Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Big Brother Rides Along

Hertz has begun installing cameras in their rental cars as part of a system called NeverLost. But don’t worry, they’ve got no plans (they say) to use them (yet).

“The camera feature has not been launched, cannot be operated and we have no current plans to do so,” Hertz spokesman Evelin Imperatrice assures us. I guess Hertz is with St. Augustine about how all that exists time-wise is a vanishingly small present moment, inasmuch as the past is already gone, the future not yet here. Ergo, nothing to worry about.

Nevertheless, customers are worried.

“I even felt weird about singing in the car by myself,” says one.

“The system can’t be turned off from what I could tell,” reports another. “[And] the camera can see the entire inside of the car. I know rental car companies have been tracking the speed and movements of their vehicles for years but putting a camera inside the cabin of the vehicle is taking their need for information a little too far.”

I’m all in favor of extensive monitoring of police and others with government-conferred power over us, in a position to easily abuse that power. I’m not in favor of indiscriminate spying by everybody on everybody. Or of any gearing up to do that.

What to do? A little bit of tape over the lens, that’s one option. Another: boycott Hertz until they rip the cameras out. Or at least make them easy to turn off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags privacy, surveillance

Thought

Mario Vargas Llosa

“Literature creates a fraternity within human diversity and eclipses the frontiers erected among men and women by ignorance, ideologies, religions, languages, and stupidity.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Lecture, 2010

Common Sense folly media and media people national politics & policies

Cruz Country

The cultural differences between left and right may be stronger than the political.

When Sen. Ted Cruz answered a question about his musical taste posed by a CBS news correspondent, and he announced that his preference switched after 2001, 9/11, the leftosphere fell of its rocker and into convulsions.

Why?

He said he switched from listening to classic rock to country, and did so because the country music culture responded to the 9/11 atrocity so much better than did rock-and-roll culture.

Confession: my musical tastes lean toward classic rock. But there’s no way I would get upset about a politician’s musical choices — unless he started listening to Wagner while reviving an interest in National Socialism.

But boy, on the left there was a lot of outrage and indignation. At least, Matt Welch of Reason quoted a good spattering of it, and I found more on Twitter and elsewhere. On Slate? Snark. A YouTuber tubed Cruz’s change as “pandering.” And in New York magazine, Jonathan Chait identified Cruz’s professed change-of-taste “an incredible testament to his personal willpower.”

Huh?

You may or may not like country music, or appreciate the last 30 years of it, or its origins, or its commercialization, or the twang, but that stuff’s really not that important.

A conservative found political reasons to change his listening habits. Wow. A matter of self-definition? Whatever. It neither builds up nor undermines his philosophy or program.

Though certainly Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe” provides more than a cultural context for understanding much of what happens in Washington.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, media, politics

Thought

Mario Vargas Llosa

“You can’t make facts fit the rules, it is the other way round. The rules have to be adopted to fit the facts.”

Mario Vargas Llosa, The Time of the Hero, 1963

Accountability Common Sense government transparency term limits

The Article V Path

Can Americans term-limit Congress?

Twenty-three states had passed term limits on their congressional delegations by 1995 — many while simultaneously term-limiting state lawmakers.

Voters in most other states lack statewide initiative rights. But if the term limits passed by the 23 had been left alone, the pressure would have been enormous to bring term limits to the whole Congress.

Alas, in its 1995 Thornton decision, the Supreme Court ruled, five to four, that this method of building a more perfect union is constitutionally imperfect.

U.S. Term Limits currently backs an amendment that would originate in Congress to limit House members to three two-year terms and senators to two six-year terms. Just in case congressmen don’t get around to passing such an amendment, though, USTL has also endorsed the Article V path to term limits being promoted by Citizens for Self-Governance.

Article V of the Constitution authorizes states to call a constitutional convention if two thirds of them apply. In 2014, Georgia, Alaska and Florida did formally apply for a convention to consider term limits and other reforms. Lawmakers in many other states advocate similar applications. As with congressionally proposed amendments, any amendment offered by the states’ convention would then have to be ratified by three fourths of the states.

Is Article V a long shot? Yes. Every means of imposing congressional term limits has proven to be a long shot.

When we get there, it will be because one of the long shots paid off.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags term limits

Today

Quartering

On March 24, 1765, the Kingdom of Great Britain passed the Quartering Act, which required the Thirteen Colonies to house British troops.

On the same date in 1855, slavery was abolished in Venezuela.

The Intolerable Acts (among which was the Quartering Act) was the American Patriots’ name for a series of punitive laws passed by the British Parliament in 1774 after the Boston Tea party. They were meant to punish the Massachusetts colonists for their defiance in throwing a large tea shipment into Boston harbor. In Great Britain, these laws were referred to as the Coercive Acts.

Common Sense general freedom individual achievement meme U.S. Constitution

Everything That Could Be Done

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 23, 2015
4 Comments on Everything That Could Be Done

Two hundred forty years ago, the situation was dire. In the Virginia Colony, not too far from where I live, representatives to the Second Virginia Convention were debating the problems they were having with their “masters” in Britain — and the more dangerous, violent situation that was developing to the north.

Several days into the convention, Patrick Henry spoke. His speech was rousing. And it changed minds, concluding with the famous words “give me liberty or give me death!” — an ultimatum quite stark indeed.

Mr. Henry was for action, and waiting no longer. Addressing himself to the president of the convention, he said, “Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on.” And they had done a great deal, engaging in

– petitioning

– remonstration

– supplication

and, Henry went on, had even “prostrated ourselves before the throne.” And they got worse than the cold shoulder for all their efforts. They got the brush-off, the turn of the cold robe. Along with troops of occupation.

Hence the need for serious action.

Then, Americans were wrestling with the world’s most powerful nation: the British Empire. Today we again face the world’s most powerful empire: our own.

A federal regime similarly out of control in terms of spending and debt, arrogance and corruption, intrusiveness and incompetence. As if dictated by a know-it-all king of old, or a cabal of insiders acting as oligarchs.

Then it was a far-off Parliament; today it is our own far out-of-it representatives . . . duly elected.

We are engaged in a sort of class war, insiders vs. outsiders, and it is the insiders who are bringing the country to the brink of collapse.

The biggest difference between 1775 and 2015? We haven’t done all we can. There is much more to do. And possibly even succeed before the doom of another financial collapse, sovereign debt crisis, or . . . worse.

It often seems a Herculean task, but as Mr. Henry implored, “Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.”

Let’s join together to give ourselves, our loved ones, and generations hence liberty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags constitution, liberty, meme, Patrick Henry, revolutionary war

Thought

Patrick Henry

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”

links

Townhall: More Aid and Subsidy for Billionaires — Who’s For It?

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 22, 2015
2 Comments on Townhall: More Aid and Subsidy for Billionaires — Who’s For It?

A new report is in: billionaires are still doing well at the federal trough.

I’m not for it. Are you? More interestingly, what do progressives have to say? Can they mount a principled case against such subsidy? No. See the column.

Oh, and read about the report, too. (Click here.)

video

Video: The N-Word Bizarrerie

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 21, 2015
No Comments on Video: The N-Word Bizarrerie

Word politics. Interesting argument. Does it all come down to “ah” instead of “er”?

Ah, no.