Category: national politics & policies

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ideological culture national politics & policies

Too Virtuous to Win?

politicians

The Democrats lost a presidential election where the biggest issue, shared by both contenders, was The Other Side Is Off-putting, Icky and Crazy. 

Third Way, a think tank pushing for “moderate” policy, almost acknowledged this in a widely-shared memo: “For a party that spends billions of dollars trying to find the perfect language to connect to voters, Democrats and their allies use an awful lot of words and phrases no ordinary person would ever dream of saying.”

So it’s not without reason that Third Way suggests Democrats drop the “therapy-speak,” for example — words like privilege, violence (“as in ‘environmental violence’”), othering, etc. Also to be nixed? “Seminar room language,” featuring jargon like subverting norms, systems of oppression, heuristic, etc.

Then there’s the far-out lefty nonsense, like chest-feeding and Latinx, along with the “criminal-excusing phraseology” — elaborate euphemisms like incarcerated people.

The upshot? “Communicating in authentic ways that welcome rather than drive voters away would be a good start.”

Meanwhile, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin seems to think his party failed by trying too hard to persuade. 

“After six months as chair, I’ve learned that a lot of people, especially folks in DC, think they can change things by winning arguments,” Martin explained. “You know what winning the argument gets you? Maybe a nice round of applause and a few likes on Instagram. But the reality is, it doesn’t make life any better for any person. We have to stop settling on winning arguments with each other. We have to win elections.”

This is covered in an Epoch Times article that also shows the Democrat leader pressing the Too Virtuous to Win meme: “We cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore. We’ve gotta stand up and fight. We’re not gonna have a hand tied behind our backs anymore.”

This pose, that “our side” is too good and noble and rule-following is, of course, echoed among Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies representation

Must the War Go On?

Gerrymander, Jerrymander, voting, elections, representation

“There is an easy way to end the gerrymandering wars,” a new video by The Recount asserts, “and no one is talking about it.”

Except them. And us. And others. 

“We need more members of Congress,” the anonymous male narrator continues. “This might sound weird, especially since most of us don’t exactly love the ones we have now. But the reality here is simple: the U.S. has the worst ratio of citizens to elected representatives of every developed democracy in the world.”

It’s true. Congressional districts have been capped at 435 since 1929’s Permanent Apportionment Act. That year, the average congressperson represented 243,000 people. That’s too many. But today, the average congressperson represents 761,000 people.

“So uncap the house,” Jeff Mayhugh and A.D. Tippet argue in The Hill, “and rein in gerrymandering at least a bit.

“Our founders believed that smaller congressional districts would lead to a better relationship between citizens and their government,” the authors contend. “Gerrymandering undermines this idea by splitting neighbors from each other or packing them in districts with others from the same party to secure a seat for the political party in control.”

And then there’s this: “Smaller districts are more representative and also harder to manipulate.”

“With more seats, districts can be smaller and more representative of smaller enclaves and communities,” explains the video presentation, “and when that happens, the chances of Republicans winning seats in Massachusetts or Democrats winning seats in South Dakota goes up.”

Entitled “Why Expanding Congress Would End Gerrymandering,” The Recount’s video also correctly points out that creating a smaller representative-to-voter ratio by increasing the size of the House is “fully within Congress’s power” and “doesn’t take a constitutional amendment.”

But it would take a great deal of citizen . . . push.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law national politics & policies Voting

Lost Their Bearings

voting, democracy, immigration, non citizen voting

“Washington, D.C. should have every right to set its own rules and policies, just as Vermont does,” argues Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT). “The micromanagement by congressional Republicans and Trump must end.”

First, the District of Columbia is not a state. Vermont is, if you’re playing at home. 

Second, Congress and the President have constitutional authority and responsibility for our nation’s capital. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 of the U.S. Constitution specifically empowers Congress “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of Government of the United States . . .”

Sen. Welch’s comments above, from last week’s Washingtonian magazine article, were in defense of the noncitizen voting law passed by the D.C. City Council, which every Republican in the U.S. House — joined by 56 Democrats — voted to repeal. (Senate action awaits.) The Vermont senator was featured because three Vermont cities also allow noncitizens to vote.

I oppose the laws in those three Vermont cities as well as in our nation’s capital. But Washington, D.C.’s law is the worst. 

Why? It allows noncitizens in the country illegally to vote. It offers the vote even to foreign nationals working in the embassies of hostile powers. For instance, China’s and Russia’s ambassadors could decide who the next mayor is . . . or pass or defeat ballot measures. 

Make any sense? Not a lick.

One new local D.C. officeholder is Mónica López. She is not really a “noncitizen,” just a citizen of Mexico. And one of three non-U.S. citizens who were elected to Washington’s powerless neighborhood advisory council.

“It’s incredibly local,” López offers. “It has no bearing over anything federal.”

Really? None? She’s in a federal enclave, where the feds do their million-billion things, and what she’s up to has no bearing on it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets national politics & policies regulation

Banks Not the Only Debankers

debanking, debank, banks, censorship, surveillance

A recent executive order that President Trump issued to stop regulators from abetting and even compelling the “debanking” of bank customers for their political views is clear and on-target.  

On-target as far as debanking by banks goes.

But Reclaim the Net notes a glaring omission. The order’s identifies financial institutions willing to blacklist customers for possessing the “wrong” political opinions or missions. (“Wrong” here means not too pro-criminal or pro-terrorist but too constitutionalist, too much in favor of individual rights of the First or Second Amendment variety.)

The problem is that the order says nothing about major payment processors like Visa and PayPal.

Now, perhaps a penumbra of the new regulatory marching orders would influence the policies of the credit-card companies, whose cards are after all typically issued in cooperation with banks. But this is highly uncertain.

And Reclaim the Net thinks that Visa and Mastercard, “the twin tollbooth operators of the global payments highway,” are, like PayPal and Stripe, untouched by Trump’s order. Yet all of these payment processors have in recent years been blacklisting individuals and organizations that the processors happen to disagree with.

The practice goes back at least to the Obama administration, which instructed regulators that it could regard something called “negative public opinion” as a legitimate risk factor. 

This doctrine “quickly turned into a permission slip for politically driven account closures.” 

The government shouldn’t be issuing such “permission slips” — or implicit instructions — to banks, payment processors, or anybody.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies subsidy

Propaganda Shoved Where?

PBS, NPR, public broadcasting, socialism, Democratic Party, propaganda, censorship

The continued existence of “public radio” and “public television” is out of place in these United States. Not because it’s partisan — all news vendors tend to toe some partisan line — but because it’s partisan and taxpayer subsidized.

Though NPR aficionados tend to downplay the subsidies to NPR and PBS, what public media boosters have more consistently done is deny the partisanship. 

They have no standing any longer — if the evidence of our senses weren’t enough. 

In “The Bell Finally Tolls for National Public Radio,” Matt Taibbi explains how the media behemoth’s CEO Katherine Maher admitted NPR’s and PBS’s partisanship in her defense of it.

That won’t help her case in Congress, though, notes Mr. Taibbi. 

While the New York Times insists that tax-funded “public” media “improves the lives of millions of Americans” and “strengthens American interests” (presumably by being relentlessly progressive), it has no defense to Taibbi’s indictment: the branches of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting have taken “the country’s signature public news shows into an endless partisan therapy session, a Nine Perfect Strangers retreat for high-income audiences micro-dosing on Marx and Kendi.”

Taibbi makes clear just how annoying the dish served by CPB/NPR/PBS is, the entities seeing no “problem with taking funds from a huge plurality or even a majority of citizens and pursuing a nakedly politicized, ear-splitting propaganda project in opposition to the views of those people. NPR is the vegetables we refuse to eat, administered up a different entrance for our own good.”

I was thinking about the blight upon our eyes and ears and reason, but point taken.

De-fund National Public Propaganda immediately.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies scandal

The Autopen Question

Joe Biden, autopen, auto-pen

When the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project offered its report on the Biden Administration’s use of the presidential “autopen,” in March, the legality of many of President Joe Biden’s signatures were placed in jeopardy.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and Trump in the White House have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen sometimes without the presidential awareness.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and President Trump have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen and sometimes without presidential awareness.

If so, with the non-stroke of a non-pen, could much of what came out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four years be un-done?

“The full picture of what Mr. Biden did on pardon and clemency decisions,” the New York Times explains, “and how much he directed those decisions and the actions of his staff, including the use of the autopen, may come down to tens of thousands of Biden White House emails that the National Archives has turned over as part of the investigation by the Trump White House and the Justice Department.”

Times reporters investigated some of the emails, offering a tentative-if-predictable conclusion: “the Biden White House had a process to establish that Mr. Biden had orally made decisions in meetings before the staff secretary, Stefanie Feldman, who managed use of the autopen, would have clemency records put through the signing device.”

And of course Biden himself defends the integrity of his administration: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.

“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.” 

Trust him!

The Times has been working to encourage us to trust the ex-president. Its March article, “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral,” clearly shows its bias — a context piece before any real investigation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies partisanship

Unserious Resolution

Donald Tump, Iran, impeachment

Impeachment is serious business, but the folks in Congress who advanced the most recent impeachment agendum are anything but.

The man to be impeached is President Trump, of course. And it was Rep. Al Green (D.-Tx.) who formally filed the paperwork. Trump, Rep. Green accused, had failed to “notify or seek authorization from Congress before the U.S. launched strikes on three Iranian nuclear sites over the weekend,” explains Sarah Fortinsky of The Hill. 

The resolution, dated June 24, 2025, is limited to a single article: “Abuse of Presidential Powers by Disregarding the Separation of Powers — Devolving American Democracy into Authoritarianism by Unconstitutionally Usurping Congress’s Power to Declare War.” 

The bit about authoritarianism is the real stretch. 

“President Trump’s unilateral, unprovoked use of force without congressional authorization or notice constitutes an abuse of power when there was no imminent threat to the United States” — that part is certainly arguable. 

But the rest, which alludes to “January Sixth” and criticizes that Trump “called for the impeachment of federal judges,” is mere partisan foolishness.

Rep. Green must have known it would go nowhere. One hundred twenty-eight Democrats sided with all 216 Republicans, leaving a mere 79 Democrats voting to move forward with impeachment.

Meanwhile, Republicans and the Administration are calling the bombing strike a success, a grand example of Trump’s “peace through strength” game-plan.

An impeachment might be believable, even commendable, if it came from a member of his party, or — if from Green or another Democratic supporter of the move, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — had been brought against a sitting Democrat president, such as Obama or Biden.

As it is? Just another partisan ploy.

The kind of thing Americans are rightly sick of.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies privacy

The State vs. Our Privacy

encryption, privacy, surveillance, censorship

The policies of the new Trump administration have given us only partial reprieves from the war on freedom of speech.

The war is still chugging along. It extends even to our most private communications, including those now hidden from prying eyes by encryption. Revived legislation in the U.S. Senate threatens the providers of such encryption.

Reclaim the Net’s Dan Frieth observes that under the STOP CSAM Act of 2025 (S. 1829), which targets “child sexual abuse material,” providing a “secure, privacy-focused service could be interpreted as ‘facilitating’ illegal activity, regardless of whether the provider can access or verify the content being transmitted.”

The legislation stipulates that providers may defend themselves from charges of “facilitating” illegal activity by showing that it is “technologically impossible” to remove CSAM without disabling their encryption. But firms would still often have to go to court to make this case, and “many platforms may adopt invasive scanning out of fear, not necessity, just to avoid liability, with real consequences for privacy and user trust.”

Defaulting to routine invasive scanning means an end to providing users with encryption, including users threatened by despotic regimes.

Current law already requires platforms to report known examples of material that entails the sexual abuse of children.

Any good or service that can be put to good use can also be put to evil use. Just as we shouldn’t penalize the makers of knives, forks, mail, curtains, roads, and guns for their use by criminals, the makers of encryption services should also not be so punished.

Nor should we grant to government bodies such a frightening dystopian power, accumulated to override our basic freedoms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies political economy regulation

Ultra-Absurd?

minimum wage, coins, Walking Liberty, freedom

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is oh-so-ultra.

USA Today dubs him a “conservative” in the title of a recent article on a proposed minimum wage hike, and then an “ultraconservative” (emphasis added) in the first word of the article itself. 

Why does this “ultraconservative” join a Democratic senator in raising the federal minimum wage to $15? They both seem to assume that minimum wage laws raise wages.

For hundreds of years, economists have argued they don’t. On the face of it, these laws merely prohibit jobs paid below a certain rate. They disemploy. 

When the government prohibits low-wage compensation, businesses shift productive processes to keep afloat; when a factor is suddenly made more expensive, they adjust. With more automation, for example.

At least, the USA Today article mentions, briefly, that the Congressional Budget Office forecasts that some individual workers and families would see their livelihoods diminished by the higher minimum — which is the only part of the coverage of the new, more restrictive (higher) minimum wage regulation that gets to the meat of the issue: what minimum wage laws actually do. 

A related article back home in the Springfield News Leader (a member of the “USA TODAY NETWORK”) explores the question of Missouri’s minimum wage and what activist economists call the state’s “minimum living wage” — and it is relevant at least to this extent: states have different economic climates, and wage rates differ region to region in the United States, so it’s very relevant to a senator from his state affecting his state’s economy with a regulation applying equally to all states.

Which is to say that the minimum wage issue should be a state issue.

If an issue at all.

“Ultraconservative” Hawley’s bill is ultra-misguided.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture national politics & policies

The Uninvited

Rand Paul

There’s talk of proof that Iran now possesses a nuclear weapons capacity; Israel bombed the targets; war drums are beating — but for a short time yesterday, the news was all abuzz over the Trump Critic Snub.

The federal government’s official debt rushed to the $37 trillion mark — but Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took a few moments to shake his head over how he and his grandson were singled out by not being invited to the White House picnic.

“I just find it so incredibly petty,” Senator Paul said. “It’s really kind of sad that this is where we are.”

Politics is a petty business, too often, and this sure looked like one of those moments to upgrade the word with a capital P. Or with a T, for You-Know-Who.

Oddly, though, often it was the senator who was besmirched with the P word, not the prez!

“His complaint has sparked bipartisan mockery online,” explains Newsweek. “Vince Langman, a self-described member of the MAGA movement, told his 381,000 followers on X, formerly Twitter: ‘Rand Paul crying like a school girl because President Trump uninvited him from the White House picnic is the funniest thing I’ve seen on X in weeks.’”

I don’t know. Is it funnier than the Deep State admitting that it had been faking and fanning the flames of the UFO craze all along? 

Or blaming Senator Paul for noticing and not the White House for the actual snub?!?

The attack on Paul is dumb: the Kentucky senator has always been an equal opportunity critic.

Thankfully, Rand Paul and his grandson — and, presumably, Rep. Thomas Massie, another Big Beautiful Bill critic — are back on the picnic list.

Maybe they can hold a moment in silence, amidst the fun, as the debt hits $37 trillion.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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