Common Sense with Paul Jacob

The Milei Option

Argentina, socialism, communism, Milei, president, economy

Argentina’s new president promised to take a chainsaw to the high taxes and controls that have been killing the country’s freedom and prosperity.

He has had successes. One of his decrees removed rent controls, and as a result the supply of rentals has jumped and rents have dropped.

But Milei cannot simply issue decrees to free up markets. He’s got to go through the legislature. And Argentina’s Senate recently rejected a mammoth Milei-issued emergency decree to deregulate the economy apparently in one fell swoop—revising or killing some 300 regulations.

The Financial Times reports that Milei’s coalition, La Libertad Avanza, “controls less than 10 per cent of Senate seats.” Many of the “centrist” senators could have helped pass Milei’s reforms over the objections of the adamantly leftist members. But these centrists profess to have constitutional reservations about the decree.

The real problem is probably that there is still a very large constituency for the subsidies and grift that have impoverished so many Argentinians.

The decree remains in effect until the House votes on it too. Milei’s administration is negotiating with the lawmakers of that chamber and with others who may have an impact on their vote.

If President Milei loses this fight in the near term, he must keep reminding voters why he can’t do more to lift them out of poverty and serfdom. His election to the presidency was a huge political change. But it’s not the only one Argentina needs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Argentina, Communism, economy, Milei, president, socialism

Thought

The Hammer

We are a nationwide organization of people looking for clues.
Owen “The Hammer,” of the “Hammered Out” YouTube channel, in “‘Twin Peaks’ Explained, Part Three: Cooper Cooper Cooper,” describing the “Twin Peaks” fanbase. The next line is “We are a federal bureau of investigation.”

Today

Sunflower & Hawaii

March 18 marks the ninth anniversary of the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, wherein students occupied the Taiwanese legislature to block a trade agreement between Taiwan and China, which the public came to believe gave too much economic leverage to China, a power that regularly threatens to invade the free and democratic island nation.

The event awakened a deep concern about China’s dangerous encroachment as well as further impressing a “Taiwanese identity.” The protest may have influenced the 2014 Umbrella movement in Hong Kong as well as leading to electoral victories in Taiwan for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in 2016 and again in 2020. This website salutes the Sunflower Student Movement and hopes this date may be long remembered as the day the modern world first stood up and said “No” to totalitarian China.

On March 18, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill enabling Hawaii to become the 50th state in the Union. The official day of statehood was set for (and became) August 21 of that year.

The statehood signing occurred exactly 85 years after The Kingdom of Hawaii formalized its treaty with the U. S. establishing exclusive trading rights.

Update

Dangerous Drugs, Dangerous Wars on Drugs

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 17, 2024
1 Comment on Dangerous Drugs, Dangerous Wars on Drugs

The dangers of the War on Drugs has been a long-running theme here at Common Sense with Paul Jacob. And some times it is incumbent upon us to note that the drugs governments prohibit are often not as dangerous as proclaimed.

But no drug lacks dangers.

Indeed, for the past three years, the main Dangerous Drug theme has been a government-approved, government-subsidized, government-mandated drug, “the vax.”

With the rise of homelessness and simultaneous rise of drug de-criminalization in many states, the recreational drug issue has come back. And some people have taken the drum beat of old-timey Progressive Era drug alarmism, as reported by Jacob Sullum, Reason, “Because ‘Marijuana Is Dangerous,’ Inveterate Drug Warriors Say, ‘Legalizing It Was a Mistake’” (March 15, 2024):

Barr and Walters complain that marijuana legalization has “created the false perception that the drug is ‘safe.’” They think refuting that false perception is enough to justify a return to prohibition. Because “marijuana is dangerous,“ they say, “legalizing it was a mistake.” But the question is not whether marijuana is “safe”; it is whether marijuana’s hazards justify the use of force to stop people from consuming it. Barr and Walters fail to seriously grapple with that question even in utilitarian terms, and they completely ignore moral objections to criminalizing conduct that violates no one’s rights.

We will no doubt be talking about this issue a lot more in the months and years to come, especially if teetotaling Donald Trump returns to office.

Thought

John Milton

Who overcomes
By force, hath overcome but half his foe.
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book One (1667).

Today

Wartime

selective service, conscription, draft, lottery

On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”

On March 17, 1941, the U.S. Selective Service held its first lottery for the draft, in preparation for World War II. (Image, above, from the Morning Oregonian, from that year.)

Update

West Virginia Citizens

The idea that non-citizens should vote in America’s elections has gained ground among Democrats. But, as reported here earlier — see, for instance, “Alien Nation Capital” (March 7, 2023) and “Blue Boston Democracy” (March 9, 2024) — the idea is being beaten back. Take the case of West Virginia:

A House of Delegates resolution that would create an amendment to the state Constitution ensuring only United States citizens can vote in West Virginia elections is now with the state Senate.

House Joint Resolution 21 passed on a 96-0 vote February 6. It was introduced February 7 in the state Senate and sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee before it would go to the Senate Finance Committee.
Chris Dickerson, ”Proposed amendment to add U.S. citizenship to W.Va. voting requirement passes House,” West Virginia Record (February 7, 2024).

A co-sponsor of the State Senate’s version of the bill, State Sen. Mike Stuart (R-Kanawha), is quoted making a commonsense argument: “As an American citizen, I don’t vote in other countries’ elections, and they shouldn’t vote in ours.”

Thought

Mike Stuart

While I support legal immigration, no one likes line skippers at Disney World or the border. Legal citizens who are here pursuant to our laws should have the right to vote — no one else.
West Virginia State Senator Mike Stuart, as quoted in “Proposed amendment to add U.S. citizenship to W.Va. voting requirement passes House,” West Virginia Record (February 7, 2024).

Today

Belated Confirmation

On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.

James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.

education and schooling ideological culture

Kids Paid to Propagandize

Pravda, propaganda, education, government spending

“You get paid good.”

So said one student when asked “Why should students join CFJ?”

How well-paid? $1,400, for learning to fight for “racial justice” and “social justice.”

Parrot left-wing propaganda, that is.

The activist group Californians for Justice has paid at least 78 public high school students a total of around $100,000 to take CFJ’s ideological training. Another $20,200 has gone to parents for participating.

The training apparently does not include lessons in independent thinking or assessing alternative viewpoints, such as the view that “social justice” is typically a euphemism for collectivist injustice.

One teacher, who preferred to remain anonymous lest she lose her job, told The Free Press that it’s helpful to know what students think “would help them learn better, but” the students were “obviously reading scripts that have words that they don’t know how to say.” One trainee advised this teacher that students would “come to class on time if we built relationships with them.”

Another teacher in the district, agreed that “CFJ is not helping students find their own voices. . . . They’re teaching them parroting . . . the exact opposite of how you empower children.”

The focus on “racial justice” is manifested in CFJ’s own recruiting: its website reports that CFJ has “trained hundreds of youth of color in Long Beach to be community leaders and organizers.” Why only “of color”?

The training is not funded by strictly voluntary donations, of course. Long Beach Unified School District has been subsidizing it, using taxpayer dollars. The district has already given CFJ nearly $2 million.

The whole operation stinks to high heaven. But they’re “paid good.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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