Category: Accountability

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Accountability budgets & spending cuts national politics & policies too much government

Blame Rand Paul?

Rand Paul, CR, Continuing Resolution, debt, spending, Congress

“The Republican plan adds about $2 trillion to the debt,” Senator Rand Paul explained at the beginning of the month, referring to the Continuing Resolution (CR) which remains, to this day, unresolved. “I’m opposed to deficit spending,” he added, insisting that he would “vote for something with less deficit, but not a $2 trillion deficit.”

Most of the shutdown screaming blames President Donald Trump, but Trump’s a big advocate for the CR. Trouble is, it requires a 60 percent Yea vote in the Senate. All but three Democrats voting Nay ensure that the CR will continue to fail.

So, Sen. Paul’s continuing Nay vote isn’t the cause really; a switch on his part wouldn’t allow the bill to pass. The folks worried about losing their SNAP benefits (just about the only Americans not in government who’ve noticed the shutdown) shouldn’t blame anyone other than those nay-saying Democrats.

From the beginning, Paul has noted a different irony — his alignment with the bulk of Democrats in opposing the CR. He’s against its continuation of old spending expectations; Democrats, on the other hand, demand even more, especially securing the renewal of Obamacare subsidies.

While the CR failed a 13th time, yesterday, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Ct.) said that lawmakers had set aside a USDA contingency fund “for exactly these kinds of purposes” — that is, to fund SNAP during the shutdown. The White House insists it lacks legal authorization for this, and, besides, November’s food subsidy requires $9 billion, and the fund falls short by four.

It appears that the tens of millions who may not get their EBT cards filled at the beginning of November remain unaware of what the battle is really about.

But they may be getting a clue: it’s not about them.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies scandal

The Autopen Question

Joe Biden, autopen, auto-pen

When the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project offered its report on the Biden Administration’s use of the presidential “autopen,” in March, the legality of many of President Joe Biden’s signatures were placed in jeopardy.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and Trump in the White House have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen sometimes without the presidential awareness.

Since then, Republicans in Congress and President Trump have been pushing the case that White House staff often used the autopen and sometimes without presidential awareness.

If so, with the non-stroke of a non-pen, could much of what came out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for four years be un-done?

“The full picture of what Mr. Biden did on pardon and clemency decisions,” the New York Times explains, “and how much he directed those decisions and the actions of his staff, including the use of the autopen, may come down to tens of thousands of Biden White House emails that the National Archives has turned over as part of the investigation by the Trump White House and the Justice Department.”

Times reporters investigated some of the emails, offering a tentative-if-predictable conclusion: “the Biden White House had a process to establish that Mr. Biden had orally made decisions in meetings before the staff secretary, Stefanie Feldman, who managed use of the autopen, would have clemency records put through the signing device.”

And of course Biden himself defends the integrity of his administration: “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency.

“I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation and proclamations.” 

Trust him!

The Times has been working to encourage us to trust the ex-president. Its March article, “How an Autopen Conspiracy Theory About Biden Went Viral,” clearly shows its bias — a context piece before any real investigation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption

Secret Stupidity?

Trump, assassination attempt, questions, Secret Service, puzzle

Six agents of the Secret Service were suspended yesterday. “The agency has come under intense scrutiny,” explains Eileen Sullivan of The New York Times, “since a 20-year-old gunman was able to fire several shots at Mr. Trump as he spoke onstage at a campaign rally on July 13, 2024. . . .

“It was the first assassination attempt since 1981 to wound a current or former president — a bullet grazed Mr. Trump’s ear.” Such a close miss! No wonder Trump now suggests he’s on a mission from God.

The Times’s Washington reporter says the agency has, since the shooting, endured “intense” scrutiny, but that’s not what it looks like from here in the bleachers. The Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt was dropped by the media like a hot rock, after the first week or so, receiving very little public scrutiny . . . considering its grave implications. (Pun intended.)

“Multiple inquiries, including from Congress,” the Times goes on, “into the security lapses at Butler had some overlapping conclusions, in particular that there was a significant breakdown in communications between agents themselves, and between Secret Service agents and the local law enforcement helping to secure the rally site.”

By Hanlon’s razor, we are supposed to avoid using malice and conspiracy as explanations for when things go wrong . . . if at all possible. And incompetence — if not exactly Hanlon’s chosen word, stupidity — is indeed the official determination.

And now it has been dealt with. Officially. A few agents were suspended without pay from ten to 42 days.

Is that enough?

Such gross incompetence deserves an outright termination of employment. Everybody knows this.
Is it really that impossible to fire a government employee?

Some will speculate that they were treated lightly to keep their mouths shut.

You know, about a conspiracy. 

But the undoubted proliferation of stupidity in government always makes Hanlon’s razor easy to apply.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

RFKj’s Clean Sweep

Big Pharma, RFKj, corruption, healthcare

“All of the guardrails for this kind of a committee, which I served on many years ago, have simply disappeared,” says Sara Rosenbaum, Professor Emerita of Health, Law and Policy at George Washington University. 

She’s referring to Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy’s “retiring” of the entire 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

You know, the group that did such a bang-up job for the Centers for Disease Control during the pandemic.

“After the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves vaccines based on whether the benefits of the shot outweigh the risks,” the BBC explains, “ACIP recommends which groups should be given the shots and when, which also determines insurance coverage of the shots.”

A lot of money rides on what this board determines, you see.

Which is a big element of Kennedy’s complaint against the whole of the Big Pharma/Big Government complex. “The committee has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest and has become little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal prior to what he calls a “clean sweep.” “Most of ACIP’s members have received substantial funding from pharmaceutical companies, including those marketing vaccines.”

Various newspaper reports quote a lot of experts expressing their shock and worry, but — in the articles, mind you — avoid Kennedy’s key points.

After the corruption of “science” by Big Government during the pandemic, sweeping out the old board gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. 

Let’s hold the new board members fully accountable; perhaps they could break with tradition by not holding any meetings in secret.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The State & Child Rape

kids in cages, immigration, border, trafficking,

Four billion bucks: That’s what Los Angeles County has confirmed it will pay “to settle nearly 7,000 claims of ‘horrific’ child sexual abuse related to their juvenile facilities and foster care homes over a period of decades,” according to a BBC report. “Survivors say they were abused and mistreated by staff in institutions meant to protect them — with many of the claims linked to MacLaren Children’s Center, a shelter that permanently closed in 2003.”

A lawyer for the plaintiffs offered the perfectly apt cliché, of foxes and hen house: “they were raping boys and raping girls.”

Meanwhile, something odd’s going on with the “children in cages” issue.

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of Health and Human Services, said, in a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, that “we have ended HHS as . . . the principal vector in this country for child trafficking.” He went on to say that “during the Biden administration, HHS became a collaborator in child trafficking and for sex and for slavery. And, we have ended that, and we are very aggressively going out and trying to find these children — 300,000 children that were lost by the Biden administration.”

Last year, a whistleblower claimed that the Biden-Harris administration had “created a ‘white glove delivery service’” funneling migrant minors “into the hands of criminals, traffickers, and cartel members throughout the United States.” 

The federal government has failed worse than LA County.

Not so much by intention of politicians (we hope) but by abusive acts of government workers and contractors.

However, a major lawsuit against the worst contractor has been dropped, and the contractor re-engaged in “servicing” migrant children.

On this issue, government failure has been massive.

So, maybe when we hear calls for taking kids away from parents at local and state levels, for, say, “gender acceptance” rationales, we should demand that proponents come up with guarantees that such interventions will make things better.

For the children.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

A Cuomo Indictment?

New York City, Mayor Andrew Cuomo, covid

Can there be “pandemic justice”?

On June 11th of last year, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of the House of Representatives interviewed former Governor of the State of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, in pursuance of getting to the bottom of the disaster that was COVID in New York and beyond. 

Cuomo had counsel; the interrogation was transcribed.

The focus? The governor’s disastrous decision to send coronavirus patients back to his state’s nursing homes, where they quickly spread the new disease to its most vulnerable targets.

On October 30th, the Select Subcommittee sent an official letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, “a detailed referral for criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” which Garland unsurprisingly ignored. 

Partisans sometimes stick together; fearing being hanged separately.

On Monday, Representative James Comer, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a repeat request, but this time to the new AG, Pam Bondi.

The case against Cuomo is fairly clear: “Mr. Cuomo provided false statements to the Select Subcommittee in what appears to be a conscious, calculated effort to insulate himself from accountability.”

Cuomo made multiple criminally false statements, including that he was neither involved in the drafting nor the review of the state’s report, “Factors Associated with Nursing Home Infections and Fatalities in New York State during the COVID-19 Global Health Crisis” (2020).

It is worth remembering that the legacy news media made Governor Cuomo their pandemic hero and sex symbol, even as his policies killed as many as 10,000 people.

How to hold media folk accountable?

You already have: the media’s low ratings.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability Voting

The Five Million Fix

voter rolls, democracy, voting, elections, ID

Thanks to its analyses of voter rolls and numerous lawsuits, Judicial Watch can now report that, over the last several years, about five million names have been struck from voter rolls in almost a dozen states and localities.

These names unlawfully appeared on the rolls because of invalid voter registrations, as validity is defined in the National Voter Registration Act Of 1993.

According to the Act, each application to register “must state each voter eligibility requirement (including citizenship), contain an attestation that the applicant meets each requirement, state the penalties provided by law for submission of a false voter registration application and require the signature of the applicant under penalty of perjury.”

Thanks to Judicial Watch, 735,000 ineligible names have been removed from Kentucky voter rolls since 2019; 918,139 ineligible names have been removed from New York City voter rolls since 2022; and over a million ineligible names have been removed from the voter rolls of Los Angeles County.

These efforts have also led to the removal of ineligible names from the voter rolls of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, North Carolina, and outside of LA in California.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the organization. In Maryland, for example, the State Board of Elections promulgated a rule to criminalize the use of registration lists to investigate voter fraud. A district court ruled that the rule violated the law.

Voter fraud is a problem, and it hasn’t been fixed yet. Thanks to Judicial Watch for making a big dent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency international affairs

The Argentine Ratline

Hitler, Argentina, Nazi

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!

Joe BIden, autopen

“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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