is only a bare beginning, however. If we want to prevent a partisan police state, there is much more to be done.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Fully Baked Defense

Legal Insurrection, donuts

Having your say can have an important impact even if you don’t know about it. Sometimes the people on the front lines are paying surprisingly close attention to what you say.

William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog has learned how important his posts and the comments of readers have been to the legal team fighting for Gibson’s Bakery.

Gibson’s, you may remember, is the shop in Oberlin, Ohio, that Oberlin College tried to clobber because an employee of the bakery confronted shoplifters. Because the thieves were black, race-conscious student activists erupted in outrage — at the bakery, not against the shoplifters — and college officials echoed the students’ irrational hostility and smears.

Long story short, Gibson’s sued for damages and spent years in court to first win a substantial judgment, then to fight Oberlin’s appeals.

In a recent interview with Professor Jacobson, Lee Plakas, lead trial attorney for the bakery, told him how important Jacobson’s blog has been to the legal team.

They clicked in daily.

“Your readers gave the family the support and the courage that they needed to persevere,” Plakas said. “We had a billion-dollar bully doing everything they possibly could to destroy this iconic bakery. . . . And we wanted to make sure that in this battle that we didn’t miss any nuance that one of your readers or Professor Jacobson may have identified. So we could incorporate it into our presentation.”

The result? Oberlin College finally agreed to pay the damages: $36.59 million.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

The Middle of the Beginning of the End

Presidential powers, pardons, marijuana

President Biden’s decision to pardon everyone federally convicted for a simple marijuana possession is not the true beginning of the end of the federal war on drug-taking people.

In 2018, the federal government legalized certain products with cannabinoids derived from hemp. That’s something, even if the feds still ban buying and selling marijuana.

On the other hand, for years many states have been legalizing pot, inspiring the federal government to somewhat slacken enforcement of its own pot ban — sometimes.

These developments constitute the beginning of the end for the federal war on drug-taking people.

Call Biden’s gesture the middle of the beginning. That it won’t be rapidly followed by full federal legalization of unapproved drugs or even marijuana is shown by the objections of other politicians.

Senator Tom Cotton laments that Biden is “giving blanket pardons to pot heads — many of whom pled down from more serious charges.”*

The argument would be equally valid if it were illegal to blow soap bubbles and some people had pled down from a charge of smashing windows to a charge of blowing soap bubbles. Granted, plea deals are often horrible, wrongly abetting the guilty and hurting the innocent. So reform the plea-deal regime. 

But don’t criminalize non-crimes.

The real impact? The White House admits that “while no-one is currently in prison for ‘simple possession,’ a pardon for those who have convictions could allow better access to housing or employment.”

Call it a half-start at the middle of the beginning of the end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another lament is that Biden’s pardon is just cynical election-eve politics. Well . . . let’s have more such pandering to the people; it seems the only way to get good policy from bad politicians. 

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general freedom insider corruption international affairs

Musk Gone Mad?

China, Taiwan, authoritarianism

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has often been lauded in this commentary — regarding SpaceX and the growth of private space travel, and recently for providing crucial internet access through his company’s Starlink satellites first to Ukraine and now for Iranian protesters.

I like that.

But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like it at all. As Musk acknowledged last week in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), explaining that Chinese rulers wanted “assurances” he would not provide Starlink internet to the 1.4 billion people they actively repress.

With a Tesla plant in Shanghai, Musk is much more vulnerable to the dictates of Xi Jinping and the CCP than he is to Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollah. 

“Tesla, though headquartered in the U.S.,” Forbes notes, “made about half of its cars last year in mainland China, the world’s largest auto market.” 

Which amounts to an awful lot of leverage.

In that same FT interview, Musk floated a “solution” to the tensions between China, which threatens a military attack that might kill millions, and its target Taiwan, which overwhelmingly favors a war of resistance to CCP takeover and threatened re-education.

“My recommendation,” the usually innovative businessman told FT, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan [under China’s authority] that is reasonably palatable,” adding, “it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

While the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. thanked Elon Musk for his idea, a senior Taiwanese official reminded, “The world has seen clearly what happened to Hong Kong.”

Does this brilliant businessman really think that the promise of a more “lenient” totalitarianism is any kind of solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

Armageddon, Anyone?

war, Russia, nuclear bomb

Ah, the things one hears at high-dollar Democratic Party fundraisers!

Like declaring Russia’s threat to unleash nuclear weapons against Ukraine as the most serious “prospect of Armageddon in 60 years.”

Last week, Sleepy Joe “startled many Americans” with those remarks at a closed-door meeting of big donors.

Backpedaling on Friday, “U.S. officials stressed . . . that the United States has no reason to change its nuclear posture.” No reason? We’re backing one side in a war in which nukes are on the table!

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, didn’t defend Biden’s “Armageddon” terminology but offered that it was “useful for the president and the administration to be having a conversation with the public about the risk.”

Of course, the president gave this frank evaluation to his party’s top check-writers, not the public. And that’s the second biggest problem with U.S. foreign policy: it’s totally divorced from the people. 

The biggest? Headin’ towards Armageddon. If Mr. Biden is serious about slouching towards the End Times, he should do more than make it the subject of political locker-room talk. 

Like what? How about:

  1. Seek to reduce tensions, wherever possible, and help Mr. Putin find an off ramp from his war in Ukraine; 
  2. Double- and triple-down on technologically defending the American people from the threat posed by nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction; and  
  3. Speak to the people about these threats and the U.S. response.

While security concerns may dictate that information not be shared publicly, if it’s good enough to share on the rubber-chicken circuit, it good enough for ‘We the People.’

We pay the highest prices; we deserve to hear the sales pitch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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X Lives Matter

mind control, PSYOP

I don’t usually comment on fashion. But at a recent show in Paris, this rather famous rapper who calls himself Ye but who used to call himself Kanye West sported newly designed black-and-white T-shirts with the slogan “White Lives Matter” on the back. Squarely in the territory of ideological fashion, I can comment without too much embarrassment.

There was some furor. 

It is unfashionable, politically, for anyone — even a black man, or especially a famous black man — to admit the obvious truth that “White Lives Matter.”

It appears that chic faux-lib’rals regard the slogan “Black Lives Matter” as some sort of trademark that precludes extension to other races. Only people of color may use an “X Lives Matter” kind of branding.

Idiotic. And racist. But ABC News laid out the case as if it were clearly established truth: “The [White Lives Matter] phrase has been described by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center as a white supremacist hate slogan that originated in 2015 as a racist response to the civil rights movement Black Lives Matter.”

And yet a statement like “White Lives Matter” or “Human Lives Matter” can only be hate speech if you think one usage defines words forever.

Which of course is precisely what some are trying to establish here.

Why? Well, the better to engage in angry, hateful ideological pseudo-discourse: shaming; marginalizing; de-humanizing.

Ye also posed with Candace Owens, a conservative commentator for The Daily Wire, wearing those shirts, and that, too, really annoyed people.

Not that it should. Ye was once married to a white woman, and Candace is married to a white man. They are making a commonsense point here: if you can’t say your spouse matters, what kind of spouse are you? And if you cannot extrapolate that mattering principle more generally, what kind of human are you?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency political challengers

Pro Bono No Bueno

campaign finance reform

The twisty highways and byways of campaign finance regulation bring us to another strange pass.

The Texas Ethics Commission is considering whether to effectively ban pro bono legal work for candidates. The method? Mandate that such work be regarded as an in-kind contribution subject to campaign finance regulations. 

David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, observes that most candidates “can’t afford to hire counsel and spend probably hundreds of thousands of dollars challenging the constitutionality of a law where the opinion may not come out until after the election. . . . Basically, the opinion would slam the courthouse door shut to candidates and most political committees.”

Campaign finance regulation has always meant curtailing speech and the activities that enable it and flow from it. This latest regulatory prospect is more of the same. As long as campaign finance regulation exists, there will always be obnoxious new ways to use it to hamper speech and action.

The commissioners, apparently seeing some merit in the pro-pro bono argument and therefore judging the issue at least worth mulling, have deferred their decision. It would have been far better to simply accept Keating’s objections and put an end to the proposed new crackdown then and there.

Meanwhile, Texans — especially potential candidates — must sit on the edge of their seats until the commission decides whether to make it prohibitively expensive to fend off unconstitutional assaults on candidates and campaigns. 

Not unlike the unconstitutional assault exemplified by campaign finance regulation itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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