Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
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John Adams
Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order.
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt” goes the old saying. It’s a message completely unappreciated by the folks producing MSNBC’s Lean Forward spots, featuring various network stars spouting lame political talking points.
Go figure — in place of paid advertisements from real customers, the propaganda vignettes air frequently.
Months ago, I took issue with MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry for saying in one spot that “we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.”
She was arguing for higher taxes so government can spend more money on education. I was anxious we not replace Mommy and Daddy with Big Brother.
Harris-Perry is back for Round Two.
“Americans will always want some level of inequality,” she informs us, “because it’s a representation of a meritocracy.” Then the Tulane professor reassuringly adds, “People who work hard and sacrifice and save their money and make major contributions: we think that they should earn a little more. And they should have more resources. And that’s fine.”
No problem. You want to invent amazing new technology, develop life-saving drugs, create inspiring art, produce incredible abundance? Fine. For your “work” and “sacrifice” and frugality and “contributions” Melissa Harris-Perry is willing to permit you to have, well, “a little more.”
Emphasis on “little.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Independence Depends…
July 4, 2013
Some 237 years ago we made a clean break from the corrupt Old World of Europe. Fifty-six men risked it all to proclaim in the Declaration of Independence that
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . .
That sums it up — the grand total of good government. The rest is history. Freedom prospers. A country of empowered citizens works a whole lot better than a nation of subjects following a dictator.
But the most striking lesson of history is sadly the opposite of America’s July 4, 1776, birth. So much of the world has long lived under political oppression.
In Syria, more than 100,000 have lost their lives. Egypt is enjoying a military coup. People yearning to be free in China, Iran, Russia, and around the world, risk it all, arrest, torture, death, to speak out, to protest, to demand change.
I’m frustrated that there is so little I can do to help them.
And then it occurs to me: the best thing I can do, as an American, is to fight to keep our country all that it should be.
That’s no easy fight. As you well know.
Our governments from Washington, DC, to Hometown, USA, are out of control.
What’s the trouble? Spending. Debt. Government as ATM. Regular attacks on our property rights. The list runs long: Corruption. Arrogance. Nanny-statism. Those relentless assaults on any process of reform — from term limits to voter initiative, referendum and recall.
The philosophy running government for far too long now directly opposes the creed of 1776: The career politicians and the special interests believe in unlimited government, the idea that everything is permissible, anything is affordable (with your money), and nothing is sacred.
Disaster is on the horizon; the storm clouds of several coming catastrophes are dark and visible.
Politicians cannot stop the rain or the rise of the oceans. Though they act as if they can.
But all hope is not lost. I have faith in you. And in Common Sense.
Our political problems are absolutely solvable. But your work and commitment to freedom is ultimately the difference maker.
And I like to think Common Sense helps. By laughing at the sad absurdities. By voicing a little righteous indignation. And by using wit . . . whenever I can find it.
But mainly Common Sense does its job by connecting the outrages of unaccountable government with the great people all across America who stand up to defend their rights and the rights of their neighbors from politics gone wild.
Common Sense helps bring folks together to put citizens in charge and ensure that government is accountable to the people.
This Common Sense program is run on a shoestring. But even shoestrings cost money. We need to raise $52,000 to cover the program for the remainder of the year and to step up our marketing of the program.
On July 4, 1776, they pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
This July 4, 2013, I’m asking you to pledge some of your fortune to help keep Common Sense on the air, online and in your email Inbox — and to help us reach out to new audiences.
A number of readers and listeners have made a monthly pledge of $17.76. That’s a big help. Can you make the same pledge?
Or give a one-time contribution of $176 today? If you can, please consider donating $1,776. Or $10, $25, $100 — whatever amount works for you.
The antidote to government gone wild is simple: Common Sense. Help us keep it coming.
Happy Independence Day!
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John Adams’s last words
Independence forever. Thomas Jefferson survives.
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Dave Barry
Reporters aren’t stupid. We were standing around talking about which of the 900 health-care proposals that nobody’s going to accept is that day’s hot news. They know how silly that is. But that’s what they do. And if they don’t do it, they’ll get fired and someone else will do it. There’s tremendous pressure, if you’re in that system, to be involved and be interested and to care about it. There’ s no room to say, “This is stupid.”
When it comes to the full faith and credit of the Great State of Illinois, three major credit rating companies judge it the lowest in the union. The problem is that state politicians made pension promises they didn’t pay for and still aren’t.
How bad is it? Illinois’s total unfunded pension liability now tops $200 billion dollars – that’s roughly 250 percent of the state’s annual revenue. And growing.
But take, heart!
Gov. Pat Quinn just said that the massive pension shortfall will grow at a slower pace than previously thought, $5 million (instead of $17 million) a day.
Whoopee!
Folks at the Illinois Policy Institute are a little mystified by this pronouncement, though. The projection seems based more on wishes and hope than the straight dope. Besides, “this isn’t the first time the state has predicted that the growth in the state’s unfunded liability would slow,” Institute Senior Fellow Jonathan Ingram writes, noting that “the exact same prediction was made last year based on the actuarial projections made in fiscal year 2011. The systems predicted that the unfunded liability would grow by ‘only’ $5.3 billion in fiscal year 2012.”
The conventional wisdom blames too many years of the legislature shorting the annual payments to the five public-employee retirement funds.
Another way to look at it is simply that politicians are a whole lot better at promising than delivering, and defined benefit (rather than defined contribution) pensions are too tempting to trust to any politician.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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John Adams
The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more.
There’s something worse than “printing the myth”: printing government press releases and calling that “journalism.”
In those cases where folks in today’s news media do get their watchdog legs underneath them and yet their questions go unanswered, we citizens need be mightily concerned.
“The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment,” the Washington Post reported yesterday.
What did they refuse to comment on?
Wiretap stats.
Spokespeople for the Obama Administration have been repeating incessantly that we ought not worry about them grabbing all our phone and Internet and financial information and communications. After all, they tell us, to actually delve into that mountain of metadata to gaze at your personal stuff, the Feds have to lug a rubber stamp across town to a secret court to get approval.
But, lo and behold: the Administrative Office of the United States Court released figures on the number of federal wiretaps in criminal investigations, showing that wiretaps had spiked up 71 percent in 2012. Such wiretaps by state and local police increased only 5 percent.
The average number of federal wiretaps between 1997 and 2009 were 550. But in 2010 the number soared to 1,207. The number went down to 792 the next year and then shot back up to 1,354 last year — a 147 percent increase over the 1997-2009 period.
The report further notes that “A single wiretap can sweep up thousands of communications.” For instance, one wiretap in Los Angeles intercepted more than 185,000 calls — nine of every ten deemed non-incriminating.
Why worry about governments having too much power? Governments have been known to use the power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Gone are the happy-go-lucky days of buying water and then going home as though it were no big deal.
Elizabeth Daly learned the hard way. As she and her roommates walked toward her car in a dark parking lot, she was accosted by a crew of Virginia state Alcohol Beverage Control agents. One jumped on her car, another drew a gun. They thought she was lugging beer instead of LaCroix sparkling water.
You must be 21 to buy alcohol in Virginia. Daly is 20.
“They were showing unidentifiable badges . . . but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” she recalled. “I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car. . . . They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were . . . terrified.”
As they made their escape, the women dialed 911.
The ABC agents charged Daly with counts of assaulting and eluding enforcement officers. (“Assault” because the car brushed past agents as Daly drove away.) She had to spend a night in jail.
We hear so many stories of government-empowered bullies using the feeblest of excuses to terrify luckless innocents. Renegade T-shirt-wearers, estranged husbands of financial-aid scofflaws, barbers . . . and now water-buyers?
Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, says the ABC agents should be fired.
Yes. But when “law enforcement” thugs blatantly violate the rights of innocent persons they should be more than fired. They should be prosecuted. Let’s also shut down agencies that consistently threaten innocent people.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.