Categories
Common Sense

All a‑Twitter About Kamala

Kamala Harris, statistics, pay gap, sexism,

The Obamas just gave Kamala Harris their endorsement. But before you rush to the Babylon Bee to get the taste of it out of your mouth, take a look at when Paul Jacob noticed a past connection between the pols: “Sen. Kamala Harris successfully bears aloft the banner of Barack Obama.” But by “banner” Paul meant “lie”! See “The 79¢ Lie,” October 8, 2019. See also “Why Lie?” May 22, 2019.

While the press does a full-​court praisefest for the Vice President, we all  pretty much remember that she was originally picked for the rôle not because anyone liked her but because she fit the intersectional boxes as a woman of color. Paul asked the multi-​million-​dollar question, though: “How important is the color of a person’s skin or their ancestry or the skin color of their spouse to that person’s fitness to be president?” Find out his answer in  “Birth of a Twitterstorm,” July 2, 2019.

Speaking of Twitter (now known as X), Kamala Harris once demanded that Donald Trump be thrown off the platform. See “Twitter Abuse,” October 4, 2019. Update: Trump was thrown off Twitter, following the events of January 6, 2021. He is now back on X. 

In “Into and Out of the Muck,” August 2, 2019, Paul Jacob wrote of the humiliating takedown of Senator Harris by Representative Tulsi Gabbard. How times have changed, however, now that Democratic Party insiders and the corporate media have anointed Harris as their party’s standard-​bearer for the presidency in the general elections next November.

Oh, and don’t forget The Babylon Bee on Barack Obama’s endorsement!

Categories
Thought

A. James Gregor

In 1934, Mussolini reiterated that capitalism, as an economic system, was no longer viable. Fascist economy was to be based not on individual profit but on collective interest.

A. James Gregor, The Ideology of Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (1969), p. 299, showing that fascism has always been the very opposite of a free-​trade, freedom-​of-​contract society.
Categories
Today

Royal Charter

On July 27, 1694, the Bank of England received a royal charter, beginning a long history of central banking in England. Subsequent inflationary booms and deflationary busts are usually considered “mysterious” by people connected with the bank.

July 27 births include that of Samuel Smith (1752), an American who served as a captain, major, and lieutenant colonel in the Continental Army, and later as a politician in several capacities in the state of Maryland; Hilaire Belloc (1870), author of a classic analysis of modern political governance, The Servile State; and American singer and songwriter Bobbie Gentry (1944).

Categories
judiciary local leaders

Arresting Speech Victory

Institute for Justice, Sylvia Gonzalez

I am happy that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the way it did, letting Sylvia Gonzalez proceed with her litigation.

But why was there even a question?

The case is Gonzalez v. Trevino. It started in 2019 when Gonzalez was elected to the council of Castle Hills, Texas. After winning, she led a petition drive to remove the city manager from office for abusing employees and neglecting his duties.

Soon the mayor and the police chief were falsely accusing her of tampering with a government record. She was arrested and jailed. But the district attorney dropped the charges after a day.

After Gonzalez resigned from the council because of “ongoing intimidation,” the Institute for Justice helped her file a federal lawsuit against the town for selective prosecution.

A lower court had gone along with the city’s request to dismiss the case. The rationale was that Gonzalez had not shown that others who trivially “mishandled a government petition” in exactly the same way Gonzalez did were not then arrested.

In reversing this decision, the Supreme Court said that “the demand for virtually identical … comparators goes too far.” Plausible evidence that Gonzalez had been singled out for retaliation, thus violating her First Amendment rights, was enough to let the case proceed.

It’s an important issue for all of us, not only for Sylvia Gonzalez. As IJ stresses, this kind of retaliation “against citizens engaging in protected speech or activity” is more common than we may suspect.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo provided by Institute for Justice

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Categories
Thought

William Leggett

A legislature is always badly set to work in manufacturing crime. To risk money in a wager is not a crime per se, whether the wager be on the result of a race, on the fate of a lottery ticket, on the turn of a dicebox, or on any other like contingency. It is folly, perhaps, in all cases, and it becomes crime and madness in some; but to draw the line between allowable folly and criminality, in a matter of this kind, is rather the office of publick opinion, than of the law.

William Leggett, in an editorial in the Plaindealer, January 28, 1837, republished in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), and titled “Gambling Laws.”
Categories
Today

Atahualpa

On July 26, 1533, Francisco Pizarro’s Spanish conquistadors strangled to death Atahualpa, the 13th and last emperor of the Incas, thereby ending 300 years of Inca civilization. The conquistadors were greedy and murderous, but the Inca civilization, arguably, was worse: totalitarian and radically inegalitarian. But they made great high-​mountain roads. (Arguments about infrastructure promoted by Big Government continue to this very day. And it is quite possible that an earlier civilization made the roadways, which the Inca merely renovated.)

On this day in 1948, U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 desegregating the U.S. military.