Tag: covid

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Accountability subsidy

SNAP Accountability

Republican, Reconciliation Law, waste, Covid, SNAP

“The harmful Republican reconciliation law enacted July 4, 2025, poses great harm to families, including higher food costs, poverty, and hunger. It makes deep cuts to federal funding for food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), shifting significant new costs to states,” the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned, two weeks ago. “It dramatically expands SNAP’s already harsh and ineffective provision taking away people’s benefits for not meeting a work requirement.”

The Wall Street Journal’s Potomac Watch podcast highlighted this shift from a different perspective.

“[O]ne reason why food stamps ballooned during the pandemic and then still didn’t decline even as unemployment declined is because states didn’t have an incentive to actually police their roles and pare back people who were ineligible . . . because of their incomes or for other reasons,” explained Allysia Finley, a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board.

“The second component” of the law, Finley continued, “was that it ended or banned these waivers that the Biden administration had provided to states to suspend the work requirements for these able-bodied people.

“Now, the third thing that the bill did was put states on the hook for a share of the benefits if they had improper error payment rates over six percent,” Finley elaborated. “Six percent was about the pre-pandemic average, but the improper payment rate actually ballooned again during the pandemic and was about 10.6% as of last year.”

“But that’s the whole point,” offered columnist Kimberley Strassel “because the feds traditionally pay a hundred percent of the benefit costs of SNAP, it’s free money. . . .”

The point being, what incentive could states have to police the program’s abuse? None. Until “this bill came along. . . .”

Disincentives matter. 

A whisper of accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency

Deadly Shenanigans

Covid, conspiracy, cover up, crime

It has been five years since I first wrote about “The Man the Media Missed,” Dr. Peter Daszak. But this British zoologist, crucial in the funneling of U.S. taxpayer funds to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, is now feeling heat from U.S. prosecutors. He may get away unsinged, but . . .

As reported here over the weekend, a man has confessed to conspiring to “evade public records laws and conceal government documents related to grant research funding and the Covid-19 pandemic.” His name is David Morens, and he received two bottles of a Napa Valley red blend wine from Daszak. And a note containing two killer sentences: 

“This is the first of what I hope will be a continued series of expressions of gratitude for your advice, support, and behind-the-scenes shenanigans in my battle against your bosses [sic] boss, his boss, and the ultimate boss on the hill. It takes courage and commitment to do what you’ve done, given your job and the vindictive nature of the Administration.”

The effrontery: In April 2020, funding to Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance was cut off. This is apparently the president’s “vindictiveness.” How awful of the administration, seeking vengeance for Daszak’s evading the prohibition on dangerous research . . . and unleashing a deadly virus upon the world! 

Daszak yearned for a more forgiving president, I guess.

For his part, Morens — now facing five years in prison — was more than forgiving, and advised Daszak to hide emails, also complaining that FOIA requests were “dreadful and paranoia inducing.”

Daszak may get away with his crime against humanity, but at least this fact is clear: Morens and his boss Antony Fauci conspired with Peter Daszak to bury the truth of their deadly “shenanigans.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Accountability media and media people national politics & policies

Fauci’s the Focal Point

Dr. Fauci, Anthony Fauci, covid, science, research

Senator Rand Paul “has it in” for Fauci — said Dr. Anthony Fauci at last week’s Senate hearing. 

The former director of the NIAID and former Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden made it sound like the Kentucky senator was trying to put him in prison. But what Dr. Paul asked of Dr. Fauci was an apology — not jail-time.

Why, though?

“If we don’t want this to happen again, him acknowledging that he was wrong to fund this research will be a word of caution and warning to the next generation of people to come through,” the senator told Mark Halperin. “And the debate will have ultimately been won on ‘gain of function.’

“The danger of it.”

The point, Rand Paul says, is to stop the madness of this type of research.

Earlier in the interview he had noted that scientists had warned that the results at the Wuhan Institute of Virology should not be published. It would be a blueprint, or recipe, for a never-ending biological warfare by terrorists.

The whole interview is worth listening to. Mark Halperin does what so few journalists do when confronting a contentious issue: formulate each question in epistemically sound terms, for clarity. “Is that an established fact in your mind, or do you need to know more?” 

Here are some responses from Sen. Paul:

  • Fauci was a long-time supporter and financer of gain-of-function research: fact.
  • Fauci “was aware that they [the Wuhan researchers] were doing gain-of-function research” but Fauci would quibble over semantics, about the exactitudes of what qualifies as such: fact. (Fauci’s being evasive.)
  • Fauci funded that research: “without question” a fact.
  • Fauci lied about the wet market origin theory: fact.

There’s more. Let’s praise a journalist for asking clear questions and a politician for giving clear answers.

Especially about the coronavirus origin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Internet controversy media and media people

Zero-Evidence Zeroes

Dana Bash, RFK Jr. , Covid

“A new poll finds 40% of respondents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was created in a lab in China,” @NPR tweeted on Friday. 

“There is zero evidence for this,” declared the radio network. “Scientists say the virus was transmitted to humans from another species.”

Some scientists say this. Others — along with several U.S. intel agencies — do not. 

What does not exist? A consensus on a zoonotic origin. What we knew early on and what we learned from the Fauci diary last week demonstrates that the wet market was not the origination point, and that Fauci had to convince consulting scientists to go against the Lab Leak hypothesis.

Sad that NPR would still be cherry-picking scientists — and flat-out fibbing — to buttress the political narrative it favors.

But unsurprising.

CNN is no better. On Sunday, the egregious Dana Bash interviewed Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in an utterly disgraceful way, repeatedly contradicting him with vague claims of “study after study after study” while unable to cite any specific published research. 

When RFK pointed out that the U.S. had the highest death rate from COVID, Bash claimed, “That’s not accurate because” — awkwardly long pause — “public health experts say that there is a combination of factors that went into that.”

Went into what? Oh, yes, the U.S. having the highest death rate from COVID . . . just like RFK said.

Too many journalists see themselves as defenders of some Official Story. Dana Bash is a perfect example, doing the job of factless fact-checker, Overton Window Shrinker, and censuring censor.

These days, when you hear someone say that there exists “zero evidence” for something — or imply unanimity among experts — we know they possess zero credibility.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment Fifth Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Fauci Can’t Lie

Anthony Fauci, Congress, Covid, 5th Amendment

Is there any crime for which Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, will be prosecuted?

The multi-millionaire former “public servant” received a full and unconditional pardon “FOR ANY OFFENSES against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in . . .” 

Courtesy of Mr. Biden — or his auto-pen.

“Biden backdated the pardon to 2014, a date nearly six years before the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 emerged,” Newsweek reported a year and a half ago.

Why? Come on, man! Because it “shields Fauci from allegations tied to U.S.-funded gain-of-function research in addition to his work during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

So, Fauci is immune from prosecution for 

  1. a decade’s worth of skirting U.S. domestic restrictions, to fund gang-of-function research at the lab in Wuhan, China; 
  2. for each and every lie he told Senator Rand Paul and others in Congress; and 
  3. for any other fraud — such as using his federal employees to solicit more than a million dollars in cash prizes for him personally.

So when Fauci — formerly known as “the Science” — asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 111 times before Congress (NBC says 106), refusing to answer questions about his past role as a government official, it was illegitimate. Because on those matters, he cannot be incriminated.

“No person,” reads the amendment, “shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.” There can be no criminal case brought for his past lies.

But the problem for Dr. Fauci is that he can be prosecuted for telling those lies again to Congress. Like at yesterday’s hearing. 

Past lies? You’re pardoned, Doc. 

But Fauci cannot repeat his lies. That would be a new crime. 

And since he wants those falsehoods to stand, he will not speak.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Previously on Common Sense:

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national politics & policies too much government

The Long, Long Two Weeks

covid, hysteria, protest, obedience, disgrace, freedom

Nothing is so permanent, wrote Milton Friedman, as a temporary government program.

Six years ago, Americans learned that not only vaguely temporary measures go on and on, even precisely marked-out periods with clear starts and stops stated at the outset can be dragged on well past their expiration date.

Last week, Robby Soave “celebrated” the most astounding example of this in an article for Reason titled “This Was the Moment the COVID-19 Experts Betrayed Us,” about how the “two weeks to slow the spread” rationale for the lockdowns was shown to be a lie.

I wonder how many people were like me, at the time, noticing that the lengthening of the lockdown period was almost never justified by hospital numbers — a key point in the initial rationale, since we feared overwhelming the hospital system. The opposite happened almost everywhere, with hospitals becoming ghost towns in most locations, stressing the system in the opposite manner. By extending the duration of the near-universal quarantine, government officials and employees and their hangers-on showed how little interest they had in taking our health seriously.

What Soave focuses on is one tweet by National Public Radio, about how all crowds were bad for public health except those marching in protest of the death of George Floyd, a criminal with a long, violent rap sheet. NPR’s post began “by condemning the protests against lockdowns” and then drew “an explicit contrast with the racial justice protests, which are explicitly condoned.”

Soave calls this “junk science.” 

But it wasn’t any kind of science at all. It was pure ideological perversity.

Knowledge of that moment must be kept alive. Our expert class betrayed us by prioritizing their riot apologetics over our health.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

NOTES:

See Milton Friedman, Tyranny of the Status Quo (1980) p. 115.
For a “Timeline of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020)” see Grokipedia.
The encouragement of the riots was, many hazard, an opportunistic psy-op to unseat President Trump in the 2020 election. It seems to have succeeded.

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First Amendment rights media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Governing the News

FCC, censorship, covid, surveillance

“The Fairness Doctrine was controversial and led to lawsuits throughout the 1960s and ’70s that argued it infringed upon the freedom of the press,” explained FCC commissioner Ajit Pai for the Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed I quoted yesterday.

“The FCC finally stopped enforcing the policy in 1987, acknowledging that it did not serve the public interest. In 2011 the agency officially took it off the books. But the demise of the Fairness Doctrine has not deterred proponents of newsroom policing. . . .”

Thankfully, this is old news. The former FCC commissioner’spiece was actually published nearly twelve years ago. Mr. Pai has since moved on to the private sector, in April becoming President and CEO of CTIA, the wireless industry trade association.

We can breathe a sigh of relief. The FCC is not planning on regulating the news for biased content.

Well, supposedly, anyway. 

So why rehash an old issue — why revive something from the proverbial slush pile?

To compare and contrast. Bias is a continuing problem, but the biggest threat to news reporting and dissemination since that time has revealed itself in a very different form, not as “abridgments” to press freedoms but as secret government commands and direction.

Remember what we learned in the Trump-and-pandemic years?

During the recent pandemic, and the release of the Twitter Files, we learned of a massive effort of government and “ex-government” personnel directing social media outlets to platform-censor dissent, going so far as to squelch new sources . . . as happened regarding the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story.

The FCC Fairness Doctrine was nothing compared to the meddling that has more recently occurred behind the scenes, but which we all experienced, on social media. It played a role in the election results favoring Biden in 2020, and in the dysfunctional, disastrous public health response to COVID-19. 

The FCC doesn’t handle that level of biased manipulation of news.

So who does?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture media and media people

Defending Groupthink?

groupthink, Covid, OBEY

The Atlantic is a beautiful magazine, expertly designed and printed, lovely to behold: an excellent showpiece for your coffee table . . . but marred by absurdities. 

Currently, consider David Merritt Johns’s article “MAHA’s Blinkered War on ‘Groupthink’” — and when I shift to reader mode, a second title appears: “In Defense of ‘Groupthink.’”

Of course The Atlantic defends groupthink! It’s been working mightily to shore up totalitarian mob-think, woke half-think, for years!

“More than 1,300 academic papers and dozens of books have been published on” the target concept, groupthink, Mr. Johns explains. “Even after all of this time and effort, the evidence is wanting. In fact, most experts now believe that the old story of groupthink being a prime cause of bad decision making is wrong. Some don’t think that the phenomenon is even real.” 

All this is to attack the Make America Healthy Again movement — without ever addressing any (yes, any) actual argument Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has actually made about “the jab” (various innovative coronavirus treatments from Pfizer, Moderna, etc.) in particular or the full panoply of vaccines in the various government-stamped vaccine schedules more generally (much less the disturbing rise, in America, of autism, auto-immune disorders, and obesity).

The entire essay is an elaborate evasion . . . to defend the thinking of a very large group of tax-paid/regulator-defended professionals.

“Our nation’s thinking isn’t broken,” Johns concludes, “and this administration shouldn’t try to fix it.”

The opposite is true: American political and bureaucratic culture has been corrupt and delusional for decades, at the very least.

And we should all be trying to fix it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights government transparency ideological culture social media

Google Confesses All

Google, Youtube, censorship, free speech, Covid, 2020 election, fraud

Google is no longer silent about whether the Biden administration pushed Google to censor customers for their viewpoints. 

Under Biden, Google censored YouTube content creators under federal pressure, specifically about COVID-19. But Google did muzzle discourse on other matters, such as disputes about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, as a result of its own policies that it now says are “sunsetted” along with policies resulting from its submission to a rogue administration.

Its own role is important because we know that a tech giant can effectively resist federal pressure to censor on the basis of the principles of the company’s leaders.

The proof is how Twitter changed course while Biden or his autopen was still the president. Twitter revamped its policies after Elon Musk ascended to the helm, starting to welcome back those who had been censored under the previous owners.

Yes, Elon Musk found himself under assault from every direction from a variety of federal agencies; which, it seemed, were acting as if in concert with and at the behest of a foiled Biden administration. Musk’s opposition to censorship and documentation of administration pressure to censor was not risk-free.

Now Google is following suit. When restoring freedom of speech is lots less risky.

Let’s hope Google’s words now decrying censorship, and its still-in-progress efforts to make things right — inviting the return of former YouTubers whose channels it had censored, for example — will render the company less eager to cooperate when the next pro-censorship administration takes power.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom

Precedented Prosecution?

Canada, Covid, truckers, punishment, tyranny

“The Crown says it’s seeking an extraordinary sentence for an unprecedented crime,” wrote Arthur White-Crummey for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation last week, “as court began hearing sentencing submissions Wednesday in the mischief case of Ottawa truck convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.”

The “Ottawa truck convoy” is what they are calling the big anti-totalitarian protests made by truckers in Canada during the late pandemic scare. 

“Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher asked Justice Heather Perkins-McVey to impose a prison sentence of seven years for Lich and eight years for Barber,” we learn, and if you raise your eyebrows over such stiff sentences — for “mischief” cases! — you’re not alone. Chris Barber’s lawyer called the prosecutor’s demanded punishment, “cruel and unusual.” 

The exact charges against the two convoy leaders are “mischief and counselling others to disobey a court order” (Barber) and “mischief alone” (Lich). The prosecutor argued that these people did a lot of damage.

But it wasn’t property damage, or burning buildings, or even littering. The convoys stalled traffic around government buildings and made a lot of noise — and Barber is acknowledged by the prosecutor to have worked with police to move trucks out of residential areas. 

Barber and Lich wanted a clean and pointed protest. 

Barber’s lawyer noted that the organizers and hooligans of the “Black Bloc” protesters at Toronto’s 2010 G20 summit “caused extensive property damage, including upending police cars and smashing storefronts, but received comparatively light sentences of under two years.”

And remember, even the CBC article used the word “unprecedented.”

Traditionally, however, a specific kind of government does indeed prosecute its opponents in this manner, no matter how peaceful.

Tyrannical governments.

So we now know how to categorize the Canadian government.

Very precedented.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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