Category: Accountability

The Argentine Ratline

In less than one month, the 80th anniversary of Adolf Hitler’s death may be celebrated — unless President Javier Milei’s formal disclosure of the Argentine “ratline” shows what a lot of people believe: that Hitler didn’t kill himself in that bunker.

Ratlines are what the human smuggling routes of Nazis out of falling Germany in 1945 were called.

And yes, Argentina was the chief receiver of Nazis. This is known. Confirmed. Not controversial.

But did the South American country accept Nazis higher up than Dr. Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann?

Well, the FBI was searching for Hitler in South America for decades, into the 1960s. And rumors of Hitler’s escape to Argentina have been bandied about for years and years.

But the official story, of Hitler’s suicide in the Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, has been stuck to, its skeptics frequently “debunked,” and “experts” have been mocking “conspiracy theorists” on this matter for a very long time.

Now, however, Javier Milei — perhaps inspired by Donald Trump’s disclosure attempts regarding the JFK assassination and Jeffrey Epstein’s honeypot scheme — has set in motion the release of Argentina’s “ratline files.”

The Argentine government has committed to declassifying and releasing all government-sequestered information related to Nazi war criminals who sought refuge in the country after World War II. Formally announced by Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos on March 24, the documents are said to include financial details and relevant records held by Argentina’s Defense Ministry.

What will we learn?

If we learn that Hitler lived long after 1945, what would be the repercussions?

Maybe it depends: who exactly — and in which government — arranged the escape?

Whatever the revelations, whatever the ultimate result, the Age of Deference is over; the Age of Disclosure has begun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability too much government

Federal Self-Service

DOGE, corruption, spending, waste, fraud

Even government agencies that perform an identifiable function should be eliminated if they are not performing a proper function of government.

But what about an agency that exists primarily “to provide luxurious lifestyles for its employees”?

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service is one of the agencies getting the ax under the Trump administration, at least until some judge tries to resurrect it.

Nominally, FMCS existed to serve as a voluntary mediator between unions and businesses. But aside from doling out grants to unions and applicants with a tenuous connection to unions, its overriding purpose was to enable employees to splurge on themselves at the expense of taxpayers.

That’s what Luke Rosiak discovered during a year-long investigation.

One FMCS official pretended to take a years-long “business trip” so that taxpayers would foot the bill for his living expenses.

Employees unblocked government credit cards to circumvent protections against abuse, then used them to fund personal expenses. One leased a BMW with the card.

Junkets to resort locations supposedly to drum up interest in the pointless agency were really just a way of enjoying government-funded vacations.

One employee told Rosiak: “Personally, the reason that I’ve stayed is that I just don’t feel like working that hard, plus the location on K Street is great, plus we all have these oversized offices with windows, plus management doesn’t seem to care if we stay out at lunch a long time. Can you blame me?”

Yes, we can.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Robot Signatures Rule!

“I’ve got a pen,” said Barack Obama, famously, “and I’ve got a phone; and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.…”

There has been a lot of talk, recently, about the danger posed by Donald J. Trump’s executive orders. Understandable, but no matter how dangerous an imperial president may be, the one thing you cannot say about the “use of the pen to sign executive orders” is that it is unprecedented.

But there’s one kind of pen that is somewhat … problematic: the autopen.

It’s a signing machine.

The first was called the “polygraph,” invented by John Isaac Hawkins in 1803; President Thomas Jefferson was an enthusiastic user.

Today’s autopen is much advanced. Regular people probably use something like it to file their taxes, or use it regularly on legal documents in PDF form, but the presidential autopen is more secure. Or is supposed to be.

In 2005, the Bush legal team decided it was hunky dory to use an autopen to “sign” documents when the president is out of the country. What matters, the lawyers reasoned, was presidential intent.

Since then, all three presidents have used an autopen.

But Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., used it to sign nearly everything.

Or so alleges The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. “The organization’s assertion points to a pattern whereby all documents featuring Biden’s signature, except for the one announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race last year, utilized the autopen,” reports Christina Davie. “These claims raise questions about presidential authenticity and executive authority.”

As that Bush era report makes clear, it’s presidential intent that matters. And in the case of the 46th president, we know that he did not remember ever signing at least a few of his executive orders.

As the Oversight Project makes clear in its report title, “Whoever Controlled the Autopen Controlled the Presidency.” I wonder, was it Jill Biden? Or one of the named triumvirate of Biden cronies?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Fire or Promote the Best?

DOGE, government waste, corruption, spending, debt

Things looked bad recently for Leland Dudek, an employee of the Social Security Administration.

Dudek almost got fired for helping the DOGE team understand how SSA’s systems work so that DOGE could zero in on wasteful or fraudulent payments.

On social media, Dudek wrote: “At 4:30pm EST, my boss called me to tell me I had been placed on administrative leave pending an Investigation. They want to fire me for cooperating with DOGE …

“I confess. I helped DOGE understand SSA. I mailed myself publicly accessible documents and explained them to DOGE.… I moved contractor money around to add data science resources to my anti-fraud team.… I asked where the fat was and is in our contracts so we can make the right tough choices.”

An investigation? Administrative leave? For helping, as an executive-branch employee, the head of the executive branch to find and extirpate waste and fraud? SSA managers may have been confused about whether Donald Trump really is the president.

The suspense didn’t last long.

Dudek was not fired. Instead, the SSA commissioner was fired and Dudek became acting commissioner.

“There are many good civil servants,” says Senator Mike Lee, “who have been quietly frustrated for years with politically motivated mismanagement [and] who possess an encyclopedic knowledge of the problems with their agencies. Put them in charge, hand them scalpels and flamethrowers.”

Could we have at long last found the cure for dimwitted obstructionism? A certain reality TV star had words for it: “You’re fired!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability deficits and debt general freedom meme

Millionaires

The rich…

Accountability education and schooling

Skill-Free Teachers

The new non-requirement for becoming a teacher in New Jersey — pushed by the teacher’s union there — reminds me of some of my own classroom experiences as a kid.

Applicants no longer need to pass a test that asks basic questions about English and math and other subjects in order to get the job. Why not? Because formal confirmation of basic skills is an obstacle. New Jersey needs more teachers. Remove obstacle, get more teachers. Simple addition.

Schools have other ways to determine whether applicants have the basic skills they need in order to teach those skills. But the reason for scrapping the test is evidently to ensure that deficiency in these skills, as such, won’t prevent you from being hired.

My alternative plan: accelerate free-market reforms of education, school choice, so we don’t have to “rely on” illiterate, innumerate, government-foisted “teachers.”

In 1983, when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, he instituted a competency test that, according to a 1985 Washington Post story, ten percent of the state’s public school teachers flunked. More than one-third of teachers in the state’s worst county failed this basic test.

One reason that poor and minority communities had such poor outcomes was that many of their teachers were illiterate and couldn’t do math. If you asked my fifth-grade math teacher, a product of that system, what is the sum of two plus two, she’d have had to look it up.

I survived. I now know that two plus two make eleventy. But I would not want any of today’s students to undergo the same so-called instruction.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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