Category: Popular

Make Others Pay?

Betsy Devos, education, special olympics, funding, budget, debt, spending,

Special Olympics has found a way to get kids and young adults with disabilities to feel something important: Able.

Three decades ago, as part of a community service requirement, I spent one day each week working with physically and intellectually-challenged adults at Easter Seals in Little Rock, Arkansas. I loved it.

Most unforgettable were their beaming smiles of pride when they got a chance to show what they could do. I’ve always loved sports, but never as much as there and then. In the decades since, my family has given to the Special Olympics what financial support we could afford.

So, can you imagine how I must feel hearing Education Secretary Betsy DeVos testify in favor of cutting all $17.6 million in federal funding for the Special Olympics?

“It’s appalling,” declared Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

John Kasich, the former Republican governor of Ohio, called the cut “outrageous” and “ridiculous.”

“Cruel and reckless” were the words Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) used.

“The Special Olympics is . . . a private organization. I love its work, and I have personally supported its mission,” countered Sec. DeVos.* “But given our current budget realities, the federal government cannot fund every worthy program, particularly ones that enjoy robust support from private donations.”

Federal funding provides only 10 percent of Special Olympics revenue, with over $100 million raised annually in private donations.

So, how must I feel about DeVos’s suggested cuts?

Gratitude . . . for her generous contributions to Special Olympics — and for her fiscal responsibility. Let’s fund this wonderful program without the government forcing (taxing) support from others.

Check, cash or credit card is always preferable to virtue-signaling gum-flapping.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Special Olympics is one of four charities to which DeVos donated her entire 2017 federal salary.

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Tags Betsy Devos, budget, debt, education, funding, special olympics, spending

Accountability meme national politics & policies Popular

Awful Aspirations

Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, aspirations,

A funny thing happened on the way to voting on the Democrats’ Green New Deal (GND). With ‘earth in the balance,’ the proposal for fixing climate change — and so much more! — was granted its first procedural vote in the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate.

It failed, 0-57.

Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), the Senate sponsor, along with 41 other Democrats* and independent Bernie Sanders, voted “present” to protest what he called “sabotage,” claiming Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) “wants to silence your voice.”

Au contraire! McConnell longed to hear Democrats sing the bill’s praises — loud, proud, and on the record.

After the vote, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) absurdly made the opposite accusation: Republicans were “climate delaying . . . costing us lives + destroying communities.”

Meanwhile, “If the Green New Deal came up for a vote in the Democrat-controlled House,” USA Today reports, “it would have trouble passing.”

“It’s a list of aspirations,” says Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who does not plan to bring it to a vote. Though Democrats want to address climate change, the speaker points out that the “bill has many things that have nothing to do with climate.”

Rep. Elaine Luria, (D-Va.) echoes Pelosi: “[T]he Green New Deal is aspirational.” Rep. Sean Casten, (D-Ill.) adds, “The aspirations of the Green New Deal are great.”**

But is the GND something “great” to which Americans should aspire?

Only if they yearn for government-monopolized healthcare, free college tuition, micro-management of the economy, and government providing everyone a job, except those who don’t want one . . . who would get a guaranteed income, regardless.

I aspire to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* In the Senate, three Democrats — Sens. Doug Jones (Ala.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) — and independent Sen. Angus King (Maine) joined all 53 Republicans in voting No.

** All four House co-chairs of the New Democrat Coalition’s Climate Change Task Force — Casten and Luria as well as Don Beyer, (D-Va.) and Susan Wild, (D-Pa.) — have come out in opposition to the GND.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nancy Pelosi, New Green Deal, socialism

ideological culture media and media people meme national politics & policies Popular

The Anti-Orange Man Cult

Rachel Maddow, Russia, investigation, Mueller Report,

How do you know you are in an end-time cult?

When you won’t accept the complete and utter failure of your prophecies when they come a cropper.

So, am I talking about the classic Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter study in social psychology, When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World? In that work, social scientists infiltrated an eschatological cult to see how they would react when their prophecy of end times failed.

What did the cultists do?

Many doubled down, tweaked their original prophecy, and continued in their previous beliefs but with greater fervor.

But no. I am not talking about that, not directly.

I refer to the Mueller Report.

“For years, every pundit and Democratic pol in Washington hyped every new Russia headline like the Watergate break-in,” writes Matt Taibbi in “It’s official: Russiagate is this generation’s WMD?” Noting that while the story as it was hyped from the beginning was about espionage, a “secret relationship between the Trump campaign and Russian spooks who’d helped him win the election,” the biggest thing to come of it has been “Donald Trump paying off a porn star.”

Now that the Mueller Report has come to a fizzle, proving nothing very interesting or relevant, our reaction to the news that the President is not Putin’s puppet should be jubilation.

To shed a tear and get all choked up, like Rachel Maddow? That should signal the end time for the cult.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags investigation, Mueller Report, Rachel Maddow, Russia

national politics & policies Popular term limits U.S. Constitution

The Court-Packers

Supreme Court, NPC, packing the court, FDR, law, justice, constitution

“What if there were five justices selected by Democrats,” presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke explored at an Iowa campaign stop, “five justices selected by Republicans, and those ten then pick five more justices independent of those who picked the first ten?”

Beto, meet FDR.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried something similar with the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, which would have added six new justices to the nine-justice U.S. Supreme Court. It failed in the Senate, even though FDR’s Democratic Party controlled the chamber.

This “court packing” gambit may have been the most unpopular action of FDR’s whopping three-plus terms.

Despite the obvious self-interested power grab, “Sens. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand . . . would not rule out expanding the Supreme Court if elected president,” Politico reported.

“It’s not just about expansion, it’s about depoliticizing the Supreme Court,” Sen. Warren explained . . . with a straight face. Yet Beto’s suggested reform would officially turn the nation’s highest court into a partisan, two-party political institution.

To the good, Democrats are also bantering about term limits for the nation’s High Court. Trouble is, term limits require a constitutional amendment, meaning a two-thirds vote of both chambers of Congress as well as 38-state ratification.

Court packing, on the other hand, only requires simple majorities of both houses and the presidency. Which Democrats threaten in 2020.

“You need to gain power,” Washington Examiner columnist Philip Wegmann reminds, “before you can abuse it.”

So the abuse, for now, is merely promising.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags FDR, justice, law, NPC, packing the court, Supreme Court

ideological culture Popular

The Ominous Linkages

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

What does a 16-year-old Swedish girl have in common with a popular 29-year-old U.S. Representative?

Environmentalism and socialism.

The young woman is Greta Thunberg, who spear-headed a “global movement of schoolchildren striking to demand climate change action.” The Representative is AOC, er, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who last month launched her “Green New Deal.”

Sixteen-year-old Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rep. AOC hasn’t been nominated yet, but if Barack Obama could be awarded a Nobel merely for being elected. . . .

But back to that linkage: the Swedish youngster was nominated by three adult members of the Socialist Left Party; AOC calls herself a socialist.*

But what’s the deeper link?

The solution, apparently: socialists want to destroy capitalism, or at least commandeer it; and environmentalists obsessed about anthropogenic global warming believe it’s caused by burning fossil fuels and by bovine flatulence — both made worse by capitalism, which has allowed the masses (not just the elites) to harness petroleum for power as well as raise gigantic herds of cattle for eating and milk-production. The direct control that socialism entails serves, say its advocates, as the only way to curtail carbon emissions.

A more likely story? Socialism would make us so much poorer that it is inconceivable that most of us would be able to afford to drive cars or eat steaks or drink milk.

Regardless of their so-called “green” policy obsessions, Ms.Thunberg and Rep. AOC are green in a more profound sense, of lack of experience — the latter because she’s young, the former because she’s a miseducated ideologue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It is also worth noting that the much of AOC’s much-ballyhooed Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with typical leftist social engineering.

New Green Deal, FAQ, socialism, environmentalism, global warming, climate change,

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, socialism

national politics & policies Popular too much government

Seriously Not Serious

Trump, deficit, spending, military, cuts, budget

While one segment of the voting public regards President Donald Trump as a heaven-sent savior, a louder mob treats Trump as the Beast, a veritable Anti-Obama.

I am in neither tribe.

To me, Mr. Trump must be judged on what he does. Nominating Neil Gorsuch? A-plus. But The Donald has also reneged on a number of important campaign promises, not the least being his pledge to “eliminate the national debt in eight years.”

Sure, it was never quite believable. But is this administration even making progress?

If all goes according to the new plan, “the country would run a deficit of $631 billion in 2025,” writes Eric Boehm. That is not much of an improvement over Barack Obama’s final-year deficit of $666 billion.

Boehm’s Reason article is titled “Trump’s Budget Would Add $7.9 Trillion to the National Debt Over the Next Decade,” which gives a serious picture of Trump’s under-performance.

Now, you could react to the news and just say “less than $8 trillion — could be worse!”

But by accepting such a high number, we set the bar awfully low. It just isn’t serious.

And speaking of frivolity, it is “hard to take the president’s calls for belt-tightening seriously,” Boehm writes, “when the cuts only apply to some parts of the federal budget.”

You can guess which part of government is being given a free pass. Trump’s team is attempting to hide something: “spending increases for the Pentagon.”

Now, if American foreign policy were not the incoherent mess it is, we might make excuses.

But it is.

Serious Americans would exempt no part of the budget from intense scrutiny.

And real cuts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cuts, deficit, military, spending, Trump

free trade & free markets political economy Popular

Opportunity for . . . All?

licensing, license, permission, work, labor, regulations

Simple pleasures are the best. So are simple questions.

Senate Bill 2306 in North Dakota “would make it easier for spouses of military personnel to transfer their existing occupational licenses for use in North Dakota, provided they are in good standing and licensed by a reasonable entity,” explains Rob Port at his SayAnythingBlog.

Occupational licensing has exploded, covering a mere 4-5 percent of occupations 60 years ago, but nearly 30 percent today. That’s a serious hurdle for folks trying to break into the marketplace.

Over at the Foundation for Economic Education, economist Daniel Mitchell calls licensing a “win-win” for politicians and interest groups that “get to impose barriers that limit competition.”

Not winning? Taxpayers and consumers, says Mitchell. “Or a poor person who wants to get a job.”

An Institute for Justice report released last November concluded that “licensing costs the American economy $197.3 billion” annually by “preventing people from working in the occupations for which they are best suited” and “forcing people to fulfill burdensome licensing requirements that do not raise quality.” Meanwhile, the health and safety benefits attributable to this licensing labyrinth seem scant.

A recent Grand Forks Herald editorial endorsing SB-2306 pointed to the state’s “more than 13,000 unfilled jobs, many of which require licensing,” arguing that “[o]ften, trailing military spouses are qualified to fill those openings, but because of the existing licensing process they are not able to immediately work.”

“[W]hy not make this sort of license reciprocity good for everyone moving into our state?” Mr. Port adroitly inquired.

Yes, Big Government: Tear down these barriers!

For all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags regulations

meme Popular

Green New Extremism

Bernie Sanders, climate change, global warming, extremism

Citation is here.

And here.

Tags Bernie Sanders, climate change, global warming

by Paul Jacob Popular The Draft video

Congress Considers the Draft

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 10, 2019
1 Comment on Congress Considers the Draft

Resist the Draft, Paul Jacob, National Service

Yes, “mandatory national service” is a live topic — again!

Mandatory National Service? on Vimeo.

But the situation is not hopeless. This is not a “done deal.” Indeed, there is something you can do to prevent universal, intersex/all-gender mandatory conscription. Click here to find out more.

Why not click right now?

Tags Leave Our Kids Alone, National Service, paul jacob, selective service, The Draft

Fourth Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies Popular too much government

Snowden Won?

surveillance, metadata, Snowden, Edward Snowden

“The phone records program” that Edward Snowden risked life, limb and freedom to expose “had never thwarted a terrorist attack,” the New York Times informs in a somewhat startling bit of reportage published on Monday.

But that isn’t the startling part.

The National Security Administration’s unauthorized metadata phone-records collection program was a wish-list snoop system snuck into practice under cover of the Patriot Act. After the Snowden revelation, Congress halted it, replacing it with a similar operation in 2015, via the U.S.A. Freedom Act. But we have long known that U.S. spies could do most of what they “need” without pre- or post-Snowden versions.

What is startling in the Times article, “Disputed N.S.A. Phone Program Is Shut Down, Aide Says,” is there in the title: the federal government’s top spy agency has allegedly not used the program in its Freedom Act version in months, has even closed it.

And the Freedom Act, up for renewal, may just be allowed to die a quiet death.

Nick Gillespie, at Reason, cautions that “the possible end of the USA Freedom Act doesn’t mean the federal government doesn’t have access to all sorts of tools needed to secretly snoop on you, or that your personal data isn’t being collected in any number of ways you have little control over.” And he cites a recent Reason piece on how Patriot Act survellaince powers have been used to bust up a prostitution ring.

Which shows how terrorism is not the only government target.

And why giving government vast surveillance powers could be used for anything.

Not to mention that niggly problem of abridging the Fourth Amendment rights that had so concerned Ed Snowden.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags metadata, snowden, surveillance