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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

Listen to the Warm

I like publicity stunts as much as the next activist. But haven’t we had enough of the whole Greta Thunberg bit yet?

On Wednesday, the 16-​year-​old Swede provided testimony on an apt stage, let us grant her that — the U.S. House of Representatives’ foreign affairs subcommittee joint hearing on the global youth climate change movement

She didn’t prepare any remarks, though. She merely “attached” the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming “as her testimony.” Her rationale? “I don’t want you to listen to me, I want you to listen to the scientists.” And “to unite behind science.”

You know, for “real action.”

It was what happened right after she demanded “real action,” though, where the stark reality of the situation became clear: a grown man in a suit, elected to Congress, asked, “Could you expand on why it’s so important to listen to the science?”

And then the non-​scientist spoke … not very expansively.

 Forget that science qua science isn’t to be “listened to,” it is to be engaged in, with conjectures, research and refutations. (There was nothing like that at the hearing.) Forget also that the science is increasingly less clear on the severity of what warming we see. Remember only that an elected official used a girl to imbue a text (the IPCC report) with moral legitimacy, dubbing it “best available ‘united science’” — the better to push an unargued-​for massive coercive government intervention into the life of our civilization.

Is no adult in the room ashamed of what they are doing … exploiting a cute youngster to subvert rationality?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture national politics & policies

The Trump of the Will

It’s over — our long national nightmare is over.

Or is it? 

Congress’s “movie” version of Robert Mueller’s book-​length report on Trump-​Russia collusion flopped. That is, Wednesday’s hearings were an “optics … disaster.” 

The Democrats and their media cheerleaders had put so much stock in the event, hoping it would be a Triumph of the Will spurring the much-​longed-​for Trump impeachment, an inspiration to move the masses on to victory.

It turned out to be more an industrial film on early stage dementia, with Robert Mueller the befuddled protagonist, demonstrating that he was either slipping, or had not really been in charge of the report bearing his name.

Now, we sympathize with dementia patients.

But should we sympathize with congressional Democrats? And the Republicans, too? 

They are as pathetic and evil and foolish and craven as they seem for reasons. We live in a time of crisis. They have politicked themselves into their respective corners; they now feel trapped.

Their desperation has given us Trump — The Antichrist to most Democrats and The Savior to most Republicans. I am pretty sure neither is true. 

Trump is a sign of the times.

Maybe, in the smoldering ruins of the Mueller hearing conflagration, the case for impeachment — and for Trump as Russian Agent — will completely disappear. Democrats can regain their senses, and Republicans can go back to their theme of responsibility (as epitomized in their long-​lost cause of balanced budgets and limited government).

But I won’t hold my breath.

The nightmare may be over, but Washington’s dementia is harder to recover from.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility

The Deeply State

FBI agent Peter Strzok is offended. 

Deeply.

He takes pains to clarify: he sent emails during the last presidential campaign expressing a willingness and readiness and commitment to preventing a Trump Presidency because he, Agent Strzok, is patriotic. 

Deeply.

During yesterday’s contentious congressional interrogation, fielding questions regarding just how anti-​Trump he was during the last presidential campaign, Peter Strzok denied that his obvious and admitted political bias affected his professional conduct.

“Like many people, I had and expressed personal political opinions during an extraordinary presidential election,” said Agent Strzok. “My opinions were expressed out of deep patriotism.”

But it wasn’t just a matter of expression, was it? One text message was an assurance that he would “stop” Trump’s election. When challenged on this, Strzok admitted that his memory was faulty.

Deeply?

“At no time, in any text,” Strzok said, decisively, “did those personal beliefs enter into the realm of any action I took.”

When a citizen expresses a credible threat to a president, federal agents investigate. His exchange with his “girlfriend,” Lisa Page, was not what we now call an “existential threat,” of course. Ms. Page had texted her worry about a Trump win: the man was “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!” Strzok’s reply was not vague: “No. No he won’t. We’ll stop it.” The threat is, at most, covert-​political, back-​room. FBI-​ish. The couple were, after all, a part of an investigation into Donald Trump’s alleged Russian connection.

Though one could easily understand a married man assuring his inamorata simply to puff himself up in her eyes, this assurance sure looks different to our eyes — it cannot help but make us suspicious.

Deeply.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 


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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden

Clapper into the Clink?

Lying to Congress is a strange crime. A number of people have been prosecuted for it over the years, but Congress isn’t a court of law and, more to the point, Congress may present the densest source of lies in the United States.

The idea that it would be illegal for a citizen to lie to a den of liars is, well, a bit amusing.

But it is illegal, and definitely should be illegal, for government functionaries to give false testimony before Congress.

That’s why the case of the admittedly “untruthful”* James Clapper is so aggravating. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden, on the Senate floor, about data collection of phone calls by the U.S. federal government, he — the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2017 — lied through his teeth.

And had not Edward Snowden leaked information on the National Security Administration’s metadata collection program, we would not have learned anything about it.

No wonder, then, that several congressmen want to prosecute Clapper before March 12, when the Statute of Limitations runs out on his crime. Steven Nelson at the Washington Examiner quotes Rep. Ted Poe (R‑Tex.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R‑Ky.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R‑Tex.), and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R‑Wis.) as all being in favor of siccing federal prosecutors on the forked tongue spymaster.

Senator Wyden warns that letting lies such as Clapper’s go unaddressed encourages Americans to be cynical about government, and “makes it possible, even probable, for hucksters and authoritarians to take power.”

Too late?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Clapper’s March 2013 whopper at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was that the NSA was “not wittingly” collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Later, to MSNBC, he characterized his artful dodge as having been “the least untruthful” way for him to respond.


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ballot access Common Sense initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders term limits

What Was I Thinking?

Tomorrow, I turn 50. Time flies when you’re having fun.

For the last 30-​plus years — my entire adult life — I’ve worked in politics. That might not seem like much fun. Politics is a constant struggle, a slog. But working for freedom — in one crusade or another — has been both fulfilling and fun.

Maybe it’s because, as a friend once accused, I’m a pathological optimist. Maybe it’s a whole lot more than that.

I’ve worked through nights, bleary-​eyed, peering at voter registration lists. I’ve circulated petitions in 100-​degree heat and freezing temperatures. I’ve been vilified in the press, as well as lionized. I’ve been both hounded and praised. I’ve been imprisoned, and threatened with more of the same.

What was I thinking?

I guess I thought, and indeed still think, that we are called upon to do what we believe is right — come what may. Freedom isn’t free. As much as I love words, actions speak much louder.

It’s been hard sometimes. I was in prison for five and a half months when my oldest was only a year old. I was there for refusing to register for the draft.

What was I thinking?

In the words of then-​presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, I thought: “The draft or draft registration destroys the very values our society is committed to defending.” I could not stand idly by while those cherished values were destroyed, nor certainly be any party to it.

My re-​education in federal custody fortunately didn’t take. And the road I took has made all the difference.

For instance, I met Ron Paul when, as a slightly younger congressman, he testified at my trial. Three years later, in 1988, I nominated him to run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket.

At a meeting in April of that year, the task of putting Congressman Paul on the ballot for president was handed to me. The next morning I was awakened by a phone call at home — at 6:00 am. And for the next six months the phone never stopped ringing.

I remember my wife calling me at the office to tell me our new home phone number — and urging me not to give it out to people! She’s a lot smarter than I am.

Working with wonderful people across the country, we successfully placed Ron on the ballot in 47 states and the District of Columbia. And Guam. Believe me, it took a lot of hours, daylight and late night.

What was I thinking?

I was thinking that given a choice, people would choose greater freedom, limited government and personal responsibility. We didn’t win, of course. But we weren’t through trying.

Howie Rich and Eric O’Keefe noticed my work on the petition drives and offered me a job running the Tax Accountability Amendment in Illinois. Half a million voters signed petitions to put the measure on the ballot. Then, at 77 percent in the polls, the Illinois Supreme Court took it off the ballot. (The same thing happened again four years later with a term limits petition.)

But, suddenly, freedom was breaking out around the world. The Berlin Wall came down. Czechs poured into the streets. Estonians were singing. We watched with inspiration and then horror as students rallied for weeks in Tiananmen Square only to ultimately be crushed under tanks that rolled over them. Their dream was our dream; it was universal.

The end of the Cold War allowed Americans to cast a full glance at city hall, at the state capitol, at Washington, D.C. We didn’t like what we saw.

Along came term limits.

In 1992, I was hired to run U.S. Term Limits. We were able to help activists in 14 states get on the ballot — the most states to ever vote on a single issue on a single day. All 14 states passed term limits, including my home state of Arkansas.

The issue continued to win at the ballot box in the states and in hundreds of cities and counties — from Wyoming to New York City. Politicians sued. Speaker of the House Tom Foley was one.

In 1994, Republicans swept to a majority in the U.S. House for the first time in 40 years, in no small part due to their embrace of term limitation. One of the biggest upsets was Foley, the only Speaker defeated for re-​election since the Civil War, a victim of his own lawsuit to overturn his state’s voters.

And term limits — a case from Arkansas, not Foley’s — went to the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, in a narrow 5 to 4 decision, the court struck down Arkansas’s term limits law, and by implication laws enacted in 22 other states.

What was I thinking?

On the steps of the Supreme Court, I told reporters:

All over Washington today, the politicians and the power brokers are happy. You can hear the sound of champagne corks popping. I have a simple message to them. Drink up; you’re outnumbered.

Term limits went nowhere in Congress, of course. There were a few principled supporters, but most wanted a career of perks and power. It’s very seductive.

I was on the wrong side of an 80/​20 issue. I was with the 80 percent of Americans for term limits.

What an amazing situation: Our representatives refuse to do what 80 percent of the people want. In essence, they refuse to give back the power we’ve given to them.

The issue won’t go away. At every Tea Party, one sees the homemade two-​word signs: Term Limits.

The only negative result of term limits sweeping those states with initiative and referendum has been the backlash. Legislators and their favored special interests have launched a concerted attack on the initiative process for enabling the people to do such a thing in the first place.

What was I thinking?

The initiative process is the greatest protection we citizens have from a government gone wild.

Regular readers of Common Sense know my more recent work in helping citizens across the country petition to put dozens of initiatives on the ballot to protect homes and small businesses from being taken through eminent domain abuse and other initiatives to enact state spending limits.

In the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished” and in the cesspool that has become our politics, Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson indicted three of us, The Oklahoma Three, for “conspiracy to defraud the state” over a 2006 initiative there.

What was I thinking?

The Oklahoma powers-​that-​be were scared. And they did not want us taking any limits on government spending to a public vote.

And perhaps, for a moment or two, I may have thought “I’m getting too old for this.”

We were innocent of the charge and we fought back. After more than a year and a half with a possible ten-​year prison term hanging over our heads, the charges were dismissed. The AG had campaigned in the press that we were guilty, but he had repeatedly blocked our case from going before a judge for a preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence to even go to a trial.

No such hearing was ever completed. Meanwhile, the state’s petition law was struck down as unconstitutional in federal court.

The AG thought he could threaten us into submission. He had offered my co-​defendant Susan Johnson a deal: plead guilty and all she’d get would be a small slap on the wrist.

Like so many unsung patriots in this country, she told him to stuff it.

What was she thinking?

All that is necessary for the triumph of good is for the majority of people — who are indeed good at heart — to stand up and be counted. The people are not the problem. They are the solution to the problem.

When government becomes Goliath, the initiative is the people’s slingshot.

Times are tough. Even a little scary. But I’ve never had more hope for the future. Together, I’m convinced we can leave our kids and grandkids an insurance policy. Not one that pays money when we’re gone, but something they’ll need even more:

Freedom.

The key to protecting and restoring freedom is to give the intrinsic decency and the common sense of the American people a chance to prevail. That’s what the initiative and referendum process is all about: an opportunity to place some measure of common sense on the public agenda, and when needed, to check the power of the high and mighty.

As I look back on my five decades, I’m thinking how proud and how lucky I am to serve as president of Citizens in Charge and Citizens in Charge Foundation, the only national organizations committed to protecting the right of citizens to initiative and referendum.

Last year, thanks to your support, we worked in 17 states protecting the rights of over 137 million Americans. This year, we’re already helping local leaders in 14 states and we’re engaged in eight lawsuits to overturn unconstitutional restrictions on citizen petitions. And there’s more to come.

Many times through the years I’ve asked you to make a sacrifice to support our mutual cause. Your generosity has made the difference. Again today, I ask you to help support the work of Citizens in Charge Foundation with a contribution.

Don’t donate $50 to Citizens in Charge Foundation just because I’m turning 50. If that were the only motivation, I’d want you to give $49 or $39 or $21. I’d feel younger.

Give whatever you can afford — $50 or $5 or $500 — because your freedom and mine, as well as freedom for our loved ones, is worth every penny.

We’ll put it to good use in mobilizing citizens, organizing coalitions, putting grassroots pressure on elected officials, defending the rights of citizens in court and in the court of public opinion.

My oldest emailed me to say, “This is a pretty big deal birthday.” I told her that I’ll only be one day older.

And each new day I’ll be happy, having fun, defending what we hold dear, working with great people like you to empower the common sense of the American people, to put citizens in charge.

This is Common Sense. I’m still, for one day more, 49-​year old Paul Jacob.

P.S. Please contribute today to our 2010 national campaign to Save the Initiative. And thank you for all you’ve done to stand up for liberty and justice.

P.P.S. When you make a financial gift, your spouse, your friends, your neighbors and co-​workers may ask you: Times are tough — what were you thinking?

So tell them. Freedom needs not only your support, but theirs.