Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
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Virginia’s New Boss
Virginia’s previous governor, Bob McDonnell, faces a federal prosecution, along with his wife, Maureen, for “illegally accepting gifts, luxury vacations and large loans from a wealthy Richmond area businessman who sought special treatment from state government.”
With that high-profile scandal unfolding, legislators came to the capitol this year ready to enact reforms. One bill sought to prevent corruption by banning campaign contributions and/or gifts to the governor of more than $50 from any entity seeking a grant from the Governor’s Opportunity Fund.
That fund, with a current balance of $35 million, is designed to promote economic growth by allowing the governor to personally dole out cash or loans to assist various commercial enterprises that “maintain or create jobs in the state.”
Not hard to imagine how such a fund could be used, in reality, to reward only those who reward the governor . . . or his campaign. And so, even in a session marked by major partisan warfare including an ongoing budget stalemate, every legislator in the state House and Senate, whether Republican or Democrat, came together to vote in the affirmative for the bill.
Unanimous.
Last week, Terry McAuliffe, the new governor and old Clinton confidante, vetoed this reform. Before killing it, McAuliffe offered a lame excuse about keeping the applicants to his slush fund confidential. So much for his big talk about transparency.
With the legislation now dead, let’s try an even better idea. End the Governor’s Opportunity Fund. Zero it out. No governor should have a slush fund to shower millions of dollars on crony companies. No such program should exist.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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May 30, Goddess of Democracy and Freedom
On May 30, 1989, student demonstrators unveil a 33-foot high “Goddess of Democracy and Freedom” statue in Tiananmen Square.
Also on this day: Joan of Arc was executed — for heresy, and after much debate about her cross-dressing — by immolation in 1431; Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, poet and playwright, died under mysterious circumstances in 1593; Voltaire died in 1778, and his friends secretly buried him — against Catholic Church policy — in the abbey of Scellières in Champagne (his body was later disinterred and buried in Paris by the order of the National Assembly of France).
Can we agree to tolerate disagreement?
Swedish climatologist Lennart Bengtsson’s “defection” from an alleged climatological consensus has been greeted with hysteria from some colleagues. His sin was joining the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which challenges the received wisdom.
The alleged scientific consensus is that mankind, in its industrial phase, is not only a cause but the pivotal cause of recent global warming/“climate change.” Also that our carbonic effusions are triggering not mild, normal, nothing-to-panic-about global climate variation but imminently catastrophic variation.
Is it okay to dispute these and related hypotheses?
Debate about complex scientific contentions isn’t a bad thing. New knowledge is gained both by positive investigation and by correcting errors and misinterpretations. One does not abet scientific inquiry by treating any challenges to a favored explanation as per se illicit, regardless of evidence or argument.
But Bengtsson reports that he has been subjected to enormous pressure “from all over the world that has become virtually unbearable to me . . . I see therefore no other way out . . . than resigning from GWPF. I had not been expecting such an enormous world-wide pressure . . . from a community that I have been close to all my active life.”
What’s the message? “Regardless of your reasons or credentials, don’t dare deviate from our ‘consensus,’ at least not publicly — or else we’ll make your life very very hard.” Whatever the motives and goals here, they have nothing to do with either the methodological or the social requirements of science.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Dr. Judith Curry
My main conclusion from reading the [National Climate Assessment] report is this: the phrase ‘climate change’ is now officially meaningless. The report effectively implies that there is no climate change other than what is caused by humans, and that extreme weather events are equivalent to climate change.
Knowledge is the conformity of the object and the intellect.
It’s like jumping from ice floe to ice floe while being shot at. Great if you can reach the next slab of ice while the shooters pause to reload. But then what?
Having been caught targeting right-leaning applicants for tax-exempt status, the IRS decided to clear up the “ambiguity” in rules for tax-exempt organizations that had “led” to this “confusion.” The solution, they decided, should be to make it impossible for a tax-exempt organization that ever mentions political candidates or elections to avoid getting into trouble with the IRS.
No. What Americans needed post-scandal is what we have needed all along: more restrictions on the government, not on our freedom to speak out.
Persons of all political stripes saw the danger in the Draconian new rules IRS was proposing, resulting in an unprecedented 150,000 public comments — mostly negative. So the IRS is backing down for now . . . but says it will try again.
Not everyone is happy about the reprieve.
“This delay is deeply disappointing and a real setback for democracy[!!] and faith in government[!!!],” says Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. “The only hope we have is when the IRS goes back, they don’t succumb to any form of political pressure and enact a very tough rule that will equally curtail liberal and conservative groups.”
“Only hope” for what? Equal-opportunity repression?
It bodes ill that any major political figure could be so open about wishing to stomp on our freedom of speech.
The battle for our basic rights is far from over.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Taney challenges Abe’s suspension of HC
On May 27, 1863, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issued Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in Maryland, the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause. On May 25, John Merryman, a vocal secessionist, had been arrested in Cockeysville. Although military officials continued to arrest suspected Southern sympathizers, the incident led to a softening of the policy.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, has been all over the media discussing the VA scandal.
However, I can’t find Mr. Sanders reflecting on his own role in the fiasco.
Last September, Sanders argued, “The VA is making progress in reducing the disability claims backlog. I meet very often with General Shinseki, (and) with (VA Under Secretary) Allison Hickey to see the progress that they are making.”
Apparently Sanders, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, needs new glasses.
As the public and the president were discovering the depth and breadth of the scandal, the Vermont senator moved quickly to defend the VA: “The Veterans Administration provides very high-quality healthcare, period. It’s not perfect.”
“Not perfect” indeed.
Sanders also warned of “a rush to judgment,” noting emphatically, “We don’t know how many veterans died.”
As the scandal spread nationwide, the good senator . . . freaked out. “There is right now as we speak a concerted effort to undermine the VA,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
“What are the problems?” Sanders asked himself. “The problems is . . . you have folks out there now — Koch brothers and others — who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely.”
How possible future cuts might prevent the VA from getting the job done at present remains unclear.
On Thursday, Sanders blocked Senate consideration of HR 4031, which had passed the House by a whopping bi-partisan 390–33 vote. The bill would have given the VA Secretary the power to replace managers who weren’t producing for patients.
Senator, let our vets go . . . let them escape the bureaucracy to seek the care they deserve.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.