Category: national politics & policies

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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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national politics & policies political economy

The False Gospel of the Printing Press

inflation, economist, monetary theory

It’s been a while since I’ve mentioned “Modern Monetary Theory,” popularly known as MMT.

While MMT is not popular here, it is gaining adherents outside the ranks of Common Sense readers like a new Ponzi scheme taking on suckers.

Modern Monetary Theorists go on and on about the gospel of printing money, like they just discovered that the Fed-and-Treasury act of borrowing within the banking system isn’t the only way to inflate the money supply.

You can indeed “just print money”!

Granted, the MMTers do a lot of fancy footwork, or silver-tongue-work — the closest they get to hard money — to avoid the infamous consequences of monetary inflation, “price inflation” being just one of them. They are so enamored of the money press that they’re like teenagers discovering sex: didn’t you old folks know about this great thing?

It would be comical were it not . . . inflationary.

At the present moment in history, of course, MMT is in a tricky situation: huge increases in the money supply during the COVID period resulted in no small amount of . . . huge price increases.

“Whatever you call it, MMT is printing money,” Matt Taibbi just wrote in a terrific May 18 piece, “and no matter how sure you might think you are that it will work, you aren’t, and can’t be. Sure, our leaders have been doing it, printing $4 trillion through multiple rounds of QE and $5.5 trillion more in the CARES Act, and sure, that last spree only inspired about 20% inflation so far. Still, any economist who says with a straight face he or she is sure this experiment won’t end with your kids using dollars as toilet paper is lying.”

Or just engaging in old-fashioned money-crankism. 

The old get-something-for-nothing racket. MMT’s just the latest form.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Bills of Suppression

censorship, misinformation, disinformation, surveillance

In 2021, Democrats took aim at persons who donate to Democrats’ opponents with legislation called the For the People Act, which Republicans successfully blocked.

Back then, Bradley Smith, chairman of Institute for Free Speech, observed that the legislation aimed to violate the rights of groups “who do nothing more than speak about policy issues before Congress.” It would also have limited political speech on the web.

Now the bill is being resurrected as two separate pieces of legislation, each with language purporting to counter the purported threat of artificial intelligence. They are the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act and the AI Transparency in Elections Act.

Some Republicans seem to be buying into the resuscitated anti-speech agenda, even though the legislation incorporates many proposals — even much of the same language — from the earlier bill. Again, says Smith, the goal is to expose conservative donors to “to harassment and boycotts.” Also to outlaw content called “materially deceptive content” as judged by a “reasonable person.” 

Of course, “reasonable persons” can and do disagree about the meaning of various speech and whether it’s “deceptive.” It’s reasonable to assume that the legislation, if enacted, will be used against speech that enforcers happen to disagree with.

As for actually deceptive speech: all manner of jabberwocky is protected by the First Amendment unless uttered to rob or defraud someone. If I tell you the moon is green cheese and you believe it, that may be sad. But I haven’t picked your pocket . . . or made you eat lunar cheese.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Junk Force

space junk, NASA, Space Force, TESLA, space exploration

A Space.com news story indicates a big problem and a new role for government — or industry.

“The Infra-Red Calibration Balloon (S73-7) satellite started its journey into the great unknown after launching on April 10, 1974 through the United States Air Force’s Space Test Program,” writes Meredith Garofalo. “While in orbit, the original plan was for S73-7 to inflate and take on the role as a calibration target for remote sensing equipment. After this failed to be achieved during deployment, the satellite faded away into the abyss and joined the graveyard of unwanted space junk until it was rediscovered in April.”

It’s a complicated story; the satellite never really worked properly. Which raises the space junk problem.

The biggest polluter is governments. Space agencies. And the corporations contracting to put up satellites. And the military that puts stuff up we know nothing about.

“[A]s more and more satellites head into space,” explains Garofalo, “the task will become even greater to know what exactly is out there and what threats that could pose.”

When Trump boasted of creating the Space Force in 2019, a lot of people scoffed. I didn’t.*Somebody’s got to do the dirty work, and it does look like Space Force personnel see an important role to be filled, that of garbage men in orbital space. Since the more than 20,000 objects in orbit — and their associated random debris — were put there by governments, maybe governments should clean it up. 

The future of space industry could be hampered, should the problem continue to grow — though, in the end, it may be industry that will take over the task. After all, space litter’s more dangerous than most terrestrial “externalities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Also, in no small part, because ceding outer space to China and Russia seems like a bad idea. 

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national politics & policies Tenth Amendment federalism

The Great Weed Fake-Out

marijuana, weed, pot, federal, state, con

When, in the last State of the Union political rally, Stumbler-in-Chief Joe proclaimed that his administration had been “expunging thousands of convictions for the mere possession” of cannabis, did you believe him? Previously, when Second Banana Kamala set the theme, claiming to have “changed federal marijuana policy, because nobody should have to go to jail just for smoking weed,” how confident were you of her boast?

“Neither claim was accurate,” explains Jacob Sullum, in the June issue of Reason. They are exaggerations at best. For their voting bloc.

Remember Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to “decriminalize the use of cannabis” and “expunge all prior cannabis use convictions”?

They were undelivered because these moves would require new legislation.

Biden’s not a dictator. As much as he tries.

He still needs Congress.

When he announced, last October, to much ballyhoo, a mass pardon for simple marijuana possession convictions, directing a review of the drug’s classification under the Controlled Substances Act, neither move “actually ‘changed federal marijuana policy,’” Sullum insists. Not one prisoner was freed, and — more startling yet — no record was expunged . . . for while the president can pardon, he cannot legally expunge records. 

The question to ask ourselves is this: does Biden or anyone now in power really want to do anything more than yammer about drugs? 

After all, any substantive reform would require, as Sullum points out, addressing the tension in the union: a federal government claiming powers to regulate and prohibit (not found in the Constitution), and 38 states that have effectively nullified federal law.

Confronting that might lead to ceding a whole lot of power back to the states . . . on more matters than just weed.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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national politics & policies partisanship

Hypocrisy’s Cash Value

Donald Trump, Joe Biden, court, campaign contributions

“If these corrupt Democrats didn’t have HYPOCRISY,” the Republican National Committee explained, “they’d have NOTHING!”

After months of Biden surrogates savaging former President Donald Trump for the dastardly deed of using campaign monies to cover his mounting legal fees from the plethora of trumped-up indictments brought by partisan Democratic prosecutors, it turns out the Democrats have been doing the same thing.

The BBC noted: “Democratic donors paid at least $1.7m (£1.35m) of U.S. President Joe Biden’s legal fees during the investigation into his handling of classified documents, records show.”

“We are not spending money on legal bills or hawking gold sneakers,” Rufus Gifford, finance chair of the Biden campaign, told MSNBC only days before the news broke.

Highly questionable that Biden could sell anyone a sneaker, but the other claim was a provable lie.

“The use of party funds to cover Biden’s legal bills is not without precedent and falls within the bounds of campaign finance law,” the Associated Press article quickly informed, before adding that it “could cloud Biden’s ability to continue to hammer former President Donald Trump over his far more extensive use of donor funds to cover his legal bills.”

How unfortunate! The hypocrisy could ruin the piling on by Democrats.

“Democrats say the cases are nothing alike,” The Washington Post reported.

“There is no comparison,” offered a Democratic National Committee spokesman. “The DNC does not spend a single penny of grass-roots donors’ money on legal bills, unlike Donald Trump, who actively solicits legal fees from his supporters . . .”

Let’s get this straight: the difference is that Trump is upfront in asking his middle-class supporters for help, while Biden’s money came surreptitiously from wealthy Democrats?

This must be the proverbial dime’s worth of difference between the parties.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

The CDC on Self-Defense

CDC, gun control

This April, a Nashville homeowner shot an intruder intent on burglary.

Also this month, a St. Louis apartment dweller shot an intruder who threatened to kill his family.

A Newport Beach homeowner recently shot an intruder as well.

Aside from the obvious, what do such incidents, often in newspapers, have in common? The government is hiding research about them.

In December 2022, Fox News reported that to appease gun control activists, the Centers for Disease Control had deleted reference to a study on how often guns are used in self-defense from its published research.

The CDC-commissioned study by Gary Kleck showed that “instances of defensive gun use occur between 60,000 and 2.5 million times” annually. But in 2021, after being lobbied by the gun control activists, the CDC pretended that Kleck’s study didn’t exist.

Kleck said: “CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups. . . . ‘We are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”

CDC’s conduct was not new. In 2018, Capital Research had asked why the agency was “Hiding Its Defensive Gun Use Statistics.”

For decades, we’ve had abundant data on how gun owners defend themselves from violent bad guys. CDC, which investigates something or other related to this subject, won’t share all that it knows.

We can’t legally require the media to stop hiding critical information. But we should be able to require our government to stop doing so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense national politics & policies regulation subsidy

Electric Class Warfare

Star Trek, electric car, gas car, regulations, climate

Star Trek may have adversely affected American politics. Its techno-communist utopian militarism was one thing, its attitude towards engineering? Perhaps worse.

In how many episodes did Captain Kirk demand that Scotty push the warp drives further, or decrease the time required for a task — arbitrarily according to his need, not actual possibility?

And, because television: presto, it was done; just in time for the finale!

We see that in the push for electric vehicles (EVs). 

The EV mandates, explains The Epoch Times, “will likely cause a sizable wealth transfer from rural red regions of the United States to urban blue sections, and to wealthy Democrats who reside in them. . . .”

For while Democrats say they’re trying to “save the planet” from an increase in atmospheric carbon, really, analyst Robert Bryce counters, “it’s a type of class warfare that will prevent low- and middle-income consumers from being able to afford new cars.”

How? The EPA’s new “rules are the strictest in history and will effectively force carmakers to have one-third of new car sales be plug-in EVs by 2027 and more than two-thirds by 2032.” But according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation, “as much as $48,000 of the cost of the average EV sold in the United States is paid not by the owner but in the form of ‘socialized costs’ that are spread out among taxpayers and electricity consumers over a 10-year period.”

So the new rules will reduce the supply of gas-powered vehicles, driving up costs. And the increased number of already-subsidized vehicles will also be paid by taxpayers at large, while the benefits go to . . . mostly Democrats in the bluest counties of the bluest states, as statistics show.

In recent years, Democrats have prided themselves that their “blue states” subsidize “red states,” mocking the “rugged individualist” pretensions of the hapless bubbas in flyover country. But now such boasts ring hollow. 

This is the far-flung future? 

Subsidy and regulation spoil the Star Trek promise.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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