Today’s headline:
Radical Islamist Stages Gun Massacre in LGBT Nightclub!
Caring Progressives Demand that American Citizens be Disarmed!
Category: meme
How does that old, pithy anti-term limits slogan go, again? “We already have term limits, they’re called indictments!”
Wait . . . is that it?
Must be. This election year — the year of the outsider, the year of unbridled contempt for establishment, Washington, D. C., politicians — has seen only one incumbent congressman defeated by the voters.
Just one. It came late last month in the wake of a 29-count felony indictment charging Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) with bribery, theft, bank and mail fraud, racketeering, and more.
In all the other congressional primary contests pitting incumbents against challengers across the country so far this year, a solid 100 percent were won by the incumbent — zero won by challengers.
Rep. Fattah, whose corruption trial began in federal court on Monday, has pled not guilty to all charges, proclaiming his innocence. “Chaka Fattah’s lifestyle is not on trial,” his defense attorney told jurors. “Philadelphia politics are not on trial. [Congressional] earmarks, donations, grants to nonprofits are not on trial.”
But Congressman Chaka Fattah certainly is.
The incumbent’s previous re-election had been a breeze — completely unopposed in the all-important Democratic Primary, and then garnering 88 percent of the vote against his sacrificial GOP challenger. That was in 2014, before the felony charges.
Following the indictment, the Washington Post reported that Fattah “found it difficult to raise money after the party establishment all but abandoned him.” So, even in this single instance, the FBI and the party establishment, more than voters, sent this 22-year incumbent packing.
I have a new slogan: “We don’t have term limits, and we need ’em!”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Red Flag!
When leader worship is called a “people’s movement.”
It was just pointed out to me that it isn’t clear that the people on the left are Bernie supporters. . . so here’s a revised version of the meme:
A lot of people were impressed by the reasonableness of Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech yesterday . . . despite the usual hyperbolic promises of “best” and “great” and “beautifully.”
Its general tenor? Refreshing. Rejecting post-Cold War foreign policy for a return to “national interest” and “America first”? Long overdue. Like Trump, I think we should eschew nation building.
But still there is that one big problem: Trump is a mercantilist. He believes in protectionism. He thinks that trade has to be “fair” in order to benefit both participants. He thinks NAFTA and similar trade agreements (which generally promoted trade while still reserving a lot of room for government futzing about) are what hurt American industry. Trump is always blaming the “bad deals” made with Mexico and China, rather than placing the blame where it squarely belongs, on
- America’s world-high corporate income tax, and
- chaos of regulatory excess, and
- impenetrable tax code.
But protectionism makes sense to a lot of people. They are incredulous when they hear the (well-established) idea that free trade — even unilateral free trade — is a benefit to the people who live under it.
Surely, they snort, when you target aid or protection to some industries, you are doing good, right?
Wrong. Oh, yeah, of course protectionism protects the chosen few, the advantaged. That’s what it obviously does. But it doesn’t protect the general interest – consumers pay more and producers allocate resources to less valued uses.
You have to look beyond the obvious (“the seen”) to get the full picture (“the unseen”).
Trump’s at his most dangerous right here — forget his loose talk — by continuing to pretend that protectionism helps America.
We cannot afford another Smoot-Hawley.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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A new “right” that violates other fundamental rights, can’t be a right.
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The next president will take office as this year’s $544 billion deficit pushes up the U. S. national debt to nearly $20 trillion . . . which is chicken feed compared to nearly $127 trillion in unfunded liabilities racked up by our entitlement state.
And, on top of that, add our outrageous world policeman fees.
The Washington Post reports that, “thanks to various treaties and deals set up since 1945, the U.S. government might be legally obligated to defend countries containing 25 percent of the world’s population.”
And boy, has America, World Policeman, been active! The U. S. military is well into a second decade of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, engaged in ongoing armed conflict in Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria and Yemen, and with ISIS and its terror, not seemingly degraded at all but growing.
No wonder, then, that the iconoclastic Donald J. Trump questioned — at a Washington Post editorial board meeting, just before the Brussels terrorist attacks — the wisdom of U.S. commitments to NATO, South Korea and Japan.
“NATO was set up when we were a richer country,” Trump explained. “We’re not a rich country. We’re borrowing, we’re borrowing all of this money. We’re borrowing money from China. . . .”
So why subsidize wealthy countries? “Well, if you look at Germany . . . Saudi Arabia . . . Japan . . . South Korea — I mean we spend billions of dollars on Saudi Arabia, and they have nothing but money.”
Lest I get my hopes up too high, it seems unlikely that Trump would change actual policy, but simply make “a much different deal with them, and it would be a much better deal.”
Here’s an even better deal, as our third president, Thomas Jefferson, articulated: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations. Entangling alliances with none.”
It’s quite affordable.
This is Common Sense, I’m Paul Jacob.
Common Sense Needs Your Help!
Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money. Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!