Category: national politics & policies

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Droning On

Mayorkas, Homeland Security, Lex Luthor

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said yesterday on ABC’s This Week, acknowledging the obvious.

“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast,” the Secretary assured the public, “and we are vigilant in investigating this matter.” 

That means: He doesn’t know or he’s lying. But he pinky swears to apply the same vigilance to the Mystery Drone question that he demonstrated in managing the border these last four years.

Plus, Mayorkas promised, without even cracking a smile, to let us know right away if anything changes and it turns out these things humming over our heads are part of, say, an alien invasion. Or anything. Sorta don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But he reiterated his desire “to assure the American public that we are on it.”

This follows a news briefing last week by “federal agencies leading the response” that, as CNN described, “left reporters and the public with more questions than answers, as they downplayed but simultaneously legitimized concerns about the reported drones.”

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” President-​Elect Donald Trump stated on Truth Social. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”

Meanwhile, on Friday, an international airport in New Windsor, New York, closed its runways for an hour due to a drone spotted in the area; on Saturday night, Boston Police arrested two men for flying a drone “dangerously close to Logan International Airport,” with a third suspect escaping in a boat and still at large; and, earlier in the week, a Chinese national was arrested leaving the country after having flown a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 

Is there no one in Washington capable of exerting sane leadership?

Or telling the truth?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies

Trump’s Libertarian Promise

Ross Ulbricht, drugs, drug war, prison, law, Silk Road

“If you vote for me,” President-​elect Donald Trump promised the delegates at the Libertarian Party national convention last May, “on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served.”

That is eleven years so far. “We’re going to get him home,” insisted Trump. 

Mr. Ulbricht, a libertarian cause célèbre, was sentenced in 2013 to double life terms, without parole, plus 40 years. 

So, who did he kill? 

At 26 years of age, Ulbricht created the Silk Road online platform, “an anonymous e‑commerce website.” Used by some folks, certainly, to trade in drugs and other illegalities.

On a Change​.org petition urging presidential clemency (which I’ve signed), his mother explains: “Ross is a first-​time offender” and “an Eagle Scout, scientist and peaceful entrepreneur,” who faced only “non-​violent charges at trial. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.”

That’s why she and many of us simply cannot stand the idea that now 40-​year-​old “Ross is condemned to die in prison.”

Dudley Do-​Right — no. Trump to the rescue!

Indeed, it was a very smart political move, courting the Libertarian vote both by showing up and, specifically, by pledging to free Ross Ulbricht. Libertarians suddenly had a tangible reason to support Trump.

Will Trump keep his word? “I do think he’s going to free Ross Ulbricht,” Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle told Robby Soave on his “Rising” program.

I think so, too. I sure hope so. It would be refreshing to see the awesome power our Constitution gives the president to pardon crimes and commute sentences used for someone deserving of mercy. 

Rather than someone escaping justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Politically Exposed Persecution

fascism, freedom, business, censorship

National socialism, as operated by the actual Nazis, did not seize all the major industries and run them as collectives or state-​owned businesses. The Nazis applied party control directly to big business, as a political-​regulatory matter. 

How different is what woke Democrats have been doing to business today, here in America, using multiple agencies of the United States federal government’s regulatory apparatus?

Marc Andreessen, investor, innovator, business genius, and early Internet pioneer, explained how in a discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, last month.

Start with debanking, which the regulators can tell banks to do to “politically exposed persons.” Mr. Andreessen told Joe about a friend who was debanked, apparently because his job title was involved in the business use of crypto-currency. 

And debanking is exactly what you think it is: de-​platformed from the financial system.

Don’t worry, statist: you are not “politically exposed.” This only applies to critics of our quasi-​fascist system.

This commercial censorship is run pretty much like censorship on the social media companies after 2016, by soft pressure … the “raw power” of a “privatized sanctions regime.” Government functionaries notify a bank that a person or business is “politically exposed,” and the bank — fearing getting on the bad side of regulators — kicks the customer off the rolls. 

Politicians can haughtily state that it was the bank that did it. Banks, after all, are not obliged to serve everyone! They can pick and choose their customers.

Besides, there is no First Amendment right to have a bank account.

This is how woke bureaucrats can rule like Nazis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies social media

Morbid Meme Mania

insurance, healthcare, laugh emoji, assassination

Last week’s murder — assassination — of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan has inspired something more than a mere resurgence of gallows humor. The proliferation, online, of laughter emoji reactions to the story is unsettling, to say the least. 

Then there are the hardcore “memes” scorning Mr. Thompson’s medical insurance company and mocking his death — what are we supposed to make of it all?

Well, the virtuous response is to condemn the schadenfreude and mean-spiritedness.

But some of the jesting is indeed pointedly funny. 

“All jokes aside,” runs the best of them (from BlueSky, the left’s alternative to X), “it’s really fucked up to see so many people on here celebrating murder. No one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health and no one else.”

Which brings us to the nib of it. 

As the prospective Trump Administration puts its ducks in a row to hit the ground running in January, the “health issue” that RFKj and others have pointed to is the heavily regulated and subsidized food and drug industries, which are making us sick. The question of paying for medical care was supposed to have been solved by “Obamacare” a decade ago, but prices have only risen … and resentments along with them. 

The author of that BlueSky tweet and virtually all Democrats today, think the answer to the insanity of our government-​regulated “private” health insurance system is full-​bore socialized medicine.

Our money-​grubbing leaders know that would be a disaster, but they have only kicked the chaos we’ve inherited from the terrible policy choices of yesteryear down the road.

I’m left with nothing funny to say about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: As this episode was put to bed, the biggest update to the story was the announcement of a suspect, or “person of interest”: Luigi Mangione. Make of that what you will.

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general freedom national politics & policies regulation

No, Donald Trump, No

Chavez-DeRemer, unions, Trump, nominee

Here’s a deplorable turn of events — and just when we were so happy to have thwarted the socialist stylings of Harris and Walz.

We’ve always known that Donald Trump doesn’t advocate 100 percent laissez faire capitalism. As if to confirm his inconsistencies and disabuse us of any hopes of clear sailing toward greater freedom, or even toward keeping the freedom we’ve got, he has named Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-​DeRemer as his Secretary of Labor.

Labor-​union darling DeRemer supports the Pro Act: anti-​worker, anti-​freelancer legislation that was barely blocked in Congress and that the current Labor Department has tried to impose by regulation. I doubt the incoming Congress will enact it either. But if DeRemer is Labor Secretary she, too, may try to impose it by regulation.

The Pro Act would kill laws in 26 states that let workers choose whether to join a union. There’s a novel concept, letting employees decide whether to join an organization supposedly devoted to their interests.

The Pro Act would also undermine the secrecy of the ballot in union elections. A secret ballot is a fundamental tenet of our democratic republic. 

Worst of all, at least for gig workers and freelancers, are its provisions to make life much harder to function as an independent contractor.

Unions that favor the Pro Act, and Mrs. DeRemer, are eager to do all they can to cripple the ability of non-​unionized labor to compete with above-​market-​rate union labor.

This isn’t just a No, Mr. President. 

It is, as Jennifer O’Connell puts it, a “Hell No.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Elon & Vivek to Cut Government?

Will it happen this time?

Even the most profligate taxers and spenders sometimes talk about making our federal government “more efficient” or about “cutting waste.” Commissions are set up, reports issued, and then — we still see the same runaway trajectory.

This time, former President and President-​Elect Donald Trump has announced that two heavy hitters, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, will be heading up a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to do the job. They’re already planning and hiring.

Trump says that DOGE is determined to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”

The project of cutting wasteful expenditures is the same going-​nowhere notion that we have seen before. If we get actual demolition of merely destructive agencies — which would require congressional cooperation, I believe — this would be great.

I can provide a list. But that would make me a part-​timer in this endeavor, and “We don’t need more part-​time idea generators,” DOGE says.

“We need super high-​IQ small-​government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-​cutting. If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”

Let us see what happens. Trump would have to push this forcefully and continually, getting his supporters to forcefully and continually pressure Congress, to get enough done fast enough to actually reduce Leviathan. And he’ll have a lot of other stuff to cope with.

But … boy, do we need it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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