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Life After Scalia

Antonin Scalia, Justice, Supreme Court, battle, death, Common Sense

President Reagan appointed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to the nation’s highest court in 1986. Scalia served for 29 years before passing away over the weekend at age 79. May he rest in peace.

None of the rest of us will get any.

Why? An often conservative 5 – 4 majority is gone. The court is now tied, deadlocked, at 4 – 4.

“With the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Barack Obama will make another nomination to the Supreme Court,” explained an email from the very liberal Democracy for America (I’m on a lot of lists). “It is critically important that President Obama choose a strongly progressive person who can lead the Supreme Court and our country in a new direction.”

That’s Obama’s prerogative, of course. But the president’s nominee must be approved by the United States Senate — controlled 54 to 46 by Republicans.

And guess what?

Almost as fast, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell issued this statement: “The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Now, our Democratic president could negotiate with the Republican Senate majority, come up with a consensus (yeah, right) or compromise choice (watch out).

But don’t hold your breath.

You may also want to plug your ears. There will be shouting. The media will overwhelmingly take Obama’s side — surprise, surprise— and berate Republicans for obstructing.

Republican Senators have a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent to the president’s pick. Unless Mr. Obama’s choice will improve the High Court, those senators should withhold their consent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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And So Goes the Academy

oscars, movies, racism, voting, elections, Common Sense

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.

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Hard Words, Soft Left

socialism, democrats, Hillary Clinton, Common Sense

“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.

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Accountability free trade & free markets government transparency ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

A Diminishing Lagtime

Flint, water, crisis, government, austerity

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.

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Shameless: The Next Generation

Chelsea Clinton, Hillary Clinton, President, Bernie Sanders, Health Care, mud, Common Sense, attack

On Tuesday, former (and perhaps soon to be again) First Daughter Chelsea Clinton attacked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, her mother’s chief rival in the presidential primaries.

“Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the [Children’s Health Insurance Program], dismantle Medicare, dismantle private insurance,” Chelsea charged, telling an Iowa audience that he “would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.”

The Sanders campaign quickly fired back that the young Clinton was “wrong” and disingenuously ignoring the fact that Sanders would bestow government-​paid healthcare coverage on every American. For free! (Unless you happen to pay taxes, that is. Then, it’d be very expensive.)

“It wasn’t an honest attack,” declared Democratic strategist David Axelrod on CNN.

But on ABC, Hillary defended her daughter, doubling-​down by arguing, “that’s exactly what he’s proposed. To take everything we currently know as health care, Medicare, Medicaid, the CHIP Program, private insurance, now the Affordable Care Act, and roll it together.”

Strange, in 2008, when Hillary was promoting a single-​payer system and Barack Obama took issue, Mrs. Clinton decried “tactics right out of Karl Rove’s playbook,” asking, “Since when do Democrats attack one another on universal healthcare?”

“This is wrong and every Democrat should be outraged,” the 2008 Hillary declared. “So shame on you, Barack Obama!”

Now it’s Hillary Clinton who knows no shame.

“More striking perhaps,” lamented Mark Halperin, a senior political analyst for MSNBC and Bloomberg News, “was a lack of interest that most of the news world had to [Chelsea’s] remarks.”

Maybe when Clintons “dismantle” the truth, it just isn’t news anymore.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Nazi by Association

Koch brothers, Nazi, New York Times, shame, Common Sense, illustration

Do haters of Charles and David Koch, the billionaire philanthropists, know no bounds of decency?

Monday’s New York Times squib, “Father of Koch Brothers Helped Build Nazi Oil Refinery, Book Says,” is a grand case in point. The article is basically pre-​release gossip about a book that hasn’t been published yet: Dark Money, by Jane Mayer, a New Yorker writer. The author focuses on the Kochs and other rich folks who, the article says, served as “the hidden and self-​interested hands behind the rise and growth of the modern conservative movement.”

As usual with “progressive” minds, she just assumes that all the billionaires and foundations who have supported her causes over the years cannot also (or: better) be described as “self-​interested.”

Her main charge, that the Koch brothers’ father had helped build “the third largest oil refinery in the Third Reich, a critical industrial cog in Hitler’s war machine,” is nothing more than guilt by association. As Dave Robertson, President and Chief Operating Officer of Koch Industries, notes in his official response, the plant in question was built before Hitler had proven himself a tyrant. It’s ridiculous to insinuate that the business deal demonstrates that a family of limited government proponents were somehow in favor of the big government tyrant, Adolf Hitler.

Calumny!

But once made, we may return volley.

Partisans often accuse their enemies of their own worst faults. I’m sure Ms. Mayer is not a Nazi, as such, but her economic ideas are a lot closer to the actual policies of the National Socialist Party than are the Kochs’.

Hence her need to smear first.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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