Paul reviews the week’s big stories here on Common Sense with Paul Jacob — and also reminisces about Paul Harvey. And ghosts of turkeys past.
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What part should we play in terror, torture, oppression?
Asking for a friend.
Well, friends . . . some three-hundred-and-thirty million of them.
Egypt. The government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi just stormed the newsroom of one of Egypt’s few remaining independent media outlets, Mada Masr.
“Mada has shown nothing but courage in reporting the news against all odds,” a representative of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) offered bitterly, “and in the face of brutal repression.”
According to the CPJ, Egypt is the world’s top jailer of journalists. And that repression is not just well-documented, it is also well-funded. By . . . well . . . Sisi’s state receives roughly $1.5 billion in annual U.S. military and economic assistance, while Egyptians must “forgo democratic liberties” as “authorities” maintain “a constant crackdown . . . encompassing anyone criticizing the government,” informs a Congressional Research Service report updated last week.
Iraq. Anti-government protests are in full swing, with Iraqis “demanding an end to corruption, more jobs and better public services,” the BBC informs. More than 300 people have been killed by the government the American military set up, and nearly 15,000 injured as Iraqi Security forces have used tear gas and live bullets against protesters.
Hong Kong. The smashing victory for pro-democracy candidates in the former British colony, who “won almost 90 percent of the seats” in local elections, was the weekend’s bright spot. Voters sent an unequivocal message.
Now on President Trump’s desk is the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (H.R.3289), which puts the territory’s special trading status at risk should China impinge on its autonomy.
Will our president sign the legislation or exchange it with Chinese leader Xi Jinping for a better trade deal?
Funding, facilitating oppression is no way to serve as a beacon of liberty to the world.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photo: Studio Incendo / Photo: Flazingo Photos
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News stories about death- and illness-by-vaping keep hitting us. But in most of these stories it is what is left out that is most alarming.
From Washington State’s King County we learn of another case of severe lung disease “associated with vaping.” But the reportage doesn’t mention how the maladies relate to vaping. “KING-TV reports there have been 15 cases of severe lung disease associated with vaping in Washington state since April 2019. . . .” Interesting as far as that goes, but. . . .
In addition to no discussion of causality, the most obvious thing not mentioned in this and similar reports? The numbers diagnosed with severe lung disease caused by smoking — which is the relevant vaping alternative.
The U.S. Government’s agency devoted to diagnosing potentially widespread pathogens and practices is, thankfully, a bit more useful. In a recently published study, scientists have narrowed down the real culprit: “Vitamin E acetate was detected in all 29 patient” samples taken from those under study.
Most had been vaping THC.
There are organizations worse than sloppy news outlets, however. In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives has passed a bill not merely to ban flavored e-cigarettes, but also to levy 75 percent tax on all e-liquids and vaping devices.
Typical government overkill.
But not overkill enough, for the bill doesn’t stop there. Whopping fines against those caught with unlicensed vaping products are also in the bill, as is — aaargh! — civil asset forfeiture.
The “representatives” of Massachusetts’ citizens want to take away their automobiles, boats and airplanes if they cannot prove, on the spot, their vaping products’ legality.
Politicians are far more dangerous than vaping.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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When Senator Bernie Sanders demands that the government “guarantee health care to all people as a right, not a privilege,” does anyone think about how governments currently provide more basic services as rights?
You have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in America — or so we say — but
- our police aren’t legally obliged to defend us,
- prosecution and compensation for real crimes is iffy,
- one can ruin oneself in court either as plaintiff or defense in civil cases, and
- the whole legal system is kludgy in the extreme.
And this is the core function of government!
Why expect better government performance in medical care?
Bernie’s plan, which Democratic front-runner Senator Elizabeth Warren wafflingly endorses, is “Medicare for All.” But the current Medicare-for-seniors doesn’t cover all of seniors’ medical bills. Seniors pay out of pocket for a portion of their medical costs, often buying “supplemental” insurance to help in the process. If they can afford it.
Medicare does not pay for all medical costs incurred at the supply end, either. The federal government operates with schedules of compensation, limiting charges and procedures in customary bureaucratic fashion. That’s why doctors and clinics increasingly refuse to take Medicare patients. This is what we want to roll out to the whole population?
“Polls show that voters are more willing to pay higher taxes in return for lower cost health care,” Jake Novak explains at CNBC. “What they won’t tolerate are reduced services, especially when it comes to health care, higher taxes or not.”
What assurance can politicians provide that mediocre-care, their latest schemes for socializing medicine, won’t amount to higher taxes for reduced services?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Based on a photo by Molly Adams
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One of the better arguments for government relies upon sobriety: we want rational, measured responses to threats, not panicky, hot-headed reactions. We have a rule of law to prevent revenge and vendetta, replacing them with justice and civil order.
But when we expand the concept of “threat” far beyond interpersonal violence and to dangers from our own foolish or merely misguided behavior, “sobriety” too often doesn’t even seem an option.
Take drugs.
Specifically, take “vaping.”
That is the innovative technology of “e-cigarettes” that can be used to replace the smoking of tobacco and other drugs with inhaling drug-laced water vapor.
Vaping is far less dangerous than tobacco, at least for emphysema and lung cancer, but it is not harmless. Several hundred people across several of these United States have become very ill and a few have died of a mysterious lung disease.
So of course the Surgeon General calls it an epidemic, and the White House and Congress take up the cause to regulate and even prohibit vaping. And India just “became the latest country to ban electronic cigarettes,” according to Bloomberg.
Whoa, the subject has barely been studied, and what we know so far is that it was not major-brand nicotine e-liquid, but, instead, boutique product that has caused most of the casualties.
The leap to legislation has been too quick for consumers to alter their own behavior with new information.
Besides, prohibition and regulation haven’t worked to prevent the current opiate overdose crisis.
The rush to “do something very, very strong,” as President Trump puts it, is the very opposite of why we say we want government.
Its lack of sobriety is . . . sobering.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Does the Federal Bureau of Investigation have a file on you?
Does it — or some other agency — have an active file on you?
If so, does it have good reason for such an investigation?
Well, refine that last question a bit: does the FBI have a good reason under the principles of a democratic republic, abiding by the limits set by the rights listed (and not listed) in the Constitution?
Eight years ago, the folks at AntiWar.com learned that they had been subject to FISA snooping and multiple “threat assessment” memos of the FBI. Eric Garris, founder, managing editor, and webmaster of the anti-war site sued, under the Freedom of Information Act, for discovery, and, under the 1974 Privacy Act, to have the memos expunged. On September 11, the court instructed the bureau to expunge one of them, mainly because no crime was under investigation.
You can read a good account of the story at The American Conservative, by Kelly Beaucar Vlahos. It is not a simple story. But the gist is that a journalistic enterprise was targeted for a spy operation because the American Deep State disagreed with — or just plain feared — the journalists’ policy of opposing never-ending war.
Never-ending war being, of course, the health of the ever-expanding state.
This may not unreasonably remind you of the Obama Era suppression of Tea Party activism via the Internal Revenue Service’s discriminatory doling out 501(c)3 statuses. But the FBI is even more ominous, as Angela Keaton, Director of Operations, acknowledged: “donors became scared.”
That is all the evidence we need to recognize how dangerous Deep State spying can be to the freedoms — political and personal — of Americans.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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