Category: nannyism

President Next

I’ve never liked Joe Biden. Not as a U.S. Senator, or Vice-President, or President. But I’ll be the first to acknowledge that his decision, announced yesterday, to relinquish his party’s presidential nomination, which he was set to formally receive at the Democratic National Convention next month, was the right thing to do.

Way to go, Joe!

First, however, Democratic Party bigshots decided — most importantly with money — that Mr. Biden was not cognitively up to the mighty arduous task of running for president. This fact became ever clearer to many Democrat representatives and senators the more they envisioned themselves becoming collateral political damage.

President Biden held out against their calls for his ouster for weeks after that fateful June debate. The subsequent campaign stops and high-profile interviews designed to showcase his abilities illustrated, instead, that our commander-in-chief was frail, feeble, feckless.

Now the president has endorsed his Vice President Kamala Harris to be the Democrat’s new standard bearer this fall. Still, stay tuned for an interesting DNC convention where Harris may face other challengers for the nomination.

And, as Detective Columbo used to say, “Just one more thing.”

There has been no word on whether in the coming days, not weeks, we will see the first female president of these United States, Kamala Harris.

If Democrats are too scared to have Biden as their leader this fall, should the American people really be okay with Biden sticking around for six months to be ours? Giving national and world leadership a continued go?

Thanks, but no thanks. Hello, President Harris.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Kamala Harris

initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-Style

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 16, 2024
3 Comments on Discrimination, California-Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-based, ethnicity-based, or sex-based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags California, corruption, discrimination, government, racism

folly ideological culture nannyism

The Wider Conversation

Richard III, acting, art, theater, wokeism, woke culture

“There can be nothing about us without us.”

That’s the clever slogan of the Disabled Artists Alliance, which last week tweeted a complaint about the casting of Richard III by Shakespeare’s Globe.

They weren’t complaining, as a naïf might suspect, about an actress playing the king.

Oh, no.

“We,” the signed letter explained, “are outraged and disappointed by the casting of a non-physically disabled actor in this role, and the implications this has not only for disability, but the wider conversations surrounding it.”

Michelle Terry, the Globe’s current artistic director, cast herself as Richard. Daring move? An advance for her “gender”? You may find the choice forced, or kind of dumb, but on the London stage it may seem like turnabout as fair play. In Shakespeare’s own time, men and boys often portrayed women and girls on stage. So the acting profession has a long history of making do with less-than-convincing performers in roles.

The Disabled Artists Alliance wants us to side with disabled actors, as a class, even if, as has been noted, past disabled players of Richard III had not suffered from the precise disability of the historic English king: scoliosis.

The idea is that a disabled actor has more relevant “lived experience” to offer to the role than a healthy actor.

Yet, that’s just one element of the character. Why not look for actors with the same moral defects? There’d be plenty.

Or choose a royal. For the relevant experience.

Isn’t Prince Harry out of work?

Next up: Flat-earthers complain about the name of the theater wherein the scandal occurs: the Globe.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags woke culture, wokism

deficits and debt media and media people nannyism subsidy

The Giveaway Epidemic

The most recent trend in vote buying is to propose huge giveaways on narrow subjects, like “reparations for slavery” (to people who were never slaves and from people who never enslaved) and “debt cancellation” (a national issue with student debt).

The most recent example comes to us from the nation’s capital, where “D.C. officials plan to cancel as much as $90 million in residents’ medical debt,” according to Jenna Portnoy’s piece in The Washinton Post.

But brace yourself: the rationale is racial. Though medical debt is a huge issue with all races of people, Washington, D.C., is majority black, and this giveaway is characterized as “an effort to ease a burden that data shows disproportionately impacts people of color.”

There is no magic presidential wand, here, however — as with Mr. Biden cancelling student debt. Nor the insane levels of “reparations” contemplated in San Francisco. In this case, the “District will use $900,000 in year-end surplus funds* to purchase debt, for pennies on the dollar, on behalf of about 90,000 D.C. residents earning up to four times the federal poverty level or whose medical debt is at least 5 percent of their income….”

Similar schemes are in the works in Connecticut, New Orleans, Toledo, and Illinois’s Cook County.

Interestingly, some of this has to do with COVID, or, more properly speaking, the pandemic responses, which were devastating on nearly every level. Including pocketbooks. But the focus is not, here, on fixing America’s amazingly messed-up health care system, but, instead, race and “equity.”

Over 100 million Americans are said to hold $195 billion in debt.

Before we try to correct for this mess, we might wish to inquire rationally why medicine in America is so messed up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The tsunami of federal pandemic funds bestowed on local governments is largely responsible for the surplus.

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nannyism Today

Burr and Reagan

On February 6, 1778, the Treaty of Alliance and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce were signed by the United States and France, signaling official recognition of the new republic. Exactly a decade later, the State of Massachusetts became the sixth in the union to ratify the new United States Constitution.

February 6 marks the birthdays of Aaron Burr (1756 — 1836), third Vice President of the United States and infamous Weehauken duelist, and Ronald Reagan (1911 — 2004), 40th President of the United States.

First Amendment rights ideological culture nannyism social media

Reversal of Charge

paypal, government, surveillance, censorship

Using PayPal never guaranteed smooth sailing.

But until recently, the problems users encountered mostly pertained to PayPal’s targeting of fraud — not with whether a user uttered wrong thoughts or pursued projects disfavored by corporate implementers of a Chinazi-style social credit system.

More and more, though, PayPal is informing individuals with unwelcome thoughts that they can no longer use PayPal and that PayPal will hold their funds “for up to 180 days … we’ll email you.…”

PayPal has, for now, rescinded — or partially and temporarily rescinded — policy provisions pledging to fine users $2,500 for “misinformation” or “hate speech.”

But PayPal is still targeting thinkers of wrongthink.

An example is Eric Finman, whose Freedom Phone provides access to apps banned elsewhere. After ousting him, PayPal held onto $1.2 million in his PayPal balance. Finman eventually recovered the money, but the delay “killed all the momentum.”

Biologist Colin Wright was ejected for criticizing gender ideology. PayPal won’t confirm this without a subpoena. But these and many other examples follow a similar pattern. Often, PayPal comes down like a ton of bricks right after a user utters a viewpoint PayPal dislikes.

I’m appalled. Many of PayPal’s founders — Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sacks and Max Levchin — are appalled. They say that PayPal’s original mission of empowering people is being perverted.

We’ve seen how government officials and partisan political operatives have whispered in the ears of Facebook and Twitter, instructing such companies to censor and deplatform users. Are they also instructing PayPal?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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