Category: general freedom

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Common Sense general freedom

Happy New Year — 2025

New Year, 2025, Thomas Paine, America

“We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation, similar to the present, hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months. The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.”

—Thomas Paine

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general freedom national politics & policies regulation

No, Donald Trump, No

Chavez-DeRemer, unions, Trump, nominee

Here’s a deplorable turn of events — and just when we were so happy to have thwarted the socialist stylings of Harris and Walz.

We’ve always known that Donald Trump doesn’t advocate 100 percent laissez faire capitalism. As if to confirm his inconsistencies and disabuse us of any hopes of clear sailing toward greater freedom, or even toward keeping the freedom we’ve got, he has named Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his Secretary of Labor.

Labor-union darling DeRemer supports the Pro Act: anti-worker, anti-freelancer legislation that was barely blocked in Congress and that the current Labor Department has tried to impose by regulation. I doubt the incoming Congress will enact it either. But if DeRemer is Labor Secretary she, too, may try to impose it by regulation.

The Pro Act would kill laws in 26 states that let workers choose whether to join a union. There’s a novel concept, letting employees decide whether to join an organization supposedly devoted to their interests.

The Pro Act would also undermine the secrecy of the ballot in union elections. A secret ballot is a fundamental tenet of our democratic republic. 

Worst of all, at least for gig workers and freelancers, are its provisions to make life much harder to function as an independent contractor.

Unions that favor the Pro Act, and Mrs. DeRemer, are eager to do all they can to cripple the ability of non-unionized labor to compete with above-market-rate union labor.

This isn’t just a No, Mr. President. 

It is, as Jennifer O’Connell puts it, a “Hell No.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs

Denial Is a River in Argentina?

“In the history of the Earth, there is a cycle of temperatures,” said Javier Milei during a presidential debate in 2023. “We are not going to adhere to the 2030 Agenda [a United Nations list of dozens of goals for curtailing countries’ use of resources]. We do not adhere to cultural Marxism. We do not adhere to decadence.”

Now Argentina’s President Milei is acting to formally withdraw from accords requiring countries to become poorer in order to “save the planet,” etc.

Although Milei has axed many government departments, his government still has a chief environmental officer. This personage had been leading the Argentine delegation attending the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, happening November 11-22, 2024. But Argentina had told the delegation not to participate.

Now Milei has pulled them from the summit. Why? That was not immediately announced. But “Milei has consistently denied the existence of a climate crisis,” moans the Buenos Aires Herald.

Denialist Milei doubtless recognizes hurricanes, tornadoes, and other incidents of drastic weather. He’d probably add, though, that planet earth has seen plenty of crisis-level weather before carbon-emitting industry arrived to take the blame.

Milei’s decision to exit COP29 came a day after his meeting with President-elect Donald Trump, of like mind on environmental and other questions.

Trump is expected to re-withdraw the U.S. from the 2015 Paris agreement, another anti-industrial environmental accord. We don’t know yet whether Argentina will also withdraw. 

But if you’re betting Yes, I like your chances.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Censors Slapped at Start

Kamala Harris, satire, free speech, censorship

Californians may now be allowed to see and laugh at “falsehoods” after all.

The Golden State legislature and Governor Newsom will probably fail in their attempt, made in open violation of the First Amendment, to ban certain parody and satire that communicates what they call “falsehoods.” (California hasn’t yet outlawed political novels.)

The battle isn’t over yet. But a court has issued a preliminary injunction against recently passed legislation, declaring that it “does not pass constitutional scrutiny.”

Cited in the ruling is this excellent insight: “‘Especially as to political speech, counter speech is the tried and true buffer and elixir,’ not speech restriction.”

Further, by “singling out and censoring political speech, California hasn’t saved democracy — it has undermined it. The First Amendment does not brook appeals to ‘enhancing the ability of . . . citizenry to make wise decisions by restricting the flow of information to them.’” Though the judge determined that California has “a valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process,” the current legislation “lacks the narrow tailoring and least restrictive alternative that a content based law requires under strict scrutiny.”

What could such “narrow tailoring” have consisted of? The repudiated legislation has everything to do with speech that should be unhindered and nothing to do with protecting the electoral process. 

AB2839 and a related law, AB2655, were the rapid response of California’s kingpins to an effective parody video of a “Kamala Harris” “ad.” In it, “Harris” explains that she is a vacuous “deep-state puppet.”

The First Amendment protects the right to utter truth, falsehoods, and the kinds of satirical fictions and parodic exaggerations that everybody but opponents of free speech understand to be fictions and exaggerations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture

Nondiscrimination as Discriminatory 

DEI, diversity, quotas, race, racism, regulations, education

Two parts gall, three parts random irrationality; eye of newt, toe of frog. 

That’s how you cook up the latest leftist madness.

According to the wizards running Columbia University, deliberately race-neutral policies are discriminatory if they have a “disproportionate impact.”

Columbia has updated its antidiscrimination policy about bad things you can do on campus that might get you investigated and sanctioned. The revised policy declares that one bad thing is “having a neutral policy or practice that has a disproportionate and unjustified adverse impact on actual and/or perceived members or associates of one Protected Class more than others.” 

This, the policy asserts, “constitutes Discrimination” — with a capital D.

Those “protected classes” make up a formidable list. If the idea is that treating another person abusively subjects one to penalties, why not just say this? Then no groups need be listed.

But Columbia University seems to find focusing on discriminatory nondiscrimination a more productive way to spend its time than coping with unambiguous racial and ethnic hatred on campus.

Columbia is among the schools that has responded to vicious harassment of Jewish students with little more than pro forma protest. Even as a Columbia representative tells USA Today that “calls for violence have no place at Columbia,” anti-Israel and anti-Jewish students keep calling for violence. Will they be kicked out?

Eliana Goldin, a Jewish student at the school, says that the administration is well aware of “the credible threat to Jewish students, and they’re still playing both-sideism.”

Which strikes me as Discrimination with a Capital D.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom

Kamala Harris’s Attack on Parents

Kamala Harris, truancy, truant, schools, education, regulations, consequences

Among the skeletons rattling around in presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s closet is her support — while San Francisco’s district attorney and while running for state attorney general — for a law to punish parents for their children’s absences from school.

The story, reported by Huffpost, NPR, and others several years ago, has more recently been publicized by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Harris supported the harass-parents truancy program when it was conceived in the state legislature, saying that “a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime.” Under the program, which still exists, a school can refer persistent truancy to a district attorney’s office, which can then threaten to prosecute parents.

One victim was Cheree Peoples, who was arrested and handcuffed in 2013 while still in her pajamas. “You would swear I had killed somebody.” Her daughter Shayla had missed twenty days of school in the current school year. Cheree faced a possible penalty of $2,500 or a year in jail. 

Shayla has sickle cell anemia and required frequent hospitalization. 

Shayla’s mother fought the charges for a long time. Eventually, they were dropped.

Harris bragged about the truancy program while being inaugurated as attorney general. “If you fail in your responsibility to your kids, we are going to work to make sure you face the full force and consequences of the law.”

Today, Harris says the harass-parents law she championed has been abused by others. But isn’t the law itself the abuse?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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defense & war general freedom international affairs

‘Meat on the Table’

Xi Jinping, China, South China Sea, fishing boats, Taiwan

“Vietnamese newspaper Tien Phong reported that 40 individuals from foreign ships thrashed the fishermen aboard the Vietnamese ship with iron pipes and stole their fishing gear,” relayed The Eur-Asian Times. Four fishermen were seriously injured, three had broken limbs.

At the time of that September 29th report, the vessels that attacked the fishing boat were only identified as “foreign.” But everyone knew which country was responsible.

Only the Chinazis, as Hong Kongers call those atop the Chinese Communist Party, behave with such brutality and callous disregard for the rights of others. The boats involved turned out to be part of China’s Maritime Safety Administration.

“Safety”?

Well, safe for Chinese exploitation of the entire South China Sea (SCS), 90 percent of which the genocidal totalitarian regime claims as its own and is now actively policing — without regard to international law or the rights of the Vietnamese, Filipinos, Malaysians, Taiwanese, Indonesians and others.

After arbitration between the Philippines and China under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas, an international court ruled in 2016 that China’s SCS claims were without any foundation. Obviously China continues to ignore the international court — and with increasing force.

“[T]he Chinese Coast Guard and the Philippine Navy clashed at sea and in the air a whopping six times in August over key areas of the SCS,” noted a story in The National Interest, adding that five of the six incidents occurred in Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone. The sixth was in international waters. None took place anywhere close to China.

Without a military alliance with the United States “China would basically consider you as a meat on the table,” explained Professor Renato Cruz De Castro of De La Salle University in Manila,

“China would simply subjugate you,” the professor continued, “whether you appease China or challenge China.”

This stark reality now drives even Vietnam to seek help from the United States . . . as the world lurches closer to World War III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: After putting this commentary to bed, news broke last night that China’s military is encircling Taiwan in a military exercise practicing an invasion and/or blockade of the democratic island nation.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

California vs. Inconvenient Speech

Kamala Harris, parody, satire, free speech, censorship, deep fake

California Governor Newsom wants to outlaw all political speech annoying to himself. If legislation he’s just signed is allowed to stand, he’ll be well on the way to doing so.

One target of California’s two new laws, the Babylon Bee, is filing suit against them.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the Bee, says that the subjects of the lawsuit, California’s AB2839 and AB265, “censor speech through subjective standards like prohibiting pictures and videos ‘likely to harm’ a candidate’s ‘electoral prospects.’. . . AB 2655 applies to large online platforms and requires them to sometimes label, and other times remove, posts with ‘materially deceptive content.’”

Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon observes that, contrary to the wishes of “self-serving politicians [who] abuse their power to try and control public discourse and clamp down on comedy,” the right to tell jokes they dislike is secured by the First Amendment.

The vague nature of the laws would enable California officials to “police speech they disagree with,” according to ADF and Captain Obvious.

One of the laws requires a disclaimer to be attached to satirical content, a mandate that also violates the First Amendment.

The immediate incentive for fast-tracking the censorship bills into law was a parody video of Kamala Harris that includes a simulation of her voice. The video does bill itself as parody but that is obvious regardless. This video “should be illegal,” Newsom asseverated.

No, it shouldn’t. 

Anyway, watch the hilarity on YouTube . . . while you can.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom Voting

Strange Standard

voting, illegal immigration, elections, democracy, cheating, citizenship

Last week, an audit found that Oregon’s Department of Motor Vehicles staff had erroneously forwarded the registrations of 1,259 people who had not provided necessary citizenship documents on to the Secretary of State, and — voilà! — they appeared on the voter rolls.

“None of the Oregon residents who were automatically registered to vote without demonstrating citizenship voted in an election where they could have cast the deciding ballot, the state’s elections director told lawmakers on Wednesday,” reports Oregon Capitol Chronicle.

Is that the new standard? Don’t fret about a system that automatically registers people who are noncitizens . . . because the number of likely noncitizens who appear to have illegally voted was not enough to have changed the outcome.

The Democrats running the Oregon Legislature were reluctant to hold a hearing; House Majority Leader Ben Bowman opened by warning that “scoring political points” or “attacks or accusations against election staff” or saying anything “that could incite any violence of any kind against any immigrants or any communities in the state” would not be tolerated. 

That’s a dodge — hiding behind concern for immigrants when the issue is a faulty election system. 

Besides, we don’t serve immigrants by placing them on voters’ lists without their knowledge, then sending them flyers urging them to vote, when, if they follow all the prompts sent their way and cast a ballot, they can lose their chance to become an American citizen.

And even be deported.

Simple, straightforward solutions exist: End these automatic voter registration regimes, require proof of citizenship for new folks registering to vote, and make it clear at all levels that voting is for citizens only. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom

New York’s Pandemic Orgiast

Varma, Covid, New York, pandemic

“The official in charge of New York City’s pandemic response participated in sex parties and attended a dance party underneath a Wall Street bank during the height of the pandemic,” reports The New York Times, “even as he was instructing New Yorkers to stay home and away from others to stop the spread of Covid-19. He acknowledged his transgressions on Thursday after being caught on hidden camera boasting about his exploits.”

The orgiast’s name is Dr. Jay K. Varma. He served as New York City Hall’s senior public health adviser under Mayor Bill de Blasio from the height of the pandemic panic to May 2021. The camera was hidden by comedian Steven Crowder — of “Louder with Crowder” fame and infamy — who tweeted the video last Thursday.

On the released recordings Dr. Varma says a lot of incriminating things. Bad enough is what others regard as his boast: “I actually was the one who convinced the mayor to make it mandatory,” he says clearly, with the “it” being “the vaccine.” 

He was just as intentional, though, about the orgies he participated in — “to let off steam.” These were not spontaneous events erupting at sedate dinners at his home. The “eight or ten friends” rented a hotel room and bought drugs for the occasion.

If you are at all shocked, the doctor understands. “Yeah,” he says, upon being asked what would have happened had he been found out at the time he was bullying people throughout the city, “it would have been a real embarrassment.”

But more than merely embarrassing. That the public health Covidians were willing to break both letter and spirit of their tyrannical edicts only suggests that the most flagrant orgy was their naked abuse of political power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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