Category: national politics & policies

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

Weekend at Biden’s

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Weekend at Bernie's

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former President Trump told CNN’s debate moderator Jake Tapper. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Mr. Trump was referring to the incoherent ramblings of our current president at last week’s notorious debate — bizarrely held five months before the election. (Well, now, I guess that timing might make a little more sense.)

President Biden, as journalist Glenn Greenwald put it, “unsteadily shuffled onto a debate stage in Atlanta and then preceded to fulfill every fear and nightmare that Democratic Party operatives and American voters have been harboring about him.”

Beyond what Biden’s debate performance says about who should be the next president is what it screams at maximum volume: Who is really running the country?

It’s scary to think that it isn’t the man we elected to do the job. But perhaps scarier still, after last Thursday’s performance, would be if it actually is that man.

On his System Update program, Greenwald also pointed out that, “Just two weeks ago the media was insisting that the only reason Joe Biden looked in any way to be impaired is because right-​wing liars were clipping videos in a deceitful way …”

No one clipped or cheap-​faked the 90-​minute debate, though.

In a country being torn apart and a world on fire, we have a commander-​in-​chief who is simply, obviously, not in command. And arguably even worse, we have a news media that has largely gaslighted the public on the matter.

If President Biden stays in the race, watch for the media to go back to its cover-​up mentality, telling us only what they want us to know about him … so we will vote the way they want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies regulation

DEI Virally Decoded

DEI, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion

Is “Didn’t Earn It” — the latest scam-​decoding translation of officialdom’s acronymic jargon for race-​conscious and gender-​conscious affirmative-​action policies, DEI — really catching on?

If so, maybe we’ll get back all the sooner to sanity. 

That is, in universities, workplaces, and other hunting grounds of the DEI dictators who have inherited the mantle of reverse discrimination first inflicted on Americans via the affirmative-​action quota policies of the 1970s.

John Tierney suggests that the popularizers of the apt “Didn’t Earn It” meme may well help rid us of “today’s most egregiously indefensible phrase: ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.’”

These woozy words are supposed to divert our attention from what DEI policies really mean: systematic discrimination against academic, professional, and other merit in favor of typically irrelevant physical characteristics like skin color and gender.

DEI discrimination is being imposed on ever more of our institutions, even at the cost of risking our lives. If unqualified applicants are being admitted into UCLA Medical School in order to appease the arbiters of DEI, then failing basic tests of medical knowledge after they get in — what happens if and when they start treating patients?

A single telling phrase (Tierney credits journalist Ian Cheong and cartoonist Scott Adams) can’t shoulder the whole burden of stopping DEI. True enough.

Fortunately, it’s got help. 

In Congress, Republicans have introduced legislation to shut down DEI offices and forbid federal contractors from imposing the ugly indoctrination of DEI training and DEI statements.

We can all pitch in.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling national politics & policies tax policy

Trump to Ax Tip Tax

Joe Biden, taxes, tipping, student loans, buying votes, debt

When Biden panders to his lower-​income supporters, he targets zeroing out their student debt and regulating credit card companies with further restrictions on their ability to charge for overdrafts and the like.

When Trump panders to his lower-​income supporters, he promises to exempt tips from income taxation, as he did recently in Las Vegas.

This may be the most obvious difference between left- and right-​styles in politicking to the masses, good-ol’-fashioned vote-​buying or its twin: leftists forgive debts and add regulations, rightists reduce taxes.

Like me, you may, at first blanch, prefer the latter form of pandering, but Eric Boehm, at Reason, offers some reasons not to look so kindly on Trump’s pandering. First, and most obviously: “Reducing revenue without identifying offsetting spending cuts means Trump is merely promising to borrow more heavily.”

A bigger challenge comes later: “On the surface, that sounds great. But there’s already one likely unintended consequence: A lot more income will suddenly be reported as tips. Any time a government gives preferential tax treatment to one type of economic activity, you tend to get a lot more of that type of economic activity. Does that mean we’ll have an entirely tip-​based economy?” The answer is a likely No.

Oddly, Mr. Boehm doesn’t address one obvious element: Tips aren’t wages and they aren’t profits. Tips are gifts. They aren’t determined by employers and they aren’t specified by employees. And gifts aren’t taxed as income like other income is.

So letting people who accept tips in the course of their labors not pay taxes on them is really, really hard to object to.

In fact, I don’t object.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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judiciary national politics & policies regulation

Regulatory Pressure?

gun control, Supreme Court, regulations, regulators, persuasion

Should government regulators be able to urge financial institutions to cancel clients that regulators dislike for political reasons? Such as oil companies and groups advocating Second Amendment rights?

Although a court of appeals has said Yes, the Supreme Court has just said Maybe No in a case involving the National Rifle Association (NRA v. Vullo).

The NRA hasn’t won final victory. But the court is unanimously letting it proceed with its lawsuit, which argues that by pressuring banks and insurance companies to cancel their business with the NRA, New York regulator Maria Vullo violated its freedom of speech.

The Supreme Court seems to accept an artificial distinction, though, between a regulator’s “persuading” an organization to hurt a client and “forcing” it to do so.

An official with power over a company who seeks as a government official to “persuade” that company to do something is engaging in coercion. The implicit threat is: “I have the power to hurt you if you don’t do this little favor for me.”

Moreover, in sending the case back to the lower court, the Supreme Court has also said that it may consider whether Ms. Vullo is protected by qualified immunity, the get-​away-​with-​anything card that government officials are too often able to rely on when they commit wrongdoing.

So this decision is hardly a final, definitive victory for the NRA and other victims of thug-​regulators. But at least the NRA can keep fighting — for itself and the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies Voting

The Non-​Citizen Dodge

After telling Meet the Press viewers that non-​citizen voting is “exceedingly rare” and “already against the law,” NBC’s Kristen Welker asked Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger what he thought about “efforts to prevent non-​citizens from voting.”

“I believe only American citizens should be voting in our elections,” replied Raffensperger. “I’m the first secretary of state in Georgia to ever do 100 percent citizenship verification,” adding that Georgia officials discovered “about 1600 people that attempted to register, but we couldn’t verify citizenship, so they weren’t put on the voter rolls.”

The Secretary also explained that his office “just won a court case which came from the left, the Coalition of the People’s Agenda and the New Georgia Project, which was founded by Stacey Abrams.”* Raffensperger points out that the lawsuit “tried to stop us from doing citizenship verification before people were put on the voter rolls.”

“Good news, good news for everyone,” Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson chided, dismissively. “All of us want to make sure only U.S. citizens are voting in our elections. And all of us follow the law, ensure the federal provisions are protected, and that we’re ensuring that only valid votes are counted in our state.”

Democrat Benson reiterated that “regardless of our party affiliation, we’re doing all that we can and more to ensure, as the facts show, in all of our states, that only U.S. citizens are voting.”

“What you just said there was ‘federal provisions,’” responded Raffensperger, noting that non-​citizens have been given the vote — legally — at the local level in a number of states. 

He argued that states should place in their constitutions “that only American citizens are voting in any election in your state.”**

Still, Welker inquired, “Is it a red herring?”

No, Raffensperger answered, arguing that “already there’s the left-​wing groups trying to get noncitizens voting in local elections in Washington, D.C., New York City and in other places.” And he asked, “Why are we getting sued by the left to stop us from doing citizenship verification?”

Many Democrats and much of the media continue to dodge such questions. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

*In her first run for Governor, Abrams said her “blue wave” was “comprised of those who are documented and undocumented” and specifically acknowledged that she “wouldn’t oppose” allowing non-​citizens to vote at the local level. 

** Americans for Citizen Voting has worked closely with the Georgia Secretary of State to place such constitutional amendments on six state ballots this November: Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Wisconsin. North Carolina may soon become the seventh state to do so. 

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Polylogism or Bulverism … or 1984?

polylogism, Bulverism, logic, reality, debate, fallacy

The Epoch Times’s current Opinion section tackles a subject that might surprise you. Polylogism!

What? 

The term was coined by Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. “There is not one logic, one truth, one path of thinking that is subject to verification,” Jeffrey A. Tucker asserts in “Polylogism Is the Root Problem.”

Polylogism is the idea behind a lot of trendy isms, pushed by many ists. 

“Every group and every interest operates according to its own logic,” Tucker goes on. “No one is in a position to say: This does not follow from that. There are multiple and infinite ways to think and emote, and no one is in a position to say which is correct, valid or invalid.”

The idea that there can be “many” logics is indeed present in many forms of modern and post-​modern argumentation, like Marxism and Freudianism. C. S. Lewis also attacked the ploy, calling it “Bulverism” in an amusing essay named after a fictitious fellow named “Bulver” who learned from his mother how to argue most effectively — “Oh you say that because you are a man,” she challenged. 

It’s an evasion.

According to Bulverism, er, polylogism, “There are no fallacies,” argues Tucker, “only perspectives.”

Remember Nietzsche? “There are no facts, only interpretations.”

This sort of thing makes arguing against tyranny hard, because the tyrant’s sycophants can simply say ‘what you call tyranny only looks like that because you are x; but we are y, and therefore what you call tyranny is freedom to us.’ 

“Polylogism sounds like a fancy philosophy,” Tucker concludes, “but it is nothing but the handmaiden of tyrants.” 

Are you thinking of Newspeak?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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