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Common Sense national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Weekend with Bernie: A Fresh Dark Horse

Weekend with Bernie Sanders, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill

Going into 2015, news media mavens had all but declared the race as settled: Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton. But voters didn’t cooperate with their “betters.” Republicans flocked to Donald Trump, a weirdly charismatic figure, and Democrats fell enthusiastically for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-designated socialist.

Why hordes of regular folks prefer Trump over most of his rivals hardly needs extensive analysis: Trump is funny, appears “his own man,” and serves as a sort of wild card.

But why Bernie?

Over at The Hill, H.A. Goodman offers three reasons . . . sort of. The first reason is a confused mishmash of polling blather. But check out Goodman’s second and third reasons.

“Clinton can’t win the Democratic nomination or presidency with the FBI as a running mate,” Goodman notes in bold face type. And “Classified information has already been found within Clinton’s emails and there’s a great likelihood of more revelations pertaining to breaches in protocol. . . .”

So, the reason for Bernie’s popularity is that Hillary is so bad a candidate?

Well, duh. She’s always been a bad candidate.

Indeed, Hillary’s a corrupt insider, while Sanders, like Trump, can be plausibly construed as an outsider. But, like Trump, that plausibility is superficial.

Sanders is a lifelong politician, and when challenged about this, his retort was that he has always stood against the monied interests. He thinks that doesn’t make him a “career politician.”

Maybe being a career politician means never having to look up the meaning of “career” or “politician.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Weekend with Bernie Sanders

 

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Thought

Simon Newcomb

“Although we may consider society as an organism, we must not carry the analogy with living organisms too far. There is one very important point in which society or the social organism differs from a plant or animal. We think of every plant and animal as having an individuality of its own, distinct from the conglomeration of organs which form it. Moreover, we cannot add to or subtract from the parts of the plant or animal without detracting from its character. A man cannot have three legs, and if he has only one he is imperfect. But there is no such completeness in the social organism. We can add new men to any extent, or we may divide a country into two without changing the character of the organism. In other words, it has no such attribute as individuality. By assigning such an attribute to it, and giving it a name, we may be led into confusion of thought. The people of each country and of each city may be considered to form a separate organism, but at the same time steam transportation has brought most of the world into such close communication that we may consider all these little organisms as parts of a great one, including the whole human race.”

Simon Newcomb, Principles of Political Economy, 1886, p. 8

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Common Sense folly general freedom government transparency national politics & policies political challengers

Weird & Wacky

Presidential Weirdness, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Presidential Race, political, politics

Have you noticed how weird politics has gotten?

I don’t mean government spying on us or never-ending wars or crony capitalism or rights violations or mounting trillions in debt or new, innovative forms of waste, fraud and abuse.

I’m just talking about the presidential horse race.

The Donald is way out front on the Republican side. Trump is . . . interesting: rude-to-obnoxious, but definitely not a mealy-mouthed, play-it-by-the-focus-group politician. Still, his weakness may be all the “business” he’s done with politicians, taking advantage of eminent domain and other purchased governmental powers.

I’m glad to see Carly Fiorina moving up. If 2016 is going to be the year American voters choose a woman to be president — and why not? — please let it be Carly Fiorina.

The other woman running is . . . let me check my notes . . . oh, yes, Hillary Clinton. After weeks of campaigning in a style that I think can best be described as “going underground,” she went on vacation.

But she can’t stay in hiding forever. (Can she?)

Democrats are getting so nervous that they’re talking — seriously — about a Joe Biden candidacy.

Why Biden? Having spent the last 43 years wielding power in Washington, will he be packaged as an outsider?

“The short answer is Clinton may be in real legal trouble,” writes conservative Jennifer Rubin. “The longer answer is that the Democrats need to make this election about the Republicans. With Clinton, that is impossible.”

Yes, the Democrats are more popular when the public is thinking about Republicans. And vice versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Presidential Weirdness

 

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Thought

John Locke

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11, 1689.
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Common Sense education and schooling folly general freedom tax policy

Money (for Us) Good, Profit (for Them) Bad

Teacher's Union

“One thing that we’ve done,” Dennis McBride of Support our Schools-Wauwatosa told a crowd at a free event hosted by the non-profit Wisconsin Public Education Network, “is we’ve made sure every time one of our legislators pops up his or her head above the foxhole, we’re there to shoot at them.”

The crowd laughed, reports the watchdog John K. MacIver Institute, which ran the story under the headline, “Panelist Jokes About Shooting Legislators at Public Education Summit.”

No worries, though: it was just a metaphor.

The genuinely kooky thoughts were less figurative.

One speaker encouraged the audience never to say the two words, “Scott Walker,” for fear of giving “the Wisconsin governor” higher name-recognition.

“Some of the first voucher supporters,” asserted Jonas Persson of the Center for Media and Democracy, “outside of this kind of new right core group of ideologues and wealthy entrepreneurs, were white supremacists. . . .”

Incredibly, he insisted that this movement “drew most of its support from, quote, ‘white flight areas*.’”

Somehow, no one mentioned voucher program successes, or the grassroots support for vouchers in African-American communities.

“The ultimate goal is about breaking down public schools and to be honest with you,” said Jennifer Epps-Addison of Wisconsin Jobs Now/Schools and Communities United, “it’s about profiting off of the education of our kids.”

Heavens! Making a profit by serving parents and children “consuming” education? Unthinkable.

Meanwhile, Epps-Addison pushed the “Wisconsin Freedom Compact,” which calls for doubling the tax dollars going to public education.

Will she guarantee that no one will profit from that?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Editor’s Note: A previous version of this article contained the term “white flight Aryans” in Jonas Persson’s quote. After review of notes and audio recordings, the phrase has been corrected to read “white flight areas.” The context and overall significance of Persson’s statements are not changed, but the quote is updated for accuracy.

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Teacher's Union

 

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Common Sense general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy term limits

Conflicts Perplexing Prominent Politicians

In Disguise

When does the same old song-and-dance, performed by yet another self-selected committee of the political elite, become “a unique process” that “Nobody’s ever done . . .”?

When the much-liberal Denver Post reports the “much-respected” Daniel Ritchie saying so.

Every election cycle for a decade, it seems, a cabal of big-spending politicians and big-receiving special interests form a “prominent” and “bipartisan” group to propose making citizen initiatives more difficult, weakening term limits, and circumventing the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (or TABOR, which limits spending and requires voter approval for tax increases).

This cycle’s iteration is “Building a Better Colorado,” now being formed for a September launch by Ritchie, the former Denver University chancellor.

Sunday’s Post provided the group of “prominent civic and business leaders [not to mention politicians]” ample coverage: “The project — developed behind the scenes for months and detailed in exclusive interviews and documents obtained by The Denver Post — is perhaps the most concerted effort in recent memory to address what organizers see as inherent conflicts in how the state is governed.”

Conflicts?

“Those conflicts, they say, are impeding Colorado’s ability to build new roads, put more money in classrooms, engage an increasingly disenchanted electorate and prepare for the future.”

“I’ve seen this game played too often in Colorado,” remarked the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara. “It’s like a Kumbaya committee. We are going to get all these people who are marginally diverse and at the end of this long process . . . the conclusion is to raise taxes.”

While the “new” group isn’t “advocating any specific policy outcome” and plans to engage the public at town hall meetings, the meetings’ agenda has been pre-set . . . by “experts.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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In Disguise

 

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Thought

John Locke

“He that uses his words loosely and unsteadily will either not be minded or not understood.”

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Ch. 10, sec. 31, 1689

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Common Sense crime and punishment folly general freedom national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Cannabis and Kings

Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

The over-riding reason to end the War on Drugs is to re-establish the rule of law in this country.

From Nixon and Reagan to the present time, America has vastly increased the population of prison inmates, many of them for drug offenses. The “land of the free” shouldn’t boast a larger population (per capita and total) of unfree persons than any other nation on the planet.

Further, in the mania to apprehend contraband drug users, producers, and traffickers, we’ve pretty much lost Bill of Rights protections on our lives and our property.

We’ve armed nearly every conceivable division of government against us, turning local, state and federal police “services” into police state apparatuses that hound and steal from portions of our population — which turns them from citizens into fearful, resentful, servile subjects. Meanwhile, the use of civil asset forfeiture and other policing for profit schemes corrupt our police forces in a serious and fundamental and “King Georgish” way.

Sam and John Adams, Toms Jefferson and Paine — they’d all be aghast at what we have become.

But what of the growing tide to legalize/decriminalize marijuana? Reading a report by Steven Greenhut in Reason, it becomes apparent that not every step moves us towards a rule of law. Some steps in “regulating and taxing” cannabis may be more about using crony capitalism to choose winners and losers.

Let’s use some common sense from lessons learned with alcohol — er, with regulating alcohol, that is. Keep marijuana away from the kids and keep the over-regulation of marijuana away from adults.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jack boot, photomontage, collage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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links

Townhall: A Corrupt State Against a Compassionate Doctor

The final leg of the persecution/prosecution of Dr. Annette Bosworth is coming up quickly. The state medical advisory board has spoken.

And it is of a piece with the rest of the prosecution: the state insiders are arrayed against her.

Click on over to Townhall, then come back here for more background.

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video

Video: A Traffic Stop Gone Horribly Wrong

While the young man who was stopped by the police officer in this video was obviously foolish in several ways, he wasn’t evil, or even acting “against the peace.” The officer, on the other hand, lied from the beginning, and eventually shot the young man. See what you think:

https://youtu.be/L6nvc8CcQb8