Category: national politics & policies

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies partisanship

The Governor Who Parodied Himself

Political campaigns are hard. Presidential campaigns in which your Selected Candidate is mediocre at best are harder. So wouldn’t it be good to be able to outlaw all things that highlight this mediocrity?

Things like, say, effective parody?

This seems to be the thinking — I hope I’m channeling it accurately — of the governor of California, unhappy with a popular video available at the Mr Reagan YouTube channel.

The video’s maker may have thought he was covering every base by calling it a parody in the very title, an indignity of self-labeling that Jonathan Swift would never have permitted. People consuming Swift’s satire were left to figure out for themselves that when he proposed that the children of poor people be eaten to render them “beneficial to the publick,” he was engaging in satire.

In contrast, the Kamela Harris campaign ad parody in question is called “Kamala Harris Campaign Ad Parody.” Clear. Unmistakable. 

Like the content.

Still, this video has not escaped the agenda of would-be censors like Governor Gavin Newsom. The parody uses a “deepfake” AI-generated voice that sounds like Harris. It’s even got the Harris Cackle. So Newsom wants to outlaw it.

“Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal,” he says. (Why?) “I’ll be signing a bill . . . to make sure it is.”

But as Reclaim the Net points out, California has already outlawed certain uses of deepfake media. 

These forbidden uses do not, however, include parody, which is constitutionally protected speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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nannyism national politics & policies

President Next

Kamala Harris

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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national politics & policies property rights regulation

National Control

Joe Biden, democratic party, money machine

Is federal rent control, just proposed by Commissar Biden, a good idea or bad?

Well, it’s good in one way — great to torpedo the incentives and capital of owners while reducing the supply of rental units and further eroding property rights. 

All of which is bad.

Very bad.

A few details of the economic principles being blithely ignored by Biden and/or his handlers are explained by The Wall Street Journal (“another classic White House policy contradiction: Subsidize housing, then discourage its development”), Mises.org, and Breitbart Business, among other places.

What are the chances that this pot shot at the economy will become law in the near future: slim or none?

Slim. 

Not none, unfortunately — we’ve seen too many unthwarted federal attacks on the property rights of landlords and owners, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The chances are considerably more than slim if there’s a Biden Simulacrum 2 administration.

The goal of Biden and/or his handlers is to make clear to persons who want something for nothing — a goodly percentage of Biden’s constituency — that even a near-brain-dead party leader or his puppeteers can come up with scads of new schemes to loot fellow Americans as long as Biden or a Biden-type is at least nominally in office.

So if you want more pelf, along with an expiring economy with a war of all against all, vote for Biden! 

Or whoever replaces him at the Democratic convention.

If you want freedom, prosperity, respect for property rights and each other, don’t.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

The Vance Plan for DEI

DEI, J.D. Vance

Will certain items on Senator J. D. Vance’s legislative agenda be expedited by his new status as Donald Trump’s running mate?

For example, Congress could pass his kill-DEI legislation immediately. But Biden would have to sign the bill, and it’s Biden’s administration which has been pushing the horrific DEI federal mandates.

An initialism for “mediocrity, inequity, and exclusion” — “diversity, equity and inclusion,” actually — DEI designates enforcement of race-based, gender-based, irrelevant-characteristics-based criteria for hiring and promotion. It’s a continuation of old-style affirmative action quotas but nastier, and often attended by extra helpings of censorship and hectoring indoctrination.

On June 12, 2024, Senator Vance and Representative Michael Cloud introduced legislation that would, per their press release, “eliminate all DEI programs from the federal government.”

More specifically, the Dismantle DEI Act would “eliminate all federal DEI programs and funding for federal agencies, contractors which receive federal funding, organizations which receive federal grants, and educational accreditation agencies.” 

Seems to cover the waterfront.

Vance argues that our tax dollars should not be “co-opted” to promote an agenda that “breeds hatred and racial division.”

One of the bill’s cosponsors, Senator Kevin Cramer, observes that DEI “doesn’t promote diversity of thought or merit-based employment and promotion,” which is something of an understatement. DEI doesn’t merely neglect but actively opposes rewarding of merit whenever doing so would conflict with the DEI agenda.* An agenda that obtrudes continuously.

Of course, Vance’s attack upon DEI doesn’t require Vance to be Vice President, what is required is a Republican president to sign the legislation, should it pass through Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* More than a few commentators have suggested that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was a DEI hire and that contributed to last weekend’s utterly botched Secret Service protection of Donald Trump, previously discussed.

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The Slope of Service

Trump, sniper, Secret Service, DEI

“Heads should roll at Secret Service,” I declared on Monday.

That was before I stumbled upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle explaining to ABC News the strategic situational thinking employed by the agency in determining not to place agents on top of the roof of a building where the assassin fired multiple rounds, hitting former President Trump in the ear, killing a man attending the rally with his family and seriously wounding two others. 

Director Cheatle offered that “the Secret Service was aware of the security vulnerabilities presented by the building Crooks took a sniper’s position on to aim at Trump,” Fox News reported. “However, a decision was made not to place any personnel on the roof.” 

So much for “awareness.” And why was this decision made?

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she pointed out. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Competing safety factors, eh? The former president’s and that of novice roof-climbers in the Secret Service.

Instead, three local law enforcement sharpshooters were stationed inside the building as the shooter easily climbed up onto that ever-so-dangerously slanted roof and opened fire.

The finger-pointing at local police by Secret Service officials, who claimed that securing that building was a local law enforcement responsibility, is simply passing the buck.

Cheatle acknowledged that her agency “is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding “the buck stops with me.”

Good, I’m looking for immediate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

A Cool Ninety Million

Joe Biden

“Some major Democratic donors have told the largest pro-Biden super PAC, Future Forward, that pledges worth roughly $90 million are now on hold if President Biden remains atop the ticket,” a New York Times article explained on Friday.

A daring bit of pressure from insiders whom Biden now calls, without hint of irony, “the elites.”

“A leaked poll from a group closely linked with Future Forward after the debate showed that the super PAC had tested the strength of potential Biden alternatives, including Ms. Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary,” The Times elaborated. “The poll showed that Mr. Biden had a worse overall favorability rating than all the alternatives.”

Forbes identified the skeptical billionaires as including Mark Pincus, Christy Walton, Michael Novogratz, Reed Hastings and Mark Cuban. Biden, refusing to bow out, “has attempted to undo the debate damage by rallying his allies in Congress, sitting for a series of media interviews and holding his first post-debate press conference Thursday. The interviews and Thursday’s presser are widely viewed to have gone better than the debate, but not well enough to reverse the backlash.”

“Everything is frozen because no one knows what’s going to happen,” explained one Democratic strategist to CNN. “Everyone is in wait-and-see mode.”

Well, that mode did not last long. 

On Saturday their bête noir Donald Trump was shot. The whole question of winning the race got infinitely harder, for the still-alive former president looked heroic after the bullet, especially contrasted with a feeble Biden. Used to plying an insider advantage, “the elites” now have almost no advantage to ply. They might as well unfreeze their $90 million. 

Or keep it, instead. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Serious Times

Donald Trump, shooting, assassination, media

Former President Donald Trump came a half-inch from being assassinated on Saturday. Thank goodness he’s alive. 

Let’s reflect for a moment on what would have happened to our country had Mr. Trump not turned his head slightly just before the bullet hit his right ear. 

Potentially serious violence and unrest? Even if the sorrow, despair, and anger millions would feel at having their presidential candidate murdered in cold blood were to be completely peacefully received, what is the takeaway? 

It is destructive. We are less free if political power is dictated by the barrel of a gun. And it is the government’s job to prevent that from happening. 

Political talking heads are calling for a different tone and I’m all for that, so far as it goes. But it is a vague concept that no one agrees upon. And the answer certainly isn’t less freedom of speech. 

“You know the political rhetoric in this country has gotten very heated,” President Biden told the nation last night. “It’s time to cool it down.” 

I think, instead, it is time for Mr. Biden to turn up the heat: on the Secret Service. 

This weekend’s deadly* shooting represents an epic failure. To allow a would-be assassin to climb onto the roof of a building 140 yards away, a rifle in hand and in line of sight of a former president giving a speech, demonstrates an incredible level of incompetence. 

Heads must roll at Secret Service. (Figuratively.) A new and beefed-up detail should be protecting Trump. And it is past time for RFK, Jr., to be granted Secret Service protection as well.

I don’t say this often but . . . spend the money! 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Corey Comperatore, a father sheltering his family with his body, was struck by a bullet and killed. Two others were seriously injured by the gunfire. Also, the shooter was killed by Secret Service snipers. 

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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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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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