On November 6, 1913, Mohandes K. Gandhi was arrested for participating in a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
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Gandhi Arrested
All semi-obscure (and not quite apposite) references to Seneca aside, Paul Jacob scoops out the ugly innards of today’s politics.
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Fyodor Dostoevsky
Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Idiot (1869).
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President John Hanson
On November 5, 1781, the second session of the United States in Congress Assembled began, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This “Second Confederation Congress,” as it is popularly known, ended on November 2, 1782.
And on that Fifth of November, 1781, John Hanson of Maryland (pictured above) was elected to serve as president of the United States in Congress Assembled. He would become the first president of Congress to serve a full one-year term as specified under the Articles of Confederation, for the second session of the Confederation Congress. Of course, this presidency was nothing like the presidencies under the Constitution. Hanson merely presided over Congress.
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony defied the law to vote, and was later fined $100.
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Following the Law
It’s official.
Well, it was already official because it was Pennsylvania law. And because the U.S. Supreme Court had confirmed it.
What is it? Election officials may not count mail-in ballots that are undated or incorrectly dated.
Official, yes, but now even more official.
On November 1, a week before the election, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that yes, election officials must follow Pennsylvania election law that says you can’t count undated or incorrectly dated ballots.
A voter who mails in a ballot is obliged to sign and date the outer envelope before sending it off. The court orders election officials to “refrain from counting any absentee and mail-in ballots received for the November 8, 2022, general election that are contained in undated or incorrectly dated outer envelopes.”
The ruling was issued in response to litigation initiated by the Republican Party, which has launched a slew of lawsuits around the country to combat shady election practices.
The court’s clarification is important. A problem loomed over the upcoming election. Pennsylvania’s secretary of state had been giving the go-ahead for officials to count ballots whether they’re dated properly or not . . . and to heck with election law and the SCOTUS. Until the ruling, county officials throughout Pennsylvania lacked consistent policies about how to handle bungled ballots.
Of course, when reasonable election rules are ignored, it’s easier to commit election fraud — notwithstanding the disingenuous claim advanced by some proponents of lackadaisical election procedures that fraud is either a vanishingly small problem or does not exist at all.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ludwig von Mises
Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.
Ludwig Edler von Mises, Die Gemeinwirtschaft: Untersuchungen über den Sozialismus — “Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis” (1922), Part V : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § V : Destructionism, Ch. 33 : The Motive Powers of Destructionism, p. 440.
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Will Rogers
On November 4, 1879, American humorist Will Rogers was born. Aside from his cowboy act, and his work as an actor in Hollywood, he gained much fame for being a topical comedian “just reporting what’s in the papers.” Among his most famous quips? “Be thankful we’re not getting all the government we’re paying for.”
They know. They aren’t complete idiots. When enemies of the market routinely try to stop people from earning a living through restrictions like minimum wage laws and arbitrary licensing to thwart such dangerous activities as hair-braiding, few are ignorant of the disastrous consequences.
Case in point?
The Biden administration is on the verge of using a federal version of California’s AB5 law to mass-slaughter the opportunities of millions of gig workers and freelancers. The administration hasn’t managed to do it legislatively. So it’s trying to inflict the damage with a Department of Labor regulation.
The idea is to stop companies from classifying independent contractors as independent contractors. Passed in California a few years ago, AB5 prohibited companies and many contractors from working with each other unless companies took them on as regular employees.
To avoid the costs of doing that, many companies instead simply ended their relationships with hundreds of thousands of gig workers. For example, Rev, a transcription service, stopped working with all freelancers residing in California.
California lawmakers knew how destructive AB5 would be when they passed it — proof-positive being the many exceptions for politically connected groups that were stipulated as part of the law. AB5 has now been repealed and replaced by AB2257, which increases the varieties of worker exempt from the new requirements. But it still leaves many other people, like California-based truckers, in legal limbo.
It’s okay though, because all truckers do is deliver the stuff that all the rest of us need to survive.
This madness should not be imposed on everybody throughout the country.
And certainly not by back-room bureaucratic machinations.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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William Graham Sumner
What we prepare for is what we shall get.
William Graham Sumner, “War,” (1903).
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Army Disbands
On November 3, 1783, the American Continental Army — its mission fulfilled — was disbanded.
On November 3, 1969, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon made a television and radio appearance, asking the “silent majority” to join him in solidarity on the Vietnam War effort.