“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.”
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Orange Revolution
On Nov. 22, 2004, in what became known as the Orange Revolution, massive protests erupted across the Ukraine after charges that the Nov. 21 presidential run-off election between candidates Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych was rigged by the authorities in favor of the latter. Ultimately, Ukraine’s highest court annulled the election and a new vote reversed the result.
Surprise, surprise — the so-called Super Committee isn’t very super.
It appears that the august micro-body of solons will fail to come to an agreement to reduce the federal deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next ten years, not in any combination of new revenue or spending “cuts” by today’s effective deadline.
On the bright side, given the nature of the likeliest possible agreement this committee would conceive, its failure sounds like the best possible result.
We’re now over $15 trillion in debt, running a deficit of $1.5 trillion this year alone. Still, the Super Committee couldn’t sop up even 80 percent of the red ink they’re spilling just this year. Not even spread out over the decade.
It gets worse. “I think we need to be honest about it,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul pointed out yesterday on CNN. “Spending is still rising under any of these plans. We’re only cutting proposed increases in spending.”
“The curve of spending in our country is going up at about 7.5 percent a year,” Sen. Paul went on to explain. “If you were to freeze spending for ten years, no cuts . . . they would call that a $9 trillion cut.”
So, as we face a debt crisis, the Super Committee couldn’t even manage to lessen their planned massive increases in spending.
Or talk straight with the American people.
Why? Perhaps because official Washington knows that spending is the real source of their power.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Suffragettes storm Parliment
On Nov. 21, 1911, British suffragettes stormed Parliament in London. Two hundred and twenty women and three men were arrested and received prison sentences.
The true character of liberty is independence, maintained by force.
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Patrick Henry
“Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.”
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New Jersey Bill of Rights
On Nov. 20 1789, New Jersey became the first state to ratify the Bill of Rights. New Jersey’s action was followed by the other states making the first 10 amendments to the Constitution the law of the land and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence.
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Video: You’re not the boss of me
The first in a series, “Common Sense Principles”:
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Gettysburg Adress
On Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln delivered a 272 word speech to dedicate a military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. His “Gettysburg Address” ended with the hopeful appeal “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
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Thurgood Marshall
“Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society.”