Tag: government

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inflation and inflationism national politics & policies

Quips & Stunts

Donald Trump, Kamala Harris, economy, inflation, democracy, government

The Epoch Times has produced a handy policy comparison between the two major-​party candidates for the presidency of the United States, former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Maybe issues don’t matter so much now, though: more talked-​about is Trump’s stunt scooping fries at McDonald’s, which got Democrats so upset (to their detriment), or Kamala Harris’s bizarre quip at a rally where two young men shouted “Jesus Is Lord!” and “Christ Is King!” as they were being thrown out. The Veep’s response that they were at the wrong rally was construed by many to suggest that her supporters aren’t Christians.

Nevertheless, The Epoch Times is right to emphasize policy. It’s a big subject, so let’s just compare the candidates on “The Economy.”

Donald Trump “Pledges to reduce inflation by increasing American energy production, cutting wasteful government spending, and preventing illegal immigration,” and “Seeks to lower commodity prices by ending global wars.” Are these “good for the economy”? Probably; mostly. But distant from the heart of inflation. 

Worse, Trump allegedly “‘Strongly’ feels presidents ‘should have at least a say’ in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decisions.” The Fed is indeed key, but the only way to reduce inflation immediately is through the kind of policies presidents tend to hate — for example, the deflation that Fed Chairman Paul Volcker performed on Jimmy Carter’s economy that helped get Reagan elected.

Kamala Harris sticks to progressive standards, proposing “a federal ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries to tackle inflation,” which would backfire into a major economic debacle, complete with shortages and calls for rationing and worse. It fits in nicely with another typical progressive plank, calling for “raising the minimum wage,” which would lead to less employment partly through increased robotization of businesses now employing the workers affected, the low-​skilled (the ones Trump calls “great”).

Looking over their substantive policies, it’s easy to see why “culture war” issues prevail.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom

Rogue City Government?

repair shop parking

Is it a coup?

Two years ago, Azael Sepulveda, a mechanic, sued the city of Pasadena. The city had demanded that he provide 28 parking spots before he could open a shop to fix things. The property his shop is on can accommodate only a few parking spaces.

With the help of Institute for Justice, which fights for people’s right to earn an honest living all over the country, Sepulveda reached a settlement with the city. He would be allowed to open.

Hurray. Big hassle, but now he could go on with his life.

Except that for two years the city has still blocked him from opening up.

So IJ had to sue again. And get this. Members of the Pasadena City Council recently said that for the past year they have been kept in the dark about developments in the case. This, “even though the city’s attorney claims to be acting on ‘instruction from city council.’”

That attorney, Bill Helfand, has been arguing that the city should be immune from litigation to enforce the city’s own settlement.

So … is it a coup? Is Helfand running local government himself, unauthorized, randomly ignoring settlements and whatnot?

Could some weirdly pervasive and persistent miscommunication be the problem? It just seems unlikely that mislaid telephone messages are why Sepulveda is still being stonewalled.

Whatever the problem is, Pasadena, fix it. “Stop with the games,” as IJ says. And let Azael Sepulveda get started fixing other things.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets regulation

Natural vs. Regulated

“I don’t need metabolically unhealthy politicians and obese bureaucrats watching out for my health,” The Telegraph quotes an anonymous source. 

The subject? “How milk became the new culture war dividing America,” published on June 22. It’s a “natural” vs. “technological” debate.

“For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous,” Tony Diver’s article begins, but how it ends is telling: “‘With respect to the question of food being natural — arsenic is natural,’ Prof Schaffner said.” And so, too, he says, is cyanide. 

“Sharks are natural. Those things can all kill you. So just because something is natural does not mean that it’s safe.’”

That sounds like something I’d say. 

But is it something to say about raw milk?

Consider the historical context. Raw milk and its products have been produced for human consumption for millennia. Of course there are dangers, and pasteurization has done wonders to curb bacteriological infections and death. Still, a lot of people wonder what we’ve lost in the pasteurization process. Nutrition and immune system health, for example. So for decades — perhaps as long as there have been regulations to make pasteurization mandatory — there’s been a “pro-​natural” backlash.

On the Nature side, we note that our populations aren’t as healthy as you’d expect from the benevolent tyranny of politicians, regulators, and, uh, “obese bureaucrats.”

So, last week, “the latest bill to repeal an outright ban on raw milk hit the governor’s desk in Louisiana, after similar efforts in West Virginia, Iowa, Georgia and North Dakota.”

If signed into law, Louisianans will be able to purchase raw milk in stores — “albeit with a warning, in capital letters, that it is ‘not for human consumption.’

“Everyone, including the legislators, knows that instruction will be ignored.”

There’s something sickness-​inducing about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency scandal

So Horrible?

government institutions, secrets, conspiracy, UFO, UAP

Talking to Joe Rogan about the JFK assassination,Tucker Carlson argued that Trump’s and Biden’s withholding of information runs counter to American law. “There’s clearly something worth protecting,” he says, and he doesn’t mean the people involved — they’re all dead.

What’s being protected are, presumably, institutions.

According to Judge Andrew Napolitano, Trump told him that “if they showed you what they showed me, you wouldn’t have released it either.” According to Roger Stone, Trump explained that what he saw was “so horrible you wouldn’t believe it” … and thus Trump withheld 20 percent of the documents that had been scheduled to be released.

So horrible? Many of us can imagine quite a lot of horror coming from the dark corridors of the federal Leviathan.

But there’s another generational secret that Trump and Biden share, and Tucker mentioned it too: UFOs.

Indeed, he and Rogan started out the podcast in a freewheeling discussion of what our government now calls “the UAP issue,” for “unidentified anomalous phenomena.” But Tucker focused on a “dark” and “spiritual” element to the story, giving little evidence except for the scientist’s name who had contacted him about the study of UFO injuries of military personnel.

Tucker also mentioned strangely behaving objects that traverse the oceans as if water were no matter. A few days earlier, a Yahoo News “Futurism” article explained that “Tim Gallaudet, an oceanographer and former Naval rear admiral who served as the author of a March white paper about so-​called ‘unidentified submerged objects’ or USOs, told Fox News this week that he considers it both ‘scientifically valid’ and critical to national security to study these phenomena.”

A lot of effort has been made in the recent disclosure talk to frame UAPs as potential threats. But what kind of threat? A “spiritual” one — “so horrible”? 

All we really know is that regarding assassinations and mysterious airborne and oceanic objects, the government would prefer to keep us guessing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom regulation

Monopoly vs. Monopoly

monopoly octopus, Joe Biden, Apple

The Biden Administration makes much of its pro-​consumer actions. President Sleepy Joe never tires of boasting about how his regulations favor consumers over credit card companies. Considering the massive taxation that his administration supports, however, saving a few bucks on overdraft fees looks a bit absurd in context.

As does the administration’s ramped-​up anti-​trust actions.

The federal government has now attacked Apple. On anti-​trust grounds. For being a monopoly.

The humor in this was noted by anti-​intellectual property theorist Stephan Kinsella, tweeting on X: “‘U.S. Sues Apple, Accusing It of Maintaining an iPhone Monopoly’ We grant you patent and copyright monopoly privileges and you use them to build up a monopoly? How dare you!”

Jeffrey A. Tucker of the Brownstone Institute was less amused, and less concerned with Apple’s reliance upon intellectual property, which he claims is secondary to the company’s useful products: “The very notion that the government is trying to protect consumers in this case is preposterous. Apple is a success not because they are exploitative but because they make products that users like, and they like them so much that they buy ever more.”

At issue is how Apple products work so well together but not so well with other manufacturers’ products. “The Justice Department calls this anticompetitive even though competing is exactly the source of Apple’s market strength,” insists Tucker.

Maybe it’s really about this principle: the government giveth; the government taketh away: blessed be the name of the Biden.

In full disclosure, I have an iPhone, which I hate, and a Microsoft Surface Book, which I also hate. I’m open to any of their competitors, which I might hate less.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment Eighth Amendment rights general freedom

The Case of the Narrow Driveway

nanny state, regulations, government, bureaucrats

Sandy Martinez: mother of three, working hard to get by, whole life ahead of her — why would she sabotage it by failing to perfectly park her car in her narrow driveway such that two of the wheels edged onto the grass?

Think I’m making it up? 

No. It’s true. Some people get distracted and treat their grass as if it were gravel and let their car edge onto it.

Why’dja do it Sandy, huh? Why?

On the hand, it’s her property, so who cares? 

What difference does it make? 

Well, mucho … if you’re Lantana, Florida, which fined Sandy $101,750 for imperfect parking, $47,000 because of storm-​inflicted fence damage, $16,000 for cracks in her driveway.

The good news is that Institute for Justice is litigating on behalf of Sandy Martinez and other homeowners being hit with plainly unjust fines for trivial code violations.

IJ argues that the state and local governments at fault are violating the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against excessive fines. And the Institute and its clients are winning. The U.S. Supreme Court has just ruled, in Timbs v. Indiana, that this Eight Amendment ban applies to cities and states as well as to the federal government. 

Many locales, perhaps including Lantana, Florida, may still try to get away with the grift despite this definitive ruling. But sooner or later, some judge will throw out the blatantly excessive fines and point to the recent Supreme Court decision.

Help is on the way, Sandy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-​Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-​based, ethnicity-​based, or sex-​based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change​.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture

Pandemic Politics … or Poltroonery?

Covid, vaccine, government, mandates, freedom

Fear was a major theme — and ploy — during the pandemic. But it’s looking now like the people we have been told to rely upon for our safety are themselves moved by fear. They’re cowards, poltroons.

The Centers for Disease Control wrote an alert in the thick of 2021’s “vaccine” rollout, warning of the dangers of the Moderna and Pfizer jabs.

It was never sent out.

“In the May 25, 2021, email, exclusively obtained by The Epoch Times, a CDC official revealed why some officials were against sending the alert,” explains Zachary Stieber. You see, while an alert to health care professionals using the official Health Area Network system made complete sense, one CDC official gave a clue to her colleagues’ hesitance: “people don’t want to appear alarmist,” you see.

What did we who took the jab risk? Heart inflammation, or myocarditis. The CDC knew this early on.

But did not warn us.

Now, from listening to Dr. John Campbell on YouTube and Rumble, we have learned a lot more (if not in time in 2021) about the myocarditis threat. The takers of the modRNA treatment who are most at risk are those who engage in strenuous exercise soon after inoculation (which explains why the bulk of the afflicted have been boys and young men in the prime of life). Or so I last heard. I am certainly no doctor; I merely rely upon doctors to advise me.

And those doctors, in turn, rely upon official sources of information like the CDC. 

Who did not advise them properly.

Who worry too much about “appearing alarmist” and not enough about relaying the best information.

Poltroons!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies partisanship Regulating Protest

Home of the Surveilled 

surveillance, banking, Congress, government, privacy

Abusive investigations that must themselves be investigated are piling up.

In the case commanding our attention today, the meta-​investigating organization is the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It is investigating the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).

Who does FinCEN pursue? True scoundrels? Hapless executives caught in a regulatory net?

Nope. FinCEN has been on fishing expeditions. It hasn’t been going after persons suspected of either willfully committing crimes or even tripping over regulations accidentally, or at least not only such types.

It has been going after anybody whose purchasing history puts them in the category of wrong-​thinking rightists — hence, I guess, crypto-terrorists.

FinCEN has been instructing banks to scan customer records for evidence of suspect purchases. Not illegal purchases. Just “suspicious” in light of an ideological filter, unconstitutionally applied.

On Twitter, Representative Jim Jordan reported recently that the subcommittee now knows that FinCEN required financial institutions to screen transactions in which terms like “MAGA,” “Trump,” “Bible,” and “Bass Pro Shop” popped up. 

Apparently, if you’re fishing while wearing a MAGA cap and quoting Genesis, you just might be on the verge of shooting up your local post office.

Please don’t ask me to explain what anybody involved with FinCEN could possibly be thinking by engaging in this illegal spying. Or whether they have even a glancing acquaintance with constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

I’m just glad Jordan and his Weaponization Subcommittee are on the job, “watching the watchers.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs national politics & policies too much government

To End the Great Declension

Argentina, Javier Milei, money, inflation, government

“Today begins a new era in Argentina,” said Javier Milei in his inaugural address as the new president of Argentina. “Today we end a long and sad history of decadence and decline and begin the road to the reconstruction of our country.”

President Milei has focused on a problem — the decadence of mass poverty — and identified it with a basic view of government: interventionism in markets, central control and bureaucratic proliferation. These, once established, start a cycle that must end in decay, decline. “The outgoing government has left us with hyperinflation, and it is our top priority to make every effort to avoid a catastrophe that would push poverty above 90 percent and indigence above 50 percent,” he explained.

Milei is not hesitant; gradualism’s not his bag, for the country does not “have margin for sterile discussions. Our country demands action and immediate action.”

At some point, the argument runs, you have to boldly cut government. Not just cut the rate of government growth, which is about all American Republicans have achieved — often allowing others to take the credit, as with Bill “The Era of Big Government Is Over” Clinton.

Milei’s first act as president was an executive order reducing the number of government ministries from 21 to nine. If this move actually succeeds in paring down the size of Argentina’s state apparatus and workforce, it will be something of a miracle.

In a country that needs miracles. 

Here in these United States, we may not have hyperinflation, as such, but we do face a crisis. The deficits are persistent, and majorities in both parties seem utterly unconcerned about the $34 trillion debt, rushing at us fast. Costing more to service than we spend on defense.

Only Vivek Ramaswamy has pushed specific ways to cut government.

But, unlike Milei in South America, here in North America Vivek’s just not that popular.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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