Category: national politics & policies

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Surfin’ U.S.A.

no red wave

Back in the Spring, a pollster was detailing his findings to a group of us. The Democrats were none too popular, he informed. And informed. And further informed. But at one point, the pollster stopped to remind: “Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to suggest the public is fond of Republicans.”

“We have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history, we have Joe Biden who is the least popular president . . . since presidential polling happened,” Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen explained on Fox News, “and there wasn’t a red wave.”

Barely a ripple.

Voters, he continued. “looked at all of that and looked at the Republican alternative and said, ‘No, thanks!’”

Calling it “an absolute disaster,” Thiessen advised the GOP to do a “a really deep introspective look in the mirror right now.”

Watch for cracks.

More than the abortion issue or the mixed blessing of Mr. Trump’s omnipresence, I think the GOP’s problem was the lack of any serious, cohesive and positive agenda. We are indeed facing massive inflation, crime, cultural revolution . . . but what are you going do ’bout it?

Answers aren’t coming from the Republican Party.

In last year’s red wave across my home state of Virginia, it wasn’t now-Governor Glenn Younkin who made respecting the rights of the parents of public education students a cataclysmic issue. Parents did that.

The Republican Revolution of 1994 rode a tsunami produced in no small part by the term limits movement. With term limits measures on the ballot throughout the country, the GOP gained 52 seats to secure a majority after 40 consecutive years in the minority — even defeating the Democratic House Speaker. 

Want candidates to ride a popular, pro-freedom wave? 

Better start splashing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

The Biden’s War on Independents 

California, contractors, independent, legislature

They know. They aren’t complete idiots. When enemies of the market routinely try to stop people from earning a living through restrictions like minimum wage laws and arbitrary licensing to thwart such dangerous activities as hair-braiding, few are ignorant of the disastrous consequences.

Case in point? 

The Biden administration is on the verge of using a federal version of California’s AB5 law to mass-slaughter the opportunities of millions of gig workers and freelancers. The administration hasn’t managed to do it legislatively. So it’s trying to inflict the damage with a Department of Labor regulation.

The idea is to stop companies from classifying independent contractors as independent contractors. Passed in California a few years ago, AB5 prohibited companies and many contractors from working with each other unless companies took them on as regular employees.

To avoid the costs of doing that, many companies instead simply ended their relationships with hundreds of thousands of gig workers. For example, Rev, a transcription service, stopped working with all freelancers residing in California.

California lawmakers knew how destructive AB5 would be when they passed it — proof-positive being the many exceptions for politically connected groups that were stipulated as part of the law. AB5 has now been repealed and replaced by AB2257, which increases the varieties of worker exempt from the new requirements. But it still leaves many other people, like California-based truckers, in legal limbo.  

It’s okay though, because all truckers do is deliver the stuff that all the rest of us need to survive.

This madness should not be imposed on everybody throughout the country.

And certainly not by back-room bureaucratic machinations.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ballot access national politics & policies partisanship

Launch a Thousand Lawsuits

voting, emergency, voters

In the last couple of years, the Republican National Committee has launched 73 lawsuits in twenty states to challenge slack, lax, state-law-defying election rules and prepare for further lawsuits if the elections in November are afflicted by any shenanigans. A good start.

The litigation pertains to things like treatment of poll watchers, how absentee ballots should be counted, and whether noncitizens may be allowed to vote. The RNC has achieved some important successes.

  • In June, a New York court ruled that a new law giving almost a million noncitizens the right to vote in New York City is unconstitutional. The RNC has also sued to block noncitizen voting in two Vermont towns.
  • A court ruled that Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson violated the law when imposing new restrictions on poll watchers.
  • Nevada and Arizona must now provide poll-worker data to ensure that both major political parties are represented at voting sites.

A lot of electoral hanky-panky in 2020 was never adequately investigated. Many of us were blindsided by the brazenness with which foes of one-citizen-one-honest-vote exploited COVID-19 fears to undermine election integrity. (It was an emergency. Safeguards just had to be scuttled, supposedly.)

Until the time machine gets invented, though, we’re stuck with the electoral results of that year. We can no longer contest the 2020 election.

But we can darn well contest the 2022 election if and when we espy dubious electoral doings. 

And the 2024 election too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers Voting

Good Night, Mr. Fetterman

US Capitol Building, brain damage

In popular political culture, it’s the Republican Party that’s historically been fettered with the moniker of “The Stupid Party.” 

That’s what liberal philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill called Britain’s Tories, and affixing the “stupid” label to conservatives has been important for intellectuals ever since: it’s one way they feel good about themselves. 

We can argue about the (in)justice of the accusation till the cows come home and go out to pasture again, but it’s the Democrats who are pushing brain-damaged leaders, not Republicans.

I’m not just referring to President Joseph Robinette Biden’s many out-of-mind moments. I’m also talking about Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman’s run for the U.S. Senate.

The man suffered a stroke last spring, and has mostly been hiding out in the proverbial Biden Basement ever since. But on Tuesday he appeared on stage to debate his Republican opponent Dr. Mehmet Oz. 

Fetterman’s mental impairment? Obvious.

He began with the immortal clumsiness of “Good Night” rather than “Good Evening,” and stumbled through question after question. His handling of the minimum wage issue was slow-witted, and his awkward and robotic — and so obviously deceptive — repetitions regarding fracking sent shivers down my spine.

It’s not my purpose to make fun of people with brain injuries. But it is my role to call attention to the apologetics by Democrats (and the center-left/far-left news media) for their candidate, and their pretense that Fetterman’s just fine. 

He isn’t. Biden isn’t. 

And this says something about where Democrats are — intellectually; spiritually.

Very not fine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

US Capitol Building, brain damage

On Rumble: 

PDF for printing

Illustrations created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Doctor Dead End

Anthony Fauci, covid, vaccines, masks

Dr. Anthony Fauci not only holds a smoking gun, he’s standing over the corpse and sniffing the barrel, grinning like a cartoon villain.

Last week we considered the gross indecency of this director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force funding Peter Daszak and the Wuhan lab to do more research on bat coronaviruses — to the tune of “Six Million Dimes.”

And now that a Boston group has publicized its gain-of-function research, we should ask ourselves: is Fauci involved in this, too? The answer is: YES — to the tune of $2.5 million!

This group of researchers, jiggering with a bat virus and the Omicron variant’s version of the infamous spiked protein, made a new iteration that killed 80 percent of infected mice. Success? What?!? 

We had been told that gain-of-function was against policy.

But that wise policy is no match for Fauci’s mania.

Wait, you cry, at least they developed the vaccines! 

Well, to what purpose?

A few weeks ago, in a European Parliament hearing, a Pfizer bigwig admitted that when the multinational introduced its anti-COVID mRNA “vaccine,” it had not even researched the ability of the jab to reduce transmissibility of the virus. 

“We had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what was taking place in the market,” Pfizer senior executive Janine Small explained. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk.” 

Clear? As mud?

This is a scandal . . . except . . . not according to FactCheck.org, which states that “nobody claimed the vaccines — Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s — were tested for transmission prevention before they hit the market.”

But even the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s fact checkers admit that “some officials have overstated the transmission protection provided by the vaccines.”

Chiefest of these is Fauci, who said last year that by getting vaccinated we “contribute to the community health by preventing the spread of the virus throughout the community. In other words, you become a dead end to the virus.”

Fauci, at the top of the Big Gov/Big Pharma dung heap, is himself a dead end — to responsible medicine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Craiyon

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies

The Middle of the Beginning of the End

Presidential powers, pardons, marijuana

President Biden’s decision to pardon everyone federally convicted for a simple marijuana possession is not the true beginning of the end of the federal war on drug-taking people.

In 2018, the federal government legalized certain products with cannabinoids derived from hemp. That’s something, even if the feds still ban buying and selling marijuana.

On the other hand, for years many states have been legalizing pot, inspiring the federal government to somewhat slacken enforcement of its own pot ban — sometimes.

These developments constitute the beginning of the end for the federal war on drug-taking people.

Call Biden’s gesture the middle of the beginning. That it won’t be rapidly followed by full federal legalization of unapproved drugs or even marijuana is shown by the objections of other politicians.

Senator Tom Cotton laments that Biden is “giving blanket pardons to pot heads — many of whom pled down from more serious charges.”*

The argument would be equally valid if it were illegal to blow soap bubbles and some people had pled down from a charge of smashing windows to a charge of blowing soap bubbles. Granted, plea deals are often horrible, wrongly abetting the guilty and hurting the innocent. So reform the plea-deal regime. 

But don’t criminalize non-crimes.

The real impact? The White House admits that “while no-one is currently in prison for ‘simple possession,’ a pardon for those who have convictions could allow better access to housing or employment.”

Call it a half-start at the middle of the beginning of the end.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another lament is that Biden’s pardon is just cynical election-eve politics. Well . . . let’s have more such pandering to the people; it seems the only way to get good policy from bad politicians. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Public-Private Censorship Partnership

censorship, mind control

When government pays people to help censor critics of its policies and talking points, this makes it even more obvious that it’s acting to repress speech and violate the First Amendment.

Thanks to a recent lawsuit against the Biden administration, we have been seeing emails confirming that government officials routinely ask Big Tech to censor this and that.

Now, Just the News reports that government agencies and liberal groups such as Common Cause and the Democratic National Committee worked with a consortium of private groups — the Election Integrity Partnership — during the 2020 election season to target and censor social media posts.

The EIP “set up a concierge-like service in 2020 that allowed federal agencies like Homeland’s Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency and State’s Global Engagement Center to file ‘tickets’ requesting that online story links and social media posts be censored or flagged by Big Tech.”

About 35 percent of the many posts EIP flagged in 2020 were sanctioned in some way by Big Tech.

Millions of tax dollars have been funneled to consortium members to fund these efforts to censor “misinformation,” i.e., speech that government officials disapprove of.

The EIP remains active in 2022.

Of course, politically controversial speech is just the kind of speech that the Founders were concerned to protect. Madison and Mason didn’t expect that the ability to publicly debate whether Bach is better than Beethoven or the best way to shingle a roof would ever be in great jeopardy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Repression Pal

public and private, fascism

No explanation, no warning.

PayPal has closed the account of another innocent customer: UsForThem, a UK organization that has fought to keep schools open during the pandemic.

PayPal also blocked the group’s access to its PayPal balance, thousands of pounds in donations, for 180 days.

According to cofounder Molly Kingsley: “No prior warning or meaningful explanation was given, and despite their saying we could withdraw our remaining balance, we cannot.”

This is, alas, just one of many examples. 

Last year, the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported that PayPal shut down the twenty-year-old PayPal account of Larry Brandt, which he had been using to support Tor. Tor is a way of encrypting Internet communications to protect the privacy of users, in part from regimes that repress political opponents.

No explanation, no warning — and, again, the same 180-day lockdown of funds belonging to the account holder.

At least in its stated intentions, PayPal originated as a radical alternative to establishment ways of doing things. But it now conducts itself in a repressive spirit, routinely hobbling customers whose legal speech or other legal activities it dislikes.

Or perhaps that governments dislike.

Email documents made public during a recent lawsuit in the United States confirm that our own federal government is issuing marching orders to Big Tech firms to repress users who say or do things that government officials dislike. 

The firms are loath to acknowledge such pressure openly, let alone refuse on principle to cooperate. 

This is how the Bill of Rights becomes void: made irrelevant in secret public-private partnerships.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

The Energy Trap

madness of crowds, energy policy, electric cars, fuel, oil

After the spectacular failures of the COVID response, “the experts” appear to be on a roll. That is, they are once again not “following the science” but being led by politics, ideology, and the madness of crowds.

The big issues right now demonstrating mass folly on a societal level? Aside from agriculture policy, trade, subsidy, banking and high finance, and “climate change,” the big one — not unrelated to most of the rest — is the power grid.

About which our leaders seem to be nuts.

What we know is the supply of “renewable energy” is nowhere near enough to meet the general demand for energy. California’s a great example, announcing “the end of fossil fuel-powered car sales by 2035” but sporting a power grid that is already unable to handle demand, which became bitterly funny when the Golden State asked citizens not to charge their electric cars during high-demand hot days.

“US Power Grid Needs Trillions in Upgrades to Accommodate Renewable Energy Demands,” reads a recent Epoch Times feature.

Trillions.

It’s not as if America is rolling, like Uncle Scrooge, in trillion-dollar surpluses. As I type these words, the US Debt Clock shows the federal government quickly approaching $31 trillion in public debt.

So now we’ll need more trillions to keep the lights on?

Yes.

Our lives depend on electrical energy, our civilization runs on electricity, but our leaders have been painting us into a corner. Bad policies that hobble efficient fuel sources and pushing inefficient sources have set a trap.

And the only real way out of the trap is one politicians don’t like: admitting they were wrong and reversing their policies.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

The Indicted Have Gun Rights

self defense, gun rights, gun control, 2nd Amendment

The idea that those who are indicted for a serious crime may not buy a gun, is, I think, what many in America might think of as “common sense gun control.”

But it isn’t, for it rubs against the grain of the American legal tradition.

The pseudo-commonsense view appears nonsensical when boldly defended by the U.S. attorney’s office, which, The Texas Tribune informs us, argued that a “law to prohibit those under felony indictment from obtaining guns does not interfere with the Second Amendment ‘because it does not disarm felony indictees who already had guns and does not prohibit possession or public carry.’”

That argument boils down to this: if you retain some relevant gun rights, others may be taken away. 

Compare it to free speech: if the government allows you to talk freely with your family, its regulation of your conversations with neighbors is hunky-dory!

“The Second Amendment has always allowed laws restricting the gun rights of groups viewed by legislatures as posing a public-safety risk,” the prosecution elucidated, “including those accused but not convicted of wrongdoing.”

But U.S. District Judge David Counts, introduced in every account of this I’ve read so far as “appointed by former President Donald Trump” — so that must be important, eh? — denies this. He found no historical precedent for disallowing the accused and indicted from buying firearms.

Therefore, based on the recent Supreme Court decision,* Judge Countssays the government has no case. It’s still innocent until proven guilty.

That is, governments may not “take away” our rights until convicted of a specific crime, punishment for which is loss of liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* That U.S. Supreme Court case is New York State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. v. Bruen.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with DALL-E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts