Categories
election law Voting

Who & What in LA?

Los Angeles, City Council, voting, elections, non citizen, immigration, democracy

Last week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to place a charter amendment on the November 3 ballot to facilitate giving noncitizens a vote in city elections.

“The measure, introduced by Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, will give immigrants who live, work, pay taxes and raise families in Los Angeles a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives,” The New York Post reported.

Of course, “immigrants” who have become United States citizens already have the vote; this effort is about giving voting rights to immigrants who have not become citizens.

“I believe it’s a simple principle that should guide us: If you live in the city, contribute to the city, raise your family in the city and are impacted by the decisions made in the city, you deserve to have a voice in the city,” Soto-Martínez said.

First, citizen or not, the First Amendment gives everyone a voice. 

Just not necessarily a vote.

Second, these suggested criteria by which non-citizens will gain the vote are simply made-up talking points, not part of the law at all. You don’t have to “work” to be eligible to vote. Nor must one bear children and rear them in LA to qualify. Lastly, no, you don’t have to be a net taxpayer, either.*

“The amendment would modify the city charter so that the council can later adopt an ordinance authorizing eligible noncitizens to vote in municipal contests,” explained Daily49er.com. Who would be “eligible”? Those in the country illegally, as in San Francisco and Oakland?

Worst of all, voters could know the answers to those questions only after they decide to give the city council the power to expand the electorate — to whatever part of LA’s over 680,000 noncitizens it settles upon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Plus, as standards go, “impacted by the decisions made in the city” is true for anyone who ever drives through Los Angeles. Will license plate readers be used to track down those motorists traveling through to send them mail-in ballots instead of photo enforced speeding tickets?

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Thought

James Mill

There is nothing in the world, where a government is, in any degree, limited and restrained, so useful for getting rid of all limit and restraint, as wars. The power of almost all governments is greater during war than during peace. But in the case of limited governments, it is so, in a very remarkable degree.

James Mill, “Colony,” Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. IV. Edinburgh: A. & C. Black / London: J. Innes, 1832: p. 32.
Categories
Today

Victory to Midsummer

Today is Estonia’s Victory Day, which has been celebrated on June 23 every year since 1934. The date recalls the victory in the 1919 Battle of Vonnu of the Estonian military forces (and Latvian North brigade) and their allies over German forces (Baltische Landeswehr) who sought to re-assert Baltic-German control over the region. The battle was part of the 1918-1920 Estonian War of Independence, where the main adversary of the newly independent Estonia was Communist Russia.

Today, Victory Day also marks the contributions of all Estonians in their fight to regain and retain their independence. Estonian celebration of June 23 is ceremonially tied to the following Midsummer Day celebrations on the 24th.

According to Estonian laws, the state flags are not to be lowered during the night between days.

Categories
property rights

Our Property, Not Their Loot

Asset Forfeiture, police, law, property, corruption

It’s getting harder to hit innocent Coloradans over the head with civil forfeiture laws.

If you live in the Rocky Mountain State and the police want to grab some of your stuff on the basis of a suspicion (or a claimed suspicion) that you have committed a crime, you’re better off today than you would have been a few weeks ago.

Colorado has become the second state of the union to entitle you to a lawyer if police are seizing your property.

The new law also requires “a conviction of the nonowner criminal defendant before the noninnocent owner’s property may be forfeited,” which is a little nonclear but means, if enforced properly, that authorities in the state will not be able to greedily grab your property on grounds of mere suspicion that you or some good buddy of yours has committed a crime.

One needs civil forfeiture laws to disrupt organized crime, say supporters. But Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella points out how much evidence has piled up over the years showing how easily civil forfeiture can be abused. And how frequently it has in fact been abused. Undoubtedly, civil forfeiture laws have “created perverse profit incentives for police departments and lacked due process protections for innocent property owners.”

State by state — or in all states at once, if Congress can help in a way that survives judicial challenges — the incentives must be wiped out.

Due process for innocent people subject to the confiscations must be ensured.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Confucius

To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.

K’ung-fu-tzu (Master Kong), The Analects, Book II, Chapter XV.
Categories
Today

Giants

On June 22, 1633, astronomer Galileo Galilei recanted his belief in heliocentrism, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun. He didn’t do this based on scientific research, but under pressure from the Holy Office in Rome.

Three hundred forty-five years later, to the date, American astronomer James W. Christy discovered Charon (pictured above), a moon for what was then called “the ninth planet,” Pluto. This put Christy in an august company of satellite discoverers, including Galileo, who had discovered four of Jupiter’s moons in 1610.

When Pluto was later “demoted” to “dwarf planet” status, in 2006, no one was put under house arrest for objecting, or for not changing his or her mind, as had Galileo been centuries before.

The ratio in sizes between Charon and Pluto make the pair, effectively, a “double dwarf planet.”

Categories
Update

An American Doctor in China

Six years ago, as we were beginning to unravel the lies at the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, we encountered one doctor’s very specific prevarications about his role in the Wuhan laboratory that had developed the virus. Paul Jacob wrote about him in “Twelve Monkeys in Charge?,” published here on June 18, 2020. The man’s name? Lieber.

In the midst of all this has been one Dr. Charles Lieber, a 61-year-old nanoscience researcher, who recently “has been indicted by a federal grand jury on two counts of making false statements and will be arraigned in federal court in Boston at a later date.  Lieber was arrested on Jan. 28, 2020, and charged by criminal complaint.” He allegedly lied about his relationship with China’s Thousand Talents Plan and his role as a “Strategic Scientist” at Wuhan University of Technology in China.

Where SARS-CoV-2 — the coronavirus of the current pandemic — apparently came from.

The case received scant attention at the time. Paul Jacob took note of this lack of attention in early 2021.

But what happened to Dr. Lieber after that?

Lieber was convicted of six felonies in December 2021, including two counts of making false statements to the FBI and investigators from the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health regarding his participation in the Chinese government’s Thousand Talents Program, as well as four counts of filing false tax returns. Convicted in December 2021 he was sentenced to one day in prison — time already served (before trial) — as well as “two years of supervised release including half-a-year of house arrest and a $50,000 fine,” according to The Harvard Crimson in early April 2023.

The Lieber case is not directly related to the Wuhan gain-of-function research, or its funding; it is a separate issue rising out of a Department of Justice investigation of academic espionage at American universities.

Precisely how Lieber’s nanotech work fit in with the Wuhan effort we do not know. The investigations, so far, appear to be focused on following the money.

Sure, this story is about money, too. But a different stream of money. Different from the Fauci-EcoHealth Alliance-Wuhan lab stream.

In April 2025, after release from home confinement, Lieber became a full-time chair professor at Tsinghua Shenzhen International Graduate School, a graduate school of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, China. He has also been employed as SMART Investigator at the newly-established Shenzhen Medical Academy of Research and Translation. Some see this as a case of “brain drain” of U.S. talent to China.

To clarify this situation — which Paul Jacob brought up mainly as a way to show the failure of major media to investigate the bizarre relationship between China and American scientists — here we go: there is no direct link between the crimes for which Lieber was convicted and the creation of the infamous “China virus.” Lieber’s crime was hiding money, not hiding a virus; he hid his relationship with China while declaring to his American funder, the National Institute for Health, that he had no such ties.

A kind of fraud? A spy-like fraud, perhaps.

But undoubtedly there is more to uncover.

Categories
Thought

James Mill

To understand this unhappy position of a portion of our fellow-citizens, we must call to mind the division which philosophers have made of men placed in society. They are divided into two classes, Ceux qui pillent, — et Ceux qui sont pillés; and we must consider with some care what this division, the correctness of which has not been disputed, implies.The first class, Ceux qui pillent, are the small number. They are the ruling Few. The second class, Ceux qui sont pillés, are the great number. They are the subject Many.

James Mill, “The State of the Nation,” London Review 25 (April–July 1835): p. 6.
Categories
Today

Grandfather clauses

On June 21, 1915, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down an Oklahoma law denying the right to vote to some citizens. In Guinn v. United States, the Supreme Court found “grandfather clauses” in effect in several formerly slave states — though superficially race-neutral — to be little more than sneaky ways of allowing illiterate white folks to vote while disallowing illiterate black folks.

Categories
Update

A Parting Shot

Dr. Fauci, transparency, China, covid

This week Tulsi Gabbard stepped down as Director of National Intelligence. But, before she left, she got one more bit of secret government out in the open: the files showing just how evil Anthony Fauci is and was. Here is the beginning of the ODNI press release:

Fauci Funded Wuhan Lab Research That Sparked COVID
New Evidence Fauci Manipulated Intelligence and Lied to Congress
WASHINGTON D.C. — Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Anthony Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), provided millions in US taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV)—work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic.
Today, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is releasing never-before-seen communications and documents exposing how Fauci worked with politicized career leadership in the Intelligence Community (IC) to suppress the truth about his actions, the virus’ lab-leak origins, and his role in directing U.S. funding for this dangerous research that caused immeasurable harm and countless lost lives. These documents expose Fauci’s direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID-19, and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024, when under oath he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.

ODNI News Release 11-26, June 18, 2026.

Tulsi Gabbard’s video announcement is well-spoken, as usual:

The release of data (to be found on the ODNI website) has received a great deal of social media attention, one of the most illustrious being a tweet from Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: “Thank you, Tulsi, for documenting Dr. Fauci’s central role in causing the COVID-19 pandemic — among the most consequential crimes in human history.”

Paul Jacob has covered Fauci’s perfidy and the “lab leak theory” extensively: