Categories
crime and punishment regulation

Fix-It Man Pardoned

Troy Lake, regulations, Trump, pardon

Troy Lake, the mechanic who helped truckers and bus drivers keep their vehicles going by removing crippling emissions systems, paid the price — jailed for this “crime,” and also fined $52,000. 

Prosecutors made an example out of the Wyoming fix-it man for following a practice that had become mandatory to keep rigs — in his case, at least 344 heavy-duty diesel trucks — on the road.

I’ve discussed his case, saying that President Trump should pardon him for this non-crime.

Though Troy Lake served about seven months in a federal prison, and he’s been out for a while, the conviction was still hanging over his head.

Now President Trump has indeed pardoned Mr. Lake.

He learned about it from a congratulatory voicemail left by U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis, calling to “let you know how very sorry I am that this even happened to you guys but how delighted I am that the pardon has come through.”

“It’s great,” says 65-year-old Lake, who broke down after hearing the good word. “It’s news that, you know — I guess I look at it as, there are some good things that happen in the world.”

Troy and his wife, Holly, also tearfully relieved by the news, are grateful to Senator Lummis, Wyoming legislators, and others who went to bat for him.

About the environmental regulations that sent him to prison for helping diesel drivers survive, he says, “We need to sit down and think about a more logical way of doing it, not putting people out of work.”

Talk about an understatement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Thought

Doris Lessing

There are certain types of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason. . . . I think it’s fairly common among socialists: They are, in fact, God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth. A lot of religious reformers have been like that, too. It’s the same psychological set, trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future — always taking it for granted that there is a better future. If you don’t believe in heaven, then you believe in socialism. When I was in my real Communist phase, I and the people around me really believed — but, of course, this makes us certifiable — that something like ten years after World War II, the world would be Communist and perfect.

Doris Lessing, novelist, as quoted in “Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and Space Fiction,” Lesley Hazelton, New York Times Book Review (July 25, 1982).

Categories
Today

Shooting Stars

On this day in 1833, Denison Olmsted was alerted by his neighbors to something truly amazing, a night sky filled with shooting stars.

Not just a one or two or a dozen or a hundred: 72,000 or more per hour. Though recognizing where among the constellations meteors came from was ancient knowledge, it had not been recorded by modern-era scientists, at least in this case. What Olmsted noticed was that the meteors were coming from one point in the sky, the constellation Leo. This regular meteor event is now called the Leonid meteor stream.

In the morning, Olmsted wrote a brief report on the meteor storm for the New Haven Daily Herald newspaper, which elicited correspondence from around the country, thus beginning a social storm, in a sense: crowd-sourced science.

Categories
budgets & spending cuts international affairs political economy

Was Milei Bailed Out?

Javier Milei, Argentina, bailout, foreign policy

You saw it on the news, newscasters almost gloating: Argentina’s peso plunged — triggered by  low reserves and political defeats for President Javier Milei.

Then the U.S. Treasury under Secretary Scott Bessent finalized a $20 billion currency swap line with Argentina’s central bank. This was on top of direct U.S. purchases of pesos in the market and plans for another $20 billion from private sources. The deal was seen as a U.S. strategic play to counter instability in Latin America.

Some called it a bailout.

Were Milei’s radical reforms saved at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer?

Bessant was asked this, yesterday, directly on MSNBC, and had a response: “Do you know what a swap line is?”

I had to brush up on it. (I don’t engage in any cross-currency swaps, understandably, not being a major corporation, a central bank, or a sovereign state.) A currency swap is a financial agreement between two parties to exchange principal amounts and interest payments in different currencies over a set period — a temporary loan in one currency backed by collateral in another, designed to provide liquidity, hedge exchange rate risks, or access cheaper funding without the full risks of outright borrowing.

“In most bailouts you don’t make money,” Bessent said. “The U.S. government made money.”

In an exchange, both parties gain. But in any exchange involving extended spans of time, there is risk, so any initial win for Treasury could be wasted by a failure of Milei’s course.

Unlike American politicians opposing inflation, Milei’s been quite honest with Argentinians: “To cure inflation, you have to go through a recession. There is no way around it.” So why Milei didn’t just peg the Argentine peso directly to the U.S.; why a “crawling peg” rather than strict? Milei has been clear: he lacked political clout.

Milei insists that his crawling peg reform isn’t gradualism (which he despises), and that the swap isn’t a bailout; Bessant agrees, saying the swap’s “a profitable move for America.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: Milei’s party gained in the most recent election.

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Thought

Gustave Le Bon

If the economists marvel that demonstrations based on impeccable evidence have absolutely no influence over those who hear and understand them, we have only to refer them to the history of all dogmas, and to the study of the psychology of crowds. We have not triumphed over a doctrine when we have shown its chimerical nature. We do not attack dreams with argument; nothing but recurring experience can show that they are dreams. In order to comprehend the present force of Socialism it must be considered above all as a belief, and we then discover it to be founded on a very secure psychologic basis. It matters very little to its immediate success that it may be contrary to social and economic necessities. The history of all beliefs, and especially of religious beliefs, sufficiently proves that their success has most often been entirely independent of the proportion of truth that they might contain.

Gustave Le Bon, Psychologie du Socialisme (1896), translated as The Psychology of Socialism (1899).
Categories
Today

New Monarchy, New Republic

On November 12, 1905, Norwegians established, by referendum, a monarchy — not a republic. Exactly 14 years later, to the day, Austria became a republic.

Categories
defense & war international affairs

Strongly Stated Ambiguity

China, Taiwan, strategic ambiguity, war, foreign policy

“Because they know the consequences,” President Donald Trump told Norah O’Donnell on CBS’s 60 Minutes the Sunday before last, after meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea. 

“The Chinese military is encroaching on Taiwan’s sea lanes, its airspace, its cyberspace. I know you have said that Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare move militarily on Taiwan while you’re in office. But what if he does?”asked O’Donnell. 

“Would you order U.S. forces to defend Taiwan?”

Mr. Trump’s reply was ambiguous: “You’ll find out if it happens.” 

Labeled “strategic ambiguity,” U.S. policy regarding a threatened Chinese invasion of Taiwan has long been undeclared, designed to keep China guessing as to our intentions without giving Taiwan a military guarantee.

But then the president added, “And he [Xi Jinping] understands the answer to that.”

The Chinese regime “knows,” Trump explained to O’Donnell, “they understand what’s gonna happen.” He further declared that Xi “has openly said, and his people have openly said at meetings, ‘We would never do anything while President Trump is president.’” 

Mr. Trump’s most surprising disclosure was that Taiwan “never came up” in his two-hour talk with the Chinese ruler, with the president insisting that Xi “never brought it up” “because he understands” “very well” “what will happen.” 

Indeed, military might is the only thing that Xi and the Chinese Communist Party understand. 

As I argued on Around the World With Dane Waters last week, a Chinese takeover of Taiwan would be economically and strategically catastrophic for Asia and the world. Not to mention, disastrous for freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Thought

F. Marion Crawford

A man who believes he is beaten is already more than half conquered.

Francis Marion Crawford, Mr. Isaacs (1882), Chapter VIII.
Categories
Today

Eleven/Eleven/Eleven

On November 11, 1889, the State of Washington was admitted as the 42nd State of the United States.

In 1918, German officials signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car in the forest of Compiègne, France. The fighting officially ended at 11:00 a.m. — the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. The war officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

In 1921 on this date, U.S. President Warren G. Harding dedicated the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery.

Categories
election law Voting

A Puzzling Protest

Texas, voting, elections, citizen voting

Talk about a blowout: a few days ago, Texans overwhelmingly supported Proposition 16 to amend their state constitution to clarify that noncitizens cannot vote in state and local elections in Texas. The vote: Yes, 72%; No, 28%.

Not everybody is happy.

Jeff Forrester, who happens to be running against Rep. Candy Noble, a major sponsor of this very amendment — just a coincidence I’m sure — professes confusion about why anybody would care about this question. He asserts that the state constitution already prohibits noncitizen voting and has flung himself into a major Twitter-X tussle over the matter with the group I lead, Americans for Citizen Voting.

Per Forrester, the Texas constitution “already states that no one other than U.S. citizens can vote” in Texas elections.

But as we point out, prior to passage of the present amendment, the state constitution only explicitly protected the rights of U.S. citizens to vote. It did not “reserve the right to vote to only [U.S.] citizens. . . . It didn’t prohibit Dallas from giving the right to noncitizens to vote in local elections.”

Similarly deficient provisions in the constitutions of other states have also failed to prevent cities from allowing noncitizen voting on local matters. Now, with passage of Prop 16, there is no way for noncitizens to legally vote in Texas.

Those who assert that the Prop 16 amendment is pointless protest too much. If it’s so durn redundant, why isn’t the response to this voter-endorsed clarification simply a shrug?

Instead, we get finger-wagging opposition.

Very “mysterious.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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