Category: general freedom

Categories
folly general freedom media and media people

Where We Are Now

Covid, panic, hysteria, crazy

Two young people, a high school girl and a college man, have two very different COVID stories, but both reveal where we are right now in the pandemic.

“Abby Chenoweth was a healthy 16-year-old,” writes Emily Walker for MSN. “The Titusville teen took virtual school classes and wore a face mask when she left the house. Her mom said she didn’t have pre-existing conditions, and she didn’t go out often.”

The report goes on to focus on her horrific COVID case, and readers’ hearts go out to her. But that opening paragraph is bald-faced lie. 

Or at least a “white lie.” You decide.

You see, Abby Chenoweth is obese. She is obviously so in the photos provided by her mother. And not merely a “little bit” overweight.

Our hearts break all the same, but her obesity is a “pre-existing condition.” We knew early on that COVID can be devastating for the overweight.

The article does not once mention her corpulence. Were it not for the photos, readers wouldn’t have a clue. They would read Abby’s mother’s mask apologia at the end as an earnest and honest plea.

Next to Ms. Chenoweth’s harrowing story, and the see-through propaganda made out of it, 22-year-old Logan Hollar’s story is comic. The title delivers the punch line: “Rutgers student says he’s being stopped from taking virtual classes because he’s not vaccinated,” Karen Price Mueller’s piece summarizes.

“I believe in science, I believe in vaccines,” cautions Mr. Hollar’s stepfather, “but I am highly confident that COVID-19 and variants do not travel through computer monitors by taking online classes.”

Do the professors and administrators at Rutgers know that?

COVID craziness seems more infectious than COVID itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Photo Credit: crazy person

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom media and media people social media too much government

Ceding “Science” to Totalitarians?

Covid, fascism, vaccination

A recent Reason article on New York’s new vaccination passport informs that “there’s a case to be made . . .” yet neglects to mention that the opposite case can also be made. 

What case is it?

Well, the Mayor Bill de Blasio-sanctified case is that “these [totalitarian] measures are important for getting as much of the population vaccinated as possible in order to reduce virus mutation and prevent more harmful variants from taking root.” 

Yet the inverse is perhaps more persuasive. Several important figures in the medical and scientific community have been crying Cassandra* for some time, arguing that an ineffective vaccine, like the mRNA treatments sponsored by Pfizer and Moderna, may, according to epidemiological principles long understood, pressure the spreading viruses into the thing we don’t want: more deadly variants.

The normal course for a new contagion is for it to mutate into easier-to-spread but less deadly variants. Killing a host isn’t good for the virus, so it changes over time. Oddly, I rarely hear this mentioned.

Herd immunity, which is the prevalence in a community of enough people who can fend off the virus preventing transmission to weaker people, can only be helped by vaccination when the vaccines increase hosts’ immunity to obtaining it and spreading it — neither of which clearly applies to the current vaccines.

“From their very first conceptualization,” claims Geert Vanden Bossche, one of the biggest names in the industry to object to the vaccination campaign, “it should have been very clear that these ‘S-based’ Covid-19 vaccines are completely inadequate for generating herd immunity in a population, regardless of . . . the rate of vaccine coverage.”

Sans herd immunity but with universal vaccination, he says, deadlier variants could arise.

Is he right? I don’t know. 

But the case against vaccine passports might reference epidemiology and virology from sources outside establishment-approved “scientific” opinion.

Totalitarians rarely have “the science” on their side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Ineffective because suppressed on major social media, in part. You can find their discussion on Rumble, Brighteon, Bitchute and other upstart sites.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Subminimal Morality

Matt Thibodeau

He’s been at the job fourteen years. Congress may kill it.

Matt Thibodeau has disabilities that severely limit how productive he can be and thus how much he can contribute to the bottom line of his employer, Associated Production Services.

Under a longstanding exception to the federal minimum wage, Matt is paid $3.40 an hour for tasks like shrink-wrapping and assembling packages. The rate makes his employment feasible. (The current federal minimum is $7.25.)

Some congressmen want to scrap this exception to the mandatory minimum, calling it unfair and “out of date.”

“I felt like they were being targeted because they couldn’t speak for themselves,” says Matt’s mom, “and so that made us parents even more determined to speak for them.”

What’s out of date, or was never justified to begin with, is Congress’s federal minimum wage regulation.

Any mandatory minimum wage discourages employers from hiring persons not yet productive enough to justify the cost of being employed at the dictated minimum. It prevents low-skilled workers — on the outs of the economy — from getting a foot in the door.

Some employees initially paid only a few dollars an hour will soon improve their productivity and earn a higher wage. Others, like Matt, simply cannot advance further but can provide steady, conscientious labor within the compass of their abilities.

That’s fine. Each party to such an arrangement benefits. And his work enables Matt to be productive and valued, which is tremendously important to him. 

As it is important to all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture

The Lollapalooza Loophole

Lori Lightfoot, Lallapallooza, Chicago

When the Lollapalooza music festival took place in Chicago, on the hinge of July and August, with oodles of attendees (some masked), a few people cried bloody foul, on account of super-spreader event potential. But Fox News’s Ben Domenech noted that the number of murders in Chicago over July was three times the number of COVID deaths, and the nation’s capital sports a similar ratio.

When Domenech asked guest Tim Pool about the lack of interest in gun violence in gun-controlled Chicago, Mr. Pool expressed bafflement.

But — really? Politicians seem bent on focusing on regulating us with masks and jabs rather than regulating criminals. And for a reason. . . .

More striking was Anthony Fauci’s public worrying about the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, while ignoring the Lollapalooza event — as well as Barack Obama’s 60th Birthday Party, which revealed/reveled in plenty of celebs unmasked.

A familiar double standard: how the elites get to behave vs. how they say we “must” behave!

The concept of “Anarcho-tyranny” may explain much of this. Politicians of a certain sort prefer to regulate peaceful people (tyranny) while letting real criminals go free (anarchy). It is easier to police the peaceful and law-abiding, while criminals on the loose reinforce the need for a more powerful state.

The Lollapaloozans are on the “right side” (the left side?) of the cultural divide, while the Sturgis rally is on the “wrong side.”

And make a good target. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Lockdowns Down Under

John Howard, Australia

“Australia is suffering a surge of authoritarianism, in part because of its lack of constitutional protections for liberty,” writes J.D. Tuccille at Reason.

Sydney, Australia, is going through another major round of lockdowns. When you see the popular reaction — the mass protests demonstrate how unpopular the lockdowns are — you might be inclined to think there’s hope.

But Mr. Tuccille finds the hope in Americans’ great historic fortune: we have a Bill of Rights.

Australian politicians, on the other hand, express thankfulness that Australia doesn’t have any deep constitutional limits to their powers.

While it is the current Aussie prime minister who plays tyrant today, Aussie tyranny was cogently expressed by a previous holder of the position, John Howard, whom Tuccille quotes — chillingly: 

  1. “The essence of my objection to a Bill of Rights is that, contrary to its very description, it reduces the rights of citizens to determine matters over which they should continue to exercise control.” 
  2. “I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities.”

That first point is not made much less bizarre by the prime minister’s elaboration, expressed in a sentence Tuccille did not include, that a Bill of Rights must fail because it delivers “authority to unelected judges, accountable to no one except in the barest theoretical sense.” Yet, lacking a listing of rights, there are few things a beleaguered citizen can do but bend to the cop’s bludgeon and prime minister’s edict. (Hooray for judges?)

That second point is an old canard. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand; every right has a flip-side duty.

In the context of a pandemic: people with rights oblige others to negotiate masks and vaccines and the like.

Where? On private property: outside of government. On public property: in legislatures. 

Alas?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights general freedom

Lockdowns Down Under

John Howard, Australia

“Australia is suffering a surge of authoritarianism, in part because of its lack of constitutional protections for liberty,” writes J.D. Tuccille at Reason.

Sydney, Australia, is going through another major round of lockdowns. When you see the popular reaction — the mass protests demonstrate how unpopular the lockdowns are — you might be inclined to think there’s hope.

But Mr. Tuccille finds the hope in Americans’ great historic fortune: we have a Bill of Rights.

Australian politicians, on the other hand, express thankfulness that Australia doesn’t have any deep constitutional limits to their powers.

While it is the current Aussie prime minister who plays tyrant today, Aussie tyranny was cogently expressed by a previous holder of the position, John Howard, whom Tuccille quotes — chillingly: 

  1. “The essence of my objection to a Bill of Rights is that, contrary to its very description, it reduces the rights of citizens to determine matters over which they should continue to exercise control.” 
  2. “I also reject a Bill of Rights framework because it elevates rights to the detriment of responsibilities.”

That first point is not made much less bizarre by the prime minister’s elaboration, expressed in a sentence Tuccille did not include, that a Bill of Rights must fail because it delivers “authority to unelected judges, accountable to no one except in the barest theoretical sense.” Yet, lacking a listing of rights, there are few things a beleaguered citizen can do but bend to the cop’s bludgeon and prime minister’s edict. (Hooray for judges?)

That second point is an old canard. Rights and responsibilities go hand in hand; every right has a flip-side duty.

In the context of a pandemic: people with rights oblige others to negotiate masks and vaccines and the like.

Where? On private property: outside of government. On public property: in legislatures. 

Alas?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts