Category: Accountability

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Accountability free trade & free markets international affairs

Reciprocal Rip-Offs?

Trump, free trade, protectionism, tariffs,

Making sense of the U.S. president’s trade-deal talk has always been difficult.

What is he really up to?

Most of the time President Trump talks protectionist, like a high-tariff man. Other times, he seems to be demanding reciprocal free trade.

Now, the classic free-market economics position is that unilateral free trade is better than managed, high-tariff trading regimes. But Trump never sounds forthright like an actual free trader.

Instead, he says stuff like “Canada has been ripping us off for years.” Classic protectionist jibber-jabber. When we buy and they sell, and vice versa, barring fraud, it is not a rip-off. 

Mr. Trump posted the “rip-off” comment Tuesday. While using the word “reciprocity,” he is talking about government procurement programs, claiming that “what many do not realize is that the Canadian Government, including Canadian Provinces, have banned American Small Businesses and Companies from selling into their Government Procurement Markets. This is the case even though Canada gets broad access into the massive American Government Procurement Market, including those of our States. That is not reciprocity, it is a Canadian Trade Scam. From now on, NO RECIPROCITY — NO ACCESS!”

This was to announce a new retaliatory effort after ongoing trade negotiations broke down, both sides having immediately erected tariff barriers — and worse (the U.S. forbidding one Canadian airplane company from selling in the U.S. at all). “President Donald Trump directed the General Services Administration (GSA) on Tuesday to take steps to remove Canadian-origin products from a Multiple Award Schedule that accounts for more than $50 billion a year in transactions,” The Epoch Times explains.

This is not the reciprocity we were looking for.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability subsidy

SNAP Accountability

Republican, Reconciliation Law, waste, Covid, SNAP

“The harmful Republican reconciliation law enacted July 4, 2025, poses great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger. It makes deep cuts to federal funding for food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), shifting significant new costs to states,” the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned, two weeks ago. “It dramatically expands SNAP’s already harsh and ineffective provision taking away people’s benefits for not meeting a work requirement.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Potomac Watch podcast highlighted this shift from a different perspective.

“[O]ne reason why food stamps ballooned during the pandemic and then still didn’t decline even as unemployment declined is because states didn’t have an incentive to actually police their roles and pare back people who were ineligible . . . because of their incomes or for other reasons,” explained Allysia Finley, a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board.

“The second component” of the law, Finley continued, “was that it ended or banned these waivers that the Biden administration had provided to states to suspend the work requirements for these able-bodied people.

“Now, the third thing that the bill did was put states on the hook for a share of the benefits if they had improper error payment rates over six percent,” Finley elaborated. “Six percent was about the pre-pandemic average, but the improper payment rate actually ballooned again during the pandemic and was about 10.6% as of last year.”

“But that’s the whole point,” offered columnist Kimberley Strassel “because the feds traditionally pay a hundred percent of the benefit costs of SNAP, it’s free money. . . .”

The point being, what incentive could states have to police the program’s abuse? None. Until “this bill came along. . . .”

Disincentives matter. 

A whisper of accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Deadly Shenanigans

Covid, conspiracy, cover up, crime

It has been five years since I first wrote about “The Man the Media Missed,” Dr. Peter Daszak. But this British zoologist, crucial in the funneling of U.S. taxpayer funds to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is now feeling heat from U.S. prosecutors. He may get away unsinged, but . . .

As reported here over the weekend, a man has confessed to conspiring to “evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.” His name is David Morens, and he received two bottles of a Napa Valley red blend wine from Daszak. And a note containing two killer sentences: 

“This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your bosses [sic] boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill. It takes courage and commitment to do what you’ve done, given your job and the vindictive nature of the Administration.”

The effrontery: In April 2020, funding to Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was cut off. This is apparently the president’s “vindictiveness.” How awful of the administration, seeking vengeance for Daszak’s evading the prohibition on dangerous research . . . and unleashing a deadly virus upon the world! 

Daszak yearned for a more forgiving president, I guess.

For his part, Morens — now facing five years in prison — was more than forgiving, and advised Daszak to hide emails, also complaining that FOIA requests were “dreadful and paranoia inducing.”

Daszak may get away with his crime against humanity, but at least this fact is clear: Morens and his boss Antony Fauci conspired with Peter Daszak to bury the truth of their deadly “shenanigans.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

Fauci’s the Focal Point

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, science, research

Senator Rand Paul “has it in” for Fauci — said Dr. Anthony Fauci at last week’s Senate hearing. 

The former director of the NIAID and former Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden made it sound like the Kentucky senator was trying to put him in prison. But what Dr. Paul asked of Dr. Fauci was an apology — not jail-time.

Why, though?

“If we don’t want this to happen again, him acknowledging that he was wrong to fund this research will be a word of caution and warning to the next generation of people to come through,” the senator told Mark Halperin. “And the debate will have ultimately been won on ‘gain of function.’

“The danger of it.”

The point, Rand Paul says, is to stop the madness of this type of research.

Earlier in the interview he had noted that scientists had warned that the results at the Wuhan Institute of Virology should not be published. It would be a blueprint, or recipe, for a never-ending biological warfare by terrorists.

The whole interview is worth listening to. Mark Halperin does what so few journalists do when confronting a contentious issue: formulate each question in epistemically sound terms, for clarity. “Is that an established fact in your mind, or do you need to know more?” 

Here are some responses from Sen. Paul:

  • Fauci was a long-time supporter and financer of gain-of-function research: fact.
  • Fauci “was aware that they [the Wuhan researchers] were doing gain-of-function research” but Fauci would quibble over semantics, about the exactitudes of what qualifies as such: fact. (Fauci’s being evasive.)
  • Fauci funded that research: “without question” a fact.
  • Fauci lied about the wet market origin theory: fact.

There’s more. Let’s praise a journalist for asking clear questions and a politician for giving clear answers.

Especially about the coronavirus origin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment Fifth Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Fauci Can’t Lie

Anthony Fauci, Congress, Covid, 5th Amendment

Is there any crime for which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, will be prosecuted?

The multi-millionaire former “public servant” received a full and unconditional pardon “FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in . . .” 

Courtesy of Mr. Biden — or his auto-pen.

“Biden backdated the pardon to 2014, a date nearly six years before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 emerged,” Newsweek reported a year and a half ago.

Why? Come on, man! Because it “shields Fauci from allegations tied to U.S.-funded gain-of-function research in addition to his work during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So, Fauci is immune from prosecution for 

  1. a decade’s worth of skirting U.S. domestic restrictions, to fund gang-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan, China; 
  2. for each and every lie he told Senator Rand Paul and others in Congress; and 
  3. for any other fraud — such as using his federal employees to solicit more than a million dollars in cash prizes for him personally.

So when Fauci — formerly known as “the Science” — asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times before Congress (NBC says 106), refusing to answer questions about his past role as a government official, it was illegitimate. Because on those matters, he cannot be incriminated.

“No person,” reads the amendment, “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” There can be no criminal case brought for his past lies.

But the problem for Dr. Fauci is that he can be prosecuted for telling those lies again to Congress. Like at yesterday’s hearing. 

Past lies? You’re pardoned, Doc. 

But Fauci cannot repeat his lies. That would be a new crime. 

And since he wants those falsehoods to stand, he will not speak.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Previously on Common Sense:

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Accountability ideological culture

No Vacation from Antisemitism

Yoni Birnbaum, antisemitism, Israel, Judaism, blacklist, discrimination

Is it possible to discriminate against a Jew for being a Jew without knowing that this is what one is doing?

Yoni Birnbaum, a Jewish man and rabbi, reports on what happened after he reserved a vacation rental in France.

The property owner emailed to say that he had noticed the word “rabbi” in Birnbaum’s email address and therefore felt it necessary to inquire whether Birnbaum was sufficiently critical of Israel before letting the booking stand. If not, the reservation would be cancelled.

This wasn’t a litmus test to which all prospective renters of the property were being routinely subjected. The owner acknowledged that only because he had noticed that Birnbaum was Jewish was he demanding to know his views on Israel.

Birnbaum replied, in part: “No doubt, you wrote your email to me out of some kind of twisted sense of virtue. But it seems clear to me that what lies at the heart of your demand for me to declare my views on the conflict in the Middle East, is that to you, before anything else, I am a Jew. Therefore, at the very least, you feel you have to test me and family. . . .

“In other words, you wished to subject me to a purity test. Am I one of the ‘good Jews’ or one of the ‘bad Jews’?”

Not the worst thing that can happen to somebody. But it has something in common with the very worst that can happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture

Secrets of Liars & Calumniators

SPLC, hate group, racism, indictment

A federal grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, last week, on 11 counts including wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The Department of Justice claims that the organization deceived donors and banks about its use of charitable contributions from 2014 through 2023.

Now, the shocking accusation that “the SPLC’s paid informants (‘field sources’) engaged in the active promotion of racist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, and the National Alliance” is not what the SPLC is being prosecuted for. Neither is the SPLC’s distribution of over $3 million to such secret agents. Like the SPLC’s public strategy of lying and calumny, undercover support of infiltrators (as the SPLC defends its agents) isn’t illegal. 

Of course, those same agents encouraging crimes does implicate the SPLC in conspiracy to commit acts of terror, but that’s not the crime being prosecuted. 

The charges come, instead, from the methods allegedly used to keep these disreputable methods secret. 

Not everyone’s impressed with the case; the DOJ may lose. So the bigger question becomes, will the progressive media continue to exalt the SPLC? 

And for the SPLC itself, will anti-racist benefactors still give money to an organization shown to gin up hatred the better to soak in donations? 

Upon learning that the organization you funded to fight the evil, violent racists turned around and funded the evil, violent racists, would you continue to donate?

Yet the lines of ideological loyalty remain clear. In normal fraud cases, it is the defrauded who feel the most aggrieved. But here it is their political enemies who express the outrage that the defrauded should be feeling.

That may be the saddest element of this sick situation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies partisanship

The AOC-Schiff Thesis

Congress, AOC, Adam Schiff, Eric Swallwell, controversy

I wonder how many others were amused, as I was last week, to hear Senator Adam Schiff praise members of his party for the ouster of his fellow Californian and Democrat, Rep. Eric Swallwell, from Congress.

The tale, as told on this website on Sunday, is that Swallwell — one of Schiff’s closest colleagues pushing the Russiagate gambit against the first Trump administration — was pressured to resign over the massive amount of complaints against him for sexual harassment and other unwanted sexual advances. There is even an accusation of rape. 

Also resigning was a Republican from Texas, Tony Gonzalez, for similar reasons.

Schiff — who claimed to be “sickened” and “aghast” at the accusations and what Swallwell “has done” — followed Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in scorning the Republicans for postponing dealing with the Gonzalez problem. He accused the Republicans of not wanting to abandon Gonzalez because they wanted to continue to maintain their majority in the House.

But this works both ways. Sure, Republicans postponed pressuring the ousting of Gonzalez until Democrats likewise agreed to pressure Swallwell to resign. Both parties maintain the previous balance. This is politics. Not great high-mindedness. On either side.

Further, the big issue was Swallwell’s gubernatorial run — contributing to the splitting up of Democratic votes thereby threatening to allow two Republicans to appear on the run-off on Election Day in November in California’s screwy Top Two system. 

Finding an excuse to undermine Swallwell’s run was surely a big part of the magnanimous Democratic effort to remove him from Congress.

“You think you know someone, and it turns out you don’t,” said Schiff about Swallwell. “I didn’t socialize with Eric Swallwell, but I worked with him on the Judiciary Committee — I would never have imagined that he was capable of something like this.”

I think we know quite enough about Schiff and his partisanship, as we do so many in Congress. They are capable of anything.

Meanwhile, the vote to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.) — accused of expropriating FEMA funds to the tune of $5 million — has not exactly proven the AOC-Schiff thesis on swift Democratic self-policing. She’s still in Congress, though a vote may occur tomorrow, we’re told.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability international affairs national politics & policies

Weaponized Data via Silencer

data collection, China, surveillance, authoritarianism

“Authoritarian regimes have developed strong cyber espionage capabilities that enable their influence and coercion operations,” explains a National Intelligence Council “assessment,” dated April 7, 2020.

This report goes on to say that the “collection and aggregation of vast quantities of personal data” by commercial enterprises, and the willingness to share this data with third parties, “increases both the likelihood and the impact of data breaches.”

The report, which is highly redacted though declassified in late 2022, fingers Iranian hackers as well as foreign governments for having obtained private data on U.S. citizens. In 2013, Russia’s Federal Security Service “sponsored a theft of 3 billion accounts” off an American web service, and in 2017 Chinese agents “stole 147 million from a US credit-reporting agency.” And more.

Reading on, a sense of déjà vu develops. The report calls this technological capacity “digital authoritarian capabilities” — yet our own government has the same. 

It accuses China of marshaling “mass surveillance and AI-driven algorithmic tracking of its citizens’ behavior at home to inform the use of soft or coercive incentives and disincentives to control them,” but that, I’m afraid, is what our government does, too.

Now we learn that all this and more was known by American intelligence agencies during the first Trump administration.

But was kept from him. 

That is, “intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the ‘vulgarian’ Trump,” explains Just the News, and at least one agent kept evidence of possible Chinese interference in the 2020 election from the president because that might have led to “policies against China” that the agent didn’t like.

That, right there, we call a datum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly ideological culture responsibility

Everyone Dies?

AI, Artificial Intelligence, prediction, action

After Friday, when I worried about robots taking over, I was glad to read a debunking of the AI Will Destroy Us All meme, so in vogue. In “Superintelligent AI Is Not Coming To Kill You,” from the March issue of Reason, Neil Chilson argues that we shouldn’t freak out.

Not only do I not want to freak out, I don’t want to use AI very much — though I understand that, these days, sometimes it makes sense to consult the Oracles.

Chilson is reviewing a new book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares, who argue that “artificial intelligence research will inevitably produce superintelligent machines and these machines will inevitably kill everyone.”

Just like I feared on Friday!

Where the authors go wrong, Chilson argues, is that by “defining intelligence as the ability to predict and steer the world, Yudkowsky and Soares collapse two distinct capacities — understanding and acting — into one concept. This builds their conclusion into their premise. If intelligence inherently includes steering, then any sufficiently intelligent system is, by definition, a world-shaping agent. The alignment problem becomes not a hypothesis about how certain AI architectures might behave but a tautology about how all intelligent systems must behave.”

Today’s AI’s are “fundamentally about prediction. They predict the next element in a sequence.”

They aren’t necessarily taking action.

I hope Chilson’s critique holds true.

But we’ve caught AI lying, “just making stuff up” — though considering the nature of “Large Language Models” (the method by which modern AI works), “lying” may be the wrong word. Still, it just seems to me that at some point somebody’s — everybody’s! — gonna link the predictor to some sort of truly active mechanism. 

Like street-ready robots.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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