Category: national politics & policies

Friends & Enemies

China, Taiwan, freedom, corona virus, epidemic, pandemic, authoritarian,

When times get tough, you learn who your friends are.

Take the United States’ relationships with Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China. The island nation sports a population roughly the size of Australia’s, about 24 million; just across the Taiwan Strait, what we used to call “Red China” holds the world’s largest number of people.

Like the United States, Taiwan has a democratically elected government that recognizes basic human rights such as freedom of speech. What do the Taiwanese want from us? They’re hoping for a military ally, one capable of deterring the free-speech-squelching, democracy-detesting Chinese communist state from making war on them.

In this pandemic, already nearly 24,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 and over half a million have tested positive for the virus that appears to have originated in Wuhan, China. Worldwide, nearly 2 million souls have contracted it and, by the time you read this, more than 120,000 of them will have perished.

Excluded from the World Health Organization (WHO) at China’s insistence, Taiwanese medical professionals nevertheless managed to warn the international community on December 31, reports the Financial Times, that “its doctors had heard from mainland [Chinese] colleagues that medical staff were getting ill — a sign of human-to-human transmission.”

Yet, on January 14, the WHO tweeted that “Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission.” Six days later China publicly informed the world that this virus could be spread from human contact.

“A study published in March indicated that if Chinese authorities had acted three weeks earlier than they did,” notes Axios, “the number of coronavirus cases could have been reduced by 95% and its geographic spread limited.”

Thanks for the warning, Taiwan. Thanks for nothing, China.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Taiwan has also generously provided N95 face masks to the U.S., Europe and elsewhere, even while facing continued military provocations from China.

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Tags authoritarian, China, corona virus, epidemic, freedom, pandemic, Taiwan

national politics & policies too much government

The Ratchet Racket

ratchet, coronavirus, Covid, pandemic, epidemic, law, regulations, government,

Various models and curves and soothsayers predict that the coronavirus will lay off as the summer sun waxes. And then rush back in the autumn.

So we should not look at just near-term threats, but also look at cycles of contagion month-to-month, year-to-year.

Yet, it is not just the dreaded coronavirus that must be seen over time. “Crisis measures are often ineffective,” writes Matthew Feeney, at Cato Institute, “and can survive the crisis they are implemented to counter.”

Because government power and interference tend to ratchet up with each crisis, there is a whole lot of reason to suspect that we will not go back to normal. Indeed, “the new normal” is now a catchphrase.

The quarantine shutdown has been, if not total, totalistic. Feeney acknowledges such extremist (he didn’t use that word) measures may sometimes be justifiable. But warns of that ratchet, of new powers given to government not devolving after the crisis.

Ted Galen Carpenter, also at Cato.org, draws a “fundamental lesson” from the panic: “Americans need to resist the casual expansion of arbitrary governmental power in response to the current coronavirus crisis.”

The extreme measures of the shutdown — called by economist Gene Epstein “The Great Suppression” — should have been widely discussed before the contagion hit. Instead, they were discussed in meetings behind closed doors.

But most of us were already up to our necks in the political muck fighting off the everyday kludge of the old normal level of too-much-government.

You know, from the previous turn of the ratchet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags coronavirus, covid, epidemic, government, law, pandemic, ratchet, regulations

government transparency national politics & policies responsibility

America Unmasked

For weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services told us not to wear face masks. The Surgeon General even warned that mass use of masks could “increase the spread of the coronavirus.”

“My nose tells me,” I posted on Facebook weeks ago, “that all the info about how we don’t need face-masks is to cover up for the lack of face-masks.”

My family is very grateful to a Taiwanese friend, who mailed me masks — not the N95 masks, which the Taiwanese government is donating in large quantities, but masks of excellent non-medical quality.

Last Wednesday, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell noted that a large percentage of people spreading the virus are asymptomatic, meaning they don’t know they have it. She asked Dr. Anthony Fauci with the White House Coronavirus Taskforce: “Should we be advising people to wear masks?”

“The primary people who need masks are healthcare workers,” the doctor replied, before admitting that if supplies weren’t so limited, wearing a mask was “a potentially good way . . . you could have an impact with preventing transmission.”

Days later, President Trump passed on a CDC advisory to the same effect.

Americans had figured out the initial lie, and were already making their own and posting how to do so on social media. Now that’ll ramp up.

Initially, our leaders didn’t level with us. They could have. Americans seem amazingly cooperative, to say the least.

Government folks need to stop masking the truth from the public. That way they might earn more public trust.

Which sure can be useful during a crisis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags corona virus, coronavirus, covid, mask, pandemic, virus

national politics & policies too much government

Name Your FDA Poison

We’re dealing with a pandemic, here, and the Food and Drug Administration insists upon poisoning us.

Or, more accurately, the FDA sticks to Prohibition-Era poisoning schemes, no matter how unreasonable or counter-productive.

Private enterprise is stepping up to the plate. “Local distilleries like Restorative Republic and rum-maker Cotton & Reed are making artisanal hand cleaner, the primary ingredient in which is high-proof alcohol,” writes Peter Suderman at Reason. “And anyone who buys a bottle of their booze also gets a small bottle of what you might call hipster Purell.”

This should be a feel-good story. But government regulators are not in the feel-good biz.

What is the FDA saying to the 500 or so distilleries across the country who want to pitch in, making up for the supply crunch?

The regulatory agency insists that they denature the alcohol in the sanitizer.

Denatured alcohol is, Wikipedia succinctly states, “ethanol that has additives to make it poisonous, bad-tasting, foul-smelling, or nauseating to discourage recreational consumption.”

The feds thus carry on the old prohibitionists’ tradition of poisoning products to discourage drinking.

It’s an idiotic practice: Preventing children from destroying themselves with alcohol by making the easiest-to-access alcohol unpalatable. But kids have been known to sneak drinks even those they find disgusting and vile, just to get the alcohol buzz. So: let’s kill the kids! That’ll teach ’em.

And insisting that distilleries denature their alcohol means that distilleries would ruin their equipment for making drinkable alcohol.

Though some liquor distillers are trying to up hand sanitizer production, ten times more could be produced were the FDA to change its rules, Suderman explains.

Get out of the way, government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags coronavirus, covid, FDA, prohibition, regulation, virus

Accountability national politics & policies too much government

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Quorum

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 30, 2020
8 Comments on A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to a Quorum

Thomas Massie, Coronavirus, pandemic, virus, House of Representatives, Congress,

On Friday, the talking heads and Twitterati excoriating Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kent.) were so scandalized that they couldn’t quite get to telling us what terrible thing he had done.

“GOP’s Massie outrages House,” screamed The Washington Post headline. The paper informed that “the Republican from northern Kentucky has frequently voted no on issues large and small, even against the wishes of GOP leaders.”

Wow, is that allowed?

With Congress poised to shovel $2.2 trillion to citizens and businesses by unanimous consent, i.e., without a recorded roll call vote, Mr. Massie balked, thereby requiring a quorum to physically come to the capitol to vote on the relief package.

“I came here to make sure our Republic doesn’t die by unanimous consent in an empty chamber,” Massie declared on the House floor, “and I request a recorded vote.”

President Trump urged the “third rate Grandstander” be tossed out of the Grand Old Party. And former U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry noted — of all things — his complete agreement with Trump, tweeting that “Massie has tested positive for being an a**hole. He must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”

Rep. Max Rose (D-N.Y.) offered that Massie was “disgusting” and “inhumane,” and that if the vote was pushed “back 24 hours there will be blood on [his] hands.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) boasted of having asked the congressman, “Why don’t you just back off?”

Facing the biggest spending bill of all time, Massie’s notion of Congresspeople voting on the record? Hardly radical. But in the face of the COVID-19 threat, bringing legislators back to the capitol entailed real risk.

Yet come back they did. And just to show Massie how wrong he was in alleging a cover-up, they agreed to a roll-call vote so that there was full accountability.

Take THAT, Massie!

Wait . . . Congress didn’t go on the record?!

They came back and yet, as Massie pointed out, “they still refused to have a recorded vote.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: One spending item, which Massie had specifically complained about, was $25 million for the Kennedy Center. Then, mere hours after President Trump signed the legislation, the Kennedy Center honchos fired the National Symphony Orchestra, informing them “that paychecks would end this week.”

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Tags Congress, coronavirus, House of Representatives, pandemic, Quorum, Thomas Massie, virus, vote

Accountability insider corruption local leaders national politics & policies Voting

Bring the Bozos Home

telecommute, Rand Paul, Congress, Senate, Coronavirus, Corona Virus, computer, laptop,

“Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) announced Sunday he has covid-19,” The Washington Post reports, “and four other GOP senators are quarantined. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) disclosed Monday that her husband, too, is infected with the virus.”

Social media was not uniformly brimming with support for the Kentucky senator, of course, and some folks noted, in earnest horror, that the Republican who had been shot at by a Bernie Bro and blindsided by his deranged Democrat neighbor had dared work six days in the Senate after being tested but before receiving his diagnosis.

He should have been sequestered!

To let the big “stimulus” packages sail through Congress?

But there are work-arounds.

“We should not be physically present on this floor at this moment,” argued Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday, urging the Senate to facilitate social distancing by allowing remote voting. Asked about it at his Sunday news conference, President Trump gave thumbs up: “I would be totally in favor of it on a temporary basis.”

I say, let’s take this a step further: do it permanently.

Remote voting makes sense in an emergency. Sure. But it also makes sense all the time, because legislators voting from their home states and districts rather than within the Washington swamp would hear more from constituents than special interest lobbyists and, therefore, likely represent us better.

Plus, not tethered to life in Washington, or the confines of the capitol, we might reduce the size of congressional districts from over 700,000 people to more like 70,000 and see real representation return to our land.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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telecommute, Rand Paul, Congress, Senate, Coronavirus, Corona Virus,

Original photo by Manuel Bahamondez H

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insider corruption national politics & policies

Rage Against the Machine

Tulsi Gabbard, Democrats, socialism, moderates,

The Democratic Insider Machine’s pushing of sorta senile Biden against socialist Sanders is quite breathtaking.

But that isn’t even the entirety of the Machine’s anti-democratic agenda.

“The establishment narrative warfare against [Representative Tulsi] Gabbard’s campaign dwarfs anything we’ve seen against Sanders,” writes Caitlin Johnstone on her popular blog, “and the loathing and dismissal they’ve been able to generate have severely hamstrung her run.”

No kidding. But why would the Machine prefer Sanders over Gabbard?

“It turns out that a presidential candidate can get away with talking about economic justice and plutocracy when it comes to domestic policy,” Ms. Johnstone goes on, “and some light dissent on matters of foreign policy will be tolerated, but aggressively attacking the heart of the actual bipartisan foreign policy consensus will get you shut down, smeared and shunned like nothing else.”

This pro-war, anti-Tulsi agenda was seen right after SuperTuesday.

You see, Representative Gabbard got a delegate, from American Samoa (where Michael Bloomberg’s vast fortune also nabbed a delegate). And, by the rules that have been followed so far, a delegate gets you onto the big debate stage.

But almost immediately, word from the Democratic National Committee hit the Twittersphere: “We have two more debates — of course the threshold will go up. By the time we have the March debate, almost 2,000 delegates will be allocated. The threshold will reflect where we are in the race, as it always has.”

The DNC — the Machine — is rewriting the rules.

Tulsi must not speak.

Even if her competence and ecumenical appeal might actually save the Democratic Party, were her name to replace Biden and Sanders in the second or third voting round of a contested convention.

Such a fierce opponent of regime-change wars is obviously unacceptable to the Machine.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Democrats, moderates, socialism, Tulsi Gabbard

media and media people national politics & policies

In, Over and About

Sometimes losing track of a story pays off.

Last week, Facebook and Twitter and that minor player, the “major” news media, erupted with Democrats glorying in and gloating over and harrumphing about a story from Reliable Liar & Leaker Adam Schiff — I think that may be his semi-official position in the House of Representatives.

Schiff’s office confirmed that the House Intelligence Committee — which, in fact, Schiff chairs — had been briefed on February 13th to the effect that Russia favors the Trump Administration and will again, this year, ‘interfere’ in U.S. presidential elections.

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for the presidency as a Democrat but who calls himself a ‘democratic socialist’ (but of whom Nobel Laureate in Amnesia Paul Krugman dubs a mere ‘social democrat’) . . . well, he got in the news with the story that he had been briefed with “intelligence” that Russia was trying to throw the race towards him. Sanders sputtered his protests.

In 2016, it has been determined, Russian operatives had placed lame social media ‘memes’ into the political mill, impressing no one at the time, but scandalizing Democrats after the ‘inexplicable’ loss of their much-hated candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps they are priming their Excuse Reservoir for another ignominious defeat?

Anyway, last week I was so distracted that I did not comment on the whole story. Which, conveniently, has now received enough “pushback,” denials and contradictions to close the chapter on it.

In record time, it was over.

That’s about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags elections, interference, Putin, Russia, Vladimir Putin

national politics & policies political challengers

The Superdelegate Zombie Apocalypse

Post author By Redactor
Post date February 26, 2020
2 Comments on The Superdelegate Zombie Apocalypse

Back in 2016, this commentary was perhaps the first howl in the political wilderness against the unfairness of the Democratic Party’s use of “superdelegates” — office holders and party officials who by party rules automatically serve as unelected but voting delegates at the national convention . . . which chooses the presidential nominee.

Four years ago, the superdelegates, who account for roughly 15 percent of the total delegate vote, favored Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders by an incredible 97 to 3 percent.

Fast forward to 2020 and Dems have made what DNC Chair Tom Perez called “historic” changes to this ‘super-delegation’ — now referred to as “automatic” delegates. These non-elected insiders may not vote on the first ballot.

That’s a big deal.

But with so many candidates still in the contest, and those contests front-loaded — next week’s Super Tuesday features primaries in 14 states, including populous California and Texas — it appears unlikely that any candidate will garner a majority of delegates on the first ballot.

And next come the superdelegates.

And, again, they are likely to hurt the Vermont senator.

“Sanders . . . could win the most pledged delegates — those allocated on the basis of votes during the marathon Democratic primaries,” explains The Guardian, “but be swindled, at the last, by the Democratic party elite.”

That is not all. “DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders at convention,” reads a recent Politico headline.

Reporting from the “sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting,” Politico discloses discussions regarding “the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention.”

Democratic process does not appear to be the Democrats’ strong suit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Democrat, primary elections, superdelegate, zombie

national politics & policies political challengers

The Mandela Effect

People have been known to plagiarize college term papers. Even a few political speeches have been surreptitiously copied and brazenly re-orated without proper attribution. But you can’t plagiarize getting arrested, can you?

Not really. What you can do is lie about being arrested — just make it up out of whole cloth.

That may be what former Vice-President and once-upon-a-time Democratic Party presidential front-runner Joe Biden has been doing in recent days “as he confronts challenging political headwinds,” following fourth and fifth place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively — though he came in (a distant) second in Nevada over the weekend.

“I had the great honor of meeting [Nelson Mandela],” Biden told a South Carolina crowd last week. “I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see [Mandela] on Robbens Island.”

“No, I was never arrested,” U.N. Ambassador at that time, Andrew Young, now 87, told The New York Times, “and I don’t think he was, either.”

Back in 1977, Mr. Biden was Senator Biden from Delaware. Methinks the arrest of a U.S. Senator by a foreign government might spark at least a single news story. Be informed: “A check of available news accounts by The New York Times turned up no references to an arrest.”

The Times also notes that Biden “did not mention it in his 2007 memoir when writing about a 1970s trip to South Africa.”

Plagiarism sunk Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign. This time out, the politician’s gaffes, bouts of bizarre truculence, and age-related physical failings have hampered his quest. Add to all that, now, the apparent fact that Joe can’t even get arrested.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. The upshot of the Biden candidacy may amount to nothing more than an increased interest in “the Mandela Effect.”

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