Paul has words for the Powers That Be:
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Devil’s Island
On August 22, 1952, France closed its penal colony on Devil’s Island.
At first a leper colony, it had been transformed by the end of the 19th century into a prison tasked primarily with housing enemies of the French state.
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Herbert Spencer
The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.
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Right Here in Corruption City
Former FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty earlier this week to making a false statement to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — often called the FISA court after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that created it.
“According to the court documents, Clinesmith inserted the words ‘and not a source’ into an email from a CIA liaison that described the relationship between Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page and the CIA,” reported The Epoch Times. “As a result, an FBI special agent relied on the altered email to submit a warrant application to the FISC, which described Page as a Russian asset without disclosing that he was an approved operational contact for the CIA who reported on his interactions with Russian intelligence officers.”
While one intelligence agency, the FBI, was declaring to a FISA judge that Carter Page was not a source for the intelligence community and, instead, was a likely Putin stooge, Page was briefing another intelligence agency, the CIA.
A big fib told to surveil him.
And by extension the Trump campaign.
“At the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate,” Clinesmith told the court, “but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and that I have inserted that information.”
Had the forgery been accurate, of course, it is still clearly wrong to surreptitiously alter documents being presented to a judge.
Whatever one thinks of President Trump — innocent victim of a 22-month special counsel witch hunt or Putin asset still at large — we can all agree that this is Trouble with a capital T and that . . . doesn’t stand for Trump.
It rhymes with D and that stands for Deep State.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Frédéric Bastiat
If Exchange saves efforts, it also exacts them. It extends, and spreads, and increases, up to the point at which the effort it exacts becomes equal to the effort which it saves, and it stops there until, by the improvement of the commercial apparatus, or by the circumstance exclusively of the condensation of population, and bringing men together in masses, it again returns to the conditions which are essential to its onward and ascending march. Whence it follows that laws which limit or hamper Exchanges are always either hurtful or superfluous.
Frédéric Bastiat, Harmonies of Political Economy (from the Third French Edition, Patrick James Stirling, trans.).
Governments which persuade themselves that nothing good can be done but through their instrumentality, refuse to acknowledge this harmonic law.
Exchange develops itself NATURALLY until it becomes more onerous than useful, and at that point it NATURALLY stops.
In consequence, we find governments everywhere busying themselves in favouring or restraining trade.
In order to carry it beyond its natural limits, they set to conquering colonies and opening new markets. In order to confine it within its natural bounds, they invent all sorts of restrictions and fetters.
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Nat Turner
On August 21, 1831, Nat Turner led slaves and freed black Americans in a rebellion that was quickly suppressed.
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California Schemin’
Is California a failed state? It has an electric grid problem. And a vagrancy problem. Both of which stem from the bizarre ideological blind spots of a political class “benefiting” from the state’s high legislator/citizen ratio, which insulates politicians from feedback.
Driving them power mad.
And one form of madness flowers in political greed, hubris and overreach.
“A pack of Democratic lawmakers in California are proposing a wealth tax for the state’s richest citizens, forcing them to pay more essentially just for owning a lot of stuff,” writes Scott Shackford at Reason. “They also, amazingly, want the tax to follow Californians who flee the state in response, attempting to make them continue paying taxes on wealth that’s not even in the state.”
Rob Bonta, Oakland’s Democrat in the Assembly, says the Golden State needs more gold, and he has made a startling observation. Wait for it. “Rich people have money,” Shackford summarizes, and Bonta wants to take it. To expand services.
But surely service expansion is not only not the only option, it is often the worst option.
Take the state’s rolling blackouts. Was that caused by not enough or really bad legislation? President Trump points his finger at the Democratic-controlled Assembly: “In California, Democrats have intentionally implemented rolling blackouts — forcing Americans in the dark. Democrats are unable to keep up with energy demand,” the president tweeted on Tuesday. But the New York Post identifies as a cause not “intentionally implemented” blackouts, but “inadequate transmission and an over-reliance on renewable energy and issues with natural gas plants during high heat.”
Bad policy. Not too few “services.”
And the proposal to tax the richest Californians — or former Californians — to pay for more disastrous programs?
Hubris and greed.
Not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.
Epictetus, Discourses Book I, Chapter 12.
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Estonian Independence
On August 20, 1991, Estonia issued a decision to re-establish independence on the basis of historical continuity of the Baltic country’s pre-World War II statehood, sloughing off Soviet rule since 1940.
On August 20, 1935, Ron Paul was born. Paul is now famous for his heroic congressional record, his several presidential campaigns, and for books such as End the Fed and Liberty Defined.
In July, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un declared possessing pet dogs to be a “decadent trend” from the West.
Along with eating well and living without fear of one’s government.
Oh, not that last bit.
But, apparently — and there are many news stories, if not much exactitude or certainty — he did order all dogs confiscated.
Why?
Well, reports vary. A search of DuckDuckGo will yield much speculation and a few sparse facts.
A South Korean newspaper relayed a leak saying that Un called dog ownership “a ‘tainted’ trend by bourgeois ideology.”
How could dogs have been with us for tens of thousands of years, and may have been key to our species’ success, yet somehow now be “decadent” and “tainted” and “bourgeois”?
And, for that matter, a “trend.”
How many tens of thousands of years does it take to make a trend? On Twitter, it takes just a few minutes!
There is a lot of talk of a COVID-19 famine (on top of the Kim Family Famine that has been trending for decades) and meat shortages. I’ve read reports that the dogs are to go to restaurants. And then there is the business about higher-ups in the Hidden Kingdom’s un-hidden but Un-ridden hierarchy who have been taking advantage of a cultural loophole to display their status with expensive pet dogs from the West.
Un prefers his displays of status, apparently, to be public executions and harsh and abrupt edicts . . . such as putting all dogs into execution chambers.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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