Category: Common Sense

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Common Sense individual achievement media and media people

Hate in Plain Sight

David Koch

“Classy guy,” won’t be the moniker afforded comedian Bill Maher when his time on Earth comes to an end.

“I guess I’m going to have to reevaluate my low opinion of prostate cancer,” Maher told his HBO audience regarding the death of libertarian billionaire David Koch at 79.

“As for his remains,” continued Maher, “he has asked to be cremated and have his ashes blown into a child’s lungs.”

You get the tenor of his “humor.”

“[David Koch] and his brother have done more than anybody to fund climate-​science deniers for decades, so f — k him!” Maher argued. “I’m glad he’s dead, and I hope the end was painful.”

The HBO celeb likely hoped his crass takedown of the already deceased would go viral. “I know these seem like harsh words and harsh jokes,” Maher conceded, “and I’m sure I’ll be condemned on Fox News …”

But perhaps not reprimanded more universally, since such political viciousness has become ubiquitous. For instance, when a questioner at the Minnesota State Fair mentioned Koch’s passing, applause erupted. 

“I don’t applaud, you know, the death of somebody,” Sen. Bernie Sanders chided the crowd (to his credit). “We needn’t do that.”

Celebrating someone’s demise is sickening. Moreover, in the case of David Koch, and brother Charles, so many of the non-​stop political attacks have been erroneous — condemnation for positions they do not hold, for things they have not done. Not to mention ignoring all the wonderful benefits they have provided our society.

Bill Maher is a professional punk, so I’m not shocked. But David Koch was a hero.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. Lovers of liberty lost another champion last week: Eric Dixon. For years, Eric has been a huge help to Common Sense in a myriad of important ways. He also assisted a number of other liberty-​oriented and free-​market groups, including U.S. Term Limits, the Cato Institute, Missouri’s Show Me Institute, the Atlas Network, the Libertarian Party, and more. A lot of people will miss Eric, not the least of whom will be me.

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David Koch

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Common Sense

Money for Robots and Representatives!

Rashida Tlaib, minimum wage, The Squad, economics,

Yesterday I addressed Senator Bernie Sanders’ minimum wage problem. Today it is member of Congress and “The Squad” Rashida Tlaib’s turn. She is unsatisfied with the just-​passed national $15/​hour minimum wage. 

She wants to make it $20.

Now a bidding war begins?

But not where laborers bid for jobs. Instead, a war in which restaurateurs bid for robots.

The point being that when you force up the costs of employing one factor in a production process, those who are trying to make a living as producers do not just fold and give their wealth away to rent/​purchase the newly exorbitant factor. They economize.

They make substitutions.

If I am not mistaken, basic economics has a term for the core concept … marginal something of something substitution. 

Why folks enamored of government regulation and prohibition (for the minimum wage law prohibits hiring help below a certain rate of pay) seem to think this elementary aspect of human behavior can safely be ignored is hard to figure.

At Reason, Billy Binion explains just how devastating Tlaib’s “one size fits all approach” would be for restaurants, “particularly those of the mom and pop variety.” What Tlaib demands, for these wage contracts, “amounts to an increase of almost 940 percent.”

Binion cites one study predicting “that a median-​rated restaurant on Yelp (3.5 stars) was 14 percent more likely to close with each additional dollar added to the tipped wage.”

If restaurants go out of business, new businesses would emerge, admittedly. Say, a return of the Automat!

While young folks look up that term, we oldsters wonder if these automation-​minded entrepreneurs will fund Tlaib’s re-​election campaign.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Rashida Tlaib, minimum wage, The Squad, economics,

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Common Sense general freedom ideological culture

Dependence or Independence?

Kamala Harris, debate, Democrats, Fourth of July, Independence Day,

“America does not want to witness a food fight,” Senator Kamala Harris said at last week’s debate, reprimanding her squabbling fellow Democratic Party presidential contenders. “They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table.”

The no doubt well-​rehearsed line drew raucous applause. She’s right; we’re not interested in a food fight.

But her second statement struck me as … odd … and not true. 

Harris spoke of how “we” — meaning they, the assembled politicians on the stage — are “going to put food” on “their” — meaning our — tables. 

Does she imagine that presidents produce our food, not farmers? Is she trying to say, “You didn’t grow that”? 

“Were we directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap,” the author of the Declaration of Independence wrote, “we should soon want bread.”

Perhaps this presidential aspirant remains unaware of how America became a land of abundance? It wasn’t the exertion of career politicians. Or regulators. Or bureaucrats. It was the amazingly productive engine that is a free people.

“Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way,” Henry David Thoreau explained in his famous 1849 essay, entitled Resistance to Civil Government. “The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished.” 

The difference between a society where people honor independence and one where, conversely, they idolize dependence on the government is the difference between bright day and darkest night. 

Today’s date is July 4th, but the holiday is Independence Day. It is not a celebration of dependence on cradle-​to-​grave big brother government. We celebrate freedom for the individual.

A Republic … if We, the People can keep it.

But how? How do we restore freedoms lost while retaining extant freedoms?

Well, with ideas. Arguments. Promotion of others’ efforts.

And for two decades, this daily commentary has defended freedom and those fighting for it. And I hope to keep the Common Sense coming far into the future. 

Yet, this effort is totally dependent on you — and your generosity. In this 20th year, won’t you make a special pledge of $20? Or $200? Or $2,000 if you have the financial freedom to do so.

“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must,” wrote Tom Paine in 1777, “undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”

Don’t worry, it won’t be so fatiguing. We stand up for freedom and against dependence on big government — with a rhetorical flourish now and again … and a sense of humor. 

Please pass the ammunition. And no food fight.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Kamala Harris, debate, Democrats, Fourth of July, Independence Day,

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Common Sense The Draft

Of Honor and Horror

army, twitter, public relations, veterans,

Last week, when the public relations wing of the U.S. Army asked, on Twitter, “how has serving impacted you?” the bulk of the responses were not what was hoped for. What came like tear drops and bursts of rage were thousands of horrific tales, expressions of sorrow, bitterness and despair.

No doubt the intention was to elicit, if not patriotic uplift, at least stories of learning, moral growth, centeredness, and personal victory out of sacrifice and suffering. Almost certainly the Army wanted what the promoters of “national service” now want.

The outcome was far messier.

Now, the Army handled the Twitterflak very well, with a tweet thanking people for their expressions. But a response by Mike Schmidt (@MikeSchmidt69) was probably as upbeat as could be expected, given the ‘writing on the wall’— er, Twitterfeed: “Some say this thread back-​fired but this is just the thread that is needed each [M]emorial [D]ay so we remember the sacrifices military members and their families make and how we as a country need to understand the true cost of service and improve our support.”

Most of the tweets I read were decidedly not upbeat. The anger and pain over battle deaths, wounds, PTSD, mental illness, suicides, and so much indifference to it — it was deep and wide … and heartbreaking.

‘War is hell.’ In self-​defense — defense of These United States — the brave soldier and general is honorable. But that honor is informed by the reticence that comes from actual knowledge of its true costs.

Maybe this Memorial Day President Trump and all policy makers will finally get what service truly is … and stop pitching more of the same unjustifiable-​because-​unwinnable or ‑unendable interventions around the world. 

Of course, demanding peace and sanity and accountability is up to all of us holding the hot dogs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense links meme

The Uncommon Author of Common Sense

Tom Paine, Thomas Paine, quote, quotation, wrong, right, meme, illustration

Last week we noted the 243rd anniversary of the publication of Common Sense — Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, that is. 

The importance of this document for the formation of the United States of America can hardly be over-​estimated. And the general good … sense … of the pamphlet still impresses. It is, in fact, one of the classics of Western literature, political polemics, and social philosophy. And it radicalized Americans to dare declare their independence from King George III.

We here at ThisIsCommonSense​.com can hardly be more emphatic: if you have not read the pamphlet, you really should. If your spouse, or children, or neighbors have not read it, please send them a copy. We provide one in our Library, as a webpage.

And, also in our Library, we offer something else by Tom Paine, his essay against slavery. It seems to be one of the first anti-​slavery pamphlets published in America. Read our webpage or download the PDF. And send it to your friends. 

And enemies.

The fight against slavery is inextricably linked, in American history, to the fight for freedom. Slavery is one of freedom’s most stark opposites. 

“One of?” we hear you protest. Well, tyranny is slavery’s twin. But we grant you, maybe they are the same thing: tyranny is the slavery of a populace, slavery the tyranny over an individual person.

Paine wrote even more controversial works. He also went to France to aid in the French Revolution only to get put in prison for his trouble. And he came back to America, for refuge, and was forsaken by its people, dying in poverty.

His ideas are not impoverished though. And not dead. Not so long as we keep them alive. 

This is Common Sense. And he was Tom Paine, American hero.

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Common Sense First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture

Ideas, Online and Ongoing … with Help

Benjamin Franklin, We must all hang together, quote

In recent years there has been a great burgeoning of public debate about ideas. Politics. Ethics. UFOs. You name it.

This “burgeoning” has mostly taken place online.

Some people are so good at it that they have made their whole livings at it, parlaying advertisements and donations into successful careers.

But this has not gone unnoticed.

They are under attack.

A cabal of highly connected financial and Internet platform professionals have coordinated their attention against Alex Jones, “Sargon of Akkad,” and others. Patreon is the latest to get involved, having ousted Lauren Southern off the company’s donation intermediary service, and now the aforementioned Sargon (Carl Benjamin, an Englishman). And behind all this there lurks the shadowy decisions and machinations of PayPal and Mastercard.

I have covered some of this in the past, here at Common Sense. But too much of it has passed by, as if in my peripheral vision. I know these de-​platformings have taken place, however, and am somewhat alarmed. 

Not for myself, so much, as my main gig is political activism: helping citizens place ballot measures before voters through Liberty Initiative Fund and protecting the ballot initiative process with Citizens in Charge Foundation. Common Sense was not conceived to be a profit center, but a herald, a communication platform.

Still, like everything, the program does cost money and must prove its worth. Which is why I cherish my many donors to Common Sense. Thank you. You really do help keep the Common Sense coming — after nearly 20 years!

Something big is brewing. In our culture. In our country. Across the globe. Free speech is under attack. Corruption is rampant at all levels of government. Socialism seems on the march. 

From assisting the police camera ballot measure that passed in Ferguson, Missouri, to last November’s ballot initiative on “citizen only voting” that prevailed in North Dakota, Liberty Initiative Fund knows that real change can better come from the grassroots and the ballot box than from the halls of Congress in Washington.

Those of us who cherish individual freedom must work together to change laws and policies. We have to hang together — or, as Ben Franklin reminded, “most assuredly we will all hang separately.” 

How long will we be able to speak out politically?

I do not know.

But here is something we do know for sure. It is the last day of the year. If you have been planning on making a charitable donation for the cause of limited and accountable government, freedom of speech and press and association, this site, “Common Sense with Paul Jacob,” gratefully accepts donations … and could not carry on without the help of “people like you.”

By which I mean patriots. Thoughtful people concerned about the future.

And donations to Common Sense are fully tax deductible!

Please help us in this important work. Support us with dollars if you can. And keep forwarding my daily commentary, telling friends, and taking a stand for FREEDOM.

This is Common Sense. Common effort is the key. Oh, and I’m Paul Jacob.


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