On August 26, 1920, the 19th amendment to United States Constitution took effect, giving women the right to vote in every state of the union.
Prior to the passage of this amendment, 15 states allowed women to vote. Most of them were west of the Mississippi. The territory of Wyoming was the first to extend voting rights to women in 1869.
ACA 1 would shrink the percentage of voters who must approve certain tax increases from two thirds to 55 percent in cases where the money would purportedly be used for infrastructure or public housing.
Passage would further erode the legacy of Prop 13, which in addition to cutting taxes, limiting tax increases, and requiring a two-thirds legislative majority to increase state taxes, also imposed a two-thirds threshold for voter approval for special local taxes.
In 2000, voters accepted a lower threshold for approval of school bonds — 55 percent instead of two thirds — enabling billions more in property taxes.
That’s bad enough, but things could easily get worse.
Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association observes that if enacted, ACA 1 would be used to raise taxes repeatedly in local elections by dint of dubbing all government spending “infrastructure.”
The infrastructure exemption is an innovation of the 2023 version of the bill (the tricky tricksters never stop).
Moreover, if passed, the amendment would take effect immediately. “Billions of dollars in tax hikes will start that much faster.”
Coupal stresses that the new exactions would be added to property tax bills “above and beyond Prop 13’s one percent cap” on property taxes.
ACA 1 keeps getting reintroduced and, so far, keeps getting killed off, like the mad killer in a teen slasher movie. Only to be revived for the sequel.
Kill it again.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Il n’y a point de plus cruelle tyrannie que celle que l’on exerce à l’ombre
des lois et avec les couleurs de la justice, lorsqu’on va, pour ainsi dire,
noyer des malheureux sur la planche même sur laquelle ils s’étaient sauvés.No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice — when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
On August 25, 1945, the Cold War began (some say) when, ten days after World War II ended with the Japanese surrender, armed supporters of the Chinese Communist Party killed Baptist missionary Capt. John Birch (1918-1845).
Mr. Richburg doesn’t bother to name any of these “expanded personal freedoms” to which he refers. I’m sure the Chinese people are wondering as well.
Richburg is certainly not alone in his delusion; one regularly hears this inane idea suggesting some sort of political legitimacy and justification for the CCP’s totalitarian state. In fact, in this same Post feature assessing China’s current economic woes, columnist Catherine Rampell likewise declared, “For generations, the Chinese Communist Party has held on to power partly through an implicit bargain with its citizenry: Sacrifice your freedoms, and, in exchange, we’ll guarantee ever-rising living standards.”
But there simply is no such bargain. No contract. No political compact between the Chinazi rulers and the Chinese people. That’s a figment of fuzzy Western elitist — and Rousseauvian — fantasy.
The CCP doesn’t hold power via demonstrated public support. Their power flows from the barrel of a gun, as notorious mass-murderer Chairman Mao acknowledged long ago. Not to mention fear of today’s Tiger chair.
Pretending otherwise only enables the tyranny.
Know your enemy. And if you know the Chinese state, you know it is your enemy and an enemy of the Chinese people.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ludwig Edler von Mises, Nation, State and Economy (1919; 1983, Leland B. Yeager, trans.), p. 252.
Bourgeois civilization has built railroads and electric power plants, has invented explosives and airplanes, in order to create wealth. Imperialism has placed the tools of peace in the service of destruction. With modern means it would be easy to wipe out humanity at one blow.
In 1814 on this day, British forces burnt down the White House. Unlike audience reaction to the 1996 movie Independence Day (pictured), there was no widespread cheering among Americans for the building’s destruction.
One year later, the modern Constitution of the Netherlands received its empowering signatures.
August 24 birthdays include that of British anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce (1759-1833), Argentine literary genius Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), and French historian and author of a magisterial study of the rise of capitalism in Europe, Fernand Braudel (1902-1985),
On August 24, 1682, William Penn received an area of territory to add it to his colony of Pennsylvania. The area comprises, today, the state of Delaware.
This, in response to a case where anti-abortion protesters were arrested for chalking the words “Black Pre-born Lives Matter” on a Washington, D.C., street back in 2020.
Emma Camp makes clear, in her Reason coverage of the ruling, that the case is not as simple as it may sound in the headlines. “While writing chalk messages on public streets and sidewalks is considered vandalism in D.C., protest leaders had an earlier conversation with a police officer in which he ‘explained that he believed Mayor Bowser had effectively opened up the District’s streets for political markings.’”
Nevertheless, during the protest, “police told demonstrators that they would be arrested if they painted or chalked any messages.” Two individuals in the pro-life protest defied police order and scribbled their message in chalk.
It’s actually a bigger issue than just an altercation during a protest. The police in D.C. had not merely looked the other way, allowing helter-skelter displays of “Black Lives Matter” graffiti, but the city government had actually gotten in on the act and messaged “Black Lives Matter” on the streets itself — in bold paint.
This obviously sends a message to disagreeing citizens: we are on this side, not that.
As Judge Rao insists, “The government may not play favorites in a public forum — permitting some messages and prohibiting others.”
She interprets this injunction as pertaining to the First Amendment, but it goes much deeper than that, reaching to the core idea of a rule of law, and equality of treatment under it.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever.
Excerpt from The Gospel of Philip as translated by M. Meyer, in The Nag Hammadi Scriptures (2007), p. 163
On August 23, 1989, two million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania stood on the Vilnius-Tallinn road, holding hands, as part of the “Singing Revolution” that helped set the Soviet Union to its fateful implosion.