Category: national politics & policies

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Accountability crime and punishment national politics & policies

COVID Cover-Up Criminal

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Covid, Rand Paul

On February 11, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci participated in a conference call with about a dozen scientists. The nation’s highest paid government bureaucrat was told that the quickly spreading COVID might have leaked from and even been created in the Wuhan lab, which the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, which Fauci heads) was funding, in part, through EcoHealth Alliance. 

What did Fauci do?

He worked mightily to discredit the idea.

That is, he engaged in a cover-up.

Last week, Senator Rand Paul asked Fauci about all this. Indeed, he posed a number of very specific questions, and got — for his trouble — generalities and counter-assertions from Fauci. 

The trail of evidence linking Peter Daszak of EcoHealth and Anthony Fauci of NIAID to the gain of function research (along with a Chinese plan to release “novel chimeric spike proteins” into Chinese air with the alleged aim of infecting bats) has been confirmed on the Pentagon end — Senator Paul referenced work by Project Veritas that performed this service. 

There’s really little question that gain-of-function was developed in Wuhan at the instigation of the Daszak-Fauci team. And that it was done despite DARPA’s reluctance, despite U.S. law. 

Let’s hope that Fauci’s cover-up was merely of a dangerous policy that would end in disaster and death, and the ruination of his reputation, not a genocidal conspiracy worthy of taking to The Hague for prosecution as a crime against humanity.

But everyone knows that cover-ups imply criminality. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access national politics & policies

The Other Big Lie

Joe Biden

“Let me be clear,” President Joe Biden told a Georgia crowd yesterday, addressing changes proposed by the Democrats to election laws nationally, “this is not about me or Vice-President Harris or our party.”

Of course not. Who would even suggest such a thing? 

On this same “voting rights” subject six months ago, Biden called Republicans “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies” who “are threatening the very foundation of our country.” Though less colorful, yesterday’s address was merely more of the same. 

“Pass the Freedom to Vote Act! Pass it now!” the president shouted, arguing that it “would prevent voter suppression.”  

How? Well, that’s less than clear. 

For years, Democrats slammed laws requiring voters to show photo identification as “racist,” contending the requirement disproportionately suppressed black voters. But then, when polls demonstrated that voters “of color” are even more supportive of Voter ID laws than are whites, Democrats quickly insisted they had always been for such laws.

Now — keep up! — voter ID laws are back to being suppressive. And the very purpose of the Dems’ Freedom to Vote Act is to strike down all such state laws.

When Georgia’s Secretary of State called for photo ID requirements last Sunday on CBS’s Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan offered, “The Freedom to Vote Act actually does promote a national standard for states that have an ID requirement for in-person voting,” adding, “You could use a bank statement or utility bill.”

Neither of which constitutes a photo ID, as the secretary pointed out.

Democrats battling former President Trump’s so-called Big Lie have concocted one of their very own.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies partisanship

The Secret of the Second Impeachment

Assange, Snowden, Trump, impeachment

The impeachment that followed the events of January Sixth was . . . peculiar. President Trump had just a few weeks to go in his term, thus “removing him” on the way out seemed . . . almost pointless. 

And we quickly learned that the Senate wouldn’t hear the case until after Trump’s replacement was installed in office.

So why?

Had enough Republicans in the upper chamber jumped ship, what House Democrats would have obtained for their troubles was (1) a prohibition on Trump running again and (2) a twist of the knife.

Key word: Payback.

Democrats had never really “accepted” their defeat in 2016. So they played up Trump’s unwillingness to “accept defeat” in 2020. A poetic revenge — “with a twist.”

But this may have been more than merely partisan payback. 

Here’s the proverbial Rest of the Story: The lame duck president had been seriously considering pardoning Edward Snowden and Julian Assange. And that was something the permanent government of the intel agencies and military-industrial complex could not allow. So, as Glenn Greenwald reported on Rumble, the Deep State’s most ardent Republican supporters in the Senate — Lindsay Graham being most prominent — threatened to vote against Trump in the impeachment proceedings if the president pardoned either of those . . . heroes.

By impeaching Trump, Democrats not only humiliated the man, to the extent he could be humiliated, they scored a political win against Snowden and Assange, two men who had humiliated the establishment in general and their party in particular.

The big winner? The Deep State.

And the real loser? Not Trump — the American people.

Because we are left with a Leviathan that spies on us and lies to us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

Major Media’s Major Corruption

MSM, mainstream media, CIA, Surveillance, propaganda, PSYOP

The revolving door between regulated big business and regulatory agencies is a known problem. “Regulatory capture” is one of the concepts economists have used to explain it.

We got used to this sort of corruption in finance: under the Bush and Obama administrations, with Goldman Sachs serving as the Executive Branch’s talent pool. The Pentagon and its major contractors have long had a cushy, cross-pollinating relationship. And we are just beginning to learn about Fauci’s close ties to Big Pharma.

But the most dangerous employment overlap? Between the Deep State and major media news services.

Glenn Greenwald, in a Substack column on Sunday, calls our attention to an MSNBC opinion article titled “Julian Assange extradition could mean even more legal trouble for Donald Trump.” It was written, explains Greenwald, “by former FBI Assistant Director and current NBC News employee Frank Figliuzzi, who played a central role during the Obama years in the FBI’s attempt to investigate and criminalize Assange: a rather relevant fact concealed by NBC when publishing this.”

We in America tend to think of the news media’s role as that of a watchdog — against government corruption. Instead, we see, that this direct seeding of media roles with Deep State agents “is how U.S. security state agents now directly control corporate news outlets.”

In the Sixties, there was a program called Operation Mockingbird, in which the CIA used a variety of techniques to control the media. Now “the CIA is the media.”

This is not a “free press.” It is a controlled press, with the mechanisms of the control right out in the open — simply look at the “journalists’” resumes.

Is this big business capturing regulators, or regulators capturing business?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

No Federal Solution

Joe Biden, covid, masks, vaccines, federal, state

In a virtual meeting, online, the National Governors Association talked with President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., last week. The biggest issue? COVID.

About COVID tests, “I wish I had thought about ordering a half a billion two months ago,” Mr. Biden confessed. 

While serious people are taking this seriously, blah blah, the truth may be that tests do more harm than good. There have always been problems with the tests: too many false positives; they induce panics at mere “case” levels, thus feeding propaganda and unworkable government “solutions” to the “crisis.”

About which Biden now admits he’s got . . . nothing. 

Having run against Donald Trump and his alleged lack of a plan, boasting how the Democrats would conquer COVID, Biden now declares defeat: “Look, there is no federal solution.

“This gets solved at a state level,” acknowledged the president, “. . . and it ultimately gets down to where the rubber meets the road and that’s where the patient is in need of help, or preventing the need for help.”

That last phrase is odd. 

“Preventing the need for help” sounds like he might mean patients taking control of their health care and their own immune systems. Could Mr. Biden be alluding to Vitamin D, Vitamin K, zinc, HCQ, Ivermectin, and many other immune system boosters and virus blockers?

Or Biden could merely be fumbling. He’s made much of the Omicron Variant, including at the governors’ meeting. But instead of addressing the actual trend of the latest iteration, politicians and propagandists push the idea that Omicron is deadly, when the evidence is clear: it is much less deadly than previous variants. 

The great danger of COVID remains the governmental response.

Including, alas, Biden’s.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly national politics & policies political economy

Whip Producers Now

inflation, shock

The Biden administration is siccing agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, Department of Agriculture, and the Federal Maritime Commission onto the producers of stuff who have recently dared to raise prices.

Stuff like gas. Higher prices at the pump must be an oil-company conspiracy.

It has nothing to do with (and don’t even think it!) governmental actions that impede production, including shutting down the Keystone oil pipeline on Biden’s first day in office or calling a halt to new oil leases on public lands. Etcetera.

Nothing to do with mammoth expansion of the supply of money and credit to facilitate trillion-dollar government spending sprees.

In case you hadn’t noticed, meat costs more, too. So obviously that must be the fault of malicious meatpackers. Rest assured that beef price inflation is utterly unrelated to pandemic-policy-induced labor shortages and delays.

Or to any recent increase in efficiency-impairing trucking regulations.

Same with sundry supply-chain problems, like the ships and crates piling up at ports. Greater consumer demand, new pandemic-induced screening protocols, union rules that prevent ports from operating 24/7 or improving automation — all irrelevant.

Must be. That’s the script from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, anyway.

But if companies can hike prices at will, ignoring whether regulations ease or obstruct production, why doesn’t the meat industry, for example, charge a thousand dollars per pound of flesh?

Well, we know why. 

Demand for a pound of ground beef would slide to zero, or close to it.

If only the government people knew! 

Or would stop pretending they don’t know. 

A consistent recognition of the laws of economics would sure make a great gift — in any season. Instead of bullying and making things worse, government could get out of the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Faucists on the March

Fauci, fascist, authoritarian, Covid

While many experts, including Southwest Airline’s CEO, think that the air filtration systems on jetliners are so good that wearing protective face coverings (“masks”) is pointless, our Doctor Anthony Fauci will have none of it.

When the National Institutes of Health head honcho and Big Pharma Pusher No. 1 was asked about whether we can ditch masks on airplanes, he responded predictably: no. “I think when you’re dealing with a closed space, even though the filtration is good, that you want to go that extra step. . . .” He says that even with first-rate filtration systems, “masks are a prudent thing to do, and we should be doing it.”

This was on ABC News’s This Week on Sunday. 

“As Christmas approaches, COVID-19 again threatens to upend American life, driving the spread, Omicron,” ABC’s Jonathan Karl narrated. “At least 43 states now have confirmed cases of the latest and by far most contagious variant yet. On Saturday alone, New York state reported nearly 22,000 new COVID cases, breaking a single-day record set just the day before.” And then Karl mentioned total COVID deaths in the United States — but not the number of Omicron deaths. 

See how the propaganda is pitched? The breathless relaying of statistics, but nothing like a sense of the science.

Contra Fauci, these once-discouraged and now-forever-exalted masks are not nearly as effective as made out. And they have severe “unintended” effects.

I put marks around “unintended” because for some people in power, the psychological effects of mandatory masks in a situation of perpetual or seasonal alarm might be the whole point: the inducement of a mass delusional psychosis. How very fascist.

We can appreciate the name “Fauci” both by rhyme and reason: Faucism is medical fascism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies social media

Should I Sue?

Senator Amy Klobuchar, censorship

Well, why not? According to some politicians, I have a perfect right to. 

But, you ask, on what grounds?

Because of the emotional injury I suffer when I listen to these bozos.

Legislation being considered in Congress would permit social-media companies to be sued for causing physical or “severe emotional injury,” a provision of the Justice Against Malicious Algorithms Act.

This legislation would amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act so as to make Internet service providers liable if they algorithmically recommend content that results in “severe emotional injury to any person.”

The text of the legislation is — you guessed it! — vague and murky. And would doubtless be applied with extreme selectivity if enacted.

Other bills being pondered would tackle things like “health misinformation.” Senator Amy Klobuchar declares that it is “our responsibility to take action.” 

Uh, what action?

The action of penalizing social media for inadequately censoring those with whom the senator disagrees.

Such rationalizations of assaults on freedom of speech are severely emotionally injurious to me.

Will I sue? Nah. I wouldn’t win. I doubt I would be one of the ones allowed to collect such bounties. Nor would any successfully passed legislation ever permit congressmen to be sued for their own psyche-pummeling lies, psy-ops, and blather.

Perhaps more importantly, it’s wrong to seek to penalize others merely for exercising freedom of speech, no matter how lousy or dispiriting that speech.

Lousy legislation, though — yes. If only we could sue for that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture judiciary national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Packing Unpacked

Supreme Court, Justice, court packing

The “court packing” notion that progressives itch to implement has obvious flaws — which have been addressed (but not settled) in the recent report of the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States, initiated by the Biden Administration last April. 

The report, just out, did not give progressives what they want. “Opponents contend that expanding — or ‘packing’ — the Court would significantly diminish its independence and legitimacy and establish a dangerous precedent that could be used by any future political force as a means of pressuring or intimidating the Court. The Commission takes no position on the validity or strength of these claims.” 

Not a few Democrats wanted the Commission to take a very negative position on those claims. Democrats currently maintain a shaky hold on power in the Legislative and Executive branches. Had the Commission given them the green-light to push progressives onto the Court — to overwhelm the current “conservative” majority — they might have consolidated power.

The report is inconvenient for that political move — as is Associate Justice Stephen Breyer’s opposition. Damon Root, at Reason, summarizes Breyer’s case: “It is a tit-for-tat race to the bottom. One party expands the size of the bench for nakedly partisan purposes, so the other party does the same (or worse) as soon as it gets the chance.” Breyer fears that court-packing would undermine Court authority, and liberalism itself would suffer.

By “liberalism” I take Breyer to mean the order that is defined by the Constitution itself: separation of powers, basic rights, citizen control of government. And there is a way to save this kind of “liberalism”: fix the size of the Supreme Court in the Constitution.

The very opposite of court packing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Commie Beyond the Pale

Saule Omarova

President Biden has a funny way of admitting that his nominee for Comptroller of the Currency had to withdraw for being, well, too communist. He says Saule Omarova faced “inappropriate personal attacks that were far beyond the pale.”

Is calling a communist a communist . . . personal? 

As for “inappropriate” . . . negative attacks against an appointee are only inapt if groundless or unrelated to prospective performance.

Ominously, Omarova’s paper on Marxism got memory-holed after she was nominated; she refused to cough it up to the Senate Banking Committee. Written back in her college days in the USSR — was that too long ago to serve as fair evidence?

Fast-forward.

An undated but recent video clip shows Omarova musing that oil companies should “go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.”

A 2019 Twitter tweet opines: “Say what you will about old USSR, there was no gender pay gap there. Market doesn’t always ‘know best.’”

Mass murder, mass repression — but hey, no gender pay gap!

In a 2020 paper, “The People’s Ledger,” Omarova proposed “a structural shift at the very core” of the current system. The Fed balance sheet “should be redesigned to operate as . . . the ‘People’s Ledger’: the ultimate public platform for both modulating and allocating the flow of sovereign credit and money in the national system.”

Central bank accounts would “fully replace — rather than uneasily co-exist with — private bank deposits.”

Not sure what that means, precisely? No wonder: slogging through the paper, we find vagueness — maybe even evasion. My guess: it’s all about massively increasing control over our wallets and lives.

Typical, but not just of Marxists, of the Washington elite more broadly. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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