Tag: corruption

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Internet controversy media and media people

This Is Just Huge

Dr. John Campbell, covid, treatments

“Why isn’t this in the newspapers?” 

That’s what Dr. John Campbell asked on his YouTube channel yesterday, reviewing several studies of ivermectin as an agent in the fight against COVID-​19 — but directly regarding the results of research out of Brazil. It was an impressive large-​number study, in which the researchers invited the whole population of Itajaí to participate, with 159,561 included in the analysis: 113,845 regular users of ivermectin and 45,716 non-users. 

“Seventy percent reduction in mortality in this study” of those who took a very “tiny dosage of ivermectin every fortnight, acting as a prophylaxis” over those did not. “I mean, this is just huge!”

Dr. Campbell, who has been a voice of calm science during the pandemic, goes on to say that “It’s almost as if information has been deliberately suppressed throughout the pandemic, to be quite honest.” With a wry look, he went on to say “No one’s saying that’s true, of course, but it’s almost like that.” 

Droll.

But non-​ironically, he insists the evidence is “powerful, present, and overwhelming.” 

“Seventy percent,” he marvels, “how do you argue with a number like that? It’s a very, very high number.”

And the decrease in hospitalization was 67 percent.

All in all, the study found less infection, fewer hospitalizations, and an astoundingly lower death rate in the ivermectin group.

Earlier in the video, the doctor considered another study, comparing the cheap anti-​parasitic to the far more expensive remdesivir, a Fauci-​pushed Gilead Sciences anti-​viral, with similar results.

It’s “almost as if” the expert class that spurned ivermectin doesn’t care if people die.

No one’s saying that, but.…

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The studies:

Kerr L, Cadegiani F A, Baldi F, et al. (January 15, 2022) “Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for COVID-​19: A Citywide, Prospective, Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects Using Propensity Score Matching.” Cureus 14(1): e21272. doi:10.7759/cureus.21272.

I. Efimenko, S. Nackeeran, S. Jabori, J.A. Gonzalez Zamora, S. Danker, D.Singh, “Treatment with Ivermectin Is Associated with Decreased Mortality in COVID-​19 Patients: Analysis of a National Federated Database.” International Journal of Infectious Diseases 116 (2022) S1 – S130.

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insider corruption term limits

A Plutocrat’s Expensive Friend

Larry Householder, Ohio

An “expensive friend” — in documents obtained by federal prosecutors, that’s how former FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sized up former Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder.

What made the Speaker so Big Ticket?

“Republican Larry Householder hatched a plan to cement his hold on power for an additional 16 years,” The Columbus Dispatch reported, “and Akron-​based FirstEnergy Corp. invested $2 million into the effort.”

Their scheme?

Petition a citizen initiative onto the ballot to slap lifetime term limits on legislators, rather than the current eight-​year consecutive limits, as bait to hook pro-​limits voters — emphasizing this toughening part, while hiding the fact that the eight-​year limits in each chamber would be doubled to a 16-​year limit in either.

The initiative would also set a brand-​new clock, wiping out all past service so that Householder could command the House, uninterrupted, for 16 more years. 

“He told me he’ll retire from [the House],” Jones joked with an associate, “but get a lot done in 16 more years.”

The pandemic stopped Householder’s scam. And then, last July, the FBI dropped the other shoe, arresting him for racketeering. Now awaiting trial, Householder has been pushed out as Speaker and then expelled from the House completely — the first time in over 150 years.

FirstEnergy fired CEO Jones — who, according to The Washington Post, “prosecutors continue to investigate” for his “involvement in a $60 million bribery scheme secretly funded by the company to win a $1 billion legislative bailout.”

Mr. Householder never liked term limits, but his corrupt attempts to thwart them serve as evidence of their importance.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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term limits

Senatorial Senility

“We have the oldest Senate in American history,” Roxanne Roberts writes in The Washington Post. 

Roberts rattles off the five octogenarians — Sen. Diane Feinstein (D‑Calif.), age 88; Sen. Charles Grassley (R‑Iowa), age 87; Richard Shelby (R‑Ala.), age 87; Sen. James Inhofe (R‑Okla.), age 86; and Sen. Pat Leahy (D‑Vt.), age 81 — and tells us that “Twenty-​three members of the Senate are in their 70s,” noting that “only one is under 40.”

That fledgling 34-​year-​old whippersnapper is newly elected Georgia Democrat Jon Ossoff. But being 30 years younger than the current Senate average doesn’t make him better, that’s for sure.

Age isn’t the problem. Not exactly.

My issue with octogenarian Senators Feinstein, Grassley, Shelby, Inhofe and Leahy is that they’ve been politicians in Washington for the last 28, 40, 43, 34, and 46 years, respectively.

That’s way too long. They stop being one of us, representing us. And, left, right or in-​between, we know it.

“Senior senators often stay for decades,” Roberts argues, “because voters are reluctant to give up the perks of incumbency: Seniority, committee chairmanships and all the money poured into their states.”

Ha! The idea that actual voters are unwilling to “give up the perks of incumbency” is laughable. It’s the incumbents themselves who leverage their votes in Congress to dramatically out-​fundraise their challengers. 

Voters rarely get much choice.

No wonder, then, that when people got a chance to vote to term-​limit their own congressmen — they did so enthusiastically. 

President Truman once quipped that legislative term limits would help “cure senility, and seniority — both terrible legislative diseases.” He understood that the Senate’s age problem is not time on the planet. It is the time in office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Another example was the late Sen. Thad Cochran, who thankfully decided to step down in 2018 — at 80 years of age after 44 years in Congress — none too soon.

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media and media people

Media Corrections

media, news, cracks, discredit

“Our focus was to get Trump out of office,” explains CNN Technical Director Charlie Chester in video surreptitiously recorded and recently released by the gotcha video journalists of Project Veritas. 

The group had reached higher at the cable network, last December, unveiling comments made by CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker and Political Director David Chalian during an internal conference call to spike coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story … with plenty of obvious political prejudice. 

Last summer, as the presidential campaign settled into a two-​man race pitting Republican Donald Trump against Democrat Joe Biden, The New York Times reported that, “Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says,” adding, “The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.”

“There may not have been Russian bounties on US troops in Afghanistan after all,” reads the Military Times’ headline, after the Biden Administration acknowledged “low to moderate confidence” in the intel that previously seemed gospel-true.

Calling it “one of the most-​discussed and consequential news stories of 2020,” Glenn Greenwald notes, “It was also, as it turns out, one of the most baseless.”

Yet another big narrative has unraveled with the Washington, D.C., medical examiner concluding that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick “suffered two strokes and died of natural causes.”

“So The New York Times on January 8 published an emotionally gut-​wrenching but complete fiction that never had any evidence — that Officer Sicknick’s skull was savagely bashed in with a fire extinguisher by a pro-​Trump mob until he died,” Greenwald summarizes at Substack, “and, just like the now-​discredited Russian bounty story also unveiled by that same paper, cable outlets and other media platforms repeated this lie over and over in the most emotionally manipulative way possible.”

That’s “the news”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies too much government

The Audacity of the Swamp

swamp, corruption, Washington DC, politics

A crony anti-​infrastructure plan.

That, writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason, is “the best description of the Biden administration’s proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.”

Democrats are the masters of favoring a select few at the expense of the electorate and calling it the Public Good. Their woke moralism, egalitarianism, and other pieties effectively mask their party’s accomplished crony scheming.

Right now, though, the heady audacity of spending trillions of dollars we do not (yet) possess is all the mask the Democrats appear to need. 

Does anyone talk about the Swamp anymore?

Never drained, it is back with a vengeance:

  • “A large share of the plan … is a massive handout to private companies. The proposal includes $300 billion to promote advanced manufacturing, $174 billion for electric vehicles, $100 billion for broadband, $100 billion for electric utility industry, and more.”
  • “Biden’s plan also includes hundreds of billions that have nothing even remotely to do with infrastructure.”
  • “To the extent that Democrats are trying to pay for this spending with taxes, they’re doing it in a way that belies their claim that this plan will result in a boost in quality infrastructure.”

The tax increase in the plan is to eliminate established tax “preferences” for fossil fuel companies. This would be politically popular with Democratic Party supporters, feeding their enviro-​lust to lash out at what are commonly perceived as destroyers of the planet. But tax something more, get less. And a huge part of our infrastructure relies upon — indeed, consists in — the fossil fuel industry. So there will be less infrastructure investment in that realm.

But that doesn’t hurt the cronies. It hurts other folks.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption partisanship

Member-​Directed Funding

earmark, Congress, corruption

“Congress is about to bring back its secret weapon,” CNN headlined a column yesterday.

Congress? Weapon? 

Be afraid. 

Be very afraid. 

“Earmarks are back,” Chris Cillizza immediately informs readers … you know, “what is technically known as ‘member-​directed funding.’” 

Before you can say “terrible idea,” the cable channel’s editor-​at-​large does admit that “members securing money for pet projects in their districts could go wrong.”

Yeah. Right. Has gone wrong. Will go wrong. Is wrong.

“This is a sneaky big deal,” offers Cillizza nonetheless. “And a massive win for party leaders of both parties.”

Cillizza argues that it was a big mistake for Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership in Congress to take away their ability to reward individual congresspeople by stuffing a couple multi-​million-​dollar pet projects into the budget. What’s not to like for an incumbent politician? They get to hand out money right in their districts, with their name attached to it. 

As long as a member of Congress plays ball.

The way the party bosses say.

In return, that incumbent can likely stay in this nation’s heralded leadership for years, decades.

When “you realize that in taking away earmarks,” explains Cillizza, “Boehner robbed party leaders of their most potent weapon to keep their rank-​and-​file in line on key votes.”

Is it even plausible for the functioning of our democratic republic that “party leaders” — nowhere mentioned or given any power in our Constitution — leverage our tax dollars to essentially buy off our representatives in order to keep our representatives “in line” on other important votes?

No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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