Category: national politics & policies

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Trump Blot

Trump Blot, collage, photomontage, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

I’m almost professionally required to say something nice about Donald Trump — because mainstream media feel professionally required to ridicule him. So here goes: he’s doing us a great service in his presidential run.

Trump’s sort of a bung puller; he’s unstopped the cork of polite political society, and shown the massive voter dissatisfaction by giving more realistic voice to just how stupid government is. “Really stupid!”

But, beyond that, where does he stand? On too many issues, that’s murky. For economist David Henderson, a friend of mine from way back, this shows promise.

Henderson is a free-market economist. He’s not into the whole warfare/big stick bullying that some conservatives channel from the first Progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, writes Henderson, stands out, by not having “foreign policy advisers.” Which Henderson regards as “refreshing, given the hawkish views of the vast majority of his Republican competitors.”

Henderson also acknowledges Trump’s downsides, including “Trump’s claim, in 2011, that the U.S. government, having won the war in Iraq, should have taken their oil.” This nationalist plunder idea is evil on its face. And disturbingly retro, harkening back to the days of rapine and pillage.

Understandably, Americans fixate on the man’s “charisma.” Should that make us comfortable? Of Max Weber’s three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal), charismatic is the least predictable, least stable. People will follow too far those they love too much. Or find too entertaining?

Trump serves, for now, as a sort of Rorshach inkblot test. What you see depends on your hopes, fears, or the context of Trump’s candidacy, as you understand it.

For my part, I don’t see an accountable proponent of responsible, limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump Blot, Rorshach, inkblot, editorial, political cartoon

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Hard Looker?

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

What is a “democratic socialist”?

According to leading presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders, such a socialist “takes a hard look at countries around the world who [sic] have successful records fighting and implementing programs for the middle class and working families.”

I don’t believe him. He shows his cavalier attitude in his next few words: “When you do that you automatically go to countries like Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden . . .”

Competent comparative economics doesn’t simply focus on a few policies one happens to admire and then trumpet them for America. Other countries following Bernie-branded socialist policies are in or headed into the proverbial toilet, i.e. PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

The common-on-the-left meme runs like this: “No Other Advanced Country,” which Kevin D. Williamson handily demolishes in a recent article:

If we are to go around the world cherry-picking policies from happy countries, we might pass over French paid-leave laws in favor of the Swiss capital-gains tax (generally 0.00 percent) or the Swiss national minimum wage (there isn’t one), or Finland’s very liberal (in the good sense of that word) education system, or Sweden’s free-trade regime and its financial-regulatory system. We’d have to make radical improvements on our federal balance sheet to get our public debt down to Norwegian levels.

American success has never really been about copycatting Europe. We need to look hard at those who pretend otherwise — like nova Bernie, the rising star of the left, who’s now besting Hillary in polls in New Hampshire and Iowa.

And about “democratic socialism” — extreme redistributionism in a putative republic — Bernie needs to look hard at the worldwide experience . . . not hardly look.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies too much government

Just Doing Our Jobs?

Barber Shop, discrimination, police abuse, Collage, editorial

I didn’t really want to talk about Kim Davis, County Clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Last week, she got put in jail for not doing her job; this week, she got released.

Generally, I’m for people doing their jobs. Especially, those in government.

However, when they are instructed to do something destructive, I’d prefer they refrain. Unfortunately, government workers too often select the wrong things not to enforce. I could use a lot more “blue flu” over Drug War efforts, or stealing our property through civil forfeiture, or shooting pet dogs.

No such luck, usually.

Recently, a 17-year-old boy was charged, as an adult, for child pornography. But the “child porn” was a naked picture of his own body on his very own cell phone. A law designed to protect him from sexual exploitation was turned against him, making him a “sexual predator.”

The police and prosecutor in this North Carolina case didn’t really do their jobs.

In Washington County, Pennsylvania, a barbershop has been fined $750 for refusing to cut one woman’s hair. The owner claims he has nothing against doing women’s hair, but merely that this particular shop wasn’t set up to handle women’s typical hair concerns. Public servants fined him anyway.

Do we really need government to patrol beauty salons and barbershops for “discrimination” “crimes”?

After all, they cannot even patrol themselves coherently. Witness the messy case of Kim Davis, Democratic County clerk in rural Kentucky. About which I hope I need not say more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Just Doing My Job, Collage, editorial

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom national politics & policies term limits

Long Live the . . . Term Limits

Kings Collage

Queen Elizabeth II, the not-quite-just-a-figurehead monarch of Great Britain, has just become her country’s longest reigning potentate.

“She passes Queen Victoria, her great-great-grandmother,” the AP reports, “who was on the throne for 63 years and 7 months.”

This should mean almost nothing to Americans. A curiosity at best, alongside other eccentric British institutions, like cricket and pub cuisine. Americans fought and won against King George III, and we don’t have kings any longer. Or queens.

Britain’s prime minister dutifully predicted that “millions” of Britons would celebrate the “historic moment.” One of the most irreverent (and unpopular) things I ever wrote pertained to Her Alleged Majesty, and the weird, atavistic yearnings still focusing on celebrity sovereigns.

We have enough problems with non-sovereign celebrities in America — as well as with way-too-long-serving politicians.

I’m for term limits. I approve of them on our presidents (thank you, 22nd Amendment), work to place them on our legislators, state and congressional, and have suggested placing term limits on U.S. Supreme Court justices, too.

If we still had an old-fashioned monarch — as Alexander Hamilton wanted — then I would be for term limits on monarchs as well. I wouldn’t know how to implement them — it’s not exactly a live issue for me — but perhaps L. Sprague de Camp’s imagined five-year reign, leading to a beheading, could be considered.

Meanwhile, back in American reality, we have a lot of work to do. At least we aren’t saddled with a musty old . . . monarch-y.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kings Collage

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Debbie Does Democracy

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, collage, photomontage, Paul Jacob, James Gill, illustration

“Republicans in Congress are dead-set on rolling back the progress that Democrats like you and I [sic] have worked so hard to achieve,” wrote Democratic Party Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in a bizarre pitch letter last week.

They’ve already said that they’re going to try to repeal Obamacare, after more than 50 unsuccessful attempts (and two Supreme Court rulings in the law’s favor). They want to completely defund Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides necessary health services to women across the country. And if they don’t get their way, they’re just fine with shutting down the government — again!

Well, GOP strategists shouldn’t be fine with the brinksmanship of a government shutdown. That ploy has backfired before. But why? Because everyone seems to think that the Democrats’ “blame Republicans” strategy makes sense.

But it doesn’t.

Say the Republicans in Congress want to defund Planned Parenthood. Democrats want to keep funding it, but . . . the whole federal government spends over revenue — by nearly half a trillion this past year.

So if Republicans fight the spending and Democrats defend it and the government shuts down because of lack of agreement, it’s obvious: both parties shut down the government. Both refuse to compromise.

But for some reason, it’s only those who want to cut spending who get tarred with responsibility for the lack of a budget.

Debbie titled her email letter “This pisses me off.” But those who deserve to be so irked are her opponents, the Republicans, discriminated against in the double standard she perpetuates.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Debbie Wasserman Schultz, collage, photomontage, Paul Jacob, James Gill, illustration

 

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Weekend with Bernie: Leftist Demagogue

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton’s main opponent on the Democratic side of Campaign 2016, is a demagogue.

My Democratic friends balk at this, contending the term better applies to Donald Trump. But, no matter how different these men may be, their differences don’t mean that only one of them can be a demagogue.

Perhaps demagogues of very different stripes.

First, definitions.

A demagogue (from French “demagogue,” derived from the Greek “demos,” for “people”) is, my dictionary says, a political leader in a democracy who appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudices, and ignorance of the lower socioeconomic classes in order to gain power.

The charge makes sense because Sen. Sanders has made wealth and income inequality his main issue, and because he relentlessly attacks higher-income Americans as a source of America’s current woes — whose wealth Sanders targets as the cure (provided it goes through his hands, first).

True, he appeals mostly to college-educated middle-class folks and bohos. But he uses the code-phrase “everyday working Americans” as a wedge, and the poor as an innocent shield, to advance what are, in fact, elitist solutions.

Like most self-professed socialists the Senator is only faux-prole, workingman manqué. Intellectuals, collegians and government workers have long dominated the socialist movement.

Socialist Demagogue defined: Emotion, Fear, Prejudice and Ignorance - Bernie Sanders

Though Sanders rightly attacks the plutocracy, he never attacks the government half of the plutocrats’ power structure. Never admits that unions are plutocratic in nature, too.

Instead, he appeals to the emotions, fears, prejudice and ignorance of those who, against all evidence, see more government only as a solution and never as a problem.

Par for the socialist course. That, remember, is a word Sanders chose.

For its historic demagogic appeal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Common Sense crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom judiciary nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Legalize, But Prohibit?

Pot Pot, legalization, collage, photo-montage, Paul Jacob, Jim Gill

Last week, I warned of marijuana legalization.

Not that I’m against it. But how much will actual freedom be increased?

Note: I’m not bemoaning, as one activist friend argued, that “if you can’t toke up and celebrate in public when it passes, it’s not legalization.”

One cannot now legally smoke tobacco in most public buildings (meaning those open for business as well as government-owned structures) or drink a beer in most public parks or while navigating sidewalks. But you can smoke and drink at home or on certain types of private property.

Ending the drug war and treating newly legalized marijuana pretty much as we treat alcohol and tobacco seems like a long overdo common sense approach.

There’s also the freedom of home cultivation. I have friends who make wine at home, for private consumption. It’s legal; it’s proper. It should also be legal to grow cannabis at home. Yet, many a politician thinks otherwise.

And they are inspired, in a sense, by the popular legalization mantra, “legalize, tax and regulate.” That sends an ominous signal: in order to maximize revenues, politicians see the revenue advantage in forbidding hard-to-tax home cultivation — cultivation that is, let’s face it, a traditional freedom, a right “retained by the people.”

The excuse for this continued prohibition could be “think of the children.” But it’s probably just greed for revenue . . . and the even more hidden enticements of “crony capitalism,” which plagues almost all industry.

You should be able to grow a plant. And self-medicate. These are basic human rights, and the state should work around those.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Pot Pot, legalization, collage, photo-montage, Paul Jacob, Jim Gill

 

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Common Sense national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Weekend with Bernie: A Fresh Dark Horse

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Going into 2015, news media mavens had all but declared the race as settled: Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton. But voters didn’t cooperate with their “betters.” Republicans flocked to Donald Trump, a weirdly charismatic figure, and Democrats fell enthusiastically for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-designated socialist.

Why hordes of regular folks prefer Trump over most of his rivals hardly needs extensive analysis: Trump is funny, appears “his own man,” and serves as a sort of wild card.

But why Bernie?

Over at The Hill, H.A. Goodman offers three reasons . . . sort of. The first reason is a confused mishmash of polling blather. But check out Goodman’s second and third reasons.

“Clinton can’t win the Democratic nomination or presidency with the FBI as a running mate,” Goodman notes in bold face type. And “Classified information has already been found within Clinton’s emails and there’s a great likelihood of more revelations pertaining to breaches in protocol. . . .”

So, the reason for Bernie’s popularity is that Hillary is so bad a candidate?

Well, duh. She’s always been a bad candidate.

Indeed, Hillary’s a corrupt insider, while Sanders, like Trump, can be plausibly construed as an outsider. But, like Trump, that plausibility is superficial.

Sanders is a lifelong politician, and when challenged about this, his retort was that he has always stood against the monied interests. He thinks that doesn’t make him a “career politician.”

Maybe being a career politician means never having to look up the meaning of “career” or “politician.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom government transparency national politics & policies political challengers

Weird & Wacky

Presidential Weirdness, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Presidential Race, political, politics

Have you noticed how weird politics has gotten?

I don’t mean government spying on us or never-ending wars or crony capitalism or rights violations or mounting trillions in debt or new, innovative forms of waste, fraud and abuse.

I’m just talking about the presidential horse race.

The Donald is way out front on the Republican side. Trump is . . . interesting: rude-to-obnoxious, but definitely not a mealy-mouthed, play-it-by-the-focus-group politician. Still, his weakness may be all the “business” he’s done with politicians, taking advantage of eminent domain and other purchased governmental powers.

I’m glad to see Carly Fiorina moving up. If 2016 is going to be the year American voters choose a woman to be president — and why not? — please let it be Carly Fiorina.

The other woman running is . . . let me check my notes . . . oh, yes, Hillary Clinton. After weeks of campaigning in a style that I think can best be described as “going underground,” she went on vacation.

But she can’t stay in hiding forever. (Can she?)

Democrats are getting so nervous that they’re talking — seriously — about a Joe Biden candidacy.

Why Biden? Having spent the last 43 years wielding power in Washington, will he be packaged as an outsider?

“The short answer is Clinton may be in real legal trouble,” writes conservative Jennifer Rubin. “The longer answer is that the Democrats need to make this election about the Republicans. With Clinton, that is impossible.”

Yes, the Democrats are more popular when the public is thinking about Republicans. And vice versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Presidential Weirdness

 

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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Cannabis and Kings

Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

The over-riding reason to end the War on Drugs is to re-establish the rule of law in this country.

From Nixon and Reagan to the present time, America has vastly increased the population of prison inmates, many of them for drug offenses. The “land of the free” shouldn’t boast a larger population (per capita and total) of unfree persons than any other nation on the planet.

Further, in the mania to apprehend contraband drug users, producers, and traffickers, we’ve pretty much lost Bill of Rights protections on our lives and our property.

We’ve armed nearly every conceivable division of government against us, turning local, state and federal police “services” into police state apparatuses that hound and steal from portions of our population — which turns them from citizens into fearful, resentful, servile subjects. Meanwhile, the use of civil asset forfeiture and other policing for profit schemes corrupt our police forces in a serious and fundamental and “King Georgish” way.

Sam and John Adams, Toms Jefferson and Paine — they’d all be aghast at what we have become.

But what of the growing tide to legalize/decriminalize marijuana? Reading a report by Steven Greenhut in Reason, it becomes apparent that not every step moves us towards a rule of law. Some steps in “regulating and taxing” cannabis may be more about using crony capitalism to choose winners and losers.

Let’s use some common sense from lessons learned with alcohol — er, with regulating alcohol, that is. Keep marijuana away from the kids and keep the over-regulation of marijuana away from adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense