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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility

Not Fine with Feinstein?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, election, candidate, California, Democratic Party, money, campaign

Could it be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, may not be liberal enough?

The San Francisco Democrat has ostensibly represented the Golden State in the United States Senate for the last 26 years. Before that, Feinstein spent eight years on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and then a decade as mayor.

Now, after 44 consecutive years as a public official, what does the 85-year-old Feinstein seek? More. That is, another six-year lease on her powerful perch in the U.S. Senate.

But the Executive Board of the California Democratic Party — Feinstein’s Party — just said, “No way!”

A whopping 65 percent of the 333-member board opted for State Sen. Kevin de León, a fellow Democrat seen as more “progressive.” Only seven percent supported endorsing Feinstein.

Keep in mind that Feinstein is already on the November ballot. She was the leading vote-getter in California’s primary last month. Yet, she received only 44 percent of the vote: a majority does favor someone else.

In February, 2,700 activists at the State Democratic Party Convention in San Diego voted 54 to 37 percent for State Sen. De León over U.S. Sen. Feinstein.

“Feinstein, who spends much of her time in Washington, has had a distant relationship with party activists for years,” noted the Los Angeles Times report.

Still, what Democratic Party activists want may not matter so much. Mrs. Feinstein enjoys tremendous name recognition and, according to the Times, has “$7 million in campaign cash socked away as of May, ten times what De León had.”

That money seems to be Sen. Feinstein’s real base of support.

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, girlfriend Lisa Page, congressional interrogation, testimony, Trump, threat

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 folly general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism responsibility too much government

Minimum Sense

Washington, D.C., City Council, Representation, democracy, initiative, minimum wage, association, Counsel,

Suddenly, the Democrats who dominate the Washington, D.C., City Council seem unwilling to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers — despite their official support for legislative minimum wage rate increases.

And a vote of the citizens.

Initiative 77, which passed easily last month, requires restaurant employers to incrementally increase the “tipped wage” until rates “reach what will be the uniform minimum of $15 an hour by 2025.”

“Initiative 77 is something I believe will be very harmful to our restaurants and, more importantly, our restaurant workers,” argues Councilman Jack Evans, one of three council members pledging repeal.

A spokesperson for One Fair Wage DC, calling a repeal “deeply undemocratic,” notes that “D.C. voters don’t like it when Republicans in Congress do it, and we trust council will not stoop to that level.”

Yet it would not be “the first time the city’s lawmakers overturned a decision by the electorate,” the Washington Post reminds readers, citing “a decision in 2001 when the D.C. Council overturned term limits approved by voters.”*

I’m all for ballot measures to decide any issue the people have a right to decide . . . limited by all of our inalienable rights as individuals. Minimum wage laws constitute an abuse of our First Amendment right to association, which neither legislatures nor voters may legitimately abridge.

That the council doesn’t recognize this right of association, yet nonetheless thinks it should nullify a vote of the people tells you everything you need to know about the sorry state of representation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* And even quoting moi on the incredible hypocrisy dating back 17 years: “If you’re in a city struggling to get representation in the first place, that’s a terrible signal to say that your own local officials don’t respect their own citizens.”

 

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Accountability ballot access folly general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility U.S. Constitution

Should Non-Citizens Vote?

voting, elections, democracy, illegal, aliens, migration, borders, citizens

“A lot of people would like to say this is an immigration issue. It’s really not,” offered Gary Emineth, the head of North Dakotans for Citizen Voting and a candidate for state senator.  

“It’s really about preserving the right for U.S. citizens, and in our case, North Dakota residents, to only be the voters in all elections across the state of North Dakota,” added Emineth. “And that’s why we want it in the constitution.”

Turning in more than 35,000 voter signatures on petitions last Friday, Emineth and others placed a constitutional amendment on this November’s ballot that, if passed, would make voting the exclusive right of U.S. citizens in North Dakota.

Elsewhere in the country, Emineth points out, non-citizens are already voting — in Chicago and San Francisco, and in 11 cities across Maryland. Moreover, campaigns are underway across the country to give non-citizens the vote — in California, Connecticut, New York City, Boston and Montpelier, Vermont.

Opponents claim the North Dakota measure is completely unnecessary, as the state doesn’t currently allow non-citizens to cast a ballot, nor has any city yet attempted to allow non-citizens to vote. But Emineth’s goal is to keep it that way.

Moreover, University of North Dakota Law Professor Steven Morrison acknowledged to The Forum in Fargo that “the proposed amendment does clean up what could be a grammatical loophole since the word ‘every’ doesn’t conclusively exclude non-citizens from voting. . . .”

It is a very simple proposition: Do you want voting to be the exclusive right of U.S. citizens? Or should non-citizens be allowed to vote?

Coming to a ballot near and Fargo.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* With some help from Liberty Initiative Fund.

 

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Accountability folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard responsibility

Too Big for Breaches

EU, migrant, crisis, collapse, immigration, refuge, welfare, socialism, borders, freedom

“Any reporter who has covered Europe in the last decade has written a dozen articles or more,” The New York Times informs us, “about how one crisis or another has exposed the fundamental unsustainability of the European Union.”

I hadn’t noticed. Until recently, haven’t reporters and commentators been downplaying Europe’s looming crisis? But they cannot pretend “far right” separatist, decentralist and nationalist movements are marginal any longer, not after strong showings for Geert Wilders in The Netherlands and Marine Le Pen in France, and the Brexit vote.

Now everybody seems to be panicking.

Even the Times is half-predicting an end to what it calls the “European Experiment.”

The Times identifies the tension as arising from “calls for keeping out secondary migrants and demands to keep internal European borders open. It’s a version of the contradiction within the European Union itself: between an open union and a collection of sovereign states.”

Beneath all the brouhaha about freedom of movement across breached borders lies the real contradiction: between massive welfare states on the one hand and, on the other, freedom of movement, speech and all the rest.*

When governments offer freebies, they entice people into un-productive or at least sub-productive lifestyles. Which is not sustainable, especially when extensive. How many productive people must support how many unproductive people?

Then throw those domestic programs open to millions of migrants who lack even rudimentary language and First World skills? That’s how states subsidize their societies’ destruction.

Europe’s governments are way too big for their border breaches.

If you want traditional freedoms, you have to pare down government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Between social democracy (socialism lite) and the old liberal order.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Black Mask Terrorism

antifa, Portland, fascist, violence, Patriot Prayer group

I was in Arkansas on Saturday when the downtown streets of Portland, Oregon, “exploded into its worst protest violence of the Trump era,” as The Guardian explains. “More than 150 supporters of the far-right Patriot Prayer group fought pitched street battles with scores of anti-fascist protesters. In total, nine people were arrested.”

Notice that “Patriot Prayer” — a group sponsored by a Republican Senatorial candidate, and which says it stands for free speech — was labeled “far right” while the “anti-fascist protesters” were not called “far left.”

Characteristically, The Guardian vagues it up. “Violence suddenly ‘erupted,’” noted a Romanian YouTuber of the British rag’s evasiveness. “Who started it? We don’t know.”

Well, from the videos I saw it looked like the “anti-fascists” started it. The “patriots” were marching down the street when a young man, with helmet and backpack, and a young women, dressed in black, marshaled antifa mobs towards the legal march, and then stones and bottles were thrown, and explosives, too . . . into the Patriot Prayer rally.

Note: the Patriot Prayer group had filed the paperwork for the march; antifa had not. The Portland police did not protect the licensed marchers, but did revoke their license, telling everyone to disperse (threatening “duress” to the non-compliant) after the violence broke out.

If you did not carefully look at more than one video, you might be confused. Indeed, not all videos showed the crucial break from peace to violence.

So, what other clues might one look for?

In old cowboy movies, whoever ganged up masked, and wore black, were usually the bad guys.

Antifa — thanks for providing the clues: masks, black fighting gear, and Luciferian handsigns.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.