I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.
Categories
Categories
A Wall Fell
It is a day of celebration for freedom lovers.
On November 9, 2014, Germans festooned the 15-kilometer path on which the Berlin Wall had once stood with 8,000 lighted helium balloons, which were then released into the sky. Reuters says that the release symbolizes the breaching of the Wall. I think of it as symbolizing how so many trapped souls could at last freely and individually ascend.
Twenty-five years ago, in culmination of a series of protests and negotiations, a half million people demanding freedom of emigration gathered at the Alexanderplatz in East Berlin — some two years after Ronald Reagan had exhorted Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall!” On November 9, 1989, an official announced that refugees could freely travel directly from East Germany to West Germany. A barrier brutally dividing West from East Berlin since 1961 was finally torn down.
Soon the two halves of Germany were reunited. Not without problems. But certainly without the problem that faced them all during the Cold War — the risk of being shot and killed for seeking a better life.
Many of us grew up knowing no other world but one in which the Berlin Wall loomed.
It stood, marking the most visible portion of barriers that had persisted for decades.
Like Communism itself, the Berlin Wall seemed immovable. Yet ideas and choices are what created such a reality; so other ideas and choices could create something better. When prospects for freedom seem bleakest, that’s what we need to remember.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Thomas Sowell
The welfare state is not really about the welfare of the masses. It is about the egos of the elites.
On November 11, 1889, the State of Washington was admitted as the 42nd State of the United States.
In 1921 on this date, US President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.
“We just thought it was something funny we could do,” Peregrine Honig says. “But it was so scary.”
Honig is part-owner of Birdies, an “intimate apparel apothecary and swimwear boutique.” The funny thing? Offer shorts with the letters “KC” and the phrase “Take the Crown” printed on them, to cheer on the Kansas City Royals in Major League Baseball’s World Series. The scary thing? The visit by two men who identified themselves as Homeland Security agents . . . who confiscated the underwear.
“I asked one of them what size he needed and he showed me a badge and took me outside,” Honig told the Kansas City Star. “They told me they were from Homeland Security and we were violating copyright laws.” Although Honig had designed the shorts herself, not simply mimicking a KC logo, the feds said that the intersection of the K and the C in the design was enough to cross the line.
But hey, they were nice!
Apparently even somewhat abashed, like “kicking a puppy,” as Honig puts it; very nice as they took away the merchandise. Which I’m guessing — now stay with me here — was not a threat to national security.
What we have here is called overkill.
At worst this is a minor and inadvertent infraction of copyright law. What’s that worth? A phone call. A visit. Maybe a cease-and-desist letter.
So, do we file this under Silly? Or Ominous?
Or round-file it as just one more little example of the governmental excesses we’re supposed to accept as normal?
Though they lost in the seventh game of a first-one-to-four-wins series, I was rooting for KC.
Oops, did I just commit a crime? I mean I was rooting for K . . . C.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
November 10 Cry of Independence Panama
On November 10, 1821, the First Cry of Independence in the Villa de los Santos (a small town in the interior of the country) occurred in Panama. The November 10 date has since become Panama’s “Cry of Independence Day” in the country. November is a month of independence celebrations in Panama, but the November 10 celebration marks the first signs of the struggle for separation from Spain.
Categories
Thomas Sowell
Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.
Categories
Townhall: Tricked by the Tricky Tricksters
More details on the ballot title fraud in Arkansas. Click on over to Townhall.com (or here, mirrored on this site). Come back here. Make the circuit complete.
- Talk Business & Politics: For, Against & Iffy – 3 Ballot Issues Bring Mixed Results
- The Arkansas Poll, 2014: Question on Page 3
- Governing: Arkansas Voters Approve Extended Term Limits*
- Citizens for Self Governance: Outrage of the Year in Arkansas
- Log Cabin Democrat: Issue 3 extends term limits, ‘levels playing field’
- Arkansas Times: Looking Ahead on Ethics
- Arkansas Times: Call the Roll on Term Limits; Who Likes Them Now?
* This article in a magazine for policy makers makes no mention of the ballot wording, which specifically did not say that the measure was “extending” term limits, but instead said the measure was “setting term limits.”
Categories
Video: Not Up for Vote in Ventura
Hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded pensions. The full story from Reason TV:
Categories
Nov 8 death penalty
On November 8, 1965, Queen Elizabeth gave her Royal Assent to The Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, formally abolishing the death penalty in the United Kingdom.