Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Aldous Huxley

“Propaganda in favor of action that is consonant with enlightened self-interest appeals to reason by means of logical arguments based upon the best available evidence fully and honestly set forth. Propaganda in favor of action dictated by the impulses that are below self-interest offers false, garbled or incomplete evidence, avoids logical argument and seeks to influence its victims by the mere repetition of catchwords, by the furious denunciation of foreign or domestic scapegoats, and by cunningly associating the lower passions with the highest ideals, so that atrocities come to be perpetrated in the name of God and the most cynical kind of Realpolitik is treated as a matter of religious principle and patriotic duty.”

Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (1958), chapter four, p. 33.

Scandal-Less

In the 15 states voters have enacted term limits for their state representatives and senators, those politicians and the lobbyists and heads of powerful interest groups constantly complain that the limits are a problem.

I know. That’s why I like term limits.

Am I a broken record on the subject? Perhaps. But let me tell you about a different type of record . . . criminal.

“Are term limits good ideas for Pa. elected officials?” asked a Newsworks.org headline, after Steve Reed, the former 28-year mayor of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, “was arrested on nearly 500 criminal charges that included corruption, theft, bribery and dealing in proceeds of unlawful activity.”

“Top N.Y. lawmaker arrested on corruption charges,” read a January USA Today headline. Sheldon Silver, after more than 20 years as Assembly Speaker was “arrested on federal corruption charges alleging he was involved in a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme for more than a decade.”

In 2009, after Massachusetts saw its third House Speaker in a row indicted, I ranked New Jersey, Illinois and Massachusetts as the three most corrupt states. The top contenders all have one thing in common: a lack of term limits.

A couple years ago, I joined Greg Upchurch, a St. Louis patent attorney and entrepreneur at a conference on term limits in Missouri. Greg (the driving force behind the state’s 1992 initiative) told the audience, mostly opposed to term limits, that the limits are here to stay.

Before term limits, Upchurch pointed out, legislative leaders were going to prison for corruption. With term limits, there simply haven’t been such scandals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags corruption, democracy, elections, graft, term limits, voting

meme

Edmund Burke – “The people never give up their liberties but…”

Post author By CS Admin
Post date July 28, 2015
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“The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”

—Edmund Burke

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Thought

Tucker Carlson

“We’re going to look back at this moment, 2015, as like the fever pitch of insanity — before somebody stands up, someone with maybe more credibility than Donald Trump, and says ‘whoa, whoa, whoa: not all 320 million of you can be victims at the same time.’”

Tucker Carlson, The Greg Gutfeld Show (FNC), July 26, 2015.

Common Sense folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Cruz “Loses”

Koch Brothers, Ted Cruz, political, politics, collage, photomontage, conspiracy, secrets, LA Times, Campaign Finance

When Sen. Ted Cruz gave an impassioned speech on the Senate floor, last week, he ruffled a few feathers. Calling Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell a liar in front of everybody is just not done. “Elder party statesmen have not been amused,” the Los Angeles Times reports:

On Sunday, 81-year-old Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the GOP’s most senior senator, opened the chamber’s session with a reminder to colleagues of the ground rules.

“Squabbling and acrimony may be tolerated on the campaign trail,” said Hatch, who urged senators colleagues toward comity and decorum, and to keep their egos in check.

Cruz defended himself. “It is entirely consistent with decorum . . . to speak the truth.”

The “squabble” was over the Export-Import Bank, mainly. Cruz blurted out how McConnell had betrayed his own party members in the Senate by cutting a backroom deal for the crony-capitalist moral hazard that is the Ex-Im.

Regardless (or because of?) Cruz’s truth-telling, the Senate rebuffed Cruz and “voted to advance the Export-Import bank and deny the presidential hopeful a vote on his amendment.”

Crony capitalism continues.

But note an odd aside in the LA Times’s account. The paper went out of its way to identify Ex-Im as “opposed by the powerful Koch brothers but supported by a bipartisan coalition of business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.”

The Kochs were brought up . . . for what reason?

So vilified by the left, these days, the Kochs are a red herring . . . which the Times threw into the issue like an Erisian apple, nudging Democratic readers not to sympathize with Cruz.

We can’t have his anti-crony-capitalist stance attract Democratic readers, now, can we?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Export-Import Bank, Koch brothers, Los Angeles Times, Presidential campaign 2016, Ted Cruz

Thought

Edmund Burke

“A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends. Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery begins, justice ends?”

Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756).”

crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood — Baby parts matter

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Tags abortion, meme

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Townhall: Scandal-Less

The results are in. There’s an easy way to constrain political corruption. Click on over to Townhall to find out more. Then come back here for some more reading: