Category: insider corruption

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ideological culture insider corruption national politics & policies

Ineffectiveness, Please

Slotkin, lawfare, corruption

“I’m into effectiveness,” Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) told an audience last week at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.

Maybe effectiveness isn’t what we want from government, after all.

Recognizing that, in the next Congress, Democrats are unlikely to have the votes to remove President Trump from office by impeaching him in the House and convicting him in the Senate, Slotkin called for an alternative strategy: pursuing aggressive criminal prosecutions in what she called “signature cases” of the people who have “enabled” President Trump. 

Calling for the prosecution of someone who has committed a crime — I mean a real crime, not simply working for one’s political enemy — is not very controversial, of course. But Slotkin’s stated reasoning is.

“I want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration?’”

She imagines them thinking, “‘Like, that sounds fun, I might get an opportunity.’” 

But opportunities for young conservatives need to be effectively squelched, dontcha know . . .

“I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems I don’t want and so let me avoid participating in that,’” explained the senator.

“I want that deterrence message sent,” she concluded.

Yes, more lawfare is coming . . . in the name of “effectiveness” . . . to chill political participation. 

Slotkin presents herself as a moderate Democrat. Really?

Even moderates are now in favor of using the judicial system to prosecute political opponents . . . the better to frighten and intimidate young people . . . who might be looking for a job with those political opponents?

That’s not change. That’s more of the same.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Bad Move

Donald Trump, political advertising, taxes, media

“Because the GOP is in such a bad spot, five weeks out from the midterms,” Ali Velshi told his The 11th Hour audience, “the Trump administration is now also using your taxpayer dollars to air . . . political ads that feature the president.

“Not only is that a blatantly wasteful misuse of taxpayer money,” Velshi continued, “it’s unethical and likely illegal.”

And here is the zinger: “But it’s also a bad political move.”

It’s not every day that I’m this simpatico with an MS Now host. 

What is Mr. Trump thinking? It’s simply the wrong way to govern: Using the public purse to broadcast pro-yourself messages to the people. 

And is there any constituency — outside of Mr. Trump — for these television spots? One that would override the stench from misusing public resources in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue?

The White House calls these ads public service announcements. 

The whole thing smacks of leader-worship. Plus, the messages are purely political. The timing seems awfully vote-solicitous: “Together we will defeat.”

The third spot, “The Final Battle,” recycles a 2023 political ad, with Trump promising that (once again) “we” will “demolish the Deep State,” “expel the warmongers from our government,” “drive out the globalists,” “cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists,” and “throw off the sick political class that hates our country” and more.

Trump is not on the ballot, but his policies are. So, by all means, Mr. President, get the word out. 

With private funds. 

“It’s a great message. I like the message,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered, “but it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.”

That’s common sense, I agree. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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insider corruption political economy

Slower Than a Stationary Bullet

California, High Speed Rail, Gavin Newsom, folly, transportation, waste

California’s decades-in-the-making high-speed rail system has problems.

The first: In 2008 Californians approved a $10 billion bond measure as down payment on a $45 billion, 800-mile bullet-train system.

At the time, a policy analyst suggested that many people “sense that maybe that [bullet train] is something I can use at some point. It’s something they can relate to.” Hence the 52.7% support.

Now, I can “relate to” plenty of big projects I might “use at some point,” preferably before shuffling off this mortal coil, but that doesn’t mean I favor forcing fellow taxpayers to shell out many tens of billions for extravagant dreams. 

Neither does it mean I wish to open the door to endless horse-trading and political skullduggery.

There is another problem: It’s become clear that the only likely result of California’s “high-speed” project, in addition to lining the pockets of the politically well-connected, will be duplicating and interrupting an already-existing service.

The chapter-and-verse is laid out by blogger Chris Bray. “The High-Speed Rail Authority is,” Bray writes, “replacing trains with trains, and train stations with train stations. The Central Valley, which is connected by rail, is being connected by rail, after which the Gold Runner will be shut down where it overlaps, but still operated where it doesn’t.”

Instead of the mega-connective system Californians though they were voting for, they’ll get “trains to Fresno where they already have trains to Fresno.” And when riding, have to keep switching back and forth between an Amtrak train and a bullet train.

But, hey, look on the bright side: maybe it will never happen.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling insider corruption

Patronage Over Pupils

George Will, schools, education, spending, government

Frederick Douglass was a great man, so one might expect that a school named after him would also be great. But Chicago’s Frederick Douglass Academy High School, sporting a nifty web page, falls short. 

In students.

The Illinois Policy Institute’s Chicago Policy Center reports that, “Frederick Douglass Academy, with a capacity of 1,008, had just 27 students in 2025-2026.” 

Yet supporters and employees boast online how “loud and proud” they are about the school — while demanding more funding.

We’re not supposed to notice that 981 shortfall in enrolled students. 

Last year, according to columnist George F. Will, the school had more paid staff members than students! The year previous, taxpayers had funded “education” there to the tune of $93,000 per pupil!

“But Douglass is not entirely an outlier,” explains Mr. Will. “At more than 50 Chicago schools, the percent of students who achieve math proficiency is 0.” 

And the average over all the schools, last year, adds another clue: “43 percent of the city’s teachers were absent 10 or more school days. Students similarly negligent produce the phenomenon called ‘chronic absenteeism.’ A quarter of Chicago high-school students missed more than a month of school, and 100 percent of Douglass’s seniors were chronically absent. Yet the graduation rate remains high, at about 83 percent.”

Will blames the teachers’ union, which he calls “wicked.”

Corruption festers up and down Chicago’s K-12 hierarchy. There has been a moratorium on closing under-utilized schools, with near-empty schools better serving as union pork than as an efficient way to educate the young. 

The Illinois Policy Institute insists that the first step out of this mess is to close failing schools.

We cannot keep passing along those who flunk out. Students and schools, both.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption international affairs litigation

U.S. Aided Brazilian Tyranny?

Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes, Brazil, corruption, freedom

In a case with “serious repercussions,” insists journalist Brazilian-based American journalist Glenn Greenwald, a “U.S. federal judge concluded that an immigration record entered in the Customs and Border Protection system during the Biden administration was fraudulent.” 

While the idea of fraudulent behavior in a government bureau will hardly shock you, this record was special. It was used to imprison a Brazilian official.

The official? Filipe Martins. He filed suit in the U.S., and as a result a truth came out. “The fraudulent record reflected a non-existent entry into the U.S. by the national security advisor to former President Jair Bolsonaro,” Greenwald explains. “The fabricated entry was then somehow obtained and used by a controversial Brazilian Supreme Court judge to imprison that national security official.”

Behind all this lurks a rogue Brazilian Supreme Court Justice, Alexandre de Moraes. He’s Brazil’s éminence grise, exercising enormous power in his country far beyond his constitutional authority. He’s basically the country’s unacknowledged dictator. He hates free speech, as his run-ins with Twitter (X) and Elon Musk show. 

Moraes was gung ho for tyranny during the Biden years, but is justice catching up with this “justice”? U.S. intelligence agencies appear to have secretly nurtured the rogue judge, but with the change of administrations has come an official antagonism.

Now ramped up by a federal judge in the current case — which is “increasingly suspect and bizarre,” as Greenwald notes. “The political implications are obvious: did Biden officials — overtly hostile to the Bolsonaro government and strongly supportive of Lula — deliberately manufacture an immigration record to permit Moraes to order this top-level Brazilian official imprisoned unjustly?”

Americans traditionally think that their government shouldn’t meddle in the internal affairs of foreign states. We certainly shouldn’t allow our government to work sub rosa against freedom around the world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law First Amendment rights incumbents insider corruption

El-Sayed vs. The Money

campaign finance reform, Congress, voting, elections, free speech, first Amendment

“Money out of politics, money in your pocket, Medicare for All” — so runs the campaign slogan of Abdul El-Sayed, who last week won Michigan’s Democratic Party nomination for the open U.S. Senate seat now held by Democrat Gary Peters.

Dr. El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, later heading Wayne County’s Department of Health, Human, and Veterans Services for a few years. He calls himself a progressive, but a “capitalist” one, not a socialist. Yet, seeking a national office, his national fellow travelers are Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Michigan’s own Rashida Talib and, last-but-not-least, the Democratic Socialists of America.

Today, let’s take the first phrase of his slogan: Money out of politics. 

Creating small legislative districts would go a long way toward making outsized campaign spending less effective. Of course, term limits would diminish the value to a special interest of “capturing” an elected official. And limit the threat of politicians forever shaking down interests, special or not. 

But that’s not the game plan of Abdul and progressives and, for many years now, congressional Democrats. 

Instead, they want to re-write the First Amendment, reversing it from “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging freedom of speech” to Congress shall have power to regulate the raising and spending of money insofar as it relates to campaigning. 

So far, Congress has legislated a Byzantine regulatory regime that serves only to make politics more expensive. The public benefit? Corruption diminished at all? Anyone? 

Allowing career politicians to dictate who can raise or spend money (even in the incumbents’ very own election campaigns) and without regard to whether it silences voices — how is that progress?

If you want to tear down the whole idea of America, this version of getting “money out of politics” is one big rip.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment Fifth Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Fauci Can’t Lie

Anthony Fauci, Congress, Covid, 5th Amendment

Is there any crime for which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, will be prosecuted?

The multi-millionaire former “public servant” received a full and unconditional pardon “FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in . . .” 

Courtesy of Mr. Biden — or his auto-pen.

“Biden backdated the pardon to 2014, a date nearly six years before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 emerged,” Newsweek reported a year and a half ago.

Why? Come on, man! Because it “shields Fauci from allegations tied to U.S.-funded gain-of-function research in addition to his work during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So, Fauci is immune from prosecution for 

  1. a decade’s worth of skirting U.S. domestic restrictions, to fund gang-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan, China; 
  2. for each and every lie he told Senator Rand Paul and others in Congress; and 
  3. for any other fraud — such as using his federal employees to solicit more than a million dollars in cash prizes for him personally.

So when Fauci — formerly known as “the Science” — asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times before Congress (NBC says 106), refusing to answer questions about his past role as a government official, it was illegitimate. Because on those matters, he cannot be incriminated.

“No person,” reads the amendment, “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” There can be no criminal case brought for his past lies.

But the problem for Dr. Fauci is that he can be prosecuted for telling those lies again to Congress. Like at yesterday’s hearing. 

Past lies? You’re pardoned, Doc. 

But Fauci cannot repeat his lies. That would be a new crime. 

And since he wants those falsehoods to stand, he will not speak.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Previously on Common Sense:

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insider corruption too much government

Gov’t Pushing Gov’t

Wisconsin, taxes, lobbying, government

Why, asks the MacIver Institute, “is the government lobbying the government?”

MacIver calls itself Wisconsin’s “free-market voice.” It is a privately funded outfit that makes the case for less government in the Badger State. It has to earn its funds from donors who can, at any moment, stop donating money.

One of the things the MacIver Institute found itself up against are other think-tanks and apparently donor-funded organizations advocating for more government in the state, for more programs, bigger programs, and more taxes to feed all the great new stuff.

And it turns out that several of these advocacy organizations are themselves funded by government! I mean, taxpayers.

I know, it’s not unheard of. It’s too common, existing in probably every state of the union.

And it is thoroughly corrupt.

The MacIver Institute identifies three outfits that receive tax money to promote more tax-funded programs: the Wisconsin Counties Association, the Wisconsin Towns Association and the Wisconsin League of Municipalities. These outfits promote more transportation funding and higher taxes. Comparing these outfits’ core pitch to “a swindler selling gullible buyers submerged swampland,” MacIver makes it quite clear how easily local leaders are bamboozled: “Your supervisors — at least many of them — are clueless that they are being used as patsies in a coordinated scheme by a taxpayer-funded lobbying machine, one that exists not to represent the public, but to represent government itself.”

People who want fewer government services and a smaller tax burden often wonder why government size always ratchets up, never down. Well, this is one reason: the government takes your money to give to groups that will push for more government.

Sadly, this ratchet racket is a part of government that works too well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption international affairs media and media people

Goofy Wig and All

James O'keefe, WEF, World Economic Forum, chemtrails, conspiracy

One of P.J. O’Rourke’s better books is Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut. My purpose in mentioning it is not to praise it but merely to adapt it for the James O’Keefe story, where middle age and guile and a bad haircut beat Creepiness and Guilt. 

“Disguised and undercover,” explains the O’Keefe Media Group article, “James O’Keefe embeds inside the World Economic Forum, slipping past armed security and exclusive guest lists to capture what the global climate elite say when they think no one is listening.” 

The bad haircut? A goofy blond wig that Mr. O’Keefe (1984– ) donned to fool the European bigwigs (er, elites). He looked like Andy Warhol as a special guest on “Sprockets.”

What did this subterfuge accomplish? “Posing as an employee of a fictional climate engineering firm, O’Keefe and the OMG team are welcomed into late-night events, luxury hotels, and mountaintop forums where climate financiers openly discuss carbon taxes, geoengineering, and weather modification, commonly referred to as ‘chemtrails.’”

Yes, chemtrails!

I’ve been programmed to chuckle right now, hence that exclamation point.

Speaking of programmed — Grok gave me plenty of excuses to keep on chuckling. It also gave me the wrong URL for the O’Keefe Media Group (O’Keefe’s successor to Project Veritas) and words of wisdom like this: “If O’Keefe’s video shows attendees discussing it casually, it might be speculative chit-chat rather than official policy.”

One thing Grok couldn’t understand is the “optics.” O’Keefe is not wrong to note that some of the WEFers cheerleading for BlackRock do indeed “look like Bond villains.” A conference where people enthuse about seeding the upper atmosphere with chemicals to cool off the planet? That should be the premise of the next James Bond flick.

Has weather modification actually been going on . . . for decades? 

I don’t know. But if these folks are talking about climate geo-engineering, what wouldn’t they do?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights insider corruption local leaders

Vindictiveness vs. the First Amendment

Institute for Justice, IJ, free speech, 1st Amendment

Finally, the city council of Castle Hills, Texas, is doing the right thing by Sylvia Gonzalez, accepting a settlement to resolve years of litigation against the city for violating her First Amendment rights.

In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in her favor, agreeing that courts may properly consider evidence that an arrest is retaliatory.

According to Gonzalez’s lawsuit, in 2019 city leaders had lashed out against the councilwoman for her support of a nonbinding petition to remove a city manager. The city’s weapon? A rarely used law that it wielded against her for “briefly and inadvertently having the petition among her papers” during a heated council meeting; she allegedly tried to “steal” her own petition.

Gonzalez was arrested and spent a day in jail — the real reason, according to her lawsuit, being her criticism of local leaders.

The settlement means that statewide training on “First Amendment retaliation” (presumably, how to avoid engaging in it) will be offered throughout Texas and, for Castle Hill officials, will be mandatory.

The city must also pay $500,000 in damages to Gonzalez.

Anya Bidwell, an attorney for the Institute of Justice, which represented Gonzalez in the suit, observes that the First Amendment “doesn’t come with handcuffs. This outcome sends a message to officials everywhere: if you retaliate against critics, you can be held to account.”

Let’s hope that not a whole lot of training is needed to safeguard local freedom of speech. The issue is not that complicated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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