Common Sense with Paul Jacob

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Townhall: One or Two or . . . Free

Post author By Redactor
Post date November 8, 2015
No Comments on Townhall: One or Two or . . . Free

The change in China’s one-child rule policy demanded a Townhall.com. So click on over, and then come back here, for more reading.

And tell your friends and . . . enemies!

CNN: China’s One-Child Policy to End
National Geographic: How China’s One-Child Policy Backfired Disastrously
Mei Fong’s website: Book – One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment
FEE: China’s One-Child Disaster
China’s New Two Child Policy Will Not End Forced Abortion or Gendercide
The Spectator: The brutality of China’s one-child policy is still shocking
Sky News (YouTube): Forced Abortion to Meet China’s One Child Policy
EWTN: Chapter 50 — Forced Abortion: Anti-Life Dream for the World
YouTube: Vice-President Biden at Sichuan University
The Conversation: China’s one-child policy helped women make a great leap forward – so what now?
LA Times: China’s population and economy are a double whammy for the world

Thought

Virginia Woolf

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

Virginia Woolf, The Leaning Tower (May 1940)

video

Video: George Will on Money in Politics

Post author By Redactor
Post date November 7, 2015
1 Comment on Video: George Will on Money in Politics

George F. Will has been a major defender of free speech against the campaigns for “campaign finance reform” for a long time. Here he makes his case concisely, with animation from PragerU:

Thought

H. L. Mencken

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

H. L. Mencken, Women as Outlaws, The Smart Set (December 1921)

general freedom nannyism privacy

The vast majority of Chinese people are celebrating. Last week, the 18th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party decreed that it will cease enforcing the one-child-only policy this coming March — after 35 years — as part of its 13th Five Year Plan.

Just speaking for myself, infanticide, coerced abortions and forced sterilizations seem . . . well, not good. Bad, even. Really bad. Or more precisely, evil, tyrannical and totalitarian . . . you know, if we want to use such “extreme” language.

But not everyone sees it my way.

Back in 1990, Molly Yard claimed that “[t]he Chinese government doesn’t coerce people.” Why, according to this former head of the National Organization of Women, “the only responsible policy [China] can have is to control family planning.” She went all the way: “I consider the Chinese government’s policy among the most intelligent in the world.”

The Los Angeles Times reported in 2012 that China’s “population control efforts have helped lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and contributed to China’s spectacular economic growth.”

That has not only been disputed — many economists point to policy changes that allowed entrepreneurship and private property — but overturned by reality. The one-child policy has been a disaster. There are now 117 young men for every 100 young women in China, and an aging population without enough youngsters to provide for them.

Alas, the one child policy is not being replaced with reproductive freedom. The government will still limit couples to two kids. That’s better than one, sure. But I have three children. If I were Chinese, I wouldn’t want to give up one of them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, Communism, communist, family planning, five year plan, one child policy

Thought

Virginia Woolf

“Though we see the same world, we see it through different eyes. Any help we can give you must be different from that you can give yourselves, and perhaps the value of that help may lie in the fact of that difference.”

Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (1938)

free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies tax policy

Pass/Fail/Pass

November 2015 vote, Washington, Ohio, marijuana, legalization, illustration

While the Ohio measure to legalize marijuana did not pass, this week, the Washington State measure to wrest tax limitations out of a recalcitrant legislature did indeed succeed, with a 54 percent win.

Win some, lose some.

But in both these cases, there is some evidence for a general smartening up of the voting public.

With Ohio’s Measure 103, the support for cannabis legalization, a few weeks before Election Day, seemed strong. But the more voters looked at the measure, the more they caught a whiff of stink — and it wasn’t skunk weed. It was crony capitalism and insider favoritism. So, while a solid majority reasonably favors legalization — even in Ohio — it strikes most reasonable people that the measure’s secondary provision of setting up a monopolistic/oligopolistic production cartel is as anti-freedom as the legalizations is pro.

Smart folks saw through the proposal. Cannabis legalization is proceeding, state by state. Better results for legalization next time?

Perhaps, provided a better measure is offered.

Washington’s I-1366, on the other hand, had several levels to it, too, but they worked together. Voters seeking a constitutional tax limit, got it — or, if the legislature balks at delivering it as a future referendum (as the measure instructs) then the initiative’s main feature would kick in and the sales tax would be lowered. Low-tax voters get low taxes either way, legislature cooperating or resisting.

As I’ve explained some time back, repeated legislative betrayal had forced Evergreen State super-activist Tim Eyman to concoct this rather clever ploy.

In both Ohio and Washington, what voters voted against was against politics-as-usual — and that is good, no?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cannabis, legalization, marijuana, Ohio, tax policy, Washington

Thought

Will Rogers

“We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.”

Will Rogers, “The World Tomorrow,” The Illiterate Digest, 1924

Accountability general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

A Broken Fix

carrot, sticks, congress, compromise, influence, illustration, Common Sense

It is universally acknowledged that Congress is all screwed up, but ideas differ on how to reform it.

Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), in accepting the Speaker of the House position, admitted, “The House is broken. We are not solving problems. We are adding to them.”

But how to fix what is broken?

In my opinion — and according to virtually every survey of Americans for the last 20 years — term limits would be the best first step.

Speaker Ryan, sadly, is no term limits fan. But at least he calls for “opening the process up” and a “new spirit of transparency.” Ryan promises “not [to] duck tough issues,” while seeking “concrete results.”

Chris Cillizza, writing “The Fix” blog for The Washington Post, predicts Ryan will “probably not” succeed.

Cillizza cites four big problems, the last two are obvious, though undefined: “3. Polarization in the country” that results in “4. Polarization in Congress.”

His No. 1 reason for the dysfunction in the House? The ban on earmarks. “Without a carrot to offer wavering members on contentious legislation,” Cillizza complains, “leadership had to rely almost exclusively on relationships and goodwill.”

Forget persuasion on the merits; apparently, congressional leadership should bribe members for their votes.

Next, Cillizza bemoans the “rise of outside conservative groups” able to speak against incumbents they oppose and for those they support. This means “the party leadership could no longer choke off campaign funds to those who refused to fall in line.”

“Falling in line” isn’t the right reform goal.

Meet another member of the Washington press corps with a strange hankering for boss rule.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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