Category: government transparency

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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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government transparency

Gold of the Gods

gold bar, aliens, artifacts, UFO, UAP

There may be something more shocking than UFOs.

Non-​existent gold.

Aliens and crash-​landed flying saucers are not supposed to exist. Experts have been telling us they are mere fantasy and rumor for longer than I’ve been alive.

Meanwhile, experts at the U.S. Mint insist that something very different does exist: “approximately 147.3 million troy ounces of gold stored at Fort Knox in Kentucky.”

We have testimony from two senators on these subjects. 

Senator Barry Goldwater (R‑Az.), who ran for the presidency in 1964, infamously said: “I think that, at Wright-​Patterson Field, if you could get into certain places, you’d find out what the Air Force and the Government knows about UFOs.” 

He went on to say that, even while heading the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was barred from entering the Air Force base.

His buddy General Curtis Le May also blocked the senator. “I’ve never heard him get mad, but he got madder than hell at me” for asking to see the evidence. “He cussed me out. ‘Don’t ever ask me that question again.’” 

Senator Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) has a similar story about Fort Knox. He’s tried to get inside to see the alleged gold but has always been rebuffed. 

And given no reasons.

Elon Musk, asked on X about the gold, with the suggestion that DOGE look into it, was surprised to learn from Senator Paul that there has been no believable audit of Fort Knox in decades.

Elon says he’s game to hold a public inspection.

The Government may house downed UFOs but no gold!

Which is worse?

Not knowing. 

Time to open up the vaults — in Fort Knox as well as Wright-Patterson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Addendum: “I’m actually going on this one,” President Trump said to a roomful of Republican governors, yesterday. “We’re going to open up the doors. I’m going to see if we have gold there. Did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox?”

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government transparency Update

Super Bowl LIX Disclosure?

Transparency in government may be reaching a new venue: “Elon Musk is rumored to be spending $40 million of his own money,” explains Anthony Gareffa of TweakTown, “on five commercials during one of the most-​watched events in the world — the Superbowl — highlighting U.S. government waste that DOGE has found.”

According to Michael Flores the number is four: “At the Superbowl in 2025 Trump is embracing new tech which has been blocked before. Musk is delivering four ads to the Superbowl about what he discovered in the Treasury files. Just before the game begins.

“These ads will also be shown in the stadium.” And Donald Trump will be in the audience, in the stands. Flores claims to be floored by this: “No matter who wins the games, this is history they will write about for centuries to come.”

In an email letter, Flores goes further: “Nothing in American politics will ever be the same again. We are talking about theft so ingrained in the system that they didn’t even try to hide it. But how they did it is now mapped out by computers. How long they did it is mapped by computers. Money that could have helped the poor. Could have paid for Social Security for years.”

Will this really happen? See for yourself: “The game is scheduled to begin at 6:30pm Eastern Time, on February 9, 2025, at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, Louisiana.… The game will be televised in the United States by Fox and streamed on Tubi.”

The game itself pits the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles, the Chiefs are favored — but it may be the Democrats who lose big. Democrats and their elaborate ways to give their causes taxpayer money.

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government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

The Biden Is No More

Joe Biden, stumble, exit

Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., went out as he came in, plagiarizing.

Well, in style anyway, his bizarre farewell address striking ultra-​familiar themes. 

“Most Biden speeches are acknowledged (Lincoln, Obama) or unacknowledged (Neil Kinnock, John Kennedy) homages to other politicians,” explains Matt Taibbi. “This last Biden attempt at an Eisenhower impersonation offers an anti-​insight. We’re warned about an ‘oligarchy,’ which Webster’s defines as ‘a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.’” 

And here the intelligent reader is already ahead of the author. 

“He tries to tag disobedient billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg (as opposed to Reid Hoffman, Bill Gates, Steven Schwartzman, etc.) as this new oligarchy, but there’s one closer to home, which Biden referenced later in the speech: ‘In the years ahead … it is going to be up to the president, the presidency, the congress, the courts, the free press and the American people … I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands.… Now it’s your turn to stand guard.’

“Biden’s possibly ad-​libbed distinction between ‘president’ and ‘presidency’ was the most inspired line of his career,” Taibbi quips.

And eerily defining … of Biden’s stint at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue … and various vacation hot spots.*

Taibbi contrasts the man — “stumbling, tumbling” — with the machinery of the office — run by a mostly-​unseen cabal Taibbi defines with reference to H. G. Wells’s science fiction novel The Invisible Man.

Other sci-​fi metaphors come to mind. In his penultimate paragraph, Taibbi mentions Frankenstein filmmaker James Whale, and then in his last line Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man. But didn’t Philip K. Dick provide a hundred examples of fake personae as presidents and tyrants? 

Except that the Biden Administration, whatever it might have been, was limited in its power because it lacked legitimacy from half the population — and was as cognitively challenged as Biden himself.

Yesterday, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R‑La.) told Meet the Press that our sleepy commander-​in-​chief had been manipulated by his staff into signing key executive orders under false pretenses. And running interference for this Democratic Party “presidency” were Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.).

Thank goodness, the Age of “The Biden” is over.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Biden spent 40 percent of his term in office “on vacation.”

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The August Workings!

“Congress has secretly paid out more than $17 million of your money,” Representative Thomas Massie tweeted last week, “to quietly settle charges of harassment (sexual and other forms) in Congressional offices.”

Sounds nasty when he states it like that. He could have said Congress has valiantly kept litigation from disturbing the august workings of the world’s greatest deliberative body!

But seriously, Massie tells the truth and offers a challenge: “Don’t you think we should release the names of the Representatives? I do.”

He refers to the names of the accused in Congress. The ones bailed out of criminal and civil action, along with public obloquy, to the tune that only two-​digit millions can play.

Amusingly, Representative Massie compares and contrasts congressional hanky-​panky and hush-​money payments with those of former and future president of the United States, Donald Trump. “The allegation is that President Trump paid $130,000 of his own money but here in Congress we have … there may be some on this dais!” The “some” are the bailed-​out accused harassers whom Massie works with every day.

Imagine the love Massie must feel from his fellow brothers and sisters in Congress Assembled, with his demand for complete transparency.

Years ago I quoted CNN on the hush-​money issue. “The current system in place does not require the [Office of Compliance] to make public the number of sexual harassment complaints, number of settlements reached, the dollar figure of those settlements or which offices are being complained about. Congressional aides say this is giving unintentional cover to the worst offenders in Congress.” 

I questioned whether that was “unintentional.”

It’s not called “hush money” because it brings things out in the open!

Were I the twice-​impeached Donald Trump, I’d bring up that $17 million every time I addressed Congress. After all, Trump paid for his own … alleged … indiscretions. 

Our representatives have made us pay for theirs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency insider corruption scandal

Managing the President: 2021 – 2024

Joe Biden, deep state, lizard people

Yesterday, we considered the farce of Congresswoman Kay Granger (R‑Tex.), serving out her term from an assisted living home — suffering, her family says, from “dementia issues.”

So, today, let’s discuss the donkey in the room: the president of these United States, one Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. 

“Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public,” explains a major exposé in the Wall Street Journal.

How “throughout”? Almost from day one: “a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on,” notes The Journal, “in just the first few months of his term.”

The reportage confirms what we suspected. “The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-​person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.”

This structure also served to cover for Biden’s most characteristic failing, “foot-​in-​mouth”: his hand-​holders sought “to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-​century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.”

Not a morning person, the staff concocted an elaborate schedule of afternoon meetings which they tried to keep very short. “If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether.”

Perhaps most importantly, “[t]he strategies to protect Biden largely worked,” the report reminds, “until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump.”

Luckily, the Washington cabal has not quite figured out a way to have a president as figure-​head only and keep the deception from the American electorate. 

But too close for comfort.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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