Category: national politics & policies

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general freedom national politics & policies

Dizzying Utopian Vortex

national service, the draft, slavery, involuntary servitude, freedom

“We are all, regardless of where we sit on the political spectrum,” Dr. Jonathan Holloway wrote in The New York Times last week, “caught in a vortex of intoxication.”

Holloway, president of Rutgers University as well as an author and historian, blames social media for encouraging us not “to see and respect one another.” But have no fear, he offers a solution to all or most of our nation’s problems.

“The time has come,” he argues, “for compulsory national service for all young people — with no exceptions.”*

He references FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps, LBJ’s Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) and today’s “domestic civilian service” programs such as AmeriCorps, asserting, sans evidence, that these “have been enormously successful.”

Effectiveness aside, does this academician see no significant difference between the programs mentioned, which were offered freely to young people who wanted to participate, and a program forced upon young people against their will?

Regardless, Dr. Holloway declares “it is easy to imagine” this one-year governmental control and use of millions of young people as “a vehicle to provide necessary support to underserved urban and rural communities, help eliminate food deserts, contribute to rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, enrich our arts and culture, and bolster our community health clinics, classrooms and preschools.”

In his utopia, mandatory national service would also

  • “put young people in the wilderness repairing the ravages of environmental destruction”;
  • “dispatch young Americans to distant lands where they would understand the challenges of poor countries”;
  • “force all of our young people to better know one another”;
  • “shore up our fragile communities”; and
  • even unify “America’s races, religions and social classes.”

Ah, the Rutgers president: terminally delusional . . . or only temporarily “caught in a vortex of intoxication”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The “no exceptions” stance is designed to silence questions of fairness and “equity” . . . even though just a few moments of thought will convince anyone that exceptions must and will be made. 

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education and schooling national politics & policies

Gaslight Theory

Joy Reid, Karl Marx, Marxism, CRT, critical race theory

“[P]arents are fighting with school boards in cities and towns across the country,” MSNBC’s Joy Reid informed her audience, “over curricula that they believe teaches white kids that they are racist.”

Reid asserted that “none of this is actually happening,” 

She spoke with Kimberlé Crenshaw, the executive director of the African American Policy Forum and a professor of law at UCLA and Columbia University. Crenshaw invented the term “Critical Race Theory” and told Reid that CRT was merely a “boogey-man,” adding: “I think I would know if we were being taught in K-12.” 

The “GOP freak-out over Critical Race Theory,” offered Reid, was a “highly manufactured strategy created by seasoned political operatives looking for the perfect wedge issue.”

Reid ignores parents across the country actively encountering this racist anti-racism. Back in April, parents in Loudoun County, Virginia, documented half a million tax dollars going to programs titled “critical race theory.” After being told there was no such thing. It’s happening all across the country.

But fear not: the National Education Association to the rescue! 

A few days ago, the nation’s most powerful teachers union cleared it all up by passing New Business Item 39 to defend the use of CRT in K-12 public schools, including by providing “an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or The 1619 Project.”

The NEA may be on the wrong side, but nevertheless buries the disingenuous psy-op of the left intelligentsia, for whom no lie is too big to push.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency national politics & policies social media

Authoritative!

Daszak, Covid, censorship

Just when you thought you knew all the ways our “authoritative” institutions have blocked information from us regarding the origin of COVID-19, another shoe drops.

Early in this pandemic, we learned that the World Health Organization (WHO) lacked any credibility, as their “scientists” shamelessly peddled the dishonest Chinese government line of no human-to-human transmission. 

Still, Big Tech was there to help shut down dissenting opinions in America. “Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations,” declared YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, “would be a violation of our policy” — and be banned.

We now know that Dr. Peter Daszak, the man who funneled U.S. taxpayer dollars from the National Institute of Health to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses took place, also created The Lancet’s lying letter, which offered the media an official source to level a “conspiracy theory” charge at skeptics of a zoonotic COVID origin.

While claiming its authors, including Daszak, innocent of any “competing interest.” 

Big Media — somnolent or else actively disinterested in checking the accuracy or even credibility of the WHO, Daszak, and other scientists — proclaimed the lab-leak theory debunked. 

Thus, they could ignore China; blame Trump. 

Facebook joined YouTube and others in actively preventing us from communicating about COVID, specifically its origin — using none other than Dr. Daszak as an advisor on their censorship strikes.

The other shoe?

Dr. David Feinberg, head of Google Health, acknowledged at a recent conference that the search engine had actively blocked users from finding information on the virus’s origin.*

Why? Feinberg said Google did not want to “lead people down pathways that we would not find to be authoritative information.”

Leaving us with authoritative disinformation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* This courtesy of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, who also discussed The National Pulse report that “Google funded research conducted by Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance.” 

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ballot access national politics & policies

Hypocrisy ID’d

voting rights, democracy, race

“Prominent Democrats have increasingly softened their opposition to voter identification requirements in recent days,” informs The Washington Post, “signaling a new openness to measures that activists have long vilified as an insidious method of keeping minorities from the ballot box.”

Yesterday, when Republicans backed the idea, it was racist and supposedly so were they for supporting it. Not anymore. Now, Democrats favor Voter ID.

What changed? 

Not racism. And certainly not racially exploitative demagoguery. 

The catalyst may be a new Monmouth University poll showing fully 80 percent of Americans favor a photo ID requirement for voting, with support “at 62% among Democrats, 87% among independents, and 91% among Republicans.”

These progressive mutations take place as Senate Bill 1, the companion to H.R. 1, the so-called “For the People Act,” failed to break the GOP filibuster yesterday, blocked 50 votes to 50 votes along strictly partisan lines.

While Democrats scramble for a way out, some — Stacy Abrams, notably — suggest they have always been for voter ID. 

Funny, the Democrats’ legislation would have effectively gutted the 35 state voter ID laws now on the books. “But HR-1 does not ‘ban’ voter identification laws,” lectures Newsweek’s fact-checker. “Instead, it offers a workaround” — that does not require showing an ID.

Just the sort of requirement Democrats now insist upon? 

Hypocrisy notwithstanding, the real problem with Democrats dictating election policy from Washington is the rottenness of those policies, which include: 

  • Partisan capture of the Federal Election Commission by Democrats through 2027*
  • Taxpayer financing of congressional campaigns
  • Increased regulation of speech aimed at influencing congressmen (i.e. mobilizing citizens)

Congressional Democrats have plenty more bad policies where those came from.

And a legislative majority.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* If you can’t pack the Supreme Court, packing the FEC is the next best thing.

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national politics & policies property rights

Zoning by “Outsiders”

zoning, property, freedom

“In recent years, there’s been a push to move zoning decisions further from the local level,” writes Matt Ray for Mises Wire — engaging in no small understatement. 

“In 2019, Oregon passed House Bill 2001, making it the first statewide law to abolish single-family zoning in many areas. By expanding the state government’s jurisdiction to include zoning decisions previously handled by local agencies, the law entails an alarming centralization of state power.”

This trend is old, going back at least to the Progressive Era. 

But the trend continues — “progresses” — and Oregon’s centralizing law has been “quickly followed by the introduction of similar bills in Virginia, Washington, Minnesota, and North Carolina,” Matt Ray explains. “Now President Biden is attempting to increase federal influence over local zoning.”

The problem should be obvious. Government land-use regulation by “zoning” is an awesome expression of rights-abridging power, usually becoming nothing more than what most regulations are: special-interest protection schemes, helping the in-crowd at the expense of “outsiders” (you and me, actually).

Most savvy people understand this in specific instances, but not generally, so when they see zoning they don’t like, they might leap to the notion that bad local regulations should be replaced by good state or federal regulators.

Trouble is, we have less ability to ensure that regulators in distant political centers aren’t captured by special interests or malign ideologues. 

The only way out is a general rule-of-law approach, limiting all zoning powers. Barring that? Well, no matter how bad your city’s zoning, I wouldn’t trade it for zoning decisions from Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Safety . . . or Not?

safety, Covid, OSHA

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has a formal aim: to make workplaces safer. And, during this part of the pandemic, it has sought to encourage workers to get vaccinated with one of the several mRNA treatments that have been given the green light by the federal government, though not having gone through the many hurdles of the Food and Drug Administration’s normal trials.

Now, safety isn’t just one simple thing. In May, OSHA declared that companies requiring employees to get vaccinated will be held liable for injury and illness caused by those vaccines. Seems reasonable. If your employer requires you to get “the jab,” and you get sick — and all vaccines have secondary effects, making them dangerous for some people — then your employer should be held responsible.

Along with that divvying up of responsibility, OSHA has since May mandated reporting on negative effects of the vaccines on workers in those workplaces that require the inoculations.

But not anymore.

According to The Epoch Times, “to encourage American workers to get vaccines,” OSHA has just “suspended the legal requirement for employers to report work-related injuries resulting from vaccinations aimed at combating the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.”

Why? Well, the OSHA website now states that the administration “does not want to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving” the jab, and is also worried about appearing to “disincentivize” employers.

Yet the basic responsibility remains.

Liberty Counsel, a Christian ministry, speculates that the change in reporting was “politically motivated” and came from the Biden Administration.

A specific treatment is being promoted ostensibly for health reasons, but the agency promoting safety and health now downplays the importance of keeping track of any negative results.

That’s discouraging for safety, health and truth.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies

The Colluders

censorship, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube

Big Tech social media companies that once boasted of providing open forums now routinely ban speech that they disagree with — speech about elections, pandemics, Wuhan labs, or what have you.

How much of this suppression is private and independently initiated? How much is imposed at the behest of government officials who are supposed to respect First Amendment rights?

Government officials not only say that people should not say such-and-such; they also, increasingly, either complain that social media companies don’t do enough to gag people or herald the extent to which they do so.

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that “the White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation. . . .”

Now the American Freedom Law Center is suing Twitter and President Biden so that the question of whether the government is in effect “deputizing” private organizations to assault freedom of speech can be adjudicated.

The Center is filing on behalf of Colleen Huber, a doctor Twitter censored and suspended for saying the wrong thing about COVID-19. Of course, there are many other victims of the same policy, and it the Center seeking class-action status for the lawsuit.

The government has been enlisting social-media moguls as foot soldiers in a propaganda war. Whether this is done openly or behind closed doors, this war on free speech violates the Constitution. 

As we must hope the outcome of this legal action affirms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

The Worshipful and the Incurious

Fauci, Covid, Facebook, ban

Did the recent pandemic begin as a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China?

Who knows?

But in these United States there suddenly appears serious — even bipartisan — interest in finding out.

I’ve been curious for some time, but why wasn’t more of the media interested from the beginning? Why were questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology as well as the questioners often attacked?  

“[T]he newspapers I read and the TV shows I watched had assured me on many occasions that the lab-leak theory wasn’t true,” Thomas Frank, the progressive historian and author, explains in The Guardian, “that it was a racist conspiracy theory, that only deluded Trumpists believed it, that it got infinite pants-on-fire ratings from the fact-checkers,” adding that he “always trusted the mainstream news media.”

Thank goodness Senator Rand Paul confronted Dr. Fauci, again, leading to Fauci acknowledging the need for further investigation into the Wuhan lab that performed research on bat coronaviruses, arguably including gain-of-function research, with indirect U.S. funding. 

“Renewed focus on Wuhan lab scrambles the politics of the pandemic,” was one of several recent explanatory Washington Post articles.

Politics? 

You don’t say!

“The shifting terrain highlights how much of the early debate on the virus’s origins was colored by America’s tribal politics,” the paper reported, “as Trump and his supporters insisted on China’s responsibility and many Democrats dismissed the idea out of hand . . .”

The Post should include itself when referring to Trump-blaming “Democrats.” 

Another article The Post dangled before readers captures the moment — “Facebook: Posts saying virus man-made no longer banned.” 

In addition to the media and social media failure on this lab-leak story, let’s not forget the “expert fail.” Mr. Frank fears that if Big Science is found to be the cause of the pandemic, it “could obliterate the faith of millions” in “the expert-worshiping values of modern liberalism.”

We should be so lucky. 

What’s next: a release of Fauci’s emails?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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free trade & free markets national politics & policies subsidy

Unemployed or Misemployed?

couch potato, Covid, stimulus, welfare

“Now Hiring” signs are up everywhere, especially on the windows of restaurants and other retail businesses.

But those signs aren’t disappearing.

Lots of jobs are left open.

No takers.

Week after week.

The job recovery that President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. says he has placed his fabled “laser-like focus” upon, has been disappointing, to use the words of Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell.

Oops, make that “extremely disappointing.”

“Economists and analysts had been expecting around a million jobs to be added on net in April,” Rampell wrote last week, “given the rising share of vaccinated Americans and relaxation of restrictions on business. Instead, employers created a measly 266,000 positions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Job growth for March was revised downward, too.”

This didn’t come out of nowhere, as another Washington Post columnist made clear a few weeks ago. “Many employers, especially restaurants and small retail businesses, are having a hard time finding workers,” explained Henry Olsen. “This is likely the result of trends in covid-19 vaccinations and the generous unemployment benefits that were expanded due to the pandemic.”

Normally when talking about employment and unemployment, we are tempted to put on our economist caps and talk about supply and demand, marginal productivity, monetary policy, etc. But most commentators seem to be honing in on the ultra-obvious: pay people to stay home, they tend to stay home.

Indeed, thinking of the generous unemployment benefits which the U.S. Congress has bestowed upon the country as “stimulus,” we should realize that paying people to stay at home is like hiring them for the cushiest job imaginable. No worker shortage, as many suggest, but malinvestment in the wrong “jobs.”

And thus the opposite of “stimulus.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies tax policy

The Six-Trillion Dollar Man

spending, taxes, government

“Mr. Biden is making a six-trillion dollar bet that promoting popular programs will be popular,” offered NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd on Sunday, “and that he’ll be rewarded for getting things done, long before the actual bill comes due.”

That “Six trillion dollars”? New splurging “on social spending, infrastructure, climate change, health care and more.” 

The host intoned that this constitutes the “return of big government.” 

“We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works,” Joe Biden, the 47th president, implored Congress last week, “and we can deliver for our people.”

Spend = Deliver. 
Deliver = Democracy. 
Democracy = Spend!

So goes a federal “democracy” wherein voters never get a straight, democratic choice on how much government should spend and tax.* Instead, politicians opt for their beloved “deficits forever” method. Purchase votes today — “People like it when you give them money” — and leave for future generations of voters the tax burden needed to pay that bill. No pain, all gain. 

Smart re-election strategy, some say. 

“Democratic strategists are betting that the infighting in the Republican Party, the extremism on display during the Jan. 6 attack . . . and the sheer scale of the trillion dollar programs Democrats have pushed through this year,” reports The Washington Post, “leads to a reorienting of partisan divisions that can overcome historical patterns.” Meaning Democrats avoid the traditional loss of congressional seats for a president’s party.

“Will voters care about the scope of Mr. Biden’s plans?” Todd inquired. “. . . care about the price tag?” 

Likely to the degree they notice paying that price. 

“President Trump and the Republicans may have made it a bit easier for Mr. Biden by spending big themselves,” reminded Todd.

He’s not wrong there.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Colorado voters have such a choice: a vote on any tax increase and on government spending increases. It’s called the Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) and was passed by citizen initiative back in 1992. The politicians and lobbyists just hate it, as I detail here. 

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