Common Sense with Paul Jacob

Update

Trump’s Tricky Nixing

The title of the press release possesses a certain élan. “President Trump Takes Historic Action to Eliminate Wasteful and Harmful Spending,” which, if true, would be welcome news.

But how is the president doing this? That is, if he is indeed doing it.

“Last year, President Trump took the historic step of utilizing long-neglected Presidential authorities provided to him under the Impoundment Control Act to deploy the first ‘pocket rescission’ in 50 years,” the White House press release states. “This year, he is continuing his commitment to the American taxpayer by utilizing a pocket rescission for another nearly $1 billion of the most harmful government spending.”

Use of the pocket rescission technique in 2025 targeted “woke, weaponized, and wasteful spending.” This year the president’s red pen strikes out at quite a number of aid packages to non-citizens living in the United States, and other programs as well, including

An HHS Office that Provides Funding Based on Race and Sex ($5 million)
HUD Counseling Support for NGOs that Peddle DEI and Discriminate Based on Race ($56 million)
Overfunded and Unaligned HHS Research Programs ($28 million)
Minority Business Development Agency ($10 million)
Debt Relief to Foreign Countries that Fund Climate Change Policies ($9 million)

You may be wondering how legal all this is. It sounds like impoundment, and wasn’t that prohibited in 1974 by and act of Congress?

Well, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 disallows the president from simply canceling appropriated funds on his own. He can only propose a rescission by sending a special message to Congress, which has 45 days of continuous session to respond. During that month-and-a-half window, Section 1012(b) lets the president temporarily withhold the funds from obligation while Congress decides.

Under President Trump, this rescission is carefully timed to the fiscal year and congressional adjournment. If the president sends his rescission request less than 45 days before the funds’ expiration date (typically the end of the fiscal year on September 30), then the administration simply withholds the money until the clock runs out. The funds expire unspent while Congress still has days remaining in its consideration window. That’s how a rescission request becomes a “pocket rescission.”

You can imagine the objections. And the howls of rage.

This is a tricksy maneuver, for the House is adjourned right now, recommencing at noon on September 28. Not much time to reassert previously passed spending.

Today

Drake’s Voyage

British pirate and subject of Queen Elizabeth I, Francis Drake, finished his circumnavigation of the globe when he returned to Plymouth, England, on September 26, 1580.

Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition (1519–1522) is often credited as the first circumnavigation of the globe, but Magellan himself died in 1521 in the Philippines, with Juan Sebastián Elcano completing the journey as captain. There are no well-documented cases of a captain completing a full circumnavigation before Drake, making the pirate’s circumnavigation (1577–1580) the first where the initial captain, Drake himself — survived to complete the entire journey.

Drake began his circumnavigation in 1577 with five ships: the Pelican (later renamed Golden Hind), Elizabeth, Marigold, Swan, and Christopher. By the time he returned to England in 1580, only one ship, the Golden Hind, completed the journey. The others were either lost, scuttled, or abandoned due to damage, crew issues, or strategic decisions during the voyage.

Nevertheless, the expedition was dubbed a success, for during his voyage, Drake raided Spanish ships and settlements, capturing vast amounts of gold, silver, jewels, and other valuables, particularly from Spanish colonies in the Americas and the treasure ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción (known as the Cacafuego). The haul was so substantial that it reportedly filled the Golden Hind to capacity. Upon his return to England, Drake’s plunder was estimated to be worth around £600,000, an immense fortune at the time.

Such was “exploration” in the 16th century.

Common Sense

Faulkner

Why that’s a hundred miles away. That’s a long way to go just to eat.
Novelist William Faulkner, on why he declined a White House invitation for a celebratory dinner on the occasion of his winning the Nobel Prize for Literature (1962).

election law ideological culture national politics & policies partisanship

Cheating with Democracy

Republican, elections, voting, democracy

They’re cheating, she says.

Kamala Harris insists that the Trump administration and Republicans across the union are “cheating with all this redistricting that they are doing.

“They are cheating,” she goes on, “by changing polling locations so that our elders who are used to voting at the elementary school down the street may go there on Election Day and find out it is no longer a polling place.

“They are cheating by purging voter rolls,” and . . . well, she breathlessly moves on, explaining why leaders like her have to remind people that “not only must you regislur [sic] to vote, but you must check your registration status to make sure you haven’t been purged from the rolls!”

Well, it is a good idea to check your registration status every now and then.

But the assumptions undergirding these charges, which she made on the 22nd in front of the Detroit NAACP, is that the evil Republicans are trying to disenfranchise American blacks by such horrific and unheard of practices as redistricting, by altering polling locations, and by scouring the official lists of voters for people who have moved without informing officials, for those who are ineligible because of lack of citizenship, and for the inconvenient lack of existence.

A democracy cannot run well without careful attention to all three of these things.

What’s happened with redistricting is that the Democrats have used race — illegally — as an excuse to concentrate blacks, and recently Republicans have re-instituted non-race-based standards for districting.

Changing polling places always occurs, every election year, and the biggest changes in this regard have been in the eight states (and D.C.) that have established mail-in only voting. Talk about a change of polling places!

And then there is the purging of voter rolls of non-citizen, non-resident, and non-existent voters! Who could complain about that?

Only unserious people. Like Democrats. Like Kamala Harris.

And those who seek to game elections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Coda: “That’s how I feel about this moment,” concluded Harris, “I feel about this moment like this.”

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Thought

Mencken

The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.
H. L. Mencken, Minority Report (1956).

Today

Rome’s Last

For the final time in Roman history, Rome’s Senate chose an emperor, electing 75-year-old Marcus Claudius Tacitus on September 25th, A.D. 275. This is yet another milestone on the road to the collapse of republicanism in the much-discussed “decline and fall of the Roman Empire.”

defense & war international affairs

Knowing Xi

Xi Jinping, China, CCP, Chinese Communist Party, A.I.

Chinese ruler Xi Jinping landed in Washington, DC, yesterday, to meet with President Donald Trump.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.”

I pray President Trump understands this foe: Mr. Xi, and more generally, the Chinese Communist Party . . . enemies to all freedom-loving people across the globe. China is engaged in the largest military build-up since World War II, if not of all time. It is a threat on the march.

Taiwan comes first to mind. China regularly threatens to invade the island nation, which has blossomed into Asia’s most free and democratic country, as well as a driver of the global high-tech economy, producing over 90 percent of the world’s high-end computer chips.

While the People’s Liberation Army circles the island in nearly constant military exercises, launches cyberattacks, and a range of gray-zone dirty tricks attempting to strong-arm the Taiwanese into joining their one big, happy commie family, Mr. Trump has held up a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan for months, suggesting it could be a useful bargaining chip with Xi.

“President Trump has sold more arms to Taiwan than any other president,” replied Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.) when questioned. But he added, “It’s important to note that China’s aggression — whether it’s toward Japan or the Philippines or toward Taiwan — is really creating the instability. We have a responsibility to help Taiwan defend itself.”

China also continues to bully Philippine ships in Philippine waters of the South China Sea, just recently again causing injuries. The United States, a treaty ally of the Philippines, is committed to its military defense in the event of a Chinese attack.

And the Chinese are constantly attacking.

The Wall Street Journal just reported that China is funding the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are “rattling the global energy trade” by attacking Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. Part of a strategy to undermine the lawful international order.

There’s much more, but to sum up, Xi’s CCP is the biggest enemy to peace and freedom in the world. Mr. President, please act accordingly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags A.I., CCP, China, Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping

Thought

Steele

Compared to the option of living and working where you please, at whatever occupation you wish, doing what you choose to do without permission from anyone on high, the liberty to vote in elections or to pass out leaflets on the street is, for the great majority of folks, rather a minor consideration, especially in poor countries.
David Ramsay Steele, “Life, Liberty and the Treadmill,” The Mystery of Fascism (2019).

Today

Dirigible

Western civilization’s first passenger-carrying airship, the Giffard dirigible, traveled under its own power 17 miles, from Paris to Trappes, on September 24, 1852.

The image is of a model on exhibit in the London Science Museum.

Accountability fraud national politics & policies

Who’s Against Fraud?

Obamacare, fraud, corruption, healthcare

While one might assume that the most enthusiastic proponents of extending the federal government’s assistance programs would also be the most ardent fraud hunters — since fraud weakens the system they promote — one would be wrong. When individual assistance and healthcare fraud actually receive effective scrutiny, socialists and progressives can reliably found among the chief protesters.

This is something to watch for, especially in light of what Vice President J. D. Vance announced yesterday — that the federal government has removed hundreds of thousands of Obamacare enrollments created for people who either do not meet eligibility requirements or . . . don’t exist.

“The action, initiated by the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” explains The Epoch Times, “targets 760,000 accounts and will save taxpayers an estimated $2.2 billion, according to federal officials.”

“We had a system in this country that rewarded brokers,” said the vice president, “that made people rich for enrolling fake people in programs that are meant to ensure that our fellow citizens have healthcare. This was a scandal.”

How did the task force determine ineligibility? These were the red flags: no payments received; no claims made.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shared the stage with Vance, saying that lax enforcement allowed brokers to enroll people sans income verification or even Social Security numbers.

Which is why the administration also removed hundreds of brokers and agents likely to have “knowingly enrolled people who did not qualify or did not exist,” The Epoch Times clarifies.

Also imposed was a “six-month moratorium on the enrollment of new brokers.”

Obamacare seems to have had incentives for fraud built in. It’s a pity but perhaps not surprising that the advocates of such systems cannot be counted on to police those systems.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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