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national politics & policies

The Color of Tyranny

“The Trump administration on Friday fired a group of prosecutors involved in the Jan. 6 criminal cases and demanded the names of FBI agents involved in those same probes so they can possibly be ousted,” reports an AP story from last weekend, “moves that reflect a White House determination to exert control over federal law enforcement and purge agencies of career employees seen as insufficiently loyal.”

That’s just for starters. Trump & Company is taking all the discretion it can to fire government agents who persecuted the once and current president in what was, certainly, a concerted campaign to scuttle his first presidency … and any chance at a second. 

There are several contexts to all this. One: we are witnessing a purge of those who worked against him. The other is a more general context: Trump has promised to cut down the size of government, and that can only be done by firing people — as Elon Musk is developing with his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

This has a lot of people worried. “If the Chinese hacked the U.S. government the way private citizen Elon has, it would be a major act of cyber warfare,” frets The Bulwark. Robert Kuttner states that most of what is being done through executive order is illegal — only Congress can dismantle what Congress authorized. NPR notes that DOGE leader Musk is not even legally hirable by the federal government.

Illegal government is, ipso facto, tyrannical.

But there exists a relevant bottom line: is the Trump color revolution being “tyrannical” against the American people, or “merely” against federal employees?

The federal government itself has been rogue for decades. Much of what it does is unconstitutional as well as abusive. 

The Constitution is a vast system of checks upon politicians, functionaries, and rapacious private interests on the make. To those who itch to practice real tyranny, its chains themselves appear tyrannical. If the net effect of Trump’s barrage of executive orders and DOGE edicts is to reduce government burdens, is it really the kind of tyranny we must freak out about?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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local leaders national politics & policies

Darkest Day Survived

On September 11, 2001, the nominee for secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick, took his son Kyle to his first day of kindergarten; which, he told the Senate, “is why I am with you today.”

The detour made him late for work at the company of which he is CEO, Cantor Fitzgerald, a leading financial service firm then located on top floors of the World Trade Center.

His brother Gary “and 657 of my other friends and colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald” lost their lives that day.

Lutnick asked the surviving employees, about a thousand people, to help him rebuild the company and help the 658 families who had lost a loved one. Over the next five years, they all donated 25 percent of their salaries to those families, about $180 million. These acts of generosity “stitched my soul back together,” he said.

“My employees never expected to get paid back, but I had other ideas. In 2008, we took a division of our company public and each employee received double what they had given.”

Lutnick does seem like “just a good dude,” as J.D. Vance describes him.

I don’t know whether he will do a good job as Secretary of Commerce. Leading a major government agency isn’t the same as leading a major business. I guess part of the answer depends on whether we, like Lutnick, support President Trump’s trade policies.

I do suspect he’ll be a better head of that department than the last one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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national politics & policies public opinion

The CIA’s Mutating Opinions

As January closed, the CIA changed its story on the origin of the SARS-​CoV‑2 virus.

But was it big news? 

Most people had given up any hope of finding a natural origin, and evidence favoring the virus’s creation in Wuhan, China — partly funded by U.S. taxpayers courtesy of Big Pharma bureaucrat Dr. Antony Fauci — has been clear for a very long time.

So the CIA saying it now “believes” that COVID-​19 was leaked from the Chinese lab looks, suspiciously, like a convenient change of opinion upon the beginning of the 47th presidency. 

New beliefs for a new president!

Note that the CIA certainly offers plenty of reasons to make light of the turn.

  1. The agency expresses “low confidence” in the new opinion.
  2. The spokesman admits that no new evidence was behind the shift.
  3. The spooks say they continue “to assess” both theories of coronavirus origination.

Very political. 

The change of mind looks like this: the CIA had pushed the natural origination story because it had an agenda, and Americans have largely given up on that agenda. Left pushing a wet noodle, the CIA now tries to recover some of its cachet — or prevent further erosion of public opinion in the institution — by siding with the once-​derided belief.

And the “low confidence” warning is there to allow mainstream news media to downplay the story. The whole thing smacks of propagandistic manipulation rather than honestly informing the president, Congress, the Pentagon, or the American people.

Oh, and what of that agenda? 

Let’s just say that the agency always seeks to keep us ill-informed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

A Whistleblower’s Ordeal

Eithan Haim can finally start to put it behind him, the nightmare that began after he helped to expose the fact that a hospital was lying about no longer performing sex-​change surgeries on minors.

Reacting to bad publicity about these operations, in March 2022, the Texas Children’s hospital declared that they would no longer perform them. But Haim was among the residents there who quickly learned that hospital was simply not telling the truth and continued to inject puberty blockers into kids as young as eleven.

That the destructive “gender-​affirming care” on minors was continuing was first reported by Christopher Rufo at City Journal, relying on documents provided by Haim. These were redacted medical records of the supposedly discontinued “care.” The names of the victims were concealed.

One result of the story was a state ban against performing such operations on minors.

Another was federal prosecution of Haim for allegedly violating the Health Insurance and Accountability Act. The Department of Justice’s case was weak. The DOJ had to keep refiling its court papers because of errors. And it had to replace the initial prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari, when it turned out that she had a conflict of interest.

At PJ Media, Rick Moran points out that even if Haim were not ultimately convicted, he was being forced to suffer a huge financial and personal toll as he fought the charges.

Haim: “I was facing a kangaroo court in a few weeks.” 

Not anymore. The Trump DOJ dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning Haim cannot be re-charged.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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deficits and debt national politics & policies too much government

The Biggest

Trump’s riding high, in the first week of his second term — but not regarding the biggest problem he faces, inflation and economic instability.

“When bondholders don’t see a credible fiscal path to be repaid for current and future government debt,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, “they expect that eventually the central bank will create new money to buy those government bonds, leading to higher inflation.

“Recent inflation wasn’t just about money supply; it reflected the market’s adjustment to unsustainable fiscal policy.”

Winning, for Trump, cannot equate to Spending.

While Ms. de Rugy tries to explain this all in terms of a big-​picture economic analysis, she does not quite reach back in time far enough. We had stagflation way back when I was young. It was cured then not by decreased spending but by Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve putting the brakes on money-​and-​credit expansion. He stopped inflation. 

A pure recession immediately followed, followed by recovery in the new administration, Ronald Reagan’s, who helped reduce the rate of growth of government (and not much else).

Inflation could, theoretically, be handled by the Fed alone, now, as then.

Except — the federal government can hardly now afford to service existing debt, which would skyrocket with the nitty-​gritty of the Fed’s cure, higher interest rates. 

Today, debt service (paying just the interest) approaches One Trillion Per Annum. 

“A crucial tipping point was reached in 2024 when the interest expense on the federal debt exceeded the defense budget for the first time,” Nick Giambruno summarizes at The International Man. “It’s on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.” 

Increasing it yet more would cripple the government.

The only way out, if there is one, is a radical decrease in spending and deficits, as de Rugy advises. Trump’s path to success is somehow accomplishing that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

A Free Speech Order

“Will President Trump be a free speech president?”

On January 21, David Keating, president of Institute for Free Speech, asked this question. And he refers the reader to his Wall Street Journal op-​ed published last month in which he offered suggestions about how to stop the federal government from censoring people via social media or in other ways.

The new president sure seemed to get off to a good start restoring the First Amendment. One of his thirty or so executive orders signed on the 20th, his first work day, is entitled “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

Section 2 says that it is U.S. policy to “secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech,” ensure that no federal employee or agent “engages in or facilitates” unconstitutional abridgement of speech, and “identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.”

Section 3 says no federal employee or department may act in a manner inconsistent with Section 2.

Maybe this broad order needs to be supplemented with many more specific orders that say: Really. Don’t engage in censorship here or there or anywhere.

This is where specific suggestions like Mr. Keating’s come in handy, such as preventing the IRS from penalizing taxpayers for criticizing political candidates, repealing SEC limits on political donations, and instituting specific regulations to “force disclosure of most government contacts with social-​media organizations asking to take down third-​party posts,” thereby scuttling most future such contacts.

It’s a start. Let’s keep going.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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