Category: general freedom

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general freedom individual achievement local leaders political challengers responsibility

Liberty Rising?

Nick Freitas, Republican, Virginia’s House of Delegates, libertarian, conservative freedom

“Let me make something very clear,” Nick Freitas stated unequivocally. “I don’t have a political career.”

Freitas, a Republican member of Virginia’s House of Delegates announcing his candidacy for the United States Senate, was responding to advice that running against incumbent Sen. Tim Kaine “could hurt [his] political career.”

It’s music to my ears. And to Matt Kibbe’s. The leader of Free the People calls Freitas “the most interesting liberty Republican you’ve never heard of.”

Yet, in Virginia’s conservative networks, Freitas has made quite a name for himself, defending the Second Amendment and fighting Medicaid expansion in a one-seat GOP-majority House.

“You can’t fix everything through government force and coercion,” he explained to Kibbe. “If the path we’re going down, which is just ‘let us manage the federal government as it continues to expand, as it continues to increase debt,’ that’s just not a Republican Party I’m interested in.”

Del. Freitas added that the American people seem similarly uninterested.

Perhaps he is simply telling us what we want to hear. He wouldn’t be the first bait-and-switch politician. But Freitas isn’t exactly playing for the bleachers by naming Calvin Coolidge rather than Ronald Reagan as “the best president of the 20th century.”

And he talks about individual liberty, which, he explains, is “based off the premise that I have a right to pursue happiness in accordance of what my definition of happiness is, so far as it doesn’t infringe on your right to do the same thing.”

He had me with “I don’t have a political career.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Why They Hate the First Amendment

Facebook, censorship, censor, first amendment, free speech, Citizens United, elections

Does banning Facebook in the weeks leading up to an election sound like freedom?

“The corrosive effect of social media on democratic life,” writes The New Republic’s Jeet Heer, “has led both French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make the same threat to Facebook: self-regulate or be regulated.”

But Macron doesn’t go far enough. “If fake news truly poses a crisis for democracy, then it calls for a radical response,” Heer insists.

“Many countries have election silence laws, which limit or prohibit political campaigning for varying periods of time ranging from election day alone to as early as three days before the election.” And Heer sees little reason not to apply such regulations to social media.

“What if you weren’t allowed to post anything political on Facebook in the two weeks before an election?”

This exactly parallels the prohibition of political spending “by corporations” before an election, as in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulation. Except here we have it directly affecting normal citizens.

The current excuse, “fake news,” appears to be defined by partisans almost entirely as the errors and lies and spin of their opponents’ side(s).

But since lying about one’s political enemies is at least as old as the Election of 1800, why is this different now?

Because, I submit, Facebook is just another area the folks pushing such obvious breaches of the First Amendment — politicians and most of the media — do not yet control.

Competition mustn’t be tolerated.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: by John Nakamura Remy

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Georgia on My Dime

pig, pigliets, crony capitalism, Delta, NRA

After the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, followed by pressure from gun control advocates, Delta Airlines announced it would end its corporate relationship with the National Rifle Association, whereby NRA members were given discounts on travel.*

Meanwhile, Georgia legislators were in the process of passing legislation to give Delta a state sales tax break on their fuel purchases. That special legislative deal was worth a whopping $40 million to the Atlanta-based company.

Yet, when Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle heard about Delta dissing the NRA, he tweeted, “I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.”

The Lt. Gov. added, “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

Everyone is familiar with the story. Those who favor gun rights were angry with Delta Airlines and ecstatic with the pushback from Georgia legislators. Those favoring new legislation to restrict gun ownership were thrilled by Delta’s break with the NRA and livid with those legislators.

But while cheering and jeering one side or the other, too many folks missed the 800-lb problem in the room. A letter writer to the Washington Post illuminated it: “The government can’t punish people or businesses for their political views. They can be punished only by the free market, in the form of lost business.”

True enough in the free market.

But when crony capitalism replaces free markets, the government certainly will punish or reward people and businesses — with millions and billions of our tax dollars — on purely political grounds.

Georgia government just did it to Delta Airlines.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* To be precise, reports claim a grand total of 13 NRA members availed themselves to the special rates once offered by Delta.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest Second Amendment rights

The Other Kind of Trade War

trade war, fractured, division, Alex Jones, censorship, boycott, civility, civil discourse

President Donald Trump’s promise — threat? mere negotiating gambit? — to add a 25 percent tariff on steel could usher in a new international trade war, which he says is “easy to win” but which in reality could lead to a cascade of tariff increases worldwide, throttling trade and plummeting us into a Great Depression.*

This is not just politically divisive (designed to please his protectionist base), it’s socially and globally divisive.

But that’s not the only radically divisive move at present.

Last weekend, YouTube froze, for a short time, the account of one of the most popular channels on the video service, Alex Jones’ Infowars. This is part of a major effort by Google’s platform, Jones says,** as well as a general trend by businesses and European governments, to suppress the speech of the strongest critics of open immigration, PC speech codes, gender politics, and outrageous media bias. Though, in Jones’ case, admittedly peddling some ridiculous conspiracy theories in the process.

YouTube has admitted that the new people the company had hired to police the platform — from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jones pointedly emphasizes — had taken down thousands of sites without cause.

For partisan reasons. Apparently.

Jones and many other YouTubers call it a “purge.”

What to make of all this I’m not sure. But I do know that the pressure that activist groups are putting on some companies to sever all ties with the National Rifle Association has an obvious problem: fracturing the market into warring political tribes.

Do activists on the left not see where this ultimately leads? Some companies serving half the market, others the other — this is a disaster in the making.

I prefer civil discourse.

And democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Just as it happened in 1929-1931 with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

** Infowars insists that CNN is behind at least some of the push against Jones’ popular radio/podcast news-and-conspiracy commentary business, as CNN’s own coverage more than suggests.

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Categories
Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Insufferable Common Sense

Timothy Locke, Cherry Hill High School East in New Jersey, gun, gun control, 2nd Amendment, hysteria

Sometimes common sense and open discourse can’t be suffered — or won’t be, anyway.

So discovered Timothy Locke, a popular teacher at Cherry Hill High School East in New Jersey, after discussing the possibility of arming teachers to help protect adults and kids from would-be mass-murderers. Locke also suggested that he’d be among those bearing arms if allowed.

Most of Locke’s students were okay with his opining. But one student was bothered enough by the viewpoint to complain to administrators.

Without further ado, the school — the “Home of the Cougars,” which proudly proclaims its promotion of “a welcoming environment, community, diversity . . . participation . . . growth mindset, grit. . . ,” so forth — searched Locke’s belongings, subjected him to mental and physical evaluations, and suspended him.

Mental evaluation? Wasn’t that a ploy in the old Soviet Union: dissenters must be crazy, hence ought to be carted off to the loony bin? Let’s go nowhere near such sanctions against independent thinking here.

“The bottom line,” Locke summaraized, “is that I was very concerned about security at my school.”

Through an online petition and otherwise, hundreds of students have protested the shabby way that a teacher who inspires them has been treated.

Students less enthusiastic about Locke lament the teacher’s tendency to digress — still legal in all 50 states.

So what now? After a futile school board meeting deflecting questions on Locke’s fate, a second, special meeting is scheduled for tonight, March 6, at 7 pm in the Cherry Hill High School West Auditorium.

Let’s hope sanity prevails.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard

Fear of Voters

Oklahoma, votes, democracy, initiative, marijuana, State Rep. John Enns, ballot

You are a state legislator, say. And an issue could be placed on the ballot on which a majority of your state’s citizens might not vote according to your preference. What would you do?

  1. Educate your fellow citizens on the merits of your position; or
  2. Dawdle while calling a lobbyist for advice; or
  3. Change the constitution to make it impossible for such a vote to ever be held?

State Rep. John Enns chose option C — perhaps after exhausting B. Stamping out Oklahoma’s ballot initiative process, freeing Enns and other legislators from this citizen check at the ballot box, is the essence of his House Bill 1603.

The Sooner State already possessed the toughest petition requirements in the country.  Supporters must gain the country’s highest percentage of voter support (15 percent) while limited to the second shortest time period (90 days) to circulate petitions.

On top of this current statewide slog, Enns’ constitutional amendment would require also qualifying in every single county. Oklahoma has 77 counties.

As the Tulsa World editorialized, “he wants to make it impossible.”

What lousy rationale lies behind Enns’ desire to destroy democratic governance?

In response to another legislator’s query about his “fear that some marijuana bill will . . . become a state [ballot] question,” Enns claimed his effort was “not pre-emptive.” But he acknowledged his strong opposition to legalizing recreational marijuana, which he pointed out “had been done through initiative petition” in other states.

Enns is afraid of Oklahoma voters having their say. He should be.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* I mean, of course, that Rep. Enns should fear being booted out of office on his keister. He should not have to fear physical reprisal. The Tulsa World reports that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is now providing security to Enns, after a death threat was received related to his HB 1603.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture judiciary media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Post Blindfold

blind justice, unions, Supreme Court, polarization, politics

While the Supreme Court heard oral argument, Monday, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court of public opinion focused not so much on the constitutionality of the law in question, i.e. justice, but instead on the partisan impact of the decision, i.e. politics.

A Washington Post editorial advances the notion that the court was presented “with two questions. The first is the legal issue . . .” and the second “implicit” question is “how the court should conduct judicial review in a deeply polarized society.”

Plaintiff Mark Janus and his legal team are seeking an “extraordinary remedy in the context of the Supreme Court’s tumultuous recent history,” claims the Post.

But that history is not Mr. Janus’s.

Or the union’s.

Or even U.S. labor relations’.

The editors are talking about Washington’s bitter 2016 political fight.

What does political polarization have to do with the facts or law of this case? Nothing. Except . . . what’s in peril is a system whereby government workers who do not wish to join a union are nonetheless forced to pay union dues.

So, if the Court nixes current law, AFSCME might wind up with fewer dues paying members . . . meaning less money for AFSCME’s political pet, the Democratic Party.

And Democrats — now stuck with a conservative replacement for the late Justice Scalia — are left only with Obama’s pronouncement: “Elections have consequences.”

And, embarrassingly, the Post’s bizarre case for “steering the court modestly down the middle of the road.”

A lady, blindfolded, holding scales and a sword symbolizes justice. That blindfold is not to avoid reading the law; it represents the imperative to ignore politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Self-Defense, Implausible?

gun, gun free, school zone, control, schools, teachers, Israel, defense, gun control

Don’t take a GUN-FREE ZONE sign to a gun fight.

Whenever there’s a horrific incident of mass murder, advocates of citizen disarmament blame the right to protect oneself against armed attackers. The thinking seems to be that if we make it illegal for all civilians to have guns, bad guys willing to kill people will also refrain from using guns as they try to kill people.

This is implausible.

And if you do not see its implausibility immediately regarding firearms, consider drugs. Not taking them, but the war on same. Drugs didn’t vanish upon prohibition. Neither would guns if prohibited.

President Trump argues that students would be safer were schools a harder target. Why not arm well-trained teachers? “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.” He’s right.

Not a new idea, of course. It’s been argued, for example, by the NRA, whose chairman says that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

This idea is being practiced right now — in Israel.

As Tzvi Lev argues at the Arutz Sheva 7 site, Israel proves the NRA’s point.

Even Israel — where Arab communities are “rife with illegal weapons” despite their illegality — has not always been quick to recognize that it’s better to have lots of armed civilians when terrorists start shooting at civilians. But after terrorists attacked a school in 1974, the government began arming and training teachers — somehow failing to defer to the terrorists’ preference for gun-free zones.

In both of the only-two school shootings in Israel since then, teachers killed the attackers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

He Applied Himself

pre-crime, PKD, guns, gun control, shooting, Parkland, Florida, prevention, freedom

“I need to make this count,” wrote a young man in Everett, Washington.

Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t attempting a big career-oriented project. He was planning a mass shooting.

“I need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can,” is one of many damning journal passages the police have made public. Apparently he had settled on attacking the high school he attended. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/bombers mistakes.”

Ambition and rigor: missapplied.

Fortunately, his grandmother read his journal and discovered a rifle in his guitar case. She turned him into the police the Tuesday before the Florida shooting I wrote about last week. And maybe just in time.

Meanwhile, last week’s Parkland, Florida, shooting dominates the headlines. Fellow students and neighbors of the Florida shooting victims have ramped up their condemnations and demands — including at a horrorshow “town hall” on CNN.

Yet the nature of the difficulties in preventing such atrocities has become lost in the rhetoric and anger.*

In a free society, we cannot arrest people before they commit a crime. In the Everett case, officials were “lucky”: despite the young man’s lack of a criminal record, they were able to charge him with a burglary they allege he committed the day before arrest — and his extensive planning notes are being taken as evidence for intent. He’s also been charged with attempted murder.

We should be in inquiry mode, right now. It could be helpful to know the exact motivations for both the Florida shooter and the Everett wannabe — and similar cases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Law enforcement is tasked with uncovering spree shooting plots today — and to protect, too. But the armed, uniformed school resource officer at the Parkland high school failed to protect. He heard the gunshots but never entered the building, while the shooter killed 17 innocents.

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general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Graceless Memphis Politicians

instant-runoff elections, Memphis, city council, government, term limits,

“We could care less about instant runoff voting,” fibbed Allan Wade, the city attorney for Memphis, Tennessee.

Wade was rebutting the recent Commercial Appeal revelation that Memphis’s “City Council worked behind the scenes to find a sponsor for legislation this year that could ban instant-runoff elections statewide.”

After long relying on the mayor’s lobbyists, was it purely coincidental that the council suddenly spent $120,000 on its own Nashville lobbyists?

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), missed the memo. He acknowledged being “approached . . . on the council’s behalf to ask if he would again sponsor the bill.” A lobbyist also confirmed to the Memphis Flyer that the council engaged him to push the ban on what is also known as ranked choice voting.

So, the city council is directly lobbying the Tennessee Legislature to overrule their city’s residents — who voted 71 percent YES for instant runoff voting in 2008.

And there’s a twist. The council has placed two measures that would repeal instant runoff voting on this November’s ballot, hoping to somehow convince voters to scrap the reform. Wait . . . why lobby the legislature when the voters are already set to make the decision?

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Now they are using our money to take away that choice from us,” protests Aaron Fowles with Save Instant Runoff Memphis.

This city council — in addition to their sneaky, anti-democratic assault on instant runoff voting — has also placed a measure on the ballot to weaken their own term limits, passed by an 80 percent vote.

To paraphrase Memphis’s King, these rabid-dog politicians ain’t never caught a rabbit and they ain’t no friends of ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After media coverage, a hearing on the Senate version of the bill to ban instant runoff voting, SB 2271, was abruptly postponed for three weeks.

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