Tag: Congress

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government transparency national politics & policies

Two Roadblocks, and Their Names

Jeffrey Epstein, UAP, UFO, cover up, Congress

Meandering through social media, a popular meme with several variants runs something like this:

“Hey, this guy says the government believes in UFOs!

“See, nobody cares. Now show us the Epstein client list.”

The gist: the Jeffrey Epstein story is a bigger, more important story than the on 70-plus years of government control of the UFO story.

Well, we now know precisely why we cannot have either: a few specific politicians are blocking disclosure, one Democrat on the Epstein story and a handful of Republicans on the UFO story.

Hillary Vaughn of Fox News asked Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) why he — the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — won’t subpoena Epstein’s flight logs to and from his private Caribbean island wherein sex trafficking with under-age females and males went on. His response? “I don’t know anything about his flight logs” and “This has never been raised by anyone.”

This is untrue. 

UFO/UAP transparency, on the other hand, has gone much further than the Epstein — probably because there are fewer politicians implicated in crimes. Yet two major disclosure elements in a recent defense bill have been nixed by Mike Turner (R-Oh.) and Mike Rogers (R-Ala.). Journalist Ross Coulthart, who has covered this story best, ascribes this pair’s opposition to disclosure to their respective military-industrial complex constituencies. And Coulthart adds that Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also had a hand in disclosure suppression.

Both the Epstein and the UFO story reveal a lot about our government, which wants us to know the truth about neither.

And as for the notion that these issues must be played off each other, the proper memed response would be “Why can’t we have both?”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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deficits and debt national politics & policies

Of Stopgaps and Ladders

budget, debt, Congress, shut down

“By law, we have one job,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) asserted the last time he opposed the “continuing resolution” (CR) on the federal budget. 

What is that “one job”? It is “to pass twelve appropriations bills and a budget. We aren’t doing that, which is why we are $33 trillion in debt.”

Katherine Mangu-Ward, at Reason, fleshed this out: “In theory, the president proposes a budget, Congress passes a budget resolution, and then various committees put together a dozen separate spending bills. They’re debated and voted on, and then the president signs them into law by October 1.”

The practice, however, is a bit different: “What happens instead is that the members of the House careen into each fall full tilt, screaming at each other until they throw together some kind of stopgap measure to fund the federal government for a little while longer until they can get their act together to generate a big, messy omnibus bill that no one will have time to read.”

But it’s worse: “When they can’t manage even that, we get a shutdown.”

To prevent a shutdown, but also not fall back into the usual iterations of the continuing resolutions, the new House Speaker, Rep. Mike Johnson (R.-La.) has floated the idea of a “laddered” CR. According to The Epoch Times, this plan “would spread the due dates over a period of time rather than having all the bills come due at once.” Think of it as an ultra-weak echo of the responsible budgeting process.

Will it work? Will Congress manage this merest hint of responsibility?

In ten days, it’s go time — or, no-go time — again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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ideological culture national politics & policies

A New Speaker Conjures

New Speaker, Congress, debt, spending

The new House Speaker was a dark horse in the mad rush to fill the position vacated after Kevin McCarthy’s ouster in a historic political play. But Mike Johnson (R.-La.) appears to be a thoughtful man, known more for his prayers than backstabbing, and sporting an interesting set of principles. They are listed on his congressional web page; he calls them the seven “core principles” of conservatism:

  1. Individual Freedom
  2. Limited Government
  3. The Rule of Law
  4. Peace Through Strength
  5. Fiscal Responsibility
  6. Free Markets
  7. Human Dignity

Inspiring, but the devil can bog us in details — under each rubric his elaborations sound more like fantasied ideals than anything like current practice. And for a man who got ahead by having “no enemies,” any real advancement would hardly conjure up consensus and comity.

Johnson acknowledges current government failure — at least in his fifth principle, which he explains entirely in terms of political fault: “Because government has refused to live within its means, America is facing an unprecedented debt and spending crisis. Federal debt now exceeds $33.5 trillion, and our current fiscal path is unsustainable and dangerous, jeopardizing our nation’s economic growth, stability and the security of future generations.” He goes on to express a congressional “duty to resolve the crisis.”

Yet, only standard Republican talking points are offered as back-up, with zero acknowledgment of the bipartisan difficulty of reducing spending even a smidgen.

Truth is, each of his principles is honored by the federal government only in the breach. While we may hope and pray that the new Speaker takes all of these serious enough to work to change course, we have to wonder: Does he have a prayer? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Leverage & Resistance

Speaker of the House, Congress, spending, compromise

“Let’s be clear,” said Representative Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) yesterday, speaking of the difficulty Republicans in the House of Representatives have in finding a new Speaker, “January was a coronation, and it was difficult; this is a competition, and it’s going to be even more difficult.”

Asked about the Steve Scalise (R-La.) candidacy, Rep. Massie replied that at least 20 Republicans would never vote for Scalise as Speaker.

Wednesday, Scalise expressed his honor to have been nominated for the position. Thursday he withdrew his nomination. “There are still some people that have their own agendas. And I was very clear we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.”

This begs the question. What does the country need? Bad-mouthing the dozen or so who would not support his compromising techniques as pushing “their own agenda” is a rhetorical move, but it is by no means demonstrated. 

Massie made the point that the recently ousted Speaker (whose ouster he did not support) had negotiated a significant concession from the Biden Administration — a one percent reduction in spending for a debt limit increase — and that no candidate for Speaker who would not press this advantage further could be accepted.

The collapse of the Scalise campaign leaves only Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Oh.) in the offing. A far better option. As of this writing, on Thursday night, no one else has thrown a hat into the ring.

It’s a pretty contentious ring, with elbows getting thrown by the Republican Freedom Caucus types leveraging the power they have. The establishment GOP is reeling.

Which is not always a good thing.

And Democrats? Appalled.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing. With a $33 trillion debt and growing fast, should everyone blithely march towards oblivion, meekly following the leader in Washington’s favorite version of Kick the Can?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies tax policy

Kick the Can

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) , Congress, spending

At first blush, it seems like the most pointless political move ever.

When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R.-Fla.) moved to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R.-Cal.) from his role as Speaker of the House, lots of eyebrows were raised, and at least one pair of lips was licked. But did it make any sense?

This has never happened before, a House Speaker ousted by his own party mid-session.

That’s not an argument against the move, though. It was Gaetz who had blocked McCarthy back in January, through more than a dozen votes, allowing the moderate Republican to serve only with explicit conditions. Gaetz now says that McCarthy has failed to meet those conditions. Arguably, that’s accountability in action. Good?

Or mere revenge? After all, McCarthy had just made a deal with a sizable number of minority Democrats to fund the government and prevent a federal shutdown — thus kicking the overspending/insolvency can down the road again. Gaetz and his closest colleagues in the House made the same deal with the opposition party, ousting McCarthy. 

It’s a game of kick the can, however you look at it.

Gaetz argues that McCarthy did not do what was required to bring fiscal responsibility, such as un-package spending bills. “We told you how to use the power of the purse: individual, single-subject spending bills that would allow us to have specific review, programmatic analysis and,” explained Gaetz, “that would allow us to zero out the salaries of the bureaucrats who have broken bad, targeted President Trump or cut sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden.”

But the deed is done. McCarthy’s out. Now, who to replace him?

Funny that no one mentions the wild plan to put Trump into the job — you know, the plan first floated after Election 2020?

It was such a snickered-at notion, just a goofy way of taking 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue from Joe Biden.

Still, it was a plan. Only in the next few days and weeks will we learn if Gaetz really has one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment ideological culture insider corruption

Traditional Terrorism

Jamaal Bowman, Congress, antifa, false alarm, protest, insurrection,

It’s a mild form of terrorism . . . perpetrated by a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in the Capitol, apparently to postpone a vote on a measure that would have kept the federal government operational, as it lurches into another of its periodic debt ceiling crises.

He denies the accusation . . . even as Breitbart News reports that he “ripped down two signs warning a second floor door in the Cannon House Office Building was for emergency use only before pulling the fire alarm and running out through a different door on a different floor.” It’s all “on tape,” requiring no advanced dialectic to determine the truth. 

I hazard that no one believes Bowman’s denial, not even his many defenders — for no one is really that stupid, not even in the Imperial City.

The go-to interpretive of the non-left commentariat is to compare it to the January 6 protests and riots. 

When those 2020 entrants into the Capitol disrupted the Senate’s ratification of the Electoral College results, they were accused of affronts to democracy, the peaceful handoff of power, and of obstructing the normal operations of government. Rep. Bowman, by misusing a fire alarm, was doing pretty much the same thing. But he is on the side of Big Government and the Democratic insider elite, so he’s probably not in as much jeopardy as those “losers” who found themselves stuck in prison.

But I notice another parallel: the juvenile stunt of pulling the fire alarm is a classic tactic of leftist protesters. Leftwing saboteurs of free speech have pulled many a similar alarm, if usually only to scuttle campus speaking events by the likes of Ben Shapiro, Cathy Young, et al. The saboteurs almost always get away with it. 

Bowman probably thought he would, too.

It’s tradition!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment deficits and debt tax policy

Just Say NO to the IRS

taxes, Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, Congress, audit, IRS

The IRS wants to do your tax returns. Should we let it?

On this question, the agency has stacked the deck in its favor by commissioning an “independent” review by a left-wing think tank, New America, already on record in support of giving IRS officials authority to do this.

Basically, the IRS handed $15 million (of taxpayer money) to New America to say “Yes, based on our very independent review, we agree with you and ourselves about thus expanding your power over taxpayers.”

Under the proposed IRS Direct File program — already being tested in a pilot program — taxpayers would use government software to let IRS crunch the tax numbers.

Mark Tapscott’s report for Epoch Times cites many objections to the scheme.

Among the most pertinent is voiced by David Williams, president of Taxpayers Protection Alliance. He notes that when individuals and private tax preparers fill out tax forms, they’re typically trying to keep the tax take to a minimum. But the IRS won’t have the same incentive to maximize deductions and refunds.

Moreover, “There is no reason to trust the IRS with even more sensitive financial information. . . .”

Participation in the IRS Direct File program would not be mandatory, at least not initially.

Once established, though, the program would make it easier to mandate participation for at least some categories of tax returns. 

And let us not pretend that such a development would be surprising. Governments tend to use precedents of newly granted power to expand that power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption national politics & policies partisanship

Breaking the Jell-O Mold

jello, Congress, term limits

American politics has become amazingly “gerontocratic.” 

Congress is run by really old people, the faces of the Supreme Court Justices are as wrinkled as the Constitution they allegedly serve, and the oldest U.S. president in our history is a Silent Generation stumbler with one foot in the grave and the other in his mouth. 

Enter Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, sporting an “I” and not an “R” or a “D” next to her name, followed by a hyphen and the state from which she hails: “AZ” for Arizona. She won office as a Democrat in 2018 but with some ballyhoo left her party last December. Wikipedia says she still caucuses with the Democrats, but in recent reporting Sinema has denied this: “I’m formally aligned with the Democrats for committee purposes,” Sinema was quoted in The Daily Wire. “But apart from that I am not a part of the caucus.”

Indeed, she stopped going to the Democrats’ bi-weekly caucus lunches because, as she puts it, they are “ridiculous”: “Old dudes are eating Jell-O, everyone is talking about how great they are.”

Ah, Washington!

“The Northerners and the Westerners put cool whip on their Jell-O, and the Southerners put cottage cheese,” she adds, laying it on a bit thick.

While Senator Sinema makes much of her status as an Independent, and the increasing popularity of that stance in her home state, getting re-elected without a major party is tricky business. Politico quotes Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) as being on the verge of endorsing her, as well as expressing hopes that Republicans can seduce her to the GOP side.

There is nothing wrong with slurping down Jello, per se. The real problem is unbridled power that calcifies our career politicians . . . and with them our political system.

We need term limits. If not age limits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights national politics & policies partisanship

Invitation to a Beheading

Twitter, Taibbi, hearings, Congressional Committee, stupidity

I don’t gawk at car crashes. I did not watch the ISIS beheadings. Bloody slasher movies aren’t my thing. 

And neither was the recent hearing held by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. It was so hard to watch I could hardly take more than a few minutes at a time.

Before the committee appeared two of the three heroes of Twitter Files fame: Michael Shellenberger, listed as “Author, Co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute and the California Peace Coalition”; and Matt Taibbi, Journalist.

Or, as Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-U.S. Virgin Islands) referred to them, “so-called journalists” — before she asked her first question.

Mr. Schellenberger testified about “The Censorship Industrial Complex” and Mr. Taibbi’s testimony was a less elaborate narrative about how he got involved in the Twitter censorship issue, and what he discovered in working through the files. But Del. Plaskett and Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl) were far more interested in discrediting what they said by attacking their qualifications and methods, not dealing with the facts they found.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-Tx) was the worst. I hand it to you if you can stomach her full interrogation — I came away wondering mostly about her IQ.

My negative reactions? Hardly an outlier. 

“Journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger were a credit to their profession and to all Americans who genuinely care about a free press and the First Amendment,” wrote Maud Maron in an op-ed for The New York Post explaining why she was walking away from the Democratic Party: the party has fully endorsed censorship. The Democrats at the hearing “questioned, mocked, belittled and scolded [Taibbi and Schellenberger] for not meekly accepting government knows best” — proving themselves “an embarrassment.”

It might be good for our side when our enemies make fools of themselves. But it’s hard to watch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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election law general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall

O, to Oust!

Santos

Everyone seems to agree: newly-minted U.S. Rep. George Santos (R-NY) — if that’s even his real name — is a cheat and a scammer who doesn’t belong in Congress.

Except, of course, Congress is exactly where you’d expect to find such a person!

Especially when voters don’t discover the truth about said candidate until it is too late.

“The constituents in NY-3 elected Representative Santos in part due to his biographical exaggerations and apparent deceptions,” complains Congressman Brandon Williams (R-NY).

Still, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) isn’t comfortable pushing to oust the fraudster — which would require a two-thirds vote of the House of Representatives — without the Ethics Committee first finding sufficient official wrongdoing. Even given the fantastical pre-election fibbing, the Speaker points out that “the voters have elected George Santos” and “they have a voice in this process.”

Only that’s the problem. Voters don’t have a voice.

“There is no way for constituents to recall a member of Congress,” informs The Washington Examiner, “though they can be expelled in the House by a two-thirds vote. This action has only been taken five times in history, only against members convicted of crimes and only twice for crimes other than the treason of joining the Confederacy during the Civil War.”

Speaker McCarthy doesn’t speak for the voters in NY-3. Neither can two-thirds (or even ninety-nine percent) of Congress.

But Congress can and should let voters speak for themselves. 

And not just this once with Serial Liar Santos. Let voters conduct the official ouster whenever those citizens realize they’ve been had, whenever they determine that they have a turkey representing them.

Every member of Congress — Republican, Democrat or independent — should stop virtue-signaling with press statement pronouncements to the effect that Congressman Santos “should” resign. 

Instead, legislate for the people; give us the power of recall.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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