Categories
ideological culture

The Latest Sizzling Controversy

Friends and foes of bacon usually get along fine in this world. But a poster at Front Post Forum couldn’t abide a sidewalk sign posted by one Sneakers Bistro and Cafe that said “Yield for Sneakers Bacon.”

Did somebody say “bacon”?

“Given the large number of Muslim families in Winooski,” complained the complainer, “as well as many others who do not eat pork … it seems unnecessary for this insensitive business sign to be at the city’s main crosswalk.” Oy, the unnecessary insensitivity!Keep Calm and Carry On

Winooski, Vermont, cafe owner Marc Dysinger replied with mollifying courtesy and forthwith removed the sign. The unnecessary and insensitive cave-in failed to extricate him from controversy, though, provoking as it did a spattering backlash by those of pro-bacon, pro-toleration-of-bacon-promotion sensibility.

HotAir blogger Mary Ham suggests that such capitulation can only embolden unreasonable complainers eager to impose their tetchy sensibilities. “If the word bacon can be deemed offensive by one person — a single member of one’s community — and thus eliminated from the public discourse, there will be plenty of other formerly innocuous words deemed the same, and then exactly how free is your speech?”

As slippery slopes go, this one isn’t quite a toboggan slide. Not yet. But silly, trivial precedents can lead to slightly less innocuous precedents, and so on. Therefore, just to be on the safe side, all those in favor of bacon say: “Bacon!” Maybe even on a yard sign.

And don’t let anybody cow you into silence about it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Henry George

Henry GeorgeProgress has not followed a straight ascending line, but a spiral with rhythms of progress and retrogression, of evolution and dissolution.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Bearing Arms and Using Them

Wrong place, wrong guy.

A Palm Beach County jewelry store. You’re going to rob it because that’s where the money is. And the guy behind the counter is a frail-looking codger. Looks like a piece of cake.

But your intel is faulty. Store owner Arthur Lewis may be 89-years-old, but the World War II vet is also, as the headline goes, “Armed & dangerous.”

He demonstrated it four years ago, when Brandon Johnson entered the store shooting. Johnson fired one shot, Lewis answered with five. Somehow neither got hurt.Arthur Lewis

What happened several days ago was scarier than the 2010 confrontation, Lewis says. He was working behind the counter when Lennard Jervis thrust a gun at him; Lewis grabbed it and brought out his .38; the two grappled with and shot at each other. Lewis did okay. Jervis ended up taking four bullets to the chest and two more to the arm and leg before finally lurching to the exit and not getting very far. He is expected to survive his wounds.

Lewis’s girlfriend says: “People think because he’s 89, he’s frail. That irritates me because he’s anything but.”

“It’s a hazardous business,” says Lewis. “I thought he was going to kill me as soon as I saw the gun. I thought, ‘This time, I’m dead.’”

The right to bear arms isn’t just for geese hunting and target practice. Sometimes it really comes in handy.

Sometimes it’s life or death.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access

Once Around

State election laws don’t always make it easy for candidates, particularly challengers. Many of these laws are unduly restrictive, especially regarding ballot access.

But some “restrictions” are just what the people want.

Just ask Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky.

Paul seems to have his sights set on the White House. But he’s a sitting senator, and 2016, the next presidential election outing, is when he would normally run for re-election. So he’s made it clear that he’d like to retain his spot in the Senate as well as run for the Top Banana position.

But there’s this snag. Kentucky (like some other states) does not allow for one person’s name to appear twice on the same ballot.

Is that a good law? I think so. It breaks up some of the power of incumbency.

And it seems a wrong that the election of a U.S. Senator could be moot and a new election be held when far fewer voters are likely to cast ballots.

Given that it is the voters who have most to lose, in a sense, you can see why Kentuckians like their law. According to a new poll, 54 percent of Republicans, 57 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Democrats oppose changing the law to allow for Rand Paul to run for both. A retired farmer seems to speak for a lot of Kentuckians: “I can see the dilemma,” the man is quoted in the Courier-Journal. “If you’re going to do it, go all the way.”

Of course, Sen. Paul will still be able to test the presidential waters before deciding to bite the bullet. But a time for choosing will come.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Henry George

Henry GeorgeI am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies.

Categories
Thought

Yves Guyot

The Law of Supply and demand was not promulgated in any code. Its power comes from elsewhere. It imposes itself upon mankind in as implacable a way as hunger and thirst. We furnish fresh demonstrations of its truth, whether willingly or not, even while we imagine ourselves to be violating it. If the Socialist excommunicates and abuses the economist, who formulates this law, he should also hold Newton responsible for all the tiles that fall on the heads of passers-by, and should declare that if some poor wretch, in throwing himself from a window, kills himself, it is the fault of those physicists who have discovered and taught the law of gravitation.

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Buy Whoppers to Oppose Whoppers

U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown has proposed a boycott of Burger King. Try Wendy’s or White Castle instead, he urges.

Why? Are the Burger King burgers moldy now?

No, they’re still delectable. In fact, I’m stepping up my patronage of Burger King thanks to Brown’s attack. All who seek to productively improve their lives should follow suit.

For that’s the actual crime here. Honest self-improvement. Contrary to Brown, though, it deserves no chastisement.

Burger King has been caught pursuing an opportunity to improve its offerings and bottom line. It is buying Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee-and-donut chain. It will also be moving its headquarters to Canada.

Why?

Because our federal government taxes corporate earnings more heavily than many other countries do, the Burger King move north means a smaller tax bite. More money for the shareholders.

And, thus, less money for Uncle Sam.

Fine with me. I don’t begrudge an honestly earned dollar. And our government’s wastrel ways  won’t be cured by ever-higher taxes on us. But if politicians fear the exodus of U.S. firms for tax reasons, why not eliminate that motive by reducing corporate taxes?

Brown gestures in the direction of lower taxes but also demands a “global minimum tax rate” to thwart absconders. Nah. Chuck the stick. Just use the carrot. Slash what U.S.-based firms must pay and American firms will stay.

Slash them enough and maybe successful foreign firms will move HQs here, too.

Entice the economic titans who benefit us so much; don’t chase them away. Instead of badgering with boycotts, inspire with freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall

Getting to Ballot in Illinois

My business is citizen initiatives. So I notice when courts — at the behest of corrupt politicians like hyper-incumbent Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan — block a popular initiative to limit the power of corrupt politicians.

Politicians like, say, Mike Madigan.

The initiative would have forced state lawmakers to step down after eight years in the legislature. Although the petition to post the question earned way more than enough valid signatures, a judge kicked the question off the ballot. Then an appeals court refused to reverse; and, finally, the state supreme court let a ballot deadline pass without reviewing the case. All this obstructionism was rationalized by a derelict misreading of the state constitution and motivated by a desire to preserve and protect Illinois’s political class, which is as bankrupt morally as the state is fiscally.

Another attempt at ballot-blocking proved less successful. It seems that “private detectives” (or maybe just thugs) hired by somebody in Illinois’s GOP establishment tried to intimidate signatories of petitions to get the Libertarian candidate for governor on the ballot. These visibly-armed creeps pushed signers to disavow their signatures in hopes of keeping the LP candidate off the ballot. So far it hasn’t worked, and the Illinois Libertarian Party has filed criminal complaints in the matter.

From these cases I conclude that things are pretty rotten with respect to the state of representative government in the state of Illinois.

Thankfully, voters there want a change. They just have to keep pushing for it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Henry George

Henry GeorgeTo prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

Categories
links

Townhall: Looting Is Good?

The professors and intellectuals make the case for crime, in the wake of the Ferguson protests and their sideshows. Your Sunday dose of Common Sense at Townhall.com takes on these “experts.” Some irony may be involved.

Come back here for the evidence.