Category: government transparency

Deep State, Deeply Fake

deep fake, Donald Trump, Young Frankenstein,

Is there a good, presumptive reason to believe what the government tells us?

Not when it comes from the “intelligence” agencies.

One of the more breathtaking developments of recent years has been the transformation of Democratic Party politicians and activists from skeptics of alphabet soup intelligence agencies — CIA, NSA, FBI and many more — to becoming enthusiastic cheerleaders.

On the bright side, Republicans are drifting in the other direction, from their old-fashioned lockstep support of “intelligence agencies” to a new realism — the relentless Deep State “coup” attempts against the Trump Administration having proved … instructive.

While we might wish to think that, whew!, these agencies are comprised of loyal Americans, consider what Senator Chuck Schumer said earlier this year, almost approvingly: “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

But more important than all this is the developing techniques the Deep State can marshal. I refer to Deepfake tech, where anything video can be faked, convincingly and completely. If not now, then very soon, technicians within the Deep State — and outside, too — will be able to videofake anything, from Trump cavorting with Moscow hookers to an Iranian “attack” to … UFO landings.

We shouldn’t have trusted intelligence agencies in the run-up to the Iraq conquest, now we have good reason to doubt anything and everything they tell us.

Which means Congress should take very tight control of them, rein these agencies in — for Congress is indeed worried about deepfake tech.

How?

Well, de-classifying old secrets might be a good start. The last bit of the JFK assassination files? Maybe. UFOs? Maybe. But it’s what’s not on our radar that may be the most important.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags deep fake, Donald Trump, face recognition technology, Frankenstein, media, technology

government transparency

Transparent on Twitter?

AOC, Trump, twitter, block, blocking, free speech,

I find Twitter distasteful, annoying, even stupid. I sometimes wonder why I should care about that particular “micro-blogging” platform.

But since it is a big deal to others, I struggle to understand.*

Joining me in the struggle are our two most famous political Twitterers, President Donald Trump and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D‑N.Y.).

The president lost in court the other day, with the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals telling him he must no longer block users on the social media platform.

Now AOC finds herself in a similar pickle. On Tuesday, a former Democratic New York Assemblyman filed a lawsuit in federal court against the popular freshman U.S. Representative for doing the same thing Trump had been doing: blocking users on Twitter based on their personal viewpoints.

The litigant surmises that AOC had blocked him “apparently because my critique of her tweets and policies have been too stinging.”

Ouch?

“Twitter is a public space,” insists this Democrat, Dov Hikind, “and all should have access to the government officials on it.”

This puts me in a pickle, too. I am all for government transparency — and I do think officials and representatives should not be completely insulated from the citizens they serve. But we don’t have a right to follow them into their bedrooms or bathrooms.

So, high-profile federal employees who in any way discuss public matters on social media should not be allowed to block Americans from seeing their posts. But take pity on the poor pols: they should be able to mute users, that is, keep others from cluttering up their social media experience.

Oddly, the lawsuit does not address this muting option.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* I even use it, occasionally.

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Tags Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, AOC, block, blocking, Donald Trump, free speech, Trump, Twitter

government transparency Popular

The Whys Behind the Whats

UFO, navy, flight, tracking, military, disclosure, secret, conspiracy,

“[H]ow quickly our differences worldwide would vanish,” said Ronald Reagan in 1987, “if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

Does that Reaganite talking point give us any hints about the current series of disclosures about Unidentified Flying Objects?

I noted the most recent story to hit mainstream news on Sunday, about members of the U.S. Senate being briefed on the many repeated Navy encounters around the world with Unexplained Aerial Phenomena — “UAP” being the current euphemism for “UFO.”

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the bulk of these news stories have been driven by a cadre of former government officials and contractors who have investigated UAP as part of a Pentagon research program. Now members of a non-profit educational corporation, they are on a mission to break the government-imposed silence and compartmentalized lock-up of knowledge about the phenomena.

This being America, the effort also has a History Channel tie-in.

But much of the buzz appears to be coming from outside that core group, some of it focusing on leaked documents relating to a 2002 meeting between a scientist and a Navy admiral. The subject matter includes a secret program studying actual, hangered examples of ultra-strange flying craft* kept deeply secret — even from current military command — in the corporate wing of the military-industrial complex.

A new threat to unite us all? Or just another excuse to throw taxpayer funds down the Pentagon/military-industrial complex rathole?

The ongoing UFO disclosure might be neither of these yet still not what it seems.

We should keep our minds open, but our suspicions set on high alert.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The technology in question, in this document as well as in the footage disclosed in 2017, purportedly does not use propellers, jets, or rockets to move extremely rapidly, change course immediately, and hover.

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Tags conspiracy, disclosure, flight, military, navy, secret, tracking, UFO

Accountability government transparency national politics & policies too much government

Long Gone Rogue

Chuck Schumer, Rachel Maddow, deep state, Donald Trump

Back in the 1990s, we used to talk about “rogue agencies” of the U.S. Government. And for good reason: the Branch Davidian massacre and the Ruby Ridge fiasco were hard to forget.

After 9/11/2001, however, we cut the agencies some slack. Why? Their incompetence and our hope.

But it became obvious from the NSA’s illegal metadata collection program, as revealed by Edward Snowden, the core agencies of the military-industrial complex do not like playing by rules that the American people have a say in.

How bad is it?

On New Year’s Day this year, Sen. Chuck Schumer was talking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow about their favorite conspiracy theory. Maddow, as we all know, had gone Full Nutter on this “collusion”/“corruption” story, and Democratic politicians (along with nearly the whole of the mainstream news media) ran with the story for two years. Then, the Mueller report is “no collusion.”

But on that first Tuesday of 2019, Ms. Maddow was talking about Trump’s tweets which she characterized as “taunting” the CIA and other agencies obsessed with the “Russian hacking” angle of the brouhaha. And Schumer’s response?

“Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

We should take this as a signal. It is like making prison rape jokes. It says something about the situation: prison rape or Deep State machinations. And about the speaker: leveraging a rogue element as a threat.

No wonder many now think the Russiagate/Mueller investigation was a “Deep State Coup” attempt.

A republic with rogue agencies is hardly a republic at all.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Chuck Schumer, deep state, Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow, Trump

Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 2, 2019
2 Comments on Put the Public in Public Policy

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster.

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.”

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . . . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters.… In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt.

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions. “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said.

Yes.

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, negotiations, Pelosi, secrecy, Sen. Chuck Schumer, transparency

government transparency national politics & policies

Full Frontal Negotiations

Pence, Vice President, sleeping, transparency, negotiations

Last week’s political circus reached a new level of Big Top.

Or three rings, as President Donald Trump hosted two Democratic leaders in the White House, debating border security and government shutdown — in public. House Minority Leader, soon-to-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.) were somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s decision to hash out their differences in front of the cameras and the American people.

It was quite the comedy. Yet Vice President Mike Pence all but snored. While many pundits once again expressed their frustrations with a lack of solemn decorum from Trump, Pence provided not solemnity but somnolence.

The idea of government negotiations being done out in the open isn’t new. Transparency is good, if rarely practiced. But it did not take long for Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer to express alarm at this foray into Reality TV.

“We’re here to have a conversation the careful way,” Pelosi informed the president, “so I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this.”

Once upon a time, Dems promised transparency. Barack Obama campaigned on negotiating health care reform on C‑SPAN — only to renege on that pledge when the negotiations got going.

In olden days, Democrat President Grover Cleveland practiced political transparency when he was governor of New York (1883 – 1885), pointedly leaving the door to his office open whenever discussing any subject whatsoever with anyone.*

And let’s tip the hat to Mike Pence. Ridiculed when it came out that he would not meet in private with any woman not his wife, upon the arrival of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings, Pence appeared genius.

If a sleepy one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Cleveland was not so transparent when, during a crisis in his second presidency, he secretly had his jaw operated upon in a boat in international waters.

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