Categories
ideological culture national politics & policies

The 7 Percenters

Forget “the one percent.” I want to know about the seven percent.

Last month, the Gallup polling outfit asked Americans about our confidence level in Congress. Did we have “a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little”?

Unlike the 93 percent of us with firing brain synapses, there appeared an enigmatic seven percent, folks who actually confessed to harboring “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of faith in that cabal of corrupt careerists legislating loquaciously in our nation’s Capitol.

It takes all kinds, I guess. The shadowy, slow-​witted, and ill-​informed must show up in statistics somewhere, right?

Granted, only five percent of Republicans expressed that much cockeyed confidence; it was six percent a year ago. Trusting Democrats hit double-​digits, with ten percent believing congressional bull, a fall from the 17 percent hornswoggled in 2021.

Gullible independents came in at the overall average — seven percent — a decrease of five percentage points from last year, when 12 percent clutched a false sense of security regarding our federal legislature.

Among a long list of American institutions, Congress roused the absolute least confidence. Odd that we feel worse about the people we elect to represent us than those we have little if any direct responsibility for or control over.

This must change.

We desperately need term limits. And the competitive elections brought by creating smaller districts where grassroots campaigns employing shoe-​leather can compete with the big money and special interest power behind professional politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Illustration assist from DALL‑E

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
general freedom ideological culture Voting

Thoughts on Nothingness

“Democracy has nothing to do with liberty,” the Libertarian Party announced on Facebook, “just as so many of the world’s greatest minds have warned.”

Huh? Just exactly which “greatest minds” are we talking about?

Not Aristotle!

The party’s statement introduced a meme quoting Hans-​Hermann Hoppe, the “Austrian school economist and libertarian/​anarcho-​capitalist philosopher,” Professor Emeritus of Economics at UNLV and Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute. It read: “Democracy allows for A and B to band together to rip off C. This is not justice, but a moral outrage.”

Dr. Hoppe has a point, of course. The ‘will of the people’ can be just plain wrong … even, at times, malevolent.  A democratic vote can lead to the tyranny of the majority and even to a tyranny of the minority, as those politicians promising to serve ‘We the People’ end up serving themselves and their cronies.

I’ve not read Professor Hoppe’s Democracy: The God That Failed, where he sort of argues for monarchy over democracy, but I offer two points: (1) no one in their right mind talks of democracy without including the protections of basic individual rights, which have become the hallmark of democratic countries across the globe, and (2) no one in the real world thinks democracy is God.

Still, we won’t trade it for monarchy

My issue with this social media post, however, is really with the Libertarian Party’s comment that “democracy” — including the democratic means the party has purportedly been employing across the country for decades — has provided no past benefit and offers no future hope for sustaining or expanding our freedom.

So, don’t vote Libertarian this November?

I’ll take that under advisement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

“Liberty Playing Cards with Aristotle” by DALL‑E (note that the AI has chosen to show Lady Liberty as bruised and beaten. Her torch appears to be made of tissue.-)

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability general freedom local leaders term limits

Freedom in Granite

“In the past two years,” the Cato Institute announced last January, “Governor [Chris] Sununu and the State of New Hampshire have topped Cato’s rankings for both our Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors and our recently released Freedom in the 50 States report.”

How? Why? 

The governor points to “a long history of local control,” insisting that “town meetings matter.” 

He also cites the state’s executive council which, along with the governor, publicly debates “every contract over $10,000,” as well as a two-​year gubernatorial term that “sucks” for him but gives citizens “all the say.”

Most of all, consider the sheer size of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives.

“When you have one of the largest parliamentary bodies in the free world with 400 members representing only 1.4 million people,” Gov. Sununu explains, “by definition” it has to be “one of the most representative bodies of government in the world.”

He elaborates that “they only get paid a hundred bucks a year. I mean, it’s like herding cats. Don’t get me wrong, it has its ups and downs. But that’s one state representative for about every 3,000 people. Like town selectmen, your representative in Concord is going to be somebody you know, somebody you see at the grocery store, somebody you can easily reach and who can hear you. It’s very different from other states where you have one person representing a district with tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

“Which means the control is really at the individual level,” Sununu adds, and “an individual citizen has much more say on how their taxes are spent or what’s going on in their schools or whether that pothole is going to get filled or not.” 

Sounds like citizens are more in charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
First Amendment rights national politics & policies

Homeland Censorship Board

We’re in a twilight zone beyond mere “mission creep” now. 

Two months ago, creeps at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created a new censorship board, secret until its existence was revealed in congressional testimony.

This disinformatively named Disinformation Governance Board is headed by an open critic of the First Amendment, Nina Jankowicz. The purpose of the amendment being to protect freedom of speech and other rights from governmental assault, the new board and its director are especially alarming.

The DHS was formed after 9/​11 to protect national security and combat terrorism, a form of politically motivated violence. And whatever the exact definition of “terrorism” should be, we can at least agree that arguing about the origins and issues of elections, pandemics, or Russian invasions doesn’t qualify. The bitterest clashing over facts is just speech, unless part and parcel of criminal acts.

But the purpose of the Disinformation Board is to combat and “address this threat” of election disinformation.

Merriam-​Webster defines “disinformation” as “false information deliberately and often covertly spread” to “influence public opinion or obscure the truth.”

The First Amendment protects dishonest and mistaken honest speech, not just infallible honest speech. But by “disinformation,” foes of freedom of speech often mean “any speech we dispute.”

If the government can repress any speech that it chooses to label “disinformation,” that portends the end of freedom of speech. 

The very existence of the Disinformation Board warrants a lawsuit on First Amendment grounds.

And since disinformation was coined to designate, specifically, government-​concocted and distributed misinformation — a term of art in the “intelligence” and propaganda biz, called dezinformatsiya by Stalin  — it is especially rich to see the current administration apply it directly against the people.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability ballot access First Amendment rights

Zuckerbuck Sucker Punch

Who should fund our public elections? 

Partisan billionaires? 

Last election, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Dr. Priscilla Chan, “gave $419 million to two nonprofit organizations that disbursed grants in 2020 to more than 2,500 election departments,” reports The New York Times.

The idea was to help officials deal with holding an election during a pandemic. No laws were necessarily broken. Apparently, private individuals and groups can give money to government election offices — even “with strings attached.” 

“Some conservatives see this largesse of ‘Zuckerbucks,’” informsWall Street Journal editorial, “as a clever plot to help Democrats win.” In fact, a Capital Research Center (CRC) analysis found the liberal non-​profit “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for Biden.” 

“[A] deep dive into the available data shows that the funds were largely requested for get-​out-​the-​vote efforts, influenced voter turnout in favor of Democrats, and may have impacted the results of the election in some states,” explains the Foundation for Government Accountability. “According to currently available information, less than one percent of the funds were actually spent on PPE nationwide.”

Can you imagine the outcry if a group with “conservative ties” funded by Charles Koch was giving grants to help Republican-​rich jurisdictions rock the vote?

“[E]ven under the purest motives,” the Journal’s editorial offers, “private election funding is inappropriate and sows distrust.”

That’s why 16 states have since passed laws to restrict private funding of election programs.

Mr. Zuckerberg himself sees the danger in Zuckerbucks: “To be clear, I agree with those who say that government should have provided these funds, not private citizens.” Last week, he announced he would not be providing such funding in the 2022 elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption term limits

Pucker Up

“Never have so few applied so much lipstick to such a pig.”

That’s what term limits activist Kurt O’Keefe told the Michigan Board of Canvassers last week, as it considered the official title for a citizen initiative that he argues is anything but.

The Detroit attorney points out that the proposed ballot measure — sponsored by a group named Voters for Transparency and Term Limits — actually comes from “current and future politicians” and “current and future lobbyists.”

These insiders, who’ve “never been in favor” of term limits, seek to replace the 6- and 8‑year cap now in place in the House and Senate, respectively, with a 12-​year overall limit in both houses. At the hearing, proponents argued that the ballot title should declare simply that their measure reduces the current term limits — even though it would double terms in the House and up the Senate cap by 50 percent.

The initiative would also allow former Speakers and previously termed-​out legislators to return like the undead to their former capitol haunts. 

“This is a trick,” warned U.S. Term Limits National Field Director Scott Tillman. “We know it is a trick. They know it is a trick. They had to sweeten it up with transparency.”

That’s the lipstick.

Yet, the transparency fix, instead of simply enacting a financial disclosure system, orders the legislature to do so. Of course, the legislature cannot be forced to legislate, so the measure encourages endless lawsuits against the legislature. 

As if to further show just how sincere these politicians are, their “voters” front-​group has raked in $5 million from “unknown sources,” according to the Michigan Information & Research Service. 

They are transparent only in their self-​serving insincerity.

Oink oink.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts