Categories
crime and punishment insider corruption

Blood Sport Justice?

The trial of Dr. Annette Bosworth has been postponed from next week to May 18. She faces 24 years in a South Dakota prison on 12 felony counts of election fraud and perjury, as well as the loss of her medical license if convicted on even one charge.

Pursuant to her run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, Dr. Bosworth had gathered petitions, including at her office. When she traveled to the Philippines to care for those injured in a typhoon, folks back at her office continued to sign six petitions — 37 people in all, including her sister.

Dr BosworthWeeks later, the doctor signed an affidavit as the circulator of those petitions, stating that she witnessed each signature being affixed. Not true, but she did know each signer. Seems more of a mistake than a criminal act. Having garnered more than enough signatures to meet the requirement, she obviously wasn’t someone trying to cheat her way onto the ballot.

Still, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley pursues a case designed to crush not only her future in politics but also her career as a doctor.

For me, this story hits close to home. Seven years ago, a state AG launched a political war against two activists and me, the “Oklahoma 3.” Though eventually vindicated, it was scary.

The worst part? The impact on my wife and three daughters.

I know Annette is going through the same fright with her husband and three boys.

Putting Annette Bosworth, a caring doctor, a loving mother and a good, decent person, in prison — or ruining her medical career — serves only one purpose: to intimidate those people, like the doctor, who might dare step into the political arena against entrenched officials.

Politics in America isn’t supposed to be like this.

Let’s use the time between now and May 18 to help stop this injustice.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Action: Help Dr. Bosworth Today!

Categories
links

Action: Help Dr. Bosworth

Sometimes it is easy to help — help an important cause. Dr. Annette Bosworth‘s is such a cause.

 

Dr. Bosworth

Here is contact information for Attorney General Marty Jackley:

Ask him to do the right thing.

PLEASE DISMISS ALL FELONY CHARGES AGAINST DR. ANNETTE BOSWORTH.

Phone: (605) 773-3215

Email: atghelp@state.sd.us

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MartyJackley

Background on the case:

To contribute to the doctor’s legal defense:

Annette Bosworth Legal Support Fund

P.O. Box 130

Tea, SD 57064

For information: bosworthlegalfund@gmail.com

Categories
Today

Reagan lifts domestic oil controls

On Jan. 28, 1981, President Ronald Reagan lifted the federal government’s remaining domestic petroleum price and allocation controls in the United States, helping to end the 1970s energy crisis and begin the 1980s oil glut.

Categories
Today

Molinari died, January 28

On January 28, 1912, Belgian economist Gustave de Molinari died. One of the last major economists of the French Liberal School, heir to Frederic Bastiat, and a prominent advocate of laissez faire, Molinari’s last book, “The Society of To-morrow” (the only one of his many books to be translated into English in his day) envisioned a future of extremely limited government, and argued against the growing tide of socialism and war that was becoming all too apparent as the future of Europe.

Categories
responsibility

Learning from Defeat

Coach Michael Anderson and the girls on his team did too well.

At least according to officials at Arroyo Valley High School in San Bernardino, who suspended him for “running up” the 161-2 score.

Here we go again.

Anderson is, alas, apologetic. But there’s nothing morally wrong with winning — or with losing, either — an honest basketball game. No matter what the margin.

And it’s vicious to teach either adults or kids that they should shoot for less than their best. Should kids also be telling their bosses, twenty years down the line, that they’re deliberately doing third-rate work this month so that less able co-workers (or competitors) won’t feel so bad?

Bloomington Coach Dale Chung says people should not feel sorry for his team, but for the Arroyo team, which “isn’t learning the game the right way.”

No, coach. To accept responsibility for a bad loss without casting blame, then to work to improve, takes grit, persistence and grace. It’s something we all must learn to do in life. It’s the real magic of sport. And easy wins don’t teach us that. Hard losses do. Why are you communicating the opposite?

If you’re doing very badly at an important task — figure out how to do better. Don’t assume that you should be accorded a fraudulent “better” regardless of actual effort and achievement; don’t chastise winners and call them “unethical” for doing their very best; don’t teach your charges that winners should hobble themselves out of “fairness.”

And if you’re a winner? Don’t apologize.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
meme

On This Day: January 27, End to Military Draft

The day the U.S. military draft ended:

To download the full-size version of this image, click the thumbnail image below to open in new window.

 

Categories
Today

Draft ends

On Jan. 27, 1973, President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of Defense, Melvin R. Laird, announced an end to the military draft in favor of a system of voluntary enlistment. Since 1973, the United States armed forces have been known as the All-Volunteer Force. However, the Selective Service System, the federal agency that would administer a military draft, continues to be funded and American males continue to be forced to register for the draft.

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Today

Auschwitz liberated

On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp built by the Nazis.

Categories
Thought

Alexander Cockburn

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Experience Denied

Jan Ellison is grateful for the low-wage jobs she had as a kid.

“The difference from the way my own children are being raised is that I was acutely aware of the financial burden of these [educational and other] pursuits. . . . I made money of my own from age 11 onward. I had a paper route. I cleaned houses and swimming pools. I took clerical temp jobs. . . . I can’t say that any of this was important work, but the act of doing it mattered.”

She learned to “work for the ticket” that would take her to better things.

That minimum wage laws make it harder to gain such experience is a problem raised not by Ellison but by a Cafe Hayek reader, Mike Wilson, who calls her memoir “as powerful a case against raising the minimum wage as I have encountered.” (Strictly speaking, against establishing or enforcing any wage-rate floor.)

Wilson’s sensible point is that when you’re just starting out in the work force, you must develop the habits and skills needed to do a job well and to then go beyond it. These include punctuality, mastering procedures, accepting corrections with grace, being civil, staying productive and careful when you’re tired, and more.

What you can bring immediately to a job is willingness to learn what’s necessary. But the higher your pay must be before you’ve made yourself worth that pay, the harder for employers to give you the chance to make yourself worth it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.