Building a mega-state to fight corporate power…
…is like giving yourself AIDS to fight the flu.
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Category: ideological culture
On February 28, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) will announce the winners of its annual movie awards. Many Americans watch this Academy Awards show as a rite, treating the “The Oscars” as if it were a big deal.
It certainly isn’t immune to controversy.
This year, a cry went up under the banner “#OscarsSoWhite.” Unlike in the recent past, no black actors or directors were nominated in the big categories. Charges of racism flew fast and wild.
AMPAS is a large but private membership organization, and its membership is overwhelmingly white. So one could “explain” the nomination list entirely on racial grounds.
But it’s not as if the organization doesn’t try to be fair: the voting process, for the final awards, is nothing as crude as America’s bizarre system, which combines first-past-the-post vote counting and selection by the Electoral College. AMPAS uses a form of ranked choice voting, instead.
“Since 2009, the Academy has used instant runoff voting to determine the winner of the coveted Best Picture award,” explains Molly Rockett at Oscar Votes 1-2-3.
The Academy has an interest in ensuring that winners at least enjoy majority support, so the selection process measures overall support, not picking the winner merely by a small plurality of first place votes in a crowded field.
Ms. Rockett tells us that the Academy is trying to racially diversify its membership. Maybe that will change something. Or maybe nothing needs to be changed — it’s not as if the Oscar nominees should be selected by racial quota.
But it is worth remembering that the Oscars sport a more rational democracy than the United States.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.
Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.
But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.
Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”
But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?
Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”
That is Establishment.
Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea . . . in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.
But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers . . . like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.
Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
According to a weekend CNN-WMUR poll in New Hampshire, Sen. Bernie Sanders leads former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by eight percentage points.
Among women.
“Hillary Clinton’s quest to become the country’s first female president has encountered an unexpected problem,” begins a Washington Post report on Hillary’s “trouble persuading women, young and old, to rally behind her cause.”
Younger women seem to pose the biggest “problem.” The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC/Marist College poll of New Hampshire Democrats found Mrs. Clinton nine points ahead of Sen. Sanders among women 45 and over. But Sanders bests Clinton by a remarkable 29 percentage points with women under 45 years of age.
Not to worry, the faces of establishment feminism have been mobilized. Madeleine Albright, appointed to be the first woman Secretary of State in 1997 by then-Pres. Bill Clinton, stood at a Granite State rally with Hillary to shout, “There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”
Persuasive?
On his HBO show, comedian Bill Maher asked feminist icon Gloria Steinem to explain why younger women “really don’t like Hillary.” Ms. Steinem postulated, “When you’re young, you’re thinking: ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie,’”
In her subsequent Facebook “apology,” Steinem claimed she “misspoke” and had “been misinterpreted as implying young women aren’t serious in their politics.”
Imagine that.
Dana Edell, the leader of an “anti-racist gender justice advocacy group,” offers a less controversial explanation. “While the historic aspect of the first woman president is hugely powerful and important,” she told the Old Gray Lady, Hillary Clinton “might not be the right first woman.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
He’s never met a government monopoly he didn’t love, or a free market service he didn’t distrust or despise…
…but don’t worry, he’s not really a socialist!
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Bernie Sanders is worse than merely wrong about the rich not paying their fair share of taxes.
It’s we, the much-lauded “Ninety-nine Percenters,” who don’t pay enough!
At least, when we figure taxes paid against direct subsidies/services rendered: taxes minus transfers. And, according to the Congressional Budget Office, only the top quintile of income earners — including the much-abhorred One Percenters — pay appreciably more in taxes than they receive in “benefits.”
In a republic, you would expect the masses to pay taxes, receiving only indirect benefits, like a broadly defined “security” and “the rule of law.”
The calculation of who is and is not a net tax-payer or net tax-consumer has to be difficult. I certainly haven’t vetted the studies carefully. But previous accountings also show that the super-rich pay the bulk of income taxes in America.
How to put the system aright?
Don’t tax us more!
Bernie’s preference, to tax a whole lot more as well as to provide more subsidies and “benefits,” will only make a bigger mess.
Unfortunately, doing the right thing (cutting back on the giveaways at all levels) is politically . . . tricky.
But there’s something missing in all this: the indirect hazards of the “benefits” . . . the opportunity costs involved when we get hooked on hand-outs. The most trapped people in America are those who pay the least and take the most. The dollar-value of their received transfer payments measure neither their dependency nor their consequent lack of upward mobility.
How could we figure real harms and helps embedded in the current system, when some “benefits” are, in fact, detriments?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The Iowa caucuses were pretty much a dead-heat for the Democrats, with Hillary Clinton winning a number of precincts by the flip of a coin and barely edging out Sanders.
Leaving aside conspiratorial notions like trick coins, the Democratic results are most interesting in one obvious way: half of the Democratic activists in this Midwestern state proved themselves just fine with voting for a self-proclaimed “socialist”; the other half were apparently hunky-dory to cast their ballots for an ethically-challenged political insider most often described by voters in an ABC News survey with the word “liar.”
No red flags, Dems?
Though Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly keeps talking about Mrs. Clinton’s possible indictment, partisanship being what it is, how is that going to happen? Despite a rising swell of support for Sanders, Clinton’s juggernaut seems fated to roll over the land.
But really, which is more disappointing:
- Lack of revulsion or censure for Clinton’s haughty incompetence and disregard for the law? or
- Lack of incredulity at someone identifying his Big Gov redistributionism as “socialist”?
Monday wasn’t a red letter day, it was a red flag day.
On the Republican side, the establishment took a drubbing. Former Gov. Jeb Bush, son and brother of former presidents, received less than three percent of the Republican vote — even though, including SuperPACs, he has raised the most money. By far — his campaign shelled out $2,884 for each Iowa vote.
Moreover, Ted Cruz, the GOP establishment’s worst nightmare, won. Let’s hope his success overcoming attacks from the governor and the crony corn lobby will help others find the political courage to oppose ethanol subsidies and mandates.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
A real-life politician has admitted to having been wrong, even going so far as to dismiss his own previous comment as “stupid.”
He wasn’t abject about it — didn’t “apologize.” He simply explained how and why he had erred.
This . . . from a presidential contender.
No, it wasn’t Hillary Clinton, she of many errors and untruths. It wasn’t Bernie Sanders, whose love of Big, Intrusive Government is an error in and of itself. And it wasn’t Trump, known hyperbolist.
The erring politician? Gary Johnson, a former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico.
Johnson, who is currently running for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination, told Reason last year that banning the burqa would be a reasonable step in protecting the rights of women. Here in America.
Sound sort of Trumpian?
Earlier this month, Johnson retracted his statement. Last week on Fox Business Network’s Kennedy, he explained why prohibiting the face-veil wouldn’t work.
“We need to differentiate between religious freedom, which is [sic] Islam, and Sharia law, which is politics,” he said — and I add a “sic” there because he is obviously driving at this point: religious freedom means we cannot prohibit the religion of Islam, but Sharia law amounts to a religious intrusion into the legal and political realm. And thus must be opposed as “contrary to the U. S. Constitution.”
The reason Johnson had earlier floated the banning of the Islamic face-veil was to save women from Islamofascist enforcement of Sharia’s mandate to go around in public only when completely covered.
“We cannot allow Sharia Law to, in any way, be a part of our lives.”
I’m with him. Let’s hold tight to both religious and political freedom. And how refreshing for a politician to admit an error.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
“The word ‘socialist’ is a really hard word,” warned former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
“Now, I love Bernie Sanders, really,” Granholm added, acknowledging she’s okay with his socialist policies — just not the term.
Not in mixed company.
The former governor of the Wolverine State was responding to a question — “How about the charges ‘he’s a socialist’?” — from Martha Raddatz, who was hosting ABC’s This Week that week.
“The socialist label is something that he applies to himself, right,” Granholm noted. “So the question is how does that play across America?”
Armed with a Gallup poll, Granholm answered that socialism doesn’t play very well at all. Voters are “even” less apt to vote for a “socialist” than for an “atheist.” In case you wondered.
So, what is the difference between a socialist and a Democrat?
“You’re the chairman of the Democratic Party, tell me the difference between you and a socialist,” Chris Matthews had implored Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz on MSNBC months ago.
“The relevant debate we’ll be having over the course of this campaign,” dodged the DNC chair, “is what’s the difference between a Democrat and a Republican.”
Chuck Todd, noting that Bernie Sanders “is an unabashed socialist” who is always praising European social democracies, echoed the question on Meet the Press: “what is the difference?”
“It’s always fun to be interviewed by Chris Matthews and I know that he enjoys that banter,” bobbed an answer-less Wasserman Schultz. “The important distinction we’ll be discussing in this campaign [blah, blah, blah] . . .”
Earlier this month, Matthews likewise asked Hillary Clinton to state the difference. Mrs. Clinton said she wasn’t a socialist but, instead, “a progressive Democrat.”
“Debbie Wasserman Schultz wouldn’t answer the question either,” Matthews replied.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
The modern age sports an amazing feature that used to be hard to detect, because so drawn out: a shorter-than-ever-before lag between the proposal of some popular inanity and its complete debunking.
It used to take seemingly forever for a bad idea to be shown up, either in argument or evidence. Now it can be a matter of days or even hours. Call it the Buncombe/Debunking Lagtime.
Take the Flint, Michigan, water fiasco.
When the story hit the news cycle, almost immediately the progressive meme machinery began cranking out slogans imposed upon visuals — jpegs and gifs — to the effect that the poisoned water was the result of Republican “austerity” or (even) “libertarian” policy.
Somehow a Democratic mayor was less to blame than a more distant Republican governor, but in the minds of knee-jerk partisans, common sense is not as important as an in-your-face accusation.
But now, days and scant weeks into the story, it turns out that the story behind the story is not merely wrong, but entirely, upside-down wrong. The Flint water fiasco was caused by a stimulus project, and the switch from bad to worse water sources was made to promote “jobs”!
In the words of Reason’s Shikha Dalmia, “the Flint water crisis is the result of a Keynesian stimulus project gone wrong.”
Yes, another failed Big Government policy — just like progressives are always pushing.
And it didn’t take years for the truth to seep out.
Hooray for today’s accelerated history! Now, if we could only decrease the lagtime between lesson given and lesson learned.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
