Had Adam tenderly reproved his wife, and endeavored to lead her to repentance instead of sharing in her guilt, I should be much more ready to accord to man that superiority which he claims; but as the facts stand disclosed by the sacred historian, it appears to me that to say the least, there was as much weakness exhibited by Adam as by Eve. They both fell from innocence, and consequently from happiness, but not from equality.
On July 16, 1931, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haille Selassie I signed a new Constitution. Not exactly a model of limited government, the new document proved that the emperor was in keeping with the time, which was a period of weakening constitutional limits in America, Europe, and Britain. A flavor of the document can be gained by its most “rights-oriented” measures:
Art. 22. Within the limits laid down by the law, Ethiopian subjects have the right to pass freely from one place to the other.
Art. 23. No Ethiopian subject may be arrested, sentenced, or imprisoned except in pursuance of the law.
Art. 24. No Ethiopian subject may, against his will, be deprived of his right to be tried by a legally established court.
Art. 25. Except in cases provided for by law, no domiciliary searches may be made.
Art. 26. Except in cases provided by the law, no one shall have the right to violate the secrecy of the correspondence of Ethiopian subjects.
Art. 27. Except in cases of public necessity determined by the law, no one shall have the right to deprive an Ethiopian subject of any movable or landed property which he owns.Art. 28. All Ethiopian subjects have the right to present to the Government petitions in legal form.
Art. 29. The provisions of the present chapter shall in no way limit the measures which the Emperor, by virtue of his supreme power, may take in the event of war or public misfortunes menacing the interests of the nation.
Tucker Carlson doesn’t like being called a Hitler sympathizer for showing some skepticism about neoconservative plans to engage with bad guys everywhere while demonizing Russia. Make no bones about it!
http://youtu.be/rpJZh92hsaY
The humorists over at Reason TV look at bad foreign and domestic policy without jesting using the argumentum ad Hitlerum. They go all the way to referencing House Lannister! (NSFW)
On July 15, 1976, Jimmy Carter accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party to run for the presidency.
Three years later, as president, he gave his infamous “malaise” speech, in which he focused on energy but did not mention the one thing that actually helped turn the ’70s’ energy crisis around: the phased deregulation of oil prices that had started three months earlier, under his own directive. Instead of touting this deregulatory effort, Carter did the usual politic thing and promised a number of new government programs, extensively ground home a “crisis of confidence” message, and vaguely talked of a spiritual challenge.
The deregulation was startlingly effective, in the long run — though the immediate effect was a rocketing of prices. These high prices presented profit opportunities, and (lo and behold!) domestic production greatly increased, allowing for many, many years of lower prices. Those high prices would have worked better as market signals had not Carter and Congress also established “windfall profits” taxes, to take away those temporary gains to existing business.
Had Carter deregulated prices earlier, he would probably have been re-elected president. Had he emphasized deregulation, he probably would have beat back Ronald Reagan’s free market rhetoric — with actual action.
The price controls had been put in place earlier in the decade by the Republican president at the time, Richard M. Nixon, with the great help of his aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.
“Anything whatever can be made ridiculous; to see this side of it, and nothing more, is to become the mere jester, whose claim to be regarded as the ideal moralist is certainly very slight. But between a too solemn sense of high importance, and that conviction of the intrinsic smallness of everything in particular which some of our satirists have displayed, there is a middle ground.”
Arthur Kenyon Rogers, The Theory of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922).
After lamenting Illinois’s fiscal decline into America’s “most messed up” state yesterday, lo and behold, today we find the State of Nevada messed up, too.
On marijuana.*
Question 2, passed by voters last November, legalized recreational use of what we used to call “weed” by those 21 years of age and older. The measure also stipulated that — for the first 18 months only — alcohol distributers are solely permitted to carry marijuana from wholesalers to the new retail dispensaries.
Why provide a monopoly to alcohol distributors?
“[T]he state’s powerful alcohol lobby worried that legalized weed would cut into liquor store sales,” explained the Los Angeles Times. Proponents added that provision as “a concession.”
But still not a single alcohol distributor has been approved to distribute marijuana.
So, with pot now flying off the shelves of Nevada’s 47 marijuana dispensaries, there is no lawful way to replenish those shelves. Nevada’s DOT (which requested from the governor an official declaration of a state of emergency) warns: “this nascent industry could grind to a halt.”
That’s not just a bummer for pot smokers; it has the governor and the DOT in a state, too. “A 10% tax on sales of recreational pot — along with a 15% tax on growers — is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for schools and the state’s general fund reserves,” notes the Times.
Legalize marijuana, sure. And realize that the politics of it can be more toxic than the drug itself.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
*Is that why the slogan “A World Within, A State Apart” is now featured on the state’s website?
On July 14, 1789, Paris citizens stormed the Bastille. On the same date nine years later, in America, the Sedition Act prohibited the writing, publishing, or speaking false or malicious statements about the United States government.
The passage of this repressive law spurred the formation of the first opposition party in the United States, with Thomas Jefferson [above] as its leader and figurehead.
Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate; now what’s going to happen to us with both a Senate and a House?
“Politicians are notorious for making promises they can’t keep,” Matt Egan reports at CNN Money. “But they really outdid themselves in Illinois — and now the state is paying for it.”
Egan dubs the state “America’s most messed-up.”*
No wonder the state has the worst outbound migration in the nation — or, as Egan puts it: “people are leaving in droves.”
On June 1, Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings downgraded the state’s credit rating to one notch above so-called “junk bond” status. “Illinois has suffered 21 downgrades from the three major ratings agencies since 2009,” the Illinois Policy Institute informs, and now has the lowest credit rating of any state, making it more expensive to borrow. Even with passage of a budget — finally, after three years of the legislature failing to fulfill its constitutional duty — the threat of a further downgrade still looms.
“After decades of historic mismanagement, Illinois is now grappling with $15 billion of unpaid bills and an unthinkable quarter-trillion dollars owed to public employees when they retire,” the article explains.
Decades of mismanagement? Perhaps the problem was inexperienced legislators, lacking the necessary expertise to do their crucial jobs, because of term limits. Except that Illinois doesn’t have term limits.
In fact, Illinois sports the nation’s longest-serving Speaker of the House in modern times. Mike Madigan has been speaker for 32 of the last 34 years, since 1983. Call him “Mr. Experience.” Madigan is recognized as the most powerful man in state government.
All that leadership experience . . . leading citizens to experience much pain and suffering.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* That’s in the headline. In the article, Egan explains the mess as “the inevitable result of spending more on pensions and services than the state could afford — then covering it up with reckless budget tricks.”
“There is no real paradox in the claim that satisfaction is open only to the man who stands prepared to give up pleasures. This only means, again, that satisfaction as a human goal is not an abstract ideal of limitless good, but presupposes a determinate human nature set to work out its destiny in determinate surroundings. That at which a sensible, human being aims is no unimaginable state of the intensest possible pleasure unaccompanied by pain, but the realization that he is making the very most of life that it is possible for him, with his particular interests and limitations, to make, considering the means at his disposal. If one is not willing to accept these qualifications, he is not yet prepared to set out intelligently to secure satisfaction.”
Arthur Kenyon Rogers, The Theory of Ethics (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922).