Category: media and media people

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

A Cuomo Indictment?

New York City, Mayor Andrew Cuomo, covid

Can there be “pandemic justice”?

On June 11th of last year, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic of the House of Representatives interviewed former Governor of the State of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, in pursuance of getting to the bottom of the disaster that was COVID in New York and beyond. 

Cuomo had counsel; the interrogation was transcribed.

The focus? The governor’s disastrous decision to send coronavirus patients back to his state’s nursing homes, where they quickly spread the new disease to its most vulnerable targets.

On October 30th, the Select Subcommittee sent an official letter to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland, “a detailed referral for criminal charges against Mr. Cuomo pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 1001,” which Garland unsurprisingly ignored. 

Partisans sometimes stick together; fearing being hanged separately.

On Monday, Representative James Comer, chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, sent a repeat request, but this time to the new AG, Pam Bondi.

The case against Cuomo is fairly clear: “Mr. Cuomo provided false statements to the Select Subcommittee in what appears to be a conscious, calculated effort to insulate himself from accountability.”

Cuomo made multiple criminally false statements, including that he was neither involved in the drafting nor the review of the state’s report, “Factors Associated with Nursing Home Infections and Fatalities in New York State during the COVID-19 Global Health Crisis” (2020).

It is worth remembering that the legacy news media made Governor Cuomo their pandemic hero and sex symbol, even as his policies killed as many as 10,000 people.

How to hold media folk accountable?

You already have: the media’s low ratings.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom international affairs media and media people

Europe, Land of the Free?

Europe, censorship, mind control, freedom, government

The Economist has declared Europe the Land of the Free.

One proof is that in Europe, no tech oligarchs are “spending their weekends feeding bits of the state ‘into the wood chipper.’”

This is an ill-considered allusion to the efforts of Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency to reduce the bloat and fraud in U.S. government spending. And the trillions in U.S. federal debt. Which are unsustainable. Because magic doesn’t work.

“Europeans can say almost anything they want, both in theory and in practice.” 

In Britain you can be arrested or jailed for praying, tweeting a wrong-thinking tweet, reading from the Bible, holding up street signs.

Nor is freedom of speech safe in Germany. To prove the continent’s theoretical and practical freedom of speech, The Economist piles up carefully unelucidated half-truths but declines to cite, for example, the conviction of German journalist David Bendels.

In February, Bendels, the editor in chief of Deutschland-Kurier, published a satirical post slamming a German minister, Nancy Faeser, for opposing freedom of speech. An obviously doctored photo showed Faeser with a sign saying “I hate freedom of speech.” Faeser, who loves freedom of speech, filed a criminal complaint after being alerted by German police, who also love freedom of speech.

Bendels has been fined 1,500 pounds, given a suspended prison sentence of seven months, and ordered to apologize. 

He is appealing the verdict, and others are fighting the law under which he was prosecuted.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Praying to the Deep State

Stephen Colbert, deep state, conspiracy, Donald Trump

The Deep State does not exist.

How do we know?

If it did exist, it would have stopped Trump’s tariffs!

Welcome to modern political theology and ideological theodicy — by way of late-night “comedic entertainment.”

Because of Trump’s tariffs, “we’ve had the worst day for our economy since Covid,” quipped Stephen Colbert on Thursday’s Late Show. “Just a reminder: this time he’s the disease.”

I found his setup somewhat funny, goofy looks and all, and I don’t usually find Colbert funny. But as the bit progressed . . .

“It’s all pretty solid proof that there is no Deep State.”

I’ve already given away his punchline, because it was not so much funny as eye-roll-worthy.

“Because if there was, they would have stopped this s**t.”

The assumption here is that, by definition, the Deep State must be omnipotent. While we can point to existing institutions working under the new rubric of “Deep State,” it’s never been all-powerful. It’s just very powerful, working in mysterious (secret) ways.

“But if they do exist,” Colbert continued, “I just want to say to the cabal of financial and governmental elites who pull all the strings behind the scenes, ‘maybe put a pause on your 5G chip/JFKjr/adrenochrome/chemtrail orgy and jump in here cuz we’re f**king dying!’”

Here’s the deal: Trump was hounded with unprecedented state surveillance, impeachments, lawfare, and speech suppression . . . and dodged bullets from assassins. While we know nothing, if we catch a whiff of anything it’s that “non-existent” Deep State.

So begging it to take out Trump is . . . late-in-the-game.

The cabal has already tried. Many times. And failed. Proving itself perhaps more desperate than competent.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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media and media people national politics & policies political economy tax policy

The Trump-Tariff Question

Donald Trump

“To this day I cannot tell you what Trump truly believes about tariffs,” Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles recently confessed. “Does he want tariffs instrumentally, to increase trade? Does he believe in tariffs as a revenue-raising mechanism? And is he hard-core on tariffs? I couldn’t tell you; the man is inscrutable.”

In “Tariffs Are Awful, But The Income Tax May Be Worse,” economist Walter Block seems less confused. “Donald Trump supports them on the ground that the McKinley administration was prosperous, and relied upon tariffs,” Walter’s Eurasia Review op-ed posits. Our free-market economist notes that this rests on a fallacy: “since A precedes B, A must be the cause of B.”

Professor Block offers a better “historical episode to shed light on this matter, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1930.” You know, the tariff hike that worsened the Great Depression.

The best part of Walter Block’s refutation, however, follows his explanation of the Law of Comparative Advantage. He discusses the gains to our economy if the expert workers Trump fires from the IRS were to find work in the private sector.

And, contemplating the idea of switching from income taxes to tariffs, our widely-published octogenarian notes that “it takes relatively little labor to run a tariff system. Hey, we already have tariffs in place. An increase in their level would hardly call for much more manpower, likely hardly any more at all.” The gains of nixing income taxes would be vast; the harms of higher tariffs would be comparatively minuscule.

An interesting argument? Sure. But I don’t see politicians giving up the income tax any time soon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights media and media people too much government

The Chirping Mockingbird

mockingbird, intelligence agency, mind control, media, press, speech, brainwashing

We are told that “there’s nothing to see” in the recent revelations about how USAID was subsidizing Politico. 

At Reason, Robby Soave pooh-poohed the story: “some critics of USAID have seized on a misleading claim: Namely, that the organization was funneling millions of dollars to Politico. In reality, it appears that government agents were paying for subscriptions to Politico‘s premium product. That may or may not be a worthwhile use of government funds (more on this in a moment), but at any rate, it does not represent some kind of direct subsidy to the news outlet.”

It could be, however, a subsidy with plausible deniability. 

The keyword may be: Mockingbird.

Remember the Church Committee investigations into the intel community, post-Nixon? One of the revelations was of Operation Mockingbird, which was (“allegedly”) the CIA training and subsidizing of — and coordinating stories to — scores (perhaps hundreds) of individual journalists. 

One of the many things we don’t know about Mockingbird is if it ever ended. But one thing we do know is that programs begun by one agency not irregularly get taken up by others.

And speaking of multiple agencies — with more than a dozen dedicated to intelligence, why is government paying the private sector for information?

For all their massive appropriations, the basic job of intel agencies to inform (not lie to) representatives, government executives, and functionaries appears to be one they’ve skimped on.

Meanwhile, USAID’s massive subsidies to New Zealand news outfits has somehow received little interest. “Last week, Wikileaks reported that 25 NZ mainstream media outlets were given funding from USAID,” explains The Daily Blog. “We need an immediate explanation from our Mainstream Media Owners if they changed any editorial stance that aligned us with America while taking this money.”

Inquiring minds should be skeptical of underplaying of these revelations. Don’t we need a wall of separation between press and state?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture media and media people

Bill Nye, the Jail-My-Debating-Opponent Guy

Bill Nye, science, climate, global warming, censorship, authoritarianism

The latest Joe Biden outrage is the handing out of Presidential Medals of Freedom to the blatantly undeserving.

Popularizers of science seem to have gone downhill these days. Or perhaps it’s just a few of the most visible ones who are so vile.

In their own day, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov espoused some lamentable left-wing views and advanced some dubious propositions as they explained the universe to nonscientists. But you could listen to, read, and enjoy them.

Neither ever suggested, not even once, that persons who disagreed with him on a scientific question might reasonably be incarcerated therefore — inasmuch as the disagreement impaired his quality of life “as a public citizen.” (An argument any totalitarian might use to rationalize violating innocent persons’ rights.)

But Bill Nye, “the science guy,” has expressed the greatest possible sympathy with the proposition that it might be okay to imprison scientists who disagree with him about climate, human impact on climate, or the advisability of trying to centrally plan climate.

In 2016, when asked about a proposal to imprison “climate skeptics,” Nye said that “extreme doubt about climate change is affecting my qualify of life as a public citizen. That there is a chilling effect on scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change, I think that is good.”

People don’t do their best thinking with a gun pointed at them, Nye guy. That is not good.

Note: it’s the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Not the Presidential Medal of Craven Censorship.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment media and media people national politics & policies

Pardon Me

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, pardons, Biden, justice

Another round of presidential pardons, anyone?

At Medium, former New York Times science and health reporter Donald G. McNeil, Jr., urges President Joe Biden to “preemptively pardon Jack Smith, Robert Mueller, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensberger, Fani Willis, Letitia James, E. Jean Carroll, Judge Juan Merchan and every judge who has ever issued a ruling that made Donald J. Trump unhappy.”

He says that “President Biden should also pardon himself,” along with “the heads of Operation Warp Speed and the chief executives of Pfizer and Moderna,” and “can’t even imagine how many political journalists . . . also need protecting.”

Is there anyone left?

“While we’re at it,” writes McNeil, “I’d like a pardon too.”

The award-winning journalist had a colorful history at The Times. In 2020, the paper reprimanded him for comments attacking Trump and the head of the Centers for Disease Control over their COVID response, declaring “that his job is to report the facts and not to offer his own opinions.”* 

And we can’t forget the primary focus of McNeil’s essay, titled: “Now Biden Should Pardon Tony Fauci.” Declaring “Dr. Fauci has done nothing wrong,” the reporter decries that “a motivated prosecutor can go after you for anything . . . can break you financially with legal fees just proving your innocence.”

Yes, we know . . . having watched it unfold against Mr. Trump.

McNeil clearly fears that Trump will become a dictator, throwing out the Constitution and the rule of law. Judging from Trump’s first term, I am not so worried. But does even McNeil really believe these pardons could survive his imagined MAGA maelstrom? 

For nearly 40 years, Anthony Fauci directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, with primary responsibility for the treatment of contagious illnesses, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. A presidential pardon would be an official admission of his guilt. 

In your own vernacular, Mr. Biden: Don’t! 

Fauci deserves his day in court. And so do we. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* Then, in early 2021, McNeil resigned from the newspaper “under pressure” after complaints surfaced about him using the n-word on a student trip to Peru, for which he served as a guide.

Note: Back in 2022, Elon Musk did post on X: “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

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ideological culture media and media people too much government

Musk’s Alternative for Germany

Germany, Democracy, far right, extremist, Elon Musk

“Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country,” ABC News tells us, “leading to the resignation of the paper’s opinion editor in protest.”

Germany’s three-party coalition government, led by “center-left” Chancellor Olof Scholz, fell apart when he fired the “pro-business” party’s biggest name in the government, Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

Musk wrote a piece for Welt am Sonntag in which he expressed his support for Alternative für Deutschland, which is considered “far-right” for opposing Die Grünen, the (“pro-business”) Freie Demokratische Partei, and Scholz’s own Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” asserted Musk*.  

“The Tesla Motors CEO also wrote,” explains ABC, “that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition.”

Musk must mean “a right” as in manners, not in law. In a free country, anyone has a legal right to speak up and comment on government.

But what is the significance of the editor who quit? She has every right to work only with news outfits that marginalize the AfD as promoters of “anti-democratic” ideas. Hers is a matter of strategy: shunning, marginalization — no-debate/no-cooperate — are what she thinks journalists must marshal against the “far right.” 

This journalist’s political tactic mirrors Germany’s practiced politics. ABC News explains that the AfD’s polling strength doesn’t much help its candidate, Alice Weidel, to “becom[e] chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party.”

The non-cooperation strategy goes full anti-democratic when election results are suppressed. In Romania, for example, elections have basically been overturned because of how “far-right” they are.

All very anti-democratic, these “democrats.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* To be clear, his piece was published in German, of course, and above I’m quoting the English translation.

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DEI Realities Unreported

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusion

The high tide of DEI policies — which reward racial affiliation, gender affiliation or gender wishing, group-think, and group-wackiness at the expense of sanity and individual merit — seems to be starting to recede. 

But we’re not on safe ground yet. One example of rearguard action by the proponents of these lunacies is the willingness of major publications to hide evidence of harm caused by DEI.

Colin Wright reports that both The New York Times and Bloomberg have “shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of diversity, equity, and inclusion pedagogy.”

The Network Contagion Research Institute finds that DEI ideology incites hostility (between members of favored and disfavored groups, you see) and authoritarianism (by bullies eager for new weapons to intimidate and control others).

When presented with various scenarios, participants in the study who had first been exposed to DEI propaganda were much more likely than participants who hadn’t been thus exposed to impute racism to agents in the scenario — even when no evidence to justify the accusation was also presented in the scenario.

Wright suggests that at both the Times and Bloomberg, reports-in-progress about the research were killed outright by editors whose decisions to spike the story “align conspicuously with the ideological leanings” of those editors.

NCRI’s work confirms what we know about the dishonesty, injustice, and destructiveness of the DEI enterprise. 

As does the conduct of certain gatekeepers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people

Watch Out!

Paul Jacob, fake news, media, truth, fact check

This week, a Google Alert brought a news article from Brady Today, a small-town publication in Brady, Texas. 

The story in the Brady newspaper is strikingly similar to one The Center Square had produced right after the election. Except that the ending — a statement from yours truly — was quite different. 

“Watch out in 2026,” The Center Square article quoted me from our press release. “We have people in another dozen states already anxious to pass these measures and clarify that only citizens can vote in their state and local elections.”

However, the Brady Today story quoted me quite differently. “In 2026, we need to be cautious. There are individuals in several more states who are eager to implement similar measures and ensure that only citizens have the right to vote in their state and local elections.”

Urge caution? Not me. Ever. 

And especially not after sweeping to wins in eight states, adding up to a 14-0 record on Citizen Only Voting Amendments in recent years.

Nolan Brown with Brady Today has me saying something I’ve never said. 

Dan McCaleb of The Center Sqare quoted me correctly. He did his job as a reporter. But Mr. Brown? He appears to have a different task in mind. 

I tried to contact both Brady Today’s management and Nolan Brown. James R. Griffin, III, who owns the small-town newspaper says he had shut down the website a year ago, only to discover (due to my phone call) that it has been revived online by an unknown entity — which has been using his name without permission on articles he did not write. And Mr. Brown? Unreachable.

The upshot is pretty clear: Don’t believe everything you read. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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