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.)
In the over 100-year history of citizen-initiated ballot measures in Arkansas, no initiative has ever qualified with signatures from only 15 counties. Zero. Moreover, to pass a statutory or constitutional initiative requires much more than merely gathering petition signatures; it mandates a majority vote of the people of Arkansas.
As for “out-of-state” special interests, the ballot issues referred by legislators last election received more such funding than the lone citizen-initiated measure.
There’s more to unpack.
“Changing” the state constitution is too easy? Well, HB-1419 hikes up the constitutional requirement that citizen petitions qualify in “at least 15 counties” to now 50 counties out of Arkansas’s 75 counties — a more than 300 percent increase.
You read that correctly. Mr. Underwood’s proposes to amend the constitution with a simple statute. Textbook unconstitutionality. Yet, that statute has now passed both houses of the legislature and Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says she will sign it.
In both 2020 and 2022, legislators placed constitutional amendments on the ballot to entice Arkansans to vote away their initiative and referendum power. Both times Natural State voters said no. One of the provisions defeated in 2020 would have increased the number of counties in which petitions must reach a threshold to 45.
After voters rebuffed legislators on those amendments, the politicians now decide to weasel their way around the constitutional restraint.
My, they’re real politicians now!
Legislators also declared “an emergency” so HB-1419 will immediately go into effect, because there’s an urgent need “to enhance and protect Arkansans’ voice in the ballot initiative and referendum process.”
Why not tell the Big Lie? They’ve told every other size.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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And all the time — such is the tragi-comedy of our situation — we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more “drive,” or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or “creativity.” In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
Clive Staples Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943).
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.
And neither was the recent hearing held by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It was so hard to watch I could hardly take more than a few minutes at a time.
Before the committee appeared two of the three heroes of Twitter Files fame: Michael Shellenberger, listed as “Author, Co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition”; and Matt Taibbi, Journalist.
Or, as Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) referred to them, “so-called journalists” — before she asked her first question.
Mr. Schellenberger testified about “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and Mr. Taibbi’s testimony was a less elaborate narrative about how he got involved in the Twitter censorship issue, and what he discovered in working through the files. But Del. Plaskett and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl) were far more interested in discrediting what they said by attacking their qualifications and methods, not dealing with the facts they found.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tx) was the worst. I hand it to you if you can stomach her full interrogation — I came away wondering mostly about her IQ.
My negative reactions? Hardly an outlier.
“Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment,” wrote Maud Maron in an op-ed for The New York Post explaining why she was walking away from the Democratic Party: the party has fully endorsed censorship. The Democrats at the hearing “questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded [Taibbi and Schellenberger] for not meekly accepting government knows best” — proving themselves “an embarrassment.”
It might be good for our side when our enemies make fools of themselves. But it’s hard to watch.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another . . . has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. . . . makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.
Immanuel Kant, Doctrine of Virtue as translated by Mary J. Gregor (1964), p. 93.
March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.
On the same date in 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful: the threatened coup d’état never took place.
“The U.S. government will guarantee all customer funds in Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) after a series of bad decisions and a run on deposits led to the bank’s collapse,” explains Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason.
Technically, the bank isn’t being bailed out. Its customers are. And that’s a lot more popular than bailing out banks directly. There are more bank customers who vote than bankers who vote — though there is probably more political donations from banks directly seeking banking policy “correctives” than bank customers doing the same. That’s almost apodictically true.
The most bizarre element? While the FDIC, the federal agency that insures depositors of this and similar banks, is designed to guarantee depositors’ capital up to a certain limited amount ($250,000, more or less), the regulatory triumvirate of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell, and FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg declare that “all depositors of this institution will be made whole.”
All.
Even the super-rich.
The key concept, here, is moral hazard — “The decision creates bad incentives for financial institutions and their customers” is how Ms. Brown puts it. We’ve been through all of this before. Is there really any question? The answers are in.
So, to the opening, Is it still capitalism if the capital is guaranteed? — if even Prince Harry’s fortune will be guaranteed — the answer is No.
Sorta.
It’s a special kind of capitalism. State-dominated capitalism; Neo-mercantilism; f***-ism. Use whichever term.
As we contemplate a profit-and-loss system without loss, and how the losses will be made up within the financial system, just remember that the federal government playing the role of Savior is not itself costless, and . . . its debt keeps growing. And the Ultimate Result of all this still looms.
Immoral hazard.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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We must picture hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives with the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.
Clive Staples Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942).
On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, ending the long practice of bimetallism by placing the United States Treasury — and banking and currency — on the gold standard.