Category: paternalism

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education and schooling government transparency paternalism

Motown Bully

School Board, parents, government

Is the republican form of government unnatural?

People in government tend to balk at republican imperatives, anyway. You know, like transparency. Citizen control sure seems unnatural to politicians.

Case in point: Detroit.

“The Rochester Community School district is determined to keep the sun from shining on its operations,” writes Kaitlyn Buss in The Detroit News.

At issue is a new school board member, Andrew Weaver. He had campaigned on issues like “transparency, accountability and communication between the district and parents.” Well, Superintendent Robert Shaner does not like this agenda. He “sent a letter to the board president and vice president in late December targeting [the] newly elected board member” and threatening “legal action if Weaver is too forceful in challenging the way schools are being run.”

This is awfully brazen, and it should alarm parents in the Rochester Community School District. For it is not coming from some obscure bureaucrat: “Shaner was selected as Superintendent of the Year in 2020 and is one of the longest tenured and highest paid school leaders in the state.”

He epitomizes government, at least in the “education” wing of Michigan government.

Bullying is how he rolls.

Mr. Weaver explains it this way: “I sat there as a private citizen and wondered why our board didn’t do anything. Well, we found the answer. Because they’re all scared of getting one of those [letters].”

But perhaps Weaver’s prepared for the battle. Even as a parent he’d received two cease-​and-​desist actions from Shaner, who objected to his online attacks.

Politicians think they are kings. Above citizen criticism.

Which is why citizen control must be forced upon them. 

Over their objections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom international affairs paternalism too much government

Deadly Dress Code

Iran, Hijab, revolt, morality police

Iranian women are again out in the streets protesting the brutality of the regime.

We can only hope that their efforts will bear fruit — or, if we’re Elon Musk, we can also provide protesters with Internet service via Starlink satellite, now that the Iranian government has blocked the Internet in much of the country.

The immediate spark was the death of 22-​year-​old Mahsa Amini.

On September 13, Mahsa was arrested by Iran’s morality police for incorrectly wearing the hijab, the traditional head covering mandatory for Iranian women since 1979. Some of her hair showed.

According to witnesses, the police beat Mahsa in the police van; the police deny it.

Within hours of being detained, Mahsa was hospitalized and in a coma. She soon died. The police not very plausibly claimed that she had a heart attack. All a terrible coincidence. The family says that Mahsa had no health problems before being detained.

The immoral morality police were obeying the country’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, who on August 15 decreed that the nation’s dress code be more strictly enforced.

The protests — in which women have been burning their hijabs, cutting their hair, and shouting “Death to the oppressor!” — are ongoing and nationwide, and have spread to other countries. 

At least thirty protesters have been killed.

In the words of the New Yorker’s Robin Wright, Mahsa’s death “lit the fuse of long-​smoldering dissent in Iran,” and its people have taken to the streets before.

Godspeed this time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom nannyism national politics & policies paternalism

Self-​Inflicted Death — by Vax?

vaccine, depression, suicide

It’s been disheartening how little alarm has been raised about the rise of suicide (along with drug use, obesity, and other markers for despair) in reaction to the lockdowns and de-​humanizing mask mandates — especially among the young.

But there’s another way suicide has become an issue with the pandemic. It’s a little roundabout.

Adverse effects of the vaccines have been severely under-​reported. A number of maladies are associated with the various vaccines, including micro-​clotting and myocarditis — that latter up especially in younger people who have been vaccinated.* 

But some adverse reactions are fatal — those up 40 percent in the adult population, says the CEO of one life insurance company. 

Our leaders and vaccine promoters don’t talk about this: if they admitted fatal side-​effects, the push for universal, mandatory vaccination might be generally considered inhumane,even monstrous. But insurance companies have a more pressing concern.

Last month, a Frenchman with a large life insurance policy died of the jab. His family cannot sue the drug company — legal immunity having been granted during the emergency — so his heirs and assigns sued to collect on the insurance. The court denied the claim. 

“The side effects of the experimental vaccine are published and the deceased could not claim to have known nothing about it when he voluntarily took the vaccine,” the court’s logic runs. “There is no law or mandate in France that compelled him to be vaccinated. Hence his death is essentially suicide.” 

And suicide is not covered in most term life insurance policies. 

The message: you take your chances with the vaxxes. 

If more such cases come to light, this may be the issue that fatally undermines the Vaccine Mandate Narrative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Doom, Still Pending

Walenski, CDC, Covid

Has our ‘wife, mother, and daughter’ betrayed us?

In late March, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the head of the CDC, went off-​script (her words), reflecting on what she called her “recurring feeling” of “impending doom.”

COVID case numbers were up. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope,” she said. “But right now I’m scared.”

You might think this is no way to lead a country in a crisis — after all, she had just been given the top job at the Centers for Disease Control. 

“I’m speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director,” she pressed on National Public Radio, “not only as your CDC director but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.”

Last Monday, Dr. Walensky “first signed off on changing her agency’s mask guidance,” The Washington Post reported, only to continue “to defend the CDC’s sweeping guidance that Americans wear masks in public, including in a Senate hearing Tuesday,” before Thursday’s announcement that the vaccinated don’t need to go about wearing masks, indoors or outdoors, for their own sake or others’.

The policy lurch leaves us in some weird territory. If the vaccinated may go about un-​masked, then the unvaccinated should remain masked — yet it remains illegal (courtesy of HIPAA regulations) for businesses to ask about our medical records. Which implies, for want of enforcement, the controversial (and unwanted) “vaccine passport” idea. 

Further, many who have endured the disease claim immunity. Others who have had COVID, like Dr. Jordan Peterson, took the jab because they were told their immune levels were too low.

But “the science” on that is far from settled.

Thankfully, the CDC is not really in the regulation business. And increasingly Americans on all sides are ignoring Walensky, Fauci and Co.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies paternalism

Georgia on My Mind

one party state, Republicans, Democrats, Georgia, Senate, House of Representatives

Georgia, oh Georgia
No, no, no, no, no peace I find …

So opens James Brown’s famous song — also an iconic hit for Ray Charles.*

As the rest of the country quiets down, post-​election, that crooned-​about lack of peace continues to echo in the Peach State as if in a deep, vast cavern. Two U.S. Senate seats now go to a January 5th runoff election, which will decide partisan control of Congress’s upper chamber.

Democrats control the House and — barring some Hail Mary effort likely to require Mary’s own participation — they will take the White House as well. In the Senate, Republicans currently hold a 50 – 48 lead, but if Democrats win both of these razor-​close races in a state won narrowly by Democrat Biden, the Senate majority, too, will be theirs … by virtue of Vice-​President Kamala Harris’s tie-​breaking vote.

Whether held by Republicans or Democrats, unitary one-​party control of the federal leviathan could prove extraordinarily consequential … in a frightening sort of way.

“[T]he federal government works better when divided, not unified,” argues the Cato Institute’s Steve H. Hanke, citing divided government as less likely to go to war, more likely to pass sustainable reforms and noting that “federal spending tends to be lower with divided governments.”**

Other reasons include existential threats to our little experiment with citizen-​controlled government. 

Having threatened to completely abolish the Senate filibuster rule, Democrats with a slim majority could then pack the Supreme Court — adding new justices to gain a majority, using one election to nullify elections going back decades. And forever partisanizing and politicizing our independent judiciary. 

Just an old sweet song — and the future of America — Keeps Georgia on my mind.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*  We made a terrible mistake. Hoagy Carmichael is the author of “Georgia on My Mind,” not James Brown. Here is a version of the song performed by Carmichael. PJ

** For these reasons, to keep divided government, third-​place finishing Libertarian candidate Shane Hazel should endorse Republican David Perdue against Democrat Jon Osskoff. Hazel garnered 2.3 percent of the vote, while Perdue fell only 0.3% short of winning a majority and precluding the runoff.

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Five-​Hundred Hour Shampoo Sham

shampoo, license, regulations

Given everything that has happened over the last several millennia, you can’t be surprised by anything. But still.

I had to check the text of the bill, A06578 in the New York State Assembly, to make sure the stories are accurate. It checks out: some lawmakers really do want to compel aspiring “shampoo assistants” to take 500 hours of training before they suds up your hair. (Apparently, though, you will still be allowed to give yourself a home-​shower shampoo, even without training. Maybe future legislation will close this loophole.)

The culpable assemblymen are Carrie Woerner, (518) 455‑5404, and John T. McDonald III, (518) 455‑4474. A companion bill, S8862, is sponsored by co-​conspirator State Senator Jen Metzger, (518) 455‑2400.

According to the legislation, certificate holders may shampoo and rinse but not, you know, perform delicate surgical procedures like waxing or placing artificial braids.

One odd thing about the bill is this stipulation: “All shampoo assistant certificates shall expire one year from the date of issuance.” So … every year, shampoo assistants must put in another 500 hours?

On the other hand … come on, man. Think of the risk.

What if the water is too hot and the shampoo assistant is brand-​new and hasn’t had the 500 hours training, so she gets burned and burns the head of the customer, or even heats the water on a stove until it boils and then pours it over her own head and the customer’s head? 

How would she know not to do that without any training whatsoever?

This is … I’m Paul Jacob.

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