Tag: corruption

Categories
crime and punishment insider corruption

The Pardon We All Saw Coming

Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, pardon, Ukraine, China, corruption

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

Back in June, after his son was found guilty on gun charges, President Biden said: “I will not pardon him.”

Now he’s saying “I believe in the justice system, but …”

Let’s remember the Conspiracy Theory floating around before the election.

Various cynical people, cynics I call them, declared that despite Biden’s pledge not to pardon his son, he was only waiting for the election. After the election, when the action could no longer hurt him or any Biden-​substitute candidate, he would then pardon his son.

And so it has come to pass— as of last night.

I guess if you can’t get Al Capone on anything else, you get him on tax evasion. But I don’t care that much about the gun charges or the tax charges against Hunter Biden. I care about the corruption.

I care about the many millions of dollars funneled into the Biden family and the Big Guy, Joe Biden, in consequence of Hunter Biden’s influence-​peddling deal-​making with firms in Ukraine, Romania, and China. Millions that fell into his lap over the years only because of who his dad is. And what daddy could do — as in fire a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into Biden family corruption.

Riding high, Hunter Biden felt he could get away with anything, including massive tax evasion.

The son can, I take it, no longer be imprisoned for any of the law-​breaking we know about. Or even suspect​.So maybe, thus unencumbered, Hunter can now take the stand about his father’s role in all the graft and bribery. 

Interestingly, Hunter’s pardon removes his ability to assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-​incrimination. Because he can’t be incriminated, i.e. criminalized, he can be compelled to testify. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Fourth Amendment rights media and media people property rights

The Realism of ‘Rebel Ridge’

Rebel Ridge, Civil Asset Forfeiture, law, police, abuse, corruption

Some viewers of the popular Netflix film Rebel Ridge say that it’s unrealistic. But a certain crucial assumption of the story is very realistic indeed.

The movie assumes that some cops are bad cops. More specifically, it assumes that bad cops often have arbitrary legal authority to do bad things. In the movie, what gets the ball rolling is the arbitrary authority conferred by America’s civil forfeiture laws.

These laws permit officers to confiscate cash on your person if they merely have a suspicion, or pretend to, that the cash is ill-​gotten. They needn’t have evidence that it’s drug money or bank-​robbery proceeds. 

The suspicion is enough.

And even if you can show that the money was acquired by your own hard work and withdrawn from your bank account in pursuit of a legitimate end — buying a truck, bailing a cousin out of jail (the reason that the protagonist carries cash in Rebel Ridge) — that’s typically not the end of it. It’s rare that the law-​empowered thugs who violated your property rights just say “Oops!” and hand your property right back.

J. Justin Wilson of the Institute for Justice observes another realistic portrayal of injustice in the movie, “over-​detaining defendants to keep them quiet.” In real life, though, such over-​detention may have as much to do with bureaucratic sloth as with malice directed toward a particular prisoner.

The solution, says Wilson, is not revenge, but the kinds of legal reform IJ fights for. The movie, on the other hand, leaned more on revenge.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders nannyism regulation

Discrimination, California-​Style

California, racism, discrimination, government, corruption

How far will a California lawmaker go to try reverse a validly enacted and also very good citizen initiative?

In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, the California Civil Rights Initiative, which prohibits the state government from imposing race-​based, ethnicity-​based, or sex-​based preferences.

Prop 209 added a section to the California Constitution stating that the government “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

In 2020, friends of racial discrimination tried to revive racial preferences through a referendum. But voters shot it down, even though proponents outspent opponents 14 to one.

Now California Assemblyman Corey Jackson wants to revive racial preferences another way. His bill, ACA7, would not touch the language of Proposition 209. But it would empower the governor to make exceptions. What exceptions? Any he wishes, as long as he spews the right rationalizations when he does so.

Law professor Gail Heriot, who has launched a change​.org petition to oppose the measure, says that “ACA7’s proponents are hoping that voters will be fooled into thinking that it is just a small exception. In fact, it gives the governor enormous power to nullify Proposition 209.”

ACA7 has passed the House and now goes to the state senate, awaiting the magic of legislative action. Heriot says Californians should let their senators know where they stand on the bill. I don’t disagree.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
education and schooling ideological culture scandal

The “Racial Animus” Gambit

race card, Harvard

Among the deflections littering former Harvard President Claudine Gay’s resignation letter is the claim that major criticisms of her conduct are “fueled by racial animus.”

The controversies have made Gay, a black woman, very visible. She may have been subjected to racial attacks in emails or on somebody’s blog. I haven’t seen reports of such. It’s possible.

But her letter makes it seem as if she feels all of it, all the criticisms of her understanding of policies regarding the treatment of Jews on campus and criticisms of her own treatment of the words of others in her published work, were “fueled by racial animus.”

If only blacks alone were ever charged with ambiguity about antisemitism or committing plagiarism, the implication might be at least superficially plausible. 

But it’s not.

Yesterday, I discussed the considerations that properly affect campus speech policies (“The Resignation”).

Here let me note, first, that scholars of all hues and sexes have been plausibly accused of plagiarism. Example: historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, white woman. Male example: Steven Ambrose.

And, second, that Harvard’s backing and filling and own animus in response to documented charges of plagiarism have converted the matter from a problem mostly for Claudine Gay personally to a problem for Harvard as an institution. By violating its own policies for dealing with the charges and by attacking the messenger, Harvard seemed to be saying that standards of scholarship like “Don’t plagiarize” don’t matter.

But they do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
election law Voting

Voting Unbound, Democracy Unhinged

voting, democracy, elections, corruption, power

In our nation’s capital, local voting rights are expanding and metastasizing so fast it is hard to keep up.

Exhibit A, a 12 – 1 vote of the City Council last year, telling the world: It is absolutely crucial to our democracy that China’s ambassador to the United States be given the same vote on who should be mayor, council member, or decide ballot measures, that any American citizen living in the District of Columbia would be entitled. 

Hey, let’s not disenfranchise the spies working out of the Russian embassy, either. Let ’em all vote! 

After all, they pay taxes. Might have their kids in the schools. 

In the country illegally? Fuhgeddaboudit! You can vote in DC. In fact, if an invading army took Washington by military force, and then held it for 30 days, the enemy soldiers could legally vote themselves into office. 

If only this were hyperbole!

A year ago, all the Republicans — along with 1 in 5 Democrats — in the U.S. House voted to nix the District’s crazy foreign citizen voting plan, as is Congress’s constitutional authority. But the Democrat-​controlled Senate refuses to act.

Last week, Abel Amene, whose Ethiopian family was granted asylum more than 20 years ago, became the first non-​citizen to be elected to a D.C. office. Abel won one of nearly 300 seats on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, where the average district contains roughly 2,000 residents. 

My only question: why hasn’t he become a citizen? 

While the ANC has absolutely no power whatsoever, it is likely that its commissioner, Vanessa Rubio, lusts for more power and authority. Earlier this week she was fined $500 for voting twice in the 2020 election — once in Maryland and another time in Washington, D.C. 

She originally told authorities she did not recall voting twice. Later she suggested that because D.C. isn’t a state, voting there didn’t count … as if everyone gets one vote in Washington and another where they actually live.

Rubio’s 2020 fraud reminds us that not every vote should count.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with PicFinder and Firefly

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies

The C‑Word

Joe Biden, crime family, corruption

It’s a truism of popular political discourse: corruption in Washington is endemic.

The fact that so many people who serve in Congress come out far richer than when they went in is testament to the corruption, not selfless service. Studies document how it is done, regulatory regimes monitor the money and a line of cases have put some of the easiest-​to-​nab offenders into the pokey.

Nevertheless, the corruption continues.

Yet, the festering congressional slime may be nothing compared to what’s in the White House.

How the corruption has worked may vary president by president, though. 

Remember that the Clinton clan’s Clinton Foundation was brought out into The Almost Open, in 2015, for all to see (if they wished), which certainly had something to do with the triumph of Donald Trump in 2016. 

The response of the insiders against Trump, however, showed corruption going much deeper. He was attacked throughout his term in office by “his own” agencies, for corruption. And now we know for certain that many of these attacks were without foundation. Just made up.

It is not with the billionaire who left office less wealthy than he entered that official corruption is revealed, but with the ghastly Biden family.

“Sen. Chuck Grassley has accused the FBI of trying to keep quiet,” explains a recent Epoch Times story, about the “information provided by 40 human sources about possible Biden family wrongdoing.”

Though none of this has been proven in a court of law, the brazenness of it all — the corporate board spots, the payments to multiple Biden family members — swamps the senses.  Still, the biggest part of the story remains — elusive. Not because there’s no evidence, but because major media and government agencies simply and continually deny the evidence as it stands, refusing to report or pursue the truth.

Allowing corruption to thrive.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

PDF for printing

Illustration created with Picfinder

—

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts