We do not want to fritter away our short lives in chains, even if they are golden chains of prosperity and power.
Professor Kurt Huber of The White Rose pamphleteers, at trial on April 19, 1943. He was executed on July 13, 1943.
On February 20, 1991, in the Albanian capital Tirana, a gigantic statue of Albania’s long-time leader, Enver Hoxha, was brought down by mobs of angry protesters.
State Senator Kevin Priola, responsible for two of the bills, says he’s acting to stop climate change. To prevent the mass extinction of species, he claims.
One of his proposed statutes would outlaw new oil wells in Colorado after 2030. Another bill would, among other things, outlaw fracking from May through September unless drillers use special hard-to-get electric equipment. The same bill would also direct an agency to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled.
Another lawmaker’s bill would make it harder to produce new wells.
Priola explains that since 50,000 wells already operate in Colorado, his legislation would not much impair production. But Dan Haley, president of Colorado Oil & Gas Association, observes that the highest production of oil wells comes in their first 18 months. Within two years of the 2030 ban, then, the state’s oil industry would sharply decline.
We’re seeing this more and more. Bans and plans to ban gas-powered lawn mowers, gas-powered cars, gas, coal, oil. Lawmakers working to shut down civilization. Not all at once, but via ever faster and bigger Interim Steps.
Don’t they see that they too will be harmed when things are no longer permitted to function? Do they imagine that if they achieve all their industry-killing dreams, all the food, clothing, shelter, transportation, communication will continue just as smoothly and abundantly as ever?
Don’t they think about the day after tomorrow?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.
Sophie Scholl, testimony before the “People’s Court” (Volksgerichtshof) of Judge Roland Freisler (February 21, 1943). Search for more about their group, “The White Rose,” and their pamphlets, on this website.
February 19, 1942, was a sad day for constitutional rights, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas of the country as military zones. These zones were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps.
On this website we have covered government involvement in tech company censorship for a long time. Readers should not miss Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Mike Benz, who goes into significant detail, and with some new information and a perhaps-startlingly wide perspective:
I knew what I took upon myself and I was prepared to lose my life by so doing.
Hans Scholl’s explanation of his and his sister Sophie’s opposition to Germany regime. He and his sister were beheaded by the German government on February 22, 1943, having been found guilty of high treason for writing, producing and distributing political pamphlets.
On Feb. 18, 1943, Hans and Sophie Scholl, a brother and sister, were arrested at the University of Munich for secretly (or not so secretly) putting out leaflets calling on Germans to revolt against Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime.
In the previous year Hans had founded a group of students, who called themselves “The White Rose.” The group wrote and distributed six leaflets aimed at educated Germans. The leaflets made their way across Germany and to several other occupied countries. The Allies later dropped them all over the Third Reich.
In Thursday’s Common Sense, “Paid Invaders,” Paul Jacob discussed the U.S. taxpayers’ subsidies going to the ongoing illegal immigrants crossing the southern border. But the sheer size of the subsidies and handouts is hard to grasp. So consider just one state of the union, on the border with Canada, not Mexico, but which found a way to find the funds to help migrants who came up from the South.
“Washington State diverted over $400 million of federal relief funds to illegal aliens in 2023,” reports Anthony Brian Logan. “The money was taken from a COVID-19 fund and was not meant to shore up migrants’ inability to make ends meet. Under this program, migrants who were not entitled to stimulus money due to their illegal status were given checks of up to $3,000 each. An estimated 300,000 illegal aliens may have been given cash through this method in Washington State alone.”
An article in The New York Post, linked to by Mr. Logan, places the 2023 total of hijacked funds at $60 million less:
A new report is highlighting how federal COVID funds were used in Washington state to give $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants who were ineligible to receive federal economic impact payments during the pandemic due to their immigration status.
The report, by the Economic Policy Innovation Center (EPIC), points to money administered by the Coronavirus State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (SLFRF), which was created by the American Rescue Plan Act and was intended to help state and local governments with their response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Washington state received $4.4 billion in funding overall from that program.
The report from the group, which calls for a smaller federal government, highlighted how $340 million in funding went to a program that sent $1,000 checks to illegal immigrants in the state.
Adam Shaw, “Washington state diverted $340M in federal COVID funds to migrants,” New York Post, February 3, 2024.
The program was announced in 2022, by the state’s Department of Health and Human Services, expressing the usual press-release pride:
“The DSHS Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance has been honored and humbled to work with our community partners over the past two years to support the WA COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund,” said Sarah Peterson, who heads the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance. “This is a tremendous opportunity for DSHS to help people who may have been left out of other federal and state resources to address the economic impact of the pandemic.”
The agency’s goal is to get these resources into the hands of community members in a timely and thoughtful manner and has partnered with many different immigrant-led organizations to implement this fund effectively and safely.
“Washington COVID-19 Immigrant Relief Fund launches new application period Sept. 19-Nov. 14,” Medium, September 19, 2022.
In his discussion of the program, Anthony Brian Logan notes that the federal source of the hand-outs to migrants was, by law, disallowed for that purpose.
No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.
Anthony Trollope, The Bertrams (1859), Ch. 27.