Category: insider corruption

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Accountability crime and punishment insider corruption

Are 1,000 Pages Enough?

Congress, FBI, security, surveillance, freedom

The GOP has just issued a 1,000-page report about corruption in the Department of Justice and its Federal Bureau of Investigation. Based largely on the disclosures of 14 whistleblowers, plus what’s in plain sight — what we’ve all been able to see for ourselves over the last several years — the report details “a rampant culture of unaccountability, manipulation, and abuse.”

  • To support its political agendas, the FBI has deliberately inflated statistics about “domestic violent extremism” and has diverted resources from legitimate investigations — like those into child trafficking.
  • The Justice Department and FBI have averted their gaze from blatant and multifarious wrongdoing by Hunter Biden, son of the president.
  • The FBI has “purged” employees who disagree with the left-​leaning ideology of top brass.
  • The FBI has targeted parents for investigation simply for protesting school board policies.
  • Without cause, the FBI has been spying on US citizens, including persons who worked for candidate Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
  • Like other agencies, the FBI has worked with Big Tech social-​media companies to censor viewpoints that FBI honchos find uncongenial.
  • While targeting anti-​abortion activists who have perpetrated no violent acts, DOJ and FBI have ignored attacks on churches and pregnancy centers.

To be sure, the recent conduct of these agencies has plenty of precedent; thousands more pages could be produced.

From initial election results (before I got too sleepy), Republicans will have control of the House of Representatives, at the very least, and perhaps a Senate majority. They will have the power to press their investigation further and compel reforms.

The House controls the purse strings … if it dares. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption

Six Million Dimes

Covid, Wuhan, bats, money

“EcoHealth Alliance and Peter Daszak should not be getting a dime of taxpayer funds,” declared Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R‑Wash.), “until they are completely transparent. Period.”

Nevertheless, “despite losing a previous award for failing to provide records essential to an investigation into that origin,” Daszak’s group is now slated to receive $600,000, The Intercept informs us.

While regular readers are well aware of what Rep. Rodgers calls “madness,” at Unherd.com’s The Post, Ashley Rindsberg refreshes our memories:

  • “EcoHealth Alliance is … responsible for funneling … US government grants to the now infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology, considered by many to be the likely source of the pandemic.”
  • Still, “[Daszak] was the go-​to source for the American media as they sought to ‘prove’ that the lab leak theory was little more than a Right-​wing conspiracy. He also surreptitiously organised a letter in The Lancet, attempting to shut down the debate by labelling this potential origin as a ‘conspiracy theory.’”
  • “Most alarmingly,” Daszak “submitted a 2018 proposal to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency that called for scientists to insert a furin cleavage site — a key distinguishing and extremely rare feature of SARS-​Cov‑2 — into SARS-​like viruses. In other words: a blueprint for making SARS‑2 in a lab.”

Instead of throwing money at EcoHealth Alliance (which would merely funnel it to a Chinese lab), invest in a thorough congressional investigation into how Dr. Daszak, EcoHealth Alliance, and co-​conspirator Dr. Anthony Fauci purposely obstructed the inquiry into the origin of a pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans and nearly seven million worldwide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom insider corruption international affairs

Musk Gone Mad?

China, Taiwan, authoritarianism

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has often been lauded in this commentary — regarding SpaceX and the growth of private space travel, and recently for providing crucial internet access through his company’s Starlink satellites first to Ukraine and now for Iranian protesters.

I like that.

But the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) doesn’t like it at all. As Musk acknowledged last week in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), explaining that Chinese rulers wanted “assurances” he would not provide Starlink internet to the 1.4 billion people they actively repress.

With a Tesla plant in Shanghai, Musk is much more vulnerable to the dictates of Xi Jinping and the CCP than he is to Vladimir Putin or Iran’s Ayatollah. 

“Tesla, though headquartered in the U.S.,” Forbes notes, “made about half of its cars last year in mainland China, the world’s largest auto market.” 

Which amounts to an awful lot of leverage.

In that same FT interview, Musk floated a “solution” to the tensions between China, which threatens a military attack that might kill millions, and its target Taiwan, which overwhelmingly favors a war of resistance to CCP takeover and threatened re-​education.

“My recommendation,” the usually innovative businessman told FT, “would be to figure out a special administrative zone for Taiwan [under China’s authority] that is reasonably palatable,” adding, “it’s possible, and I think probably, in fact, that they could have an arrangement that’s more lenient than Hong Kong.”

While the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. thanked Elon Musk for his idea, a senior Taiwanese official reminded, “The world has seen clearly what happened to Hong Kong.”

Does this brilliant businessman really think that the promise of a more “lenient” totalitarianism is any kind of solution?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption scandal

Today in Integrity News

integrity

Was there once a golden age of probity in government? Where no corruption, self-​dealing, or partisan double-​standards prevailed? 

Well, surely there have been times when politicians generally tried to pretend harder.

A story in the Washington Post epitomizes current attitudes.

“The nation’s most prestigious scientific body said Tuesday that it has barred a key White House official focused on climate change, Jane Lubchenco, from participating in its publications and activities for five years,” wrote Maxine Joselow six weeks ago. It turns out that the National Academy of Sciences took this uncommon course for good reason. “While serving as an editor for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lubchenco accepted an article for publication that was later retracted because it relied on outdated data, and because she has a personal relationship with one of the authors, who is her brother-in-law.”

Now, Dr. Lubchenco has admitted her “error of judgment” and her “regret.” 

But she’s not just any White House official: “Despite this disciplinary action from one of the most prestigious science organizations in the world,” explained M. Anthony Mills and Ian R. Banks in The Wall Street Journal this weekend, “and her own admission of fault — Ms. Lubchenco continues to lead the White House’s Scientific Integrity Task Force.”

The Biden Administration — called “The Biden” here on Tuesday, as a tip of the hat to the commonsense conjecture that Joe Biden isn’t really in charge — hasn’t removed Lubchenco from her position. She still co-​chairs the Scientific Integrity Task Force.

And her being barred from publication and participation in a number of scientific venues? It doesn’t mean that much, when she’s in government. That’s about money and propaganda, and power. Not science.

Or integrity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly insider corruption local leaders responsibility

First-​Class Arrogance

“One thing is clear,” New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell declared, “I do my job, and I will continue to do it with distinction and integrity every step of the way.” 

She marshaled this self-​righteousness in response to media inquiries as to why, as The Times-​Picayune/​The New Orleans Advocate reported, “Cantrell has charged the city of New Orleans $29,000 to travel first- or business-​class instead of coach.”

Mayor Cantrell defiantly refuses to pay back “the exorbitant fees” she ran up “for the upgraded tickets, including an $18,000 first-​class trip to France over the summer.”

But that’s precisely what City of New Orleans policy demands of her. “Employees are required to purchase the lowest airfare available,” it clearly states. “Employees who choose an upgrade from coach, economy, or business class flights are solely responsible for the difference in cost.” 

Yet, her excuse for upgraded jet-​setting is priceless. 

“As all women know, our health and safety are often disregarded …” Cantrell offered. “As the mother of a young child whom I live for, I am going to protect myself by any reasonable means in order to ensure I am there to see her grow into the strong woman I am raising her to be,” she continued. “Anyone who wants to question how I protect myself just doesn’t understand the world black women walk in.”

Hmmm. Just how much safer is it in the airplane’s high-​priced seats? 

Plus, a pity that the mayor didn’t show any consideration for those fearful souls flying with her. One of “Cantrell’s flights cost nine times that of an aide who accompanied her but flew in coach.”

There is good news, however. A recent poll of registered voters shows a majority (55.4%) support recalling Queen — er, Mayor Cantrell.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

A Plausible Theory

Donald Trump, deep state, Hillary Clinton, top secret files, fishing expedition

A solid majority of Americans — a supermajority, even — are likely unaware that Donald J. Trump is suing Hillary Clinton and a gaggle of her cohorts for their part in the Russiagate hoax.

Though it has been reported on, here and there and now and then, I wasn’t aware until a few weeks ago.

Most major network news outfits do not make much of it.

Indeed, CNN’s initial coverage was quite instructive in how to downgrade a story in potential readers’ minds: “deep state” is in scare quotes and Hillary crony John Podesta is himself quoted as saying the suit was sure to be a “hoot.”

That’s the dismissive tactic of the current Vice President’s cackle. 

But this lawsuit may be the key to understanding what the FBI was really looking for during its documents raid at Trump’s Mar-​a-​Lago residence: the material he had collected to bring this lawsuit against his enemies who had tried to unseat him using farrago, fantasy, and fraud.

In The Epoch Times, Jeff Carlson expounds on this theory that Trump had the goods on Clinton and certain other players on her staff and within the FBI and elsewhere, and that the FBI was trying to confiscate and muddy up the waters about what documents may be used in Trump’s lawsuit.

Calling the raid “a targeted fishing expedition — designed to capture any and all information relating to the Russiagate hoax,” Carlson notes it comes “at the exact time that the DOJ is defending its actions taken in the Russiagate hoax in court against Trump’s RICO case.”

Evidence, over time, has indeed linked Russiagate directly back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign. Indeed, the Muller Report was  a jumble of nonsense and notoriously fizzled. The whole mess is indecent.

But the only thing we — outside the halls of power — can count on for sure is that the insiders cannot be trusted to do anything but protect their power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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