Category: national politics & policies

Categories
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.

PDF for printing

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

Categories
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.

PDF for printing

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

Categories
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.

PDF for printing

Photo by greychr

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

Categories
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. 

PDF for printing

Photo by Anno Málie

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

Categories
national politics & policies

Doubling Down on Time Jiggering

daylight savings time, astronomical clock

Daylight Saving Time was designed to trick us into spending more free time in daylight during summer. The trick? Set our clocks forward in the spring, meaning — if we keep to our old-clocked schedules — waking up and going to work earlier, leaving more recreational and home life (and shopping time) in sunnier late afternoons and evenings.

Kind of cheating.

Most folks find it a bother.* Switching one’s clocks back and forth means upsetting sleep rhythms, which can trigger negative health outcomes. 

Commonsensical people prefer to chuck the program — and several states have opted out, having no Daylight Saving Time at all. The program’s benefits — and negatives — often prove hard to find in actual statistics.

Enter Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). They want to get rid of all the Spring-Forward/Fall-Back nonsense.

And there’s a bill in the House to push the policy forward.

But they want to do it the Nixonian way, making Daylight Savings Time universal and year-long. This effectively shifts time zones permanently east by one hour. And ensures that no one will experience 12:00 at solar noon, with the Sun directly above.

Surely we can change our schedules to fit whatever sunlight we want and we don’t need Washington to tell us when to get up . . . even as they manipulate time.

Regardless, you can check out Murray’s and Rubio’s arguments in USA Today.

The switching has got to go. But the permanent evasion of astronomical timekeeping sure smacks of . . . the opposite of . . . 

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Daylight Saving Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII. Richard M. Nixon pushed it in during the Seventies as an energy conservation program. It still exists federally, with 16 state exceptions.

Note: corrections made in the text after initial publication, with thanks to Thomas Knapp, below.

PDF for printing

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

Categories
national politics & policies

Pick Your Poison

cigarette, menthol, racism

Are cigarettes containing menthol-flavored tobacco racist?

Follow the science! It is an absolute fact that those menthol smokes “disproportionately addict — and kill — Black Americans.”

The reason? “Only 29 percent of White smokers choose menthol, as opposed to 85 percent of African American smokers, according to a National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” The Washington Post explains, “fueled by more than half a century of Big Tobacco aggressively marketing them specifically to Black Americans.”

Catch that causation claim? The black-and-white difference between racial group affinity with this flavor is the fault of cunning (white?) advertising execs with a racist penchant for hooking unsuspecting blacks. 

Never addressed — or apparently even considered? The possibility that tobacco companies are targeting their promotional efforts in relation to the obvious preferences of their customers.

It is in the news because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must officially address, by April 29, a formal regulatory petition “demanding menthol cigarettes be banned.”

Support for outlawing menthol-flavoring based on racial justice rationales meets plenty of opposition based on racial . . . sanity.

“Opposition,” notes The Post, “come[s] from GOP and Democratic officials as well as civil rights groups.” 

The idea of providing another police enforcement flashpoint by outlawing an addictive substance used overwhelmingly by blacks seems a non-starter. “We do not think kids should be put in jail or given a ticket for selling menthol,” offered Rev. Al Sharpton.* “You’re going to give the police another reason to engage our people?”

“Banning a certain type of cigarettes because black people tend to favor them is stupid and patronizing,” one Post reader commented. “Either have the courage of your convictions and ban all cigarettes (lol) or leave this alone.”

Leave us alone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Sharpton acknowledged to The Post that his National Action Network has received funding from “R.J. Reynolds, which makes Newport cigarettes, the most popular menthol cigarette and the No. 2 U.S. cigarette brand overall.”

PDF for printing

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

Categories
judiciary national politics & policies

Constitutionalize the Court

Supreme Court, court packing

“To undo the damage Republicans did by stealing multiple Supreme Court seats,” argues Demand Justice, “we should immediately add seats to the Supreme Court and appoint justices who will restore balance.”

“Stealing”? That’s hyperbolic, to say the least. The Senate used its constitutional prerogative by refusing to approve President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland in 2016 and four years later by swiftly voting to confirm Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

The group’s proposal? Add four new justices. 

Facing a 3 to 6 justice deficit (Dem-nominated vs. GOP-nominated), many Democrats and groups like this one have settled on adding four.

For “balance.” 

Which means, to them, going from the minority to the majority.

And you thought Democrats weren’t good at math!

Last week, President Biden announced a commission to look into this “court packing” notion, as well as other possible changes to the High Court, including term limits. 

“My colleagues and I need not wait for the findings of a commission,” offered Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.). It is “obvious,” he added, “we must expand the Supreme Court, before it’s too late.”

That is, before the next election or a resignation or tragic death of a single D-Senator might flip the Senate to Republican control. 

“Adding seats is straight-forward and easy,” reminds Demand Justice, correctly explaining that the Constitution specifies no number, “so Congress can change it at any time.”

Yes, even with the slimmest of congressional majorities Democrats could completely re-make the High Court. Without a single Republican vote. 

A partisan takeover of the Supreme Court is way too “easy” — until we place the number of justices firmly in the Constitution, away from poisonous partisan politicians. 

It’s the most urgent reform of all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

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

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

The Audacity of the Swamp

swamp, corruption, Washington DC, politics

A crony anti-infrastructure plan.

That, writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, is “the best description of the Biden administration’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.”

Democrats are the masters of favoring a select few at the expense of the electorate and calling it the Public Good. Their woke moralism, egalitarianism, and other pieties effectively mask their party’s accomplished crony scheming.

Right now, though, the heady audacity of spending trillions of dollars we do not (yet) possess is all the mask the Democrats appear to need. 

Does anyone talk about the Swamp anymore?

Never drained, it is back with a vengeance:

  • “A large share of the plan . . . is a massive handout to private companies. The proposal includes $300 billion to promote advanced manufacturing, $174 billion for electric vehicles, $100 billion for broadband, $100 billion for electric utility industry, and more.”
  • “Biden’s plan also includes hundreds of billions that have nothing even remotely to do with infrastructure.”
  • “To the extent that Democrats are trying to pay for this spending with taxes, they’re doing it in a way that belies their claim that this plan will result in a boost in quality infrastructure.”

The tax increase in the plan is to eliminate established tax “preferences” for fossil fuel companies. This would be politically popular with Democratic Party supporters, feeding their enviro-lust to lash out at what are commonly perceived as destroyers of the planet. But tax something more, get less. And a huge part of our infrastructure relies upon — indeed, consists in — the fossil fuel industry. So there will be less infrastructure investment in that realm.

But that doesn’t hurt the cronies. It hurts other folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

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

Categories
media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Lab Rats III: Doubling Down on Danger

Covid, China, Wuhan, virus

Ten months ago, I commented on a Newsweek article informing that “the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the organization led by Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, funded scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other institutions for work on gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.”

A deadly worldwide pandemic along with possibly explosive implications as to its origin, notwithstanding, the story went nowhere. 

Last week, I highlighted new evidence that aligns with the lab transmission theory pooh-poohed in the World Health Organization report, which was quickly discredited — including by the WHO Director-General.

Yesterday, I went further into the cover-up, and how the “conspiracy theorist” charge has been used by the confreres of the Wuhan scientists to dissuade anyone from looking in the direction of the dangerous research that had been conducted there. 

Josh Rogin’s Washington Post column gives greater context to the need to investigate the theory, expressed by Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control under President Trump, that SARS-CoV-2 was transmitted to humans accidentally through a Wuhan lab:

“Richard H. Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and biosafety expert . . . said the entire genre of research Redfield was referring to, known as gain-of-function research (in which viruses are captured from the wild and developed in lab settings to make them more dangerous), needs to be thoroughly reexamined.” 

Worse? “The world’s current plan to respond to the pandemic entails a huge expansion of precisely this type of research,” Rogin explains. “The $200 million program meant to ‘predict’ virus outbreaks is set to grow into a $1.2 billion Global Virome Project . . .”

“The plan is,” Ebright told Rogin, “having failed to predict and preempt and having possibly triggered the current pandemic, to increase the scale six times.”

Emphasis added because, well, can it be emphasized enough?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Earlier in this Series:

12 Monkeys in Charge

June 18, 2020 

Twelve Monkeys in Charge?

Lab Rats

March 31, 2021

Lab Rats

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

April 6, 2021

Lab Rats II: The Conspiracy

PDF for printing

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

Categories
national politics & policies responsibility

The Accelerators

tax, spend, inflation, bankruptcy

“We can do $10 trillion,” declared Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) last week.

“I know that may be an eye-popping figure for some people,” explained the photogenic pop-eyed pol, “but we need to understand that we are in a devastating economic moment, millions of people in the Unites States are unemployed, we have a truly crippled health-care system and a planetary crisis on our hands, and we’re the wealthiest nation in the history of the world.”

In other words, the sky is falling . . . and we still have checks.

The Bronx congresswoman, described as “one of the most influential members” by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, trumpeted that tidy sum in response to last week’s “go big” proposal by President Joe Biden to spend a special new $2.2 trillion under the loose label of infrastructure, which AOC argued “is not nearly enough.”

This new two-tril spending bill is “a follow-up to the $1.9 trillion stimulus approved in March.” And just Part 1 of a two-package infrastructure and other stuff Biden plan. 

“The White House is reportedly willing to spend $4 trillion across the two packages,” Business Insider reports, “a sum that would bring recovery spending under his term to nearly $6 trillion.”

Biden’s term has been only 76 days.

A couple trillion here, a couple trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money . . . except under Modern Monetary Theory, which Ocasio-Cortez embraces. The idea being: government can print as much money as politicians want to spend. 

While this road to bankruptcy has been paved with the partisan political intentions of big spending politicians of both major parties, right now it is the Democrats hitting the gas.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

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