Category: national politics & policies

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insider corruption national politics & policies

Oligarchy Malarkey

Joe Biden, farewell speech, covid, oligarchs

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape, in America, of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” President Biden warned the nation Wednesday night. 

“We see the consequences all across America.”

Yes, we do, but what specific consequence brought on the president’s sudden awareness of the “O” word: The Democrats’ political defeat? His own? Harris’s?

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was a swell fellow back in 2020, when he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, tossed in $400 million to goose Democratic Party turnout. But when the Meta CEO admitted that Facebook was bullied by the Biden administration into censoring content, he becomes a terrible oligarch.      

As for “extreme wealth,” Democrats outspent Republicans. By a lot.

Biden compared his swan song to President Eisenhower’s famous 1960 farewell address, in which World War II’s Supreme Allied Commander sounded the alarm about a military-industrial complex with dangerous levels of power. Says Biden: “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers for our country as well.”

“Potential”? “Could”? 

I guess he means that, say, some day Big Tech might censor discussion of information about a candidate’s drug-addicted, gun-toting son’s international influence-peddling operationjust weeks before an election. 

Or perhaps squelch news on the origin of a pandemic killing millions. 

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” argued the president.

He’s got a point. Look at the elaborate ruse run by Democrats at the White House, in Congress, at the DNC, in the media, pretending for those of us in TV Land that our commander-in-chief, the most powerful man in the world, was fully competent to execute the duties of the office even while knowing he most certainly was not. 

Joe Biden is a charter member of the “oligarchy” about which I’m most concerned. 

This is Common Sense. 

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Accountability First Amendment rights national politics & policies too much government

GEC Bullet Ducked?

censorship

Last month, a mega-monstrous “continuing resolution” (CR) — allowing federal deficit spending over the set debt limit — was killed by public outcry, helped along by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and others with megaphones or MAGAphones.

This CR was chucked to the great annoyance of champions of runaway spending and runaway violations of individual rights. They babbled about the autocratic interference of one “President Musk.” 

As if his complaints alone would have sufficed to kill it had nobody else in America cared.

The mega-monstrous CR was replaced by a mini-monstrous CR. The replacement sported many fewer pages, things like a pay raise for congressmen having been left out.

Also deleted? A part of the State Department devoted to censoring Americans.

Called the Global Engagement Center (GEC), it was designed to use indirect methods to censor Americans guilty of wrongthink. The plan was to give our tax dollars to creators of blacklists, like $100,000 to the Global Disinformation Index. American advertisers then would feel compelled to avoid dealing with listed companies — to remain on the good side of the U.S. government

Thanks to “President Musk” and his “obedient slave” Donald Trump, the GEC died. State’s website now says so itself.

Or did it? Has the GEC simply been rebranded?

The new thing is a so-called Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub; it looks like State will still be funding this GEC clone. 

The GEC, after all, was also supposed to focus only on foreign agitprop.

When will government agencies stop trying these kinds of anti-democratic, anti-constitutional end runs? 

Never. Not voluntarily.

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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national politics & policies porkbarrel politics

The Biggest Gift of All

Donald Trump, debt, funding, Santa, Congress, government shutdown

We received an early Christmas present from the incoming Trump administration.

The gift? The torpedoing of a continuing resolution (CR) supported by House Speaker Johnson that was full of concessions to the Democrat side of the aisle. Aside from the drunken-sailor spending, the 1,500-plus-page legislation — just something to tide the government over for a few months — contained many other horrific elements that made it worthy of deletion.

Trump, Vance, and Musk are among those who volubly criticized the pork and other bad provisions of the CR.

Senator Rand Paul said: “I had hoped to see @SpeakerJohnson grow a spine, but this bill full of pork shows he is a weak, weak man. The debt will continue to grow. Ultimately the dollar will fail. Democrats are clueless and Big Gov Republicans are complicit.”

Ostensibly designed to continue funding the federal government after the money had run out, the bill’s poisonous elements included a pay increase for members of Congress and a provision to make it almost impossible for the Trump Justice Department to investigate wrongdoing in the House (such as the evidence-destroying way the J6 investigation was conducted).

Another provision would have extended the life of a State Department’s Global Engagement Center, a censorship office that Republicans have been trying to kill for years. Some Republicans, that is. The ones in favor of freedom of speech. The GEC funds efforts to suppress speech.

But the worst of it was stopped. The CR monstrosity became a much more manageable, much smaller CR; “the government was saved” — and, more importantly, we were saved some of the awful things packed into the earlier resolution.

Still, a lot of people (mainly Democrats) didn’t like their Christmas gift.

And dashed were the holiday dreams of members of Congress, stuck another term at current levels of remuneration.

Ho ho ho.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

Trump Ponders Privatizing Post Office

USPS, Postal Service, public service, privatization, free enterprise

Donald Trump can’t turn the U.S. Postal Service over to private hands with a wave of his hand. But he can push to make it happen.

Three people “with knowledge of the matter” say that he has discussed the possibility with Howard Lutnick, his choice for commerce secretary.

USPS never makes money. It costs taxpayers billions every year. In fiscal year 2023, it lost $6.5 billion; in the next fiscal year, $9.5 billion.

If privatizing the agency does happen, the transition probably won’t be seamless, not even if we can surmount the opposition of the powerful postal union. 

Fortunately, we already have many private alternative ways of shipping information and packages, from encrypted email to UPS and FedEx.

The latter have come to rely on the post office to handle part of delivery, typically the last mile or two. They’ll have to find alternatives if a privatized USPS does not immediately assume these contracts. 

Thankfully, delivery services are already supplementing their local-area shipping. For example, UPS has Roadie, a company that relies on independent drivers to provide same-day delivery within a town for stores like Best Buy.

Roadie drivers are gig workers. So let’s hope that even as the federal government paves the way for a hostile private takeover of the Postal Service, freelance contractors are not being regulated out of existence. 

For some reason, Trump has named a person in favor of that sort of thing to lead the Labor Department. So expect bumps ahead.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

Droning On

Mayorkas, Homeland Security, Lex Luthor

“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said yesterday on ABC’s This Week, acknowledging the obvious.

“We know of no foreign involvement with respect to the sightings in the Northeast,” the Secretary assured the public, “and we are vigilant in investigating this matter.” 

That means: He doesn’t know or he’s lying. But he pinky swears to apply the same vigilance to the Mystery Drone question that he demonstrated in managing the border these last four years.

Plus, Mayorkas promised, without even cracking a smile, to let us know right away if anything changes and it turns out these things humming over our heads are part of, say, an alien invasion. Or anything. Sorta don’t call us, we’ll call you.

But he reiterated his desire “to assure the American public that we are on it.”

This follows a news briefing last week by “federal agencies leading the response” that, as CNN described, “left reporters and the public with more questions than answers, as they downplayed but simultaneously legitimized concerns about the reported drones.”

“Mystery Drone sightings all over the Country,” President-Elect Donald Trump stated on Truth Social. “Can this really be happening without our government’s knowledge? I don’t think so! Let the public know, and now. Otherwise, shoot them down!!!”

Meanwhile, on Friday, an international airport in New Windsor, New York, closed its runways for an hour due to a drone spotted in the area; on Saturday night, Boston Police arrested two men for flying a drone “dangerously close to Logan International Airport,” with a third suspect escaping in a boat and still at large; and, earlier in the week, a Chinese national was arrested leaving the country after having flown a drone over Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. 

Is there no one in Washington capable of exerting sane leadership?

Or telling the truth?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Trump’s Libertarian Promise

Ross Ulbricht, drugs, drug war, prison, law, Silk Road

“If you vote for me,” President-elect Donald Trump promised the delegates at the Libertarian Party national convention last May, “on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served.”

That is eleven years so far. “We’re going to get him home,” insisted Trump. 

Mr. Ulbricht, a libertarian cause célèbre, was sentenced in 2013 to double life terms, without parole, plus 40 years. 

So, who did he kill? 

At 26 years of age, Ulbricht created the Silk Road online platform, “an anonymous e-commerce website.” Used by some folks, certainly, to trade in drugs and other illegalities.

On a Change.org petition urging presidential clemency (which I’ve signed), his mother explains: “Ross is a first-time offender” and “an Eagle Scout, scientist and peaceful entrepreneur,” who faced only “non-violent charges at trial. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.”

That’s why she and many of us simply cannot stand the idea that now 40-year-old “Ross is condemned to die in prison.”

Dudley Do-Right — no. Trump to the rescue!

Indeed, it was a very smart political move, courting the Libertarian vote both by showing up and, specifically, by pledging to free Ross Ulbricht. Libertarians suddenly had a tangible reason to support Trump.

Will Trump keep his word? “I do think he’s going to free Ross Ulbricht,” Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle told Robby Soave on his “Rising” program.

I think so, too. I sure hope so. It would be refreshing to see the awesome power our Constitution gives the president to pardon crimes and commute sentences used for someone deserving of mercy. 

Rather than someone escaping justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets national politics & policies

Politically Exposed Persecution

fascism, freedom, business, censorship

National socialism, as operated by the actual Nazis, did not seize all the major industries and run them as collectives or state-owned businesses. The Nazis applied party control directly to big business, as a political-regulatory matter. 

How different is what woke Democrats have been doing to business today, here in America, using multiple agencies of the United States federal government’s regulatory apparatus?

Marc Andreessen, investor, innovator, business genius, and early Internet pioneer, explained how in a discussion on the Joe Rogan Experience, last month.

Start with debanking, which the regulators can tell banks to do to “politically exposed persons.” Mr. Andreessen told Joe about a friend who was debanked, apparently because his job title was involved in the business use of crypto-currency. 

And debanking is exactly what you think it is: de-platformed from the financial system.

Don’t worry, statist: you are not “politically exposed.” This only applies to critics of our quasi-fascist system.

This commercial censorship is run pretty much like censorship on the social media companies after 2016, by soft pressure . . . the “raw power” of a “privatized sanctions regime.” Government functionaries notify a bank that a person or business is “politically exposed,” and the bank — fearing getting on the bad side of regulators — kicks the customer off the rolls. 

Politicians can haughtily state that it was the bank that did it. Banks, after all, are not obliged to serve everyone! They can pick and choose their customers.

Besides, there is no First Amendment right to have a bank account.

This is how woke bureaucrats can rule like Nazis.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies social media

Morbid Meme Mania

insurance, healthcare, laugh emoji, assassination

Last week’s murder — assassination — of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of Manhattan has inspired something more than a mere resurgence of gallows humor. The proliferation, online, of laughter emoji reactions to the story is unsettling, to say the least. 

Then there are the hardcore “memes” scorning Mr. Thompson’s medical insurance company and mocking his death — what are we supposed to make of it all?

Well, the virtuous response is to condemn the schadenfreude and mean-spiritedness.

But some of the jesting is indeed pointedly funny. 

“All jokes aside,” runs the best of them (from BlueSky, the left’s alternative to X), “it’s really fucked up to see so many people on here celebrating murder. No one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health and no one else.”

Which brings us to the nib of it. 

As the prospective Trump Administration puts its ducks in a row to hit the ground running in January, the “health issue” that RFKj and others have pointed to is the heavily regulated and subsidized food and drug industries, which are making us sick. The question of paying for medical care was supposed to have been solved by “Obamacare” a decade ago, but prices have only risen . . . and resentments along with them. 

The author of that BlueSky tweet and virtually all Democrats today, think the answer to the insanity of our government-regulated “private” health insurance system is full-bore socialized medicine.

Our money-grubbing leaders know that would be a disaster, but they have only kicked the chaos we’ve inherited from the terrible policy choices of yesteryear down the road.

I’m left with nothing funny to say about that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Note: As this episode was put to bed, the biggest update to the story was the announcement of a suspect, or “person of interest”: Luigi Mangione. Make of that what you will.

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general freedom national politics & policies regulation

No, Donald Trump, No

Chavez-DeRemer, unions, Trump, nominee

Here’s a deplorable turn of events — and just when we were so happy to have thwarted the socialist stylings of Harris and Walz.

We’ve always known that Donald Trump doesn’t advocate 100 percent laissez faire capitalism. As if to confirm his inconsistencies and disabuse us of any hopes of clear sailing toward greater freedom, or even toward keeping the freedom we’ve got, he has named Republican Congresswoman Lori Chavez-DeRemer as his Secretary of Labor.

Labor-union darling DeRemer supports the Pro Act: anti-worker, anti-freelancer legislation that was barely blocked in Congress and that the current Labor Department has tried to impose by regulation. I doubt the incoming Congress will enact it either. But if DeRemer is Labor Secretary she, too, may try to impose it by regulation.

The Pro Act would kill laws in 26 states that let workers choose whether to join a union. There’s a novel concept, letting employees decide whether to join an organization supposedly devoted to their interests.

The Pro Act would also undermine the secrecy of the ballot in union elections. A secret ballot is a fundamental tenet of our democratic republic. 

Worst of all, at least for gig workers and freelancers, are its provisions to make life much harder to function as an independent contractor.

Unions that favor the Pro Act, and Mrs. DeRemer, are eager to do all they can to cripple the ability of non-unionized labor to compete with above-market-rate union labor.

This isn’t just a No, Mr. President. 

It is, as Jennifer O’Connell puts it, a “Hell No.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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