Category: government transparency

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Hit PLAY for Transparency

Leaked bodycam video shows new details of George Floyd's arrest

“[George] Floyd’s death changed everything,” Fox News’ Tucker Carlson told viewers two nights ago, calling it “a pivot point in American history.” 

Given “the significance of the event, it’s striking how little we really know months later about how exactly George Floyd died,” argued Carlson, before playing bits of the 18-​minutes of police cam video obtained by Britain’s Daily Mail. “The official storyline … couldn’t be clearer. Established news organizations state as a matter of factual certainty that Floyd was … murdered by a Minneapolis police officer.”

“But does it reflect what really happened?” Carlson asked. 

“Floyd had a number of narcotics in his system, including enough fentanyl to die of an overdose,” the Fox host advised. “One of the best-​known symptoms of fentanyl overdose, by the way, is shortness of breath. In the video, Floyd complains that he is having trouble breathing, famously, but says that long before the police officer kneels on his neck.”

Writers at The Wrap and The Huffington Post quickly took Carlson to task for suggesting that the new video evidence in any way altered the media narrative of events, pointing out that two separate autopsies determined Floyd’s death to be a homicide.* 

Neither a medical doctor nor a criminologist, Carlson is right about two things: 

(1) “The American people should have been allowed to see police body camera footage … much sooner than this week.”

(2) “You can decide for yourself what you think of that video.”

The point of police wearing body cameras is to give the public as clear a picture as possible. Had the full video been seen earlier, some of this summer’s violence may have been forestalled.

It should not take someone violating a court order to hit play for the public.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Later in the program, Carlson expressed his opinion that the tape fails to exonerate Officer Derek Chauvin, who held his knee on Floyd’s neck for eight minutes.

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government transparency national politics & policies responsibility

America Unmasked

virus, coronavirus, pandemic, mask,

For weeks, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Health and Human Services told us not to wear face masks. The Surgeon General even warned that mass use of masks could “increase the spread of the coronavirus.” 

“My nose tells me,” I posted on Facebook weeks ago, “that all the info about how we don’t need face-​masks is to cover up for the lack of face-masks.”

My family is very grateful to a Taiwanese friend, who mailed me masks — not the N95 masks, which the Taiwanese government is donating in large quantities, but masks of excellent non-​medical quality. 

Last Wednesday, CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell noted that a large percentage of people spreading the virus are asymptomatic, meaning they don’t know they have it. She asked Dr. Anthony Fauci with the White House Coronavirus Taskforce: “Should we be advising people to wear masks?”

“The primary people who need masks are healthcare workers,” the doctor replied, before admitting that if supplies weren’t so limited, wearing a mask was “a potentially good way … you could have an impact with preventing transmission.”

Days later, President Trump passed on a CDC advisory to the same effect.

Americans had figured out the initial lie, and were already making their own and posting how to do so on social media. Now that’ll ramp up. 

Initially, our leaders didn’t level with us. They could have. Americans seem amazingly cooperative, to say the least.

Government folks need to stop masking the truth from the public. That way they might earn more public trust.

Which sure can be useful during a crisis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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virus, coronavirus, pandemic, mask,

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People Power in the Republic of China

responsibility, command, politicians, control, self reliance,

Which country has handled this worldwide pandemic best?

The question was asked on Facebook, by one friend, and answered this way by another: 

“Government: South Korea; People: Japan.”

My response?

“Combo of people and government: Taiwan.”

There is a lot in the Taiwanese response to explore. 

“The first cause of Taiwan’s success,” write Javier Caramés Sanchez and William Hongsong Wang on Mises Wire, “is the transparency of information, which stopped the rapid growth of infection.” While on Mainland China the corrupt government was no more transparent than the very murky Yellow River, in the Republic of China (commonly called Taiwan, and once listed on the globe as “Formosa”) the Ministry of Health and Welfare began informing the public as early as December 31.

The second reason? “The type of quarantines established by the Taiwanese government are mostly self-​quarantines. The Taiwanese government acknowledges that it is crucial to rely on people’s voluntary actions to resist the pandemic.” In Japan the people regularly don masks when sick. That kind of compliance is cultural there. In Taiwan, there has been a lot of spontaneous and “all you need to ask” compliance with social distancing and the like.

“The key is that the Taiwanese government and the Taiwanese people understand that the individual’s own responsibility and actions are essential to suppressing the coronavirus pandemic, not a mandatory massive shutdown,” the authors conclude. “This is what the world needs to learn.”

Responsibility is what a free people practice. And learn to master.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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deep fake, Donald Trump, Young Frankenstein,

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

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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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