In “Uh & Other Naughty Words,” this week, Paul Jacob considered the apparent meteoric success of Francesca Hong, on Election Day expected to win the Democratic primary in her state.
She did not succeed.
Major media blames the polls. Forbes, for example. The polls were wrong. “Socialist Francesca Hong was heavily favored to win the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday in betting odds and among politicos, but the few polls taken proved unreliable in a primary with several major last-minute developments that changed the dynamics in the race.”
But really, why did she lose? Some say it is the result of the alleged fact that “progressives don’t vote.” Karlyn Borsenko has a different opinion:
In the 1960s, MIT introduced a “Pass or No Record” system for the first semester of freshman year. The idea? Help students adjust to greater workloads and “variations in academic preparation and teaching methods.”
You’d think that letter grades themselves would help students adjust by providing information about how well they are learning and adjusting — assuming that the grades are at least a roughly objective indication of mastery not yet rendered useless by grade inflation.
Some universities let first-semester freshmen convert a poor letter grade into a pass/no credit “grade.” Only a few have sweepingly replaced letter grades with the pass/no credit system in the first semester.
Now University of Michigan has joined those few. One reason: to “curb the mental health crisis unfolding.”
Why not at least make the pass/no credit “grade” optional for the sake of students who do want their academic achievement to be more specifically recorded on their transcript?
Well, this would “defeat the purpose of facilitating students’ transition to campus.” See, if “covered grades are optional, covering [hiding] an individual’s grades will inadvertently become equated with [their] not doing well in a class.”
Sounds like a reason for keeping letter grades. And what if the mental problems persist into sophomore year? Junior? Senior?
The mental health of some students may be a problem. But it won’t be fixed by hiding the evidence of how well they’re doing academically. Or by being systematically unfair to the best students.
“Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All” — so runs the campaign slogan of Abdul El-Sayed, who last week won Michigan’s Democratic Party nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Gary Peters.
Dr. El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, later heading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for a few years. He calls himself a progressive, but a “capitalist” one, not a socialist. Yet, seeking a national office, his national fellow travelers are Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s own Rashida Talib and, last-but-not-least, the Democratic Socialists of America.
Today, let’s take the first phrase of his slogan: Money out of politics.
Creating small legislative districts would go a long way toward making outsized campaign spending less effective. Of course, term limits would diminish the value to a special interest of “capturing” an elected official. And limit the threat of politicians forever shaking down interests, special or not.
But that’s not the game plan of Abdul and progressives and, for many years now, congressional Democrats.
Instead, they want to re-write the First Amendment, reversing it from “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech” to Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money insofar as it relates to campaigning.
So far, Congress has legislated a Byzantine regulatory regime that serves only to make politics more expensive. The public benefit? Corruption diminished at all? Anyone?
Allowing career politicians to dictate who can raise or spend money (evenin the incumbents’ very own election campaigns) and without regard to whether it silences voices — how is that progress?
If you want to tear down the whole idea of America, this version of getting “money out of politics” is one big rip.
Government is an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. It has the power to obtain obedience by force. The political sovereign, be it an autocrat or the people as represented by its mandataries, has power to crush rebellions as long as his ideological might subsists.
The position which entrepreneurs and capitalists occupy in the market economy is of a different character. A “chocolate king” has no power over the consumers, his patrons. He provides them with chocolate of the best possible quality and at the cheapest price. He does not rule the consumers, he serves them. The consumers are not tied to him. They are free to stop patronizing his shops. He loses his “kingdom” if the consumers prefer to spend their pennies elsewhere. Nor does he “rule” his workers. He hires their services by paying them precisely that amount which the consumers are ready to restore to him in buying the product.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, in 4 vols., ed. Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007). Vol. 2, Chapter 15, “The Metaphorical Employment of the Terminology of Political Rule.”
On August 13, 1831, Nat Turner witnessed a solar eclipse, which he interpreted as a sign from God. Eight days later he and 70 other slaves killed approximately 55 whites in Southampton County, Virginia. They did not direct their homicidal rage only upon slave owners.
With Republicans controlling most state legislatures, legislative assaults against the citizen initiative petition process tend to come disproportionally from Republicans. Just last week, Missouri voters smashed a legislative initiative petition “reform” on the primary ballot with greater than 80 percent voting NO.
In Democratic controlled states, however, attempts to thwart democracy bear Democrats’ fingerprints. A Wall Street Journal editorial recounts cases in California, Colorado and Washington where citizen petitions have been or are being deep-sixed on dubious legal grounds.
“In 2023 California Gov. Gavin Newsom sued to block a citizen initiative that sought to require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and vote of the people for major fee and tax increases such as the cap-and-tax program,” the paper explains. Let’s vote!
But the California Supreme Court labeled the measure a “constitutional revision” preventing a vote of the people.
Colorado Democrats have been hiking fees, rather than taxes, because their constitution requires a public vote to raise taxes. Citizens petitioned a measure onto this November’s ballot to more clearly define fees and require a vote to hike them.
Colorado’s all-Democrat appointed Supreme Court blocked a vote, arguing there was “a danger of log rolling because it may attract a ‘yes’ vote from voters who support statewide voter approval of fees, but who would not support narrowing the definition of existing and new fees under Colorado law.”
In Washington state, Democrats passed a 9.9% tax on income above $1 million. Then, voters “launched a ballot campaign to repeal the tax and bar the state and localities from enacting income taxes in the future,” The Journalreports. “The initiative qualified for the November ballot [last] month.”
Now, through a new law passed by the Democrats, the attorney general is required to place this specific language on the ballot after a short summary of the proposal: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”
Yet, the ballot measure would repeal a tax that hasn’t yet begun collecting money — no cuts would ensue. Moreover, even if spending reductions had been required, the legislature would be free to make cuts in other programs and not these three areas.
So, the mandated language put to voters on their ballot? A lie.
