Categories
deficits and debt national politics & policies

The Forty-Trillionth

public debt, Congress, Trump, war

When Grover Cleveland — arguably the United States’ last non-“progressive” president — won his second term after a one-term hiccup named Benjamin Harrison, list makers and ordinal number enthusiasts faced a challenge: was Cleveland to be called the union’s 22nd president, or the 22nd and 24th president?

The two-term presidents before him had all served their terms consecutively, but we spoke of each four-year term in office as the presidents’ respective first and second administrations. Historians and archivists chose the clunky 22nd/24th double listing for Cleveland, which brings us to the current president, formerly the 45th and now the 47th.

One presidency was just not enough for Donald Trump.

But what will he be remembered as? It is possible that his tombstone will have a forty-something on it, but the “th” may very well stand for “trillionth” — for under his watch the public debt of the federal government rolled over on Wednesday, past $40 trillion.

I remember when people held signs up emblazoned with “No Trillion Dollar Debt!” How “forty years ago” is that?

There’s an old law of liberty: people out of power demand freedom, people in power demand more power. Trump sounded more libertarian when running for office, and he seems to conform to a very old corollary of the law: politicians running for office protest debt, politicians in office add to it.

FDR is the grand example, yet it is Trump who may come to be identified with it.

“The unprecedented [sic] $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities,” declares The Seattle Times, “from boosting the defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump’s almost-6-month-old Iran war to lowering the cost of gas and groceries.”

Isn’t this mere Trump-bashing? For while Trump may someday receive the blame, in truth it belongs to both parties and almost all politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Galsworthy

The beginnings and endings of all human undertakings are untidy, the building of a house, the writing of a novel, the demolition of a bridge, and, eminently, the finish of a voyage.

John Galsworthy, One More River (1933), first chapter.
Categories
Today

Haitian Revolution

On August 21, 1791, a Vodou ceremony led by Dutty Boukman turned into a violent slave rebellion, thereby starting the Haitian Revolution.

Categories
education and schooling election law

Tellingly Two-Faced

Washington, ballot, initiative

The Attorney General’s office in Washington wants it both ways.

That’s Washington the state, and I’m referring to an important case about the language state officials must use on the ballot to explain initiative measures to voters. The case (Arthur West, a citizen, v. Steve Hobbs, the Secretary of State) is now before the state’s highest court.

Democrats legislated that any initiative decreasing taxes must contain this wording on the ballot: “This measure would decrease funding for public K-12 education, higher education (including universities and community colleges), and human services (primarily healthcare).”

In fact, that assertion, by law, must be placed right before voters are asked to vote: Yes or No? 

Even though it isn’t, well, true.

Consider Proposition 645, the initiative to repeal an income tax hike on “evil” millionaires: it doesn’t specifically cut any of these government service categories that voters are being told it does. That’s not even in dispute. 

What spending legislators cut to compensate for decreased tax revenues is at the discretion of, obviously, those legislators.

Last week, the AG’s office argued in a different case heard in the same courthouse on the same day: “Indicating how funds in the general fund will be allocated in the future would be both inaccurate and misleading to the voters.”

Wait . . . that concedes Mr. West’s whole point in seeking an injunction against the now admittedly “inaccurate and misleading” anti-tax cut language.

On Monday, Citizens in Charge Foundation filed an amicus brief in the Washington Supreme Court explaining that the Evergreen State’s constitution permits only legislative acts “facilitating” the process.

“Misleading the public about the consequence of a ballot measure does not ‘facilitate’ its consideration,” we argue, “it undermines it.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* As president of Citizens in Charge Foundation, I made a legal declaration in this case, previously, surveying ballot language policies across the ballot initiative states and pointing out that this law makes Washington state an outlier.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Odd Thomas

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn’t mean that you can easily rebuild it.

Dean Koontz, Odd Thomas (2003), chapter 34, musing of the title character.

Categories
Thought

William J. Locke

I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.

William J. Locke, Simon the Jester (1910).
Categories
Today

The War’s End

On August 20, 1866, President Andrew Johnson formally declared the American Civil War over.

Categories
education and schooling ideological culture Internet controversy

A Scandal’s Arc

Jason Arday, scandal, plagiarism, Cambridge, DEI, race

When did you first hear the story of Jason Arday? 

In 2023, Mr. Arday became something of a public sensation in Great Britain, where his claims to being autistic, mute till age 11, and illiterate till 18 made a striking rag-to-riches/up-from-racism story upon his appointment as Professor of Sociology of Education at the University of Cambridge.

The youngest Black professor at that institution ever.

But few in America heard much about him. 

Last September, Times Higher Education journalist Jack Grove documented what he alleged to be plagiarism in Arday’s 2015 PhD thesis and academic publications. Grove contacted Arday for comment; Arday responded with a letter from his lawyers. The story was not published. 

Then, a month ago, philosopher Nathan Cofnas published his exposé, which began with a litany of Arday’s autobiographical whoppers, not including the one I heard most bandied-about: that at age 7 the young Jason had been interviewed for the famous documentary Seven Up! — a glaring fib because the movie came out 21 years before Prof. Arday was born.

Cofnas compared passages in Arday’s 2018 paper to someone else’s 2012 paper. One sentence can serve to illustrate: “In particular, I seek to make a direct association between the tools of normative Whiteness and the deployment and consequences of racial microaggressions.” The italics indicate the one word Arday added.

A key contribution.

The Telegraph and The Times published stories on July 24th. On August 1, The Guardian got into it; four days later, the university opened an inquiry; the next day, Arday resigned. 

Eight days later, Jason Arday was found dead in his apartment. Suicide? That’s what many surmise, but police have only said his death was “unexpected but is not believed to be suspicious.”

For some, a cause célèbre! Vigils, ongoing. But his mourners downplay the lies and plagiarism. It’s all about racism.

But whose? Could it be those who rushed to promote a man beyond his merit merely because of race?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Nano Banana

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)
See recent popular posts

Categories
Thought

Brian Aldiss

Carnage added to carnage does not equal peace.

Brian Aldiss, “Basis for Negotiations,” Who Can Replace a Man? (1965), p. 152.
Categories
Today

Patriotism & Protest & Ousting

On August 19, 1919, Afghanistan gained full independence from Great Britain. Earlier, British attempts to maintain an imperial presence in this region elicited an infamous essay in protest by English sociologist and anti-imperialist Herbert Spencer (pictured), “Patriotism” (Facts and Comments, 1902).

On this day in 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was placed under house arrest, a crucial event leading to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 1999, a mass rally of Serbians demanded the resignation of Slobodon Milosevic.