Category: Accountability

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Accountability government transparency

He Lied About Who Died Where

Cuomo, Covid

Lying about data was not uncommon during the late pandemic. 

In April of 2020, I noted one way pandemic statistics were muddied: by paying hospitals more to identify a patient, surviving or not, as a COVID patient than as something else. This was especially devastating to death stats, perhaps mildly (or even wildly) over-stating the effect COVID was having.

But understating the death count, or shifting it from one location to another, was also a problem. 

“Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo personally edited a government report that undercounted the Covid deaths that resulted from his March 2020 directive forcing nursing homes to admit coronavirus-positive patients, a congressional panel concluded,” explains James Lynch at National Review.

 “The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) issued a report in July 2020 faulting nursing homes for the spread of coronavirus in their facilities at the direction of Cuomo administration officials who ‘heavily edited’ the document, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus pandemic said in a memo released Monday.” As I prepare these words, that subcommittee is set to listen to the former governor’s testimony on “the directive and his administration’s apparent coverup of the death total.

“More than 9,000 Covid-positive patients were admitted to nursing homes because of the ‘must-admit’ order,” James Lynch adds.

Remember, Andrew Cuomo was once a star of the pandemic, hailed for “getting tough” on the spread of the virus, as in cracking down on church services — assumed (but never proven) to be the kind of “superspreader” events that “kill grandma.” He was so much a star of the brief, flaming epoch that he was awarded an Emmy for his performance. (It was later rescinded).

I guess lying — falsifying data — is a performance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

The Slope of Service

Trump, sniper, Secret Service, DEI

“Heads should roll at Secret Service,” I declared on Monday.

That was before I stumbled upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle explaining to ABC News the strategic situational thinking employed by the agency in determining not to place agents on top of the roof of a building where the assassin fired multiple rounds, hitting former President Trump in the ear, killing a man attending the rally with his family and seriously wounding two others. 

Director Cheatle offered that “the Secret Service was aware of the security vulnerabilities presented by the building Crooks took a sniper’s position on to aim at Trump,” Fox News reported. “However, a decision was made not to place any personnel on the roof.” 

So much for “awareness.” And why was this decision made?

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” she pointed out. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Competing safety factors, eh? The former president’s and that of novice roof-climbers in the Secret Service.

Instead, three local law enforcement sharpshooters were stationed inside the building as the shooter easily climbed up onto that ever-so-dangerously slanted roof and opened fire.

The finger-pointing at local police by Secret Service officials, who claimed that securing that building was a local law enforcement responsibility, is simply passing the buck.

Cheatle acknowledged that her agency “is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding “the buck stops with me.”

Good, I’m looking for immediate change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

Weekend at Biden’s

Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Weekend at Bernie's

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence,” former President Trump told CNN’s debate moderator Jake Tapper. “I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Mr. Trump was referring to the incoherent ramblings of our current president at last week’s notorious debate — bizarrely held five months before the election. (Well, now, I guess that timing might make a little more sense.)

President Biden, as journalist Glenn Greenwald put it, “unsteadily shuffled onto a debate stage in Atlanta and then preceded to fulfill every fear and nightmare that Democratic Party operatives and American voters have been harboring about him.”

Beyond what Biden’s debate performance says about who should be the next president is what it screams at maximum volume: Who is really running the country?

It’s scary to think that it isn’t the man we elected to do the job. But perhaps scarier still, after last Thursday’s performance, would be if it actually is that man.

On his System Update program, Greenwald also pointed out that, “Just two weeks ago the media was insisting that the only reason Joe Biden looked in any way to be impaired is because right-wing liars were clipping videos in a deceitful way . . .”

No one clipped or cheap-faked the 90-minute debate, though.

In a country being torn apart and a world on fire, we have a commander-in-chief who is simply, obviously, not in command. And arguably even worse, we have a news media that has largely gaslighted the public on the matter.

If President Biden stays in the race, watch for the media to go back to its cover-up mentality, telling us only what they want us to know about him . . . so we will vote the way they want.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency international affairs

John Kerry, Super-Villain

John Kerry, Kiefer Sutherland, Iran, diplomacy, international affairs

Whistleblowers and unclassified emails inform us that when he was the secretary of state under Obama, John Kerry thwarted arrests of Iranians illegally acting on behalf of the Iranian state.

While in the United States.

According to Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson, “whistleblower disclosures” reveal that while the Obama administration was negotiating with Iran to “prevent” it from acquiring nuclear weapons, “then-Secretary of State John Kerry actively interfered with [the FBI’s executing of arrest warrants] on individuals in the U.S. illegally supporting Iranian efforts . . . to develop weapons of mass destruction and its ballistic missile program.”

FBI agents were frustrated because, they said in emails, they had to ask field agents “to stand down on a layup arrest . . . and wait until the U.S. and Iran negotiations resolve themselves.”

At least one of the protected suspects was on a terrorism watch list.

Seriously?

We need John Kerry to play the bad guy in a revival of 24, trying to stop super-agent Jack Bauer from taking out terrorists because the U.S. is in the middle of shipping pallets of cash to the terrorism-sponsoring government. A very delicate operation that must be executed with hair-trigger precision and without antagonizing the terrorism-sponsoring recipients.

Kerry’s most recent job: Weather Envoy. He retired from it this year. Apparently, tweaking global climate isn’t as easy as he’d thought.

Could have been worse. This dour, long-faced pillar of pretense, Kerry, almost became President of the United States. 

We must keep reminding ourselves of this.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom

Vindication at the Gym

gym, covid, lockdown, quarantine

Crime: functioning.

In July 2020, police in Bellmawr, New Jersey arrested Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti, owners of Atilis Gym, for resisting tyranny. A few months earlier, they had defied lockdown orders imposed by the administration of Democratic Governor Phil Murphy by reopening their business.

Smith contended that the lockdown mandates were unconstitutional and especially harmed small businesses.

We all remember how certain “essential” businesses, often larger ones, were allowed to function in lockdown regimes that compelled smaller, “nonessential” operations to close. Some states enforced such mandates more vigorously than others.

The arrest was a major production, complete with handcuffs, as if the gym owners were finally-cornered mob bosses. The iansmithfitness Twitter account posted a video of the arrest, along with a message: “Welcome to America 2020, where feeding your family and standing up for your Constitutional rights is illegal.”

Murphy also seized the gym’s assets: $165,000, “done in the middle of ongoing litigation defending ourself against these, our 80 charges, the revocation of our business license. . . . This was never about protection, it was always about control.”

Smith and Trumbetti have been fighting the injustice all these years. Apparently, New Jersey officials could not see their way to dropping their pseudo-case voluntarily and providing an apology, maybe even restitution.

Now, in May 2024, almost four years later, all charges and summonses have been dismissed. But the gym has not recovered the $269,000 in fines and court costs it’s had to pay out.

That’s a crime. And dysfunctional.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly political economy

Inflation & the Infirm Incumbent

Joe Biden, inflation, economy

“From President Joe Biden’s point of view, Americans ought to be thrilled with the recent trends in inflation,” writes Eric Boehm at Reason, who quotes the president: “Wages keep going up and inflation keeps coming down.”

True enough, but, Mr. Boehm goes on, “pointing at the charts and regurgitating economic figures doesn’t seem to be as convincing as the president might hope.”

You’ve seen the left-of-center memes mocking Americans for thinking the economy is bad when it is, instead, g-gr-great!

But prices for food and gasoline, after the big bulge caused by all those COVID checks and subsidies, did not go back down to previous levels. And rising wages after the “Great Suppression” of the lockdowns seem at best a verypartial return to better times.

Boehm offers some context. “It makes sense that the recent run of inflation would leave a psychological scar. After all, the peak inflation rate of 9.1 percent in June 2022 was not only the highest annualized rate seen in more than four decades, it was also more than twice as high as the average inflation rate in any year since 1991. . . .” And inflation has not stopped. “In March, the annual inflation rate was 3.5 percent. Yes, that’s 60 percent lower than the peak rate in June 2022, but that’s still higher than the average annual rate in every single year between 1991 and 2021, except for 2008.”

And then there’s the higher interest rates, which, Boehm plausibly asserts, compounds our perceptions that “inflation is a major problem.”

This is a huge issue for Biden. Boehm cites the political lore: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and notes that, “unfortunately for Biden, his task in the run-up to November’s presidential election is explaining to people that they shouldn’t feel like inflation is still a problem.”

Who you gonna believe: Your cash register receipts or a feeble, corrupt, multi-millionaire lifelong politician?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency

Less Oversight?

Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan, Audit, spending, taxes

There are long-standing debates among those who oppose big government. One is whether we should promote every budget cut and any tax cut, or whether we should more-or-less carefully support only some cuts — on the grounds that some possible cuts might scuttle future reforms.

This came to mind upon hearing Michigan Governor Gretch Whitmer’s plan to reduce the budget of one of her state’s bureaucracies by 28 percent.

Hooray!

But wait a moment: the department to be cut is the Office of the Auditor General!

Whitmer’s proposal is to take the $30 million budget and bring it down to a lean $21.7 million.

The point of an auditor is to make sure that government does not misuse the money taken from taxpayers, allegedly for the public benefit. Take that away, and what do you have? 

Waste. Corruption — a recipe for it, anyway. Maybe an engraved invitation for it.

Is there any merit to this reduction? Democrats are not known to love budget cuts. 

They say Michigan’s auditor’s office has been “too partisan” — and certainly said things about Democrat programs that don’t make those programs look good!

“If there is ever a place in Lansing where we should rise above petty partisan politics, it should be oversight and ethics,” Rep. Tom Kunse (R-Clare) said, expressing a perspective I share.

So what’s really going on here? Well, the state is facing a $418 million surplus. That’s a lot of money to play with. What’s the likelihood that the party in charge wants to reduce the Auditor’s Office for any other reason than to reduce scrutiny of how they plan to spend that money?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability education and schooling ideological culture

Bathroom Blundering 

school, bathrooms, trans

“A bunch of people from our school, John Jay, feel uncomfortable,” says a student at John Jay High School, Shauna Neilan. “We want to change that and give them their own spaces to make us more comfortable and them more comfortable.”

Students attending the Wappingers district school in New York State are rebelling against a government-imposed policy that lets students use bathrooms designated for the opposite sex. The protest has provoked a counterprotest by those who want the bathrooms to be open to all.

All this controversy even though, as Spectrum News reports, the school boasts “male and female restrooms, as well as a gender-neutral single-stall restroom that any student may use.”

Meanwhile, a school official says the school will “continue to provide a safe environment for all of our students. And ‘all’ means all, each and every one of them.” But this goal is self-contradictory if a few students are willing to make most others feel uncomfortable.

These administrators should at least say: “We agree 100% with students who object to this wrongheaded policy. Unfortunately, we are too worried about funding and/or legal repercussions and/or the possibility that the government will send troops to enforce the the current transgenderist orthodoxy.

“Until we can gather enough courage to rebel ourselves, we implore students eager to use the wrong bathroom to use, instead, the bathroom designated for their sex. Please respect the sensibilities of your fellow students even if you wish you were a member of the opposite sex.”

Three cheers for the students fighting the insanity, three jeers for the dishonesty of school officials.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture too much government

Fifteen Days to Flatten America

Fauci, Trump, Covid

The most important lesson of “Fifteen days to flatten the curve!” occurred on the 16th, when  governors kept lockdown measures going.

No state limited its lockdown measures to a mere 15 days.

The public rationale for the lockdowns had been to save hospitals from being swamped with COVID patients — though the Army Corps of Engineers had built emergency COVID care centers near pandemic hot spots around the country, which were unceremoniously dismantled, without having been used, even as governors continued their hysterics.

And tyrannies.

Out west in Washington, for example, Governor Inslee shut down the whole state with a March 24, 2020, order, and, on April 3, unilaterally extended it to May 4, despite the fact that most of the state had hardly experienced the virus yet. On May 29, the stay-at-home order was still in effect, with the governor dictating a county-by-county re-opening order that he fiddled with incoherently for the next year. 

Across the country, most hospitals suffered from under-use.

John Stossel just “celebrated” the four-year anniversary of the lockdowns with an article titled “‘15 Days To Slow the Spread’: On the Fourth Anniversary, a Reminder to Never Give Politicians That Power Again.” Mr. Stossel provides a concise litany of the idiocy of that brief, if far too long, epoch of . . . . what he calls “government incompetence.

But does incompetence exhaust the fault?

At the beginning I had expressed caution, even suggesting a little lenience for our leaders. Then came the enormity of the mass liberticide.

It was President Trump who put out the “guidelines” for shutting down the country; it was Trump who stuck to his guns on the efficacy of the lockdown “mitigations.” Trump did so because he was mesmerized, perhaps, by Drs. Fauci and Birx — whom he had promoted into the spotlight.

Little did Trump know, however, that Fauci had funded the very disease he was allegedly fighting, and that Birx, privately, had pushed lockdowns not in good faith for reasons stated, but with every intention of pushing “longer and more aggressive interventions.”

Trump? Played, yes; incompetent, sure. 

But Birx and Fauci? Malevolent. Evil. Pick the word.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability election law Tenth Amendment federalism

States Still Have a Role

Nancy Pelosi, Federalism, Nationalism

When asked what kind of government had been proposed at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin famously responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

But Old Ben did not clarify the nature of the republic. 

It was to be a federal republic. 

In the new Constitution — which was adopted by the states over the next few years — the States were sovereign, the general government given a concise and limited list of tasks to perform.

Since then, nationalism has won most of the big battles, but federalism remains vital as a principle, re-asserting itself in interesting ways.

Most recent? “Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton receives huge win with court ruling delivered on Tuesday deeming the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package passed in 2022 unconstitutional,” as Leading Report explained on Tuesday. “This victory marks a pivotal moment in Paxton’s challenge against the legislation, highlighting concerns over the bill’s approval process.”

At issue is Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, which President Biden signed in December 2022, with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division, concluding that “by including members [of U.S. Congress] who were indisputably absent in the quorum count, the Act at issue passed in violation of the Constitution’s Quorum Clause.”

As Paxton gleefully summarized, “Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi abused proxy voting under the pretext of COVID-19 to pass this law, then Biden signed it, knowing they violated the Constitution.”

The story, as Leading Report argues, “showcases the role of state attorneys general in upholding constitutional principles and ensuring adherence to legal frameworks within the realm of federal governance.”

The States have some say. Still.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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