Category: national politics & policies

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deficits and debt national politics & policies too much government

Spending All the Way to the Abyss

Entire categories of federal spending shouldn’t exist.

Now, it would be easy to eliminate budget deficits and to begin to make big and regular dents in the national debt, were it not for one teensy-weensy problem. Just hand me the budget (in electronic form, please) and a red pencil and I’ll hack away at the billions and billions. And trillions.

If that would take too long, I’d enlist a team of like-minded spending cutters to help.

We’d be doing something like what the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, tried to do early in the second Trump administration. DOGE didn’t go or wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near far enough, though. We know this because the big picture of runaway government spending hasn’t changed.

That’s what would thwart me and my team too: lack of political will. Or too much political will pulling in the opposite direction. Too many constituencies for all the spending and too many politicians, both parties, catering to the constituencies.

That’s the teensy-weensy problem.

The current U.S. national debt is approaching $40 trillion. This year, the federal government has already borrowed $1.4 trillion. These seem like catastrophic amounts. But somehow the U.S. still teeters on the edge of fiscal doom, yet to fall in.

Maybe when we get to a trillion trillions in federal debt and when a billion dollars won’t buy a dozen eggs, then we will surely see real reform. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship too much government

Socialists to Seize Power?

socialism, Democratic Party, prison, authoritarianism, totalitarianism

Evan Barker isn’t surprised. 

“The democratic socialist surge of the past several weeks has stunned the nation,” this former Democratic operative wrote last week. “From left to right and everywhere in between, people are asking: How did we get here? What does it mean? And will the Democratic Party survive it? The prevailing reaction has been shock.”

She’s not shocked, though, because for half a decade she had worked for “a slew of progressive candidates” teaching “DSA-aligned staffers how to build a money machine for the left; coached progressive politicians on how to speak to donors; and collaborated with billionaires to create a robust fundraising network.” 

But after the big loss for Kamala “Salad Slinger” Harris and Tim “Cringe” Walz, Barker left the party. And wrote a book, Nothing Left, regaling us with how she became disillusioned with “a leadership class” that had drifted “further and further from the working-class Americans they purportedly represented.”

Barker’s not alone. Others in the rah-rah crowd for an older Democratic Party have also expressed their chagrin. On the First of July, well-known “liberal” journalist Jonathan Chait published in The Atlantic “There’s Nothing Democratic About These Socialists.”

Noting that the Democratic Socialists of America despise the Democratic Party, with many of DSA’s stalwarts veering off into communist advocacy without much nudging, the question becomes why Democrats with some sense don’t come to their alleged senses.

Chait observes that Michael Harrington, the socialist founder of DSA, placed into its bylaws “the expulsion of members who were ‘under the discipline of any self-defined democratic-centralist organization,’ a slightly jargonish way of describing communists.”

Yet, the Democratic Party isn’t as moderate as Harrington!

Truth is, “DSA supporters see internal division not as a risk but as a historic opportunity to seize power.”

And the “means of production.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship

The States Fair

Great American State Fair, Donald Trump, Pennsylvania, July 4

I’m usually suspicious of business-government partnerships. But some occasional and low-level efforts are inevitable and at worst anodyne.

Take the Great American State Fair in the District of Columbia. This was an effort conceived by Donald Trump in 2023, and “enacted” (?!?!) by the president’s executive order once he resumed office in 2025. The idea was to celebrate the semiquincentennial in the capital with booths from each state. It was all very huzzah-hooray-USA-oriented, and sounds like good clean fun.

I did not attend, and it reached its natural conclusion without me last Saturday, on the Fourth of July.

Interestingly, a number of states pointedly did not participate. One gets the feeling that this was all about hating on Trump, but maybe not. Be that as it may, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor wouldn’t fund or organize the Pennsylvania booth, saying that he couldn’t whip up any business sponsors.

That is unlikely, for when Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Dave McCormick, heard about it, he called his state’s senator from across the aisle, John Fetterman, and the two decided to do it all themselves. “I started to call businesses, and they came out of the woodwork,” said the Republican.

From the accounts I’ve read, the event was either a self-serving (Trump-o-centric) failure or a moderate success — not a blowout — with the Pennsylvania booth standing out, featuring antique flags and a replica of the Liberty Bell.

This is old-time patriotic fun, a way of celebrating the good stuff of our states and the union.

A cynic might say it’s all bread-and-circuses, a distraction, but the answer to that is: enjoy but don’t be distracted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

The Kill Western Civilization Caucus

democrat, socialism, communism, democratic party, elections, democracy

“These are not social democrats,” President Trump declared on Truth Social. “These are hardcore, godless communists.”

Unfortunately, the president is on target. 

He was referring to the three members of the Democratic Socialists of America who won Democratic Party primaries last week in deep-blue New York City congressional districts.

November’s General Election being a mere formality in the Big Apple, the trio will undoubtedly be joining the next Congress. All three — State Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (NY-7), former City Comptroller Brad Lander (NY-10), and professional “left-wing activist” Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13) — were endorsed and assisted by Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

They’ll be just three out of 435 members of Congress, while the mayor is in a position to do more harm. Still, sprinkling a few Stalinists into Washington’s brew won’t help. 

Darializa Avila Chevalier worries me the most. Before launching her political campaign, CNN reports that she deleted “thousands of posts and reposts expressing support for abolishing police, prisons and borders, as well as seizing private property and nationalizing major industries and calling into question Israel’s right to exist.”

Her pursuit of a surely democratic-no-doubt-benevolent dictatorship of the proletariat to, you know, seize the means of production is . . . mighty concerning. What’s worse, however, is her hatred. 

Of America. 

In a 2019 tweet, Chevalier posted a smiley face emoji to say loud and proud: “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.” 

“We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization,” explained a group she co-founded, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD). 

Shouldn’t we take them at their word?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies regulation

Mandatory Internet IDs

Parents Decide Act, privacy, law, OS

An assault on your freedom to use your computer without having to “verify your age” has migrated from states like California, Colorado, and New York to the United States Congress.

This is the so-called Parents Decide Act, which would “require operating system providers to verify the age of any user of an operating system.”

The honor system, the for-now method of the California law, doesn’t stop ten-year-olds from claiming to be 35. For such laws to “work,” the PC would have to require you to verify your age before you can use it.

That method cannot help but be invasive, like scans of your ID card or your face. Sure, many users of mobile computing devices have private security using their faces or fingerprints, but those users do not intend to share this secret information to third parties — which sure seems like what’s going on here.

PC Gamer observes that, although the method of age verification is crucial “in terms of privacy and data security,” the Energy and Commerce Committee will be deciding such things after passage. 

They’d have to pass the bill for us to see what’s in it.

Whatever the method, many users would obey, conscientiously giving the PC — and the PC or OS maker — ID or facial info that might be linked to purchase info in the company’s database.

Could such databases be hacked and provide criminals with new information with which to commit their crimes? Only if the umpteen stories per day on successful hacks of the databases of major companies are any clue.

“Save the children” is the familiar sales pitch, but if government is in charge of saving the children, our children are in trouble.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

First Amendment Needs Help!

JAWBONE Act, free speech, censorship, internet, social media

Newly proposed legislation would make it harder for federal officials to censor speech by pressuring third parties to censor speech.

The bipartisan bill has been dubbed the “Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act”— the JAWBONE Act — introduced by Senators Ted Cruz (R.-Tx.) and Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.). 

“Government coercion of such private speech intermediaries [like social media platforms] threatens freedom of speech and open inquiry,” it asserts, “particularly for users who have no say in, or knowledge of, how their speech or access to information is affected.”

Such censorship-delegation had been brought to light by lawsuits as well as by the willingness of a reconstituted Twitter — X, under the ownership of Elon Musk — to publicize communications between the federal government and Twitter employees during the COVID-19-era assaults on freedom of speech.

The JAWBONE act would prohibit federal agencies from coercing or threatening online and other services into changing content and would give victims the right to seek damages.

Now, you might be thinking, doesn’t the Constitution already prohibit the federal government from censoring us? Well, yes. It provides no exemption for government censorship implemented via plausibly (or implausibly) deniable delegation of the task. 

But we have had many legitimate debates about constitutional meaning. Further, we have also always had many illegitimate ones, in which people — including Supreme Court justices — seek to circumvent even the plainest and most unmistakable import of constitutional provisions. 

So the Constitution needs all the help it can get.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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inflation and inflationism national politics & policies political economy

Jump the Inflation

Donald Trump, inflation, Iran, war, economics

A term in pop culture analysis, now a bit passé, is worth reviving: “jump the shark.”

The term refers to the moment in the nostalgic TV show Happy Days when, running out of ideas, the writers cooked up something so out-there and silly that it’s cringe. (To use a more recent faddish term, now also passé.) An episode in the fifth season of the sitcom where the Fonz “jumped a shark” — in water skis. 

A spectacle so goofy that it can serve as a marker for any great moment when something really goes into steep decline.

The second Trump Administration has had many such moments, but are any as odd and stupid as the president’s recent remark about the Consumer Price Index?

Asked about the CPI having “jumped 4.2% over the last year,” according to Josh Boak’s June 10 AP article, the president replied, “You know what I really love? I love the inflation.”

The AP article quoted some Democratic politicians making hay of Trump’s quip, but then went on to Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio) pressing, in a hearing, Energy Secretary Chris Wright “whether he, too, loved inflation.”

‘I love ending Iran’s ability to have a nuclear weapon,’ Wright answered. He only conceded after being pressed: ‘No, I would prefer lower inflation.’”

What is Trump trying to communicate? The idea that when crude oil prices come down, inflation rate increases will level off too. And that’ll be good.

But that all depends on a cessation of the Iran conflict, which keeps dragging on with no end in sight.

Trump’s said dumb things. And funny things. But we who have been living in the Age of Inflation are . . . not amused. This response wasn’t funny and it wasn’t insightful. Or clever. Or worthy of the president’s past hits.

Donald Trump has jumped the shark.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The Long, Long Two Weeks

covid, hysteria, protest, obedience, disgrace, freedom

Nothing is so permanent, wrote Milton Friedman, as a temporary government program.

Six years ago, Americans learned that not only vaguely temporary measures go on and on, even precisely marked-out periods with clear starts and stops stated at the outset can be dragged on well past their expiration date.

Last week, Robby Soave “celebrated” the most astounding example of this in an article for Reason titled “This Was the Moment the COVID-19 Experts Betrayed Us,” about how the “two weeks to slow the spread” rationale for the lockdowns was shown to be a lie.

I wonder how many people were like me, at the time, noticing that the lengthening of the lockdown period was almost never justified by hospital numbers — a key point in the initial rationale, since we feared overwhelming the hospital system. The opposite happened almost everywhere, with hospitals becoming ghost towns in most locations, stressing the system in the opposite manner. By extending the duration of the near-universal quarantine, government officials and employees and their hangers-on showed how little interest they had in taking our health seriously.

What Soave focuses on is one tweet by National Public Radio, about how all crowds were bad for public health except those marching in protest of the death of George Floyd, a criminal with a long, violent rap sheet. NPR’s post began “by condemning the protests against lockdowns” and then drew “an explicit contrast with the racial justice protests, which are explicitly condoned.”

Soave calls this “junk science.” 

But it wasn’t any kind of science at all. It was pure ideological perversity.

Knowledge of that moment must be kept alive. Our expert class betrayed us by prioritizing their riot apologetics over our health.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTES:

See Milton Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo (1980) p. 115.
For a “Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)” see Grokipedia.
The encouragement of the riots was, many hazard, an opportunistic psy-op to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. It seems to have succeeded.

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Promising & Not

Endorsements, Democratic Party, socialism, Mamdani

“We are capitalist, not socialist.”

Those words are from the “Promise to America” pledge promoted by a new group of the same name and unveiled last week by Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-New York) and Rep. Adam Gray (D-California). 

“Two Democrats in Congress who flipped Republican-held seats in 2024 are launching a pledge for their party’s candidates they hope will act as a rallying cry for centrists,” explains a Washington Post article, dubbing it “a direct rebuke to the party’s leftward tilt as democratic socialists such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) capture the party’s energy and activism.”

"We Are Capitalist, Not Socialist." Adam Gray, Tom Suozzi, Democratic Party

“We want safety,” their “Promise” continues, “not lawlessness.”

“No, duh,” would have been the response to such a statement years ago. But today? “Refreshing!”

These Democrats call for “secure borders, safe communities, honest government, and an orderly immigration system that protects the country, strengthens the economy, and treats people with dignity.” It’s a far cry from: Free healthcare for those here illegally!

“We believe America remains indispensable to global stability, democratic values, international security, and strong alliances,” the document expounds. “In a dangerous and uncertain world, America must lead with strength, purpose, and partnership.”

In closing, they declare: “We are proud, not ashamed of America.”

The Post suggests, however, that this slogan “could be polarizing on the left.” 

Sure, it is a much different message than Maine Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner has expressed. On an online forum back in 2021, in a discussion on securing disability benefits from the VA, a fellow veteran vented, “Fuck Uncle Sam,” to which Platner added a clarification: “Fuck him and take his money.”

Which message for Democrats?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Sorry for the foul language but, frankly, I did not want to cushion the blow.

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King & Kingslayer

Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, revenge, Republican, endorsement, elections

Two weeks ago, five incumbent Indiana state senators “weren’t just defeated,” as NBC’s Steve Kornacki explained, “they were defeated in landslides.” 

The five had bucked President Trump’s call to redraw the state’s congressional map, blocking the creation of two additional Republican-leaning districts and drawing the ire of the president and his supporters, who got behind their opponents. 

On Saturday in Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy, a 12-year Republican incumbent, became the first elected U.S. Senator to lose in a primary since 2012. Again, Dr. Cassidy wasn’t simply eclipsed by a challenger; he came in a distant third place with less than 25 percent of the vote. Cassidy was one of seven GOP Senators who found Mr. Trump guilty in his second impeachment trial, following the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.*

I cannot recall a president of either party ever wielding so much electoral clout within his own party — perhaps partly because other presidents did not attempt to reshape their party as aggressively as Trump has, and partly because no president has enjoyed the outsider status required to mobilize the disgruntled grassroots.

Today, Kentucky’s Republican Primary offers another stop on what the media has dubbed “Trump’s revenge tour.” The Bluegrass State’s 4th congressional district sports 14-year incumbent Rep. Thomas Massie facing Trump-endorsed challenger Ed Gallrein, a businessman and former Navy SEAL, in “the most expensive House primary on record.” 

President Trump called Massie “a third rate Grandstander” in 2020 but then endorsed Massie in 2022. After Massie’s opposition to the “Big Beautiful Bill,” the Iran War, tariffs, and support for releasing the Epstein files, Trump has gone after him.

Latest polling shows “the race to be evenly deadlocked,” but if anyone can withstand the Trump onslaught, it may be Massie . . . who is so thoroughly not a Washington insider.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Of the other six U.S. Senate Republicans, four chose not to seek reelection (Sasse, Neb.; Burr, N.C.; Toomey, Penn.; Romney, Utah), while Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski won re-election in 2022, and Senator Susan Collins of Maine is on this November’s ballot.

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