Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Yves Guyot

The Law of supply and demand was not promulgated in any code. Its power comes from elsewhere. It imposes itself upon mankind in as implacable a way as hunger and thirst. We furnish fresh demonstrations of its truth, whether willingly or not, even while we imagine ourselves to be violating it. If the Socialist excommunicates and abuses the economist, who formulates this law, he should also hold Newton responsible for all the tiles that fall on the heads of passers-by, and should declare that if some poor wretch, in throwing himself from a window, kills himself, it is the fault of those physicists who have discovered and taught the law of gravitation.
Yves Guyot, The Tyranny of Socialism (1894).

Today

Rome Fell

Odoacer, a German “barbarian,” ousted Romulus Augustus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire, thus ending that empire on September 4, 476 A.D.

Many common people did not notice a change.

Fourth Amendment rights

Marks of Tyranny

It pays to contest petty (as well as major) civil and criminal charges that your local and state governments lay against you. Sometimes you get off.

People have used some pretty “out there” arguments in their own defense. Example? Risk homeostasis in a speeding case. That was a stretch.

But this Michigan case, though it may seem odd, is as American as Apple pie.

Alison Taylor sued the city of Saginaw over her parking violation citations. Her argument? The Fourth Amendment.

You see, the municipality’s parking officer had used chalk to mark her (and others’) tires. If on a second round the officer sees a car with the mark at the right spot, showing that it had not moved in the allowed period — write up a ticket!

Ms. Taylor had accumulated 14.

So she and her lawyer argued that “using the chalk to mark her tires constituted an unreasonable search without a warrant.”

The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. This traditional method of enforcing parking rules was recognized as an infringement of the right of the people “to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

Trivial? The consequences may not be, as my source for this case, Greg Rasa of Autoblog, points out.

Dubious? Imagine a non-legal way to fight the chalk-mark method — non-officers chalking car tires with multiple marks indistinguishable from the officers’. Cities would object, of course, but their best case against such a practice would be the car owners’ case: defacement of private property.

Yes, if the saboteurs’ marks are defacement, so are the city’s.

Justifying the appellate court’s ruling.

Chalk one up for constitutionally guaranteed rights?

This is Common Sense. It’s Friday! I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 4th Amendment, courts, police, privacy, risk

Thought

Seneca

Qui grate beneficium accipit, primam eius pensionem solvit.

He who receives a benefit with gratitude, repays the first installment of it.
Seneca the Younger, De Beneficiis (On Benefits): Book 2, cap. 22, line 1.

Today

Dixy Lee Ray

On September 3, 1914, Dixy Lee Ray was born. Her stint as governor of the State of Washington was a controversial one, as she economized in startling ways, and proved largely unsympathetic to environmentalist politics. Indeed, she later wrote Trashing the Planet, which took on trendy “solutions” to environmental problems, based in no small part on her own experience and perspective as a scientist. She was an early critic of the developing “global warming” pseudo-“consensus.”

insider corruption term limits

On Glissando Skids

As corrupting as political power may be, not everyone is corrupted by it, at least not to the same grievous extent.

Yet, even if one starts out with some measure of integrity and good intentions, the longer one is entrenched in power, the more likely one is to lose one’s way. Little by little, and then in leaps and bounds, one goes along to get along, learning to appreciate the perks of power and the advantages of cooperating with party bosses, forgetting one’s desire to buck the establishment and always do the right thing.

Within just five years, formerly fiscally conservative U.S. Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, both Republicans “representing” Idaho, started swerving toward the abyss. Now they’re on glissando skids.

Bryan Smith, vice chair of the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee, observes the dispiriting trajectory in a recent commentary.

He cites New American’s Freedom Index, which assesses how well lawmakers work for “limited government, fiscal responsibility, national sovereignty, and avoiding foreign entanglements.”

Risch and Crapo slid from a rating of 95% and 95% in 2012 to 80% and 80% in 2015, 50% and 50% in 2018, and 35% and 30% in 2020. Both have so far gotten a score of 90% the first half of 2021, yet both also voted Yes to the recent $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” bill.

Smith remembers how both men once proudly opposed runaway government spending.

This is hardly new — or confined to Idaho. As a 1994 Cato Institute analysis concluded: “members of Congress become more pro-tax-and-spend the longer they serve in Washington.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags power, Senator Jim Risch, Senator Mike Crapo, spending, term limits

Thought

Aristotle

The Law is reason free from passion.
Aristotle, Politics, Book III, 1287a.32.

Today

Henry George

September 2 marks the 1839 birth of American economist and reformer Henry George. George is most famous for his 1879 treatise, Progress and Poverty, but made many other contributions, including advocacy of the secret ballot and his able economic policy polemic Protection or Free Trade (1886).

international affairs responsibility

The War Presidents’ Debacle

Post author By Redactor
Post date September 1, 2021
2 Comments on The War Presidents’ Debacle

Afghanistan, president, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden

President Biden yesterday called the now somewhat* completed withdrawal of U.S., Afghan and coalition soldiers and civilians an “extraordinary success,” arguing that “no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history.”

There were a reported 120,000 people airlifted out, but with 13 U.S. soldiers killed in last week’s suicide attack at the Kabul airport, along with three British nationals and more than 160 Afghans — let’s cancel any victory lap.

Still, I’m more with Mr. Biden than with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who made the case on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace that the occupation of Afghanistan was a complete success, making the pull-out (now over) a horrendous policy mistake.

McConnell’s case for a never-ending “Mission Accomplished” understates the costs in blood and treasure — by trillions of dollars, in part. Just like you would expect of a deficit-and-debt plotter.

“America’s longest war has been by any measure a costly failure,” argues David Rothkopf in The Atlantic, adding that “Joe Biden doesn’t ‘own’ the mayhem on the ground right now.” Instead, Rothkopf blames “20 years of bad decisions by U.S. political and military leaders.”

Rothkopf errs in letting Joe “The Buck Stops Here” Biden and the generals off the hook for the withdrawal. And gifting the enemy with a vast and sophisticated arsenal.

All four Afghanistan War presidents deserve blame, along with the war establishment, in government and out.

Remember: wars that cannot be won even with military victory on the battlefield should not be fought.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The Biden Administration continues to pledge they’ll work to get Americans left in Afghanistan out. However, in an ABC News interview a little more than a week ago, Biden had committed that, “If there’s American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out.”

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