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Thought

A Natural Experiment

How’s this for a randomized controlled trial: Out of the 189 hospital ivermectin cases Ralph [Lorigo] took on, eighty went to court. Of those, Ralph’s team won forty and lost forty. Out of the forty cases they lost, thirty-nine patients died (97.5 percent). Out of the forty cases they won, only two died (5 percent). Even more specifically, Ralph went to court six times on behalf of patients hospitalized at Rochester Medical Center. In the three cases he won, all survived. In the three cases he lost, all three died. Of all the infuriating injustice I have witnessed in Covid, this one puts me over the edge.

Pierre Kory with Jenna McCarthy, War on Ivermectin: The Medicine that Saved Millions and Could Have Ended the Pandemic (2024), Chapter Thirty-six: “A Legal Legend.”

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Today

Not-So-Wonderful Premiere

On December 20, 1946, Frank Capra’s holiday classic It’s a Wonderful Life premiered at the Globe Theatre in New York to mixed reviews. It has since become not merely a cult classic, but an almost universally beloved film.

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ideological culture social media

Of Loudmouths and Silence

Rob Reiner, Donald Trump, civility, rudeness

The murders of Rob Reiner and his wife — allegedly by their son, Nick — were horrific enough. But because the elder Reiner was, in rallies and interviews and on social media, a spittle-flecked progressive who said vile things about his opponents, including the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, it was inevitable that President Donald Trump’s reaction would fail to serve as a stellar example of gracefully acknowledging the death of a
public figure.

After calling the fatal knife attack a “sad thing” but before exclaiming “May Rob and Michele rest in peace,” Trump made the incident about himself. 

The butchery, he asserted, “reportedly” was the result of “the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS.” Trump referred to Reiner’s “raging obsession” and “paranoia” that reached “new heights as the Trump Administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, and with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before.” 

More extreme than Rob Reiner’s derangement may be Trump’s own. 

But the actor and director, in his heyday, also demonstrated some difficulty assessing his public persona honestly. Reiner never seemed to realize that he became the “Meathead” he played (maybe with only inadvertent satire) on All in the Family in the 1970s.

Some folks find it hard to condemn Trump for being petty and political upon Reiner’s death when that seemed to be precisely what Reiner was upon, say, Rush Limbaugh’s.

Both Reiner and Trump inhabit the “loudmouth” camp of public rhetoric, using strong condemnatory language and a reliance on over-statement when railing against their opponents. At death, do loudmouths deserve less honor?

The acceleration of history being what it is, perhaps, “too soon” no longer sticks as a useful censure when it comes to gallows humor and double-murder indecency.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kenneth E. Boulding

The greater the penalties laid on sellers in the black market . . . the higher the black market price.

Kenneth E. Boulding, “A Note on the Theory of the Underground economy,” The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science (1947), Vol. 13 no.1, p. 117
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Today

American Crises

On December 19, 1776, Tom Paine published one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis. Exactly one year later, George Washington’s Continental Army went into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

On December 19, 1828, Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, arguing against the Tariff of 1828, a key moment in what became known as the Nullification Crisis.

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property rights regulation too much government

The Regulatory Flex

Gavin Newsom, YIMBY, California, Pacific Palisades

If you’re a homeowner devastated by wildfires, you may want to rebuild. Since you have also suffered a financial setback, especially if your property insurance was canceled just before the fire, you may also want to earn money by renting a part of your new home.

Such are the considerations that motivate some property owners devastated by last January’s conflagrations in California to want to build a duplex. 

So what’s the problem?

The governor is the problem.

That he’s listening to other property owners in your neighborhood — the Pacific Palisades — who dislike duplexes makes the problem worse. 

Your property is not their property, mind you. But they’re acting as if it were.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has issued an executive order letting cities ban duplex construction in neighborhoods affected by last January’s wildfires. A pro-development group called YIMBY Law was willing to refrain from filing a lawsuit if the governor issued a new order to let property owners build duplexes after a year had passed.

But Newsom won’t budge. So YIMBY Law is suing. 

A spokesman for the governor says that letting owners build duplexes (on their own property) amounts to an “attack” on the Pacific Palisades and an undermining of “local flexibility to rebuild.”

“Local,” here, seems to mean the sum total of all neighbors who are loath to allow you to enjoy the flexibility of building on your own property. 

But the individual and his rights are as local as it gets. 

And reducing options, as a prohibition on building duplexes where single-family homes once stood, is the very opposite of “flexibility.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Winston Churchill

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

Winston Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War (1898), Chapter X.
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Today

Thanksgiving in December

On December 18, 1777, the United States celebrated its first official Thanksgiving, marking the then-recent October victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga.

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First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Governing the News

FCC, censorship, covid, surveillance

“The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press,” explained FCC commissioner Ajit Pai for the Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed I quoted yesterday.

“The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing. . . .”

Thankfully, this is old news. The former FCC commissioner’spiece was actually published nearly twelve years ago. Mr. Pai has since moved on to the private sector, in April becoming President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry trade association.

We can breathe a sigh of relief. The FCC is not planning on regulating the news for biased content.

Well, supposedly, anyway. 

So why rehash an old issue — why revive something from the proverbial slush pile?

To compare and contrast. Bias is a continuing problem, but the biggest threat to news reporting and dissemination since that time has revealed itself in a very different form, not as “abridgments” to press freedoms but as secret government commands and direction.

Remember what we learned in the Trump-and-pandemic years?

During the recent pandemic, and the release of the Twitter Files, we learned of a massive effort of government and “ex-government” personnel directing social media outlets to platform-censor dissent, going so far as to squelch new sources . . . as happened regarding the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story.

The FCC Fairness Doctrine was nothing compared to the meddling that has more recently occurred behind the scenes, but which we all experienced, on social media. It played a role in the election results favoring Biden in 2020, and in the dysfunctional, disastrous public health response to COVID-19. 

The FCC doesn’t handle that level of biased manipulation of news.

So who does?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Kenneth Arnold

They flew like a saucer would if you skipped it across the water.

Kenneth Arnold to East Oregonian reporter Bill Bequette at the airport at Pendleton on June 25, 1947, where Arnold was refueling his private plane. Bill Bequette and editor Nolan Skiff’s front page story in the evening paper of the same day, titled “Impossible! Maybe, But Seein’ Is Believin’, Says Flyer,” started the modern Flying Saucer legend, which was widely reported and discussed worldwide in the 1950s.