Tag: power

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insider corruption partisanship scandal

The Salience of the Switch

Jeffrey Epstein, blackmail, Epstein Island, corruption, power

From the moment the Jeffrey Epstein story appeared, an outrageous quality attached itself to it, like slug-​slime on the heel of your naked foot.

Now, as the case is allegedly closing, it’s only getting weirder.

It’s needless to run through the arc of the story again: the rumors, the financing, the arrests, the trials, the documentaries, the books and articles, the “suicide.” Most people are aware. And most know that it was MAGA folks who were most exercised about the issue. 

“Epstein didn’t kill himself” was not a meme of the left.

The idea that Mr. Epstein had fronted a honey-​pot blackmail ring to exert control over politics and science and culture was a story that even the mainstream didn’t pooh-​pooh much, because, in part, there was so much circumstantial evidence.

Then came the switch, when Dan Bongino and Kash Patel assured us that Epstein did indeed commit suicide. When I commented a week ago, it was Trump switching sides — after years milking MAGA anger over it — that stood out. 

And now it got bigger. In two ways. Trump’s switch got bigger. And the evidence for Epstein’s self-​offing got shakier.

The latter is explosive evidence that our leaders may have lied to us. And done a lousy job of it.  The taped evidence said to prove that no one had been to visit Epstein in his cell was first shown to have been clumsily edited, and then all-​the-​sudden more footage came out!

Meanwhile, Trump took to calling the Epstein File issue a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats — Comey, Obama and Biden specifically!

Do they think we’re stupid?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
folly too much government

Europe Goes Dark

Spain, Portugal, power, electrical grid, climate, EU,

If you prevent countries from using the most reliable fuels for making the electricity that lights the lights, elevates the elevators, and powers all other powered things, what would be the likely consequence?

Not, I think, to make the power grids more reliable.

The power companies say they don’t know why almost all the power went out recently in Spain and Portugal and in other parts of Europe.

No indication so far of cyberattack or other sabotage. 

Red Electrica, Spain’s state-​run electricity network, points to a “very strong oscillation” in the network causing the Spanish system to disconnect from the European system. Portugal’s grid operator says that the oscillations had to do with extreme temperature variations.

Spain’s electrical network now relies almost entirely on “renewable” sources of energy, “green” energy, anything but fossil fuels. (Actually, no energy is renewable; in usable form it’s gone the instant you use it. And it all comes from nature, including gas and oil.)

On April 16, Red Electra, eager to “curb the climate crisis” (weather), reported meeting all electrical demand using “renewable” sources of energy, mostly solar (60 percent).

Some have pointed out that solar and wind power don’t provide the inertia generated by the massive turbines of “traditional generators, like coal and hydroelectric plants or gas turbines.” And so the power grid becomes much more vulnerable to disruptions and oscillations, no matter the cause.

My theory is that the more ways you hobble yourself, the more likely you are to become hobbled. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

The 2024 Switcheroo

Obama, Biden, President, power

The Summer of 2024 was a political maëlstrom. It included a near-​miss assassination attempt and a withdrawal of a sitting president of the United States from his re-​election campaign, almost at the last possible moment. 

We still do not know much about Trump’s would-​be assassin on that roof in Butler, Pennsylvania. Nor does there seem much media interest in that still mysterious criminal episode. But we are learning more about Joe Biden’s stepping down from the campaign, and Kamala Harris’s taking the reins of the Democratic ticket.

Most recently, from a insider-​exposé just out by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House (Apri 1, 2025), we learn that Barack Obama, former president and key Democratic Party insider, not only pressured Biden to step down (along with Nancy Pelosi), but he also opposed Kamala Harris’s hasty top-​of-​the-​ticket switcheroo. Strongly. For five days. Then he gave his endorsement.*

It’s widely reported that the Bidens dislike Kamala Harris. It’s also well known that Obama is not exactly Joe Biden’s biggest fan — the Obama/​Biden pairing was political, making the match perhaps the most fraught since Kennedy/​LBJ.

We learn from co-​author Jonathan Allen that Obama refused to endorse Ms. Harris on that infamous first day, after Biden’s endorsement,* and that Obama was pitching for an open convention.

Obama’s political instincts are unmatched within the Democratic Party. That his advice was resisted says a lot about where the party was headed.

And where it’s at now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* If you, like me, are looking for why Biden, so soon after stepping down, publicly endorsed Kamala Harris, the sample on Amazon won’t tell you. But Ms. Harris entreated Biden immediately upon his resignation: “You need to endorse me,” she said, according to co-​author Amie Parnes. Pressure was applied.

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incumbents term limits

Missing in Congress

Congress, term limits, incumbency, age, power

Her “constituents in Texas Congressional District 12 have asked, ‘Where is Congresswoman Kay Granger?’

“Some Tarrant County residents,” The Dallas Express further reports, “have begun to speculate.”

“I’m hearing she’s in a memory care unit,” one posted on X. 

Express reporter Carlos Turcios explains that “the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering, lost, and confused in her former Cultural District/​West 7th neighborhood.”

Granger, 81, did not seek re-​election last November after 28 years in Congress. Thankfully. She has not voted in Congress since July 24 of this year. Which, given the circumstances, is also a good thing.

Her son told the media she was suffering from dementia and had declined rapidly, but that could be a slight stretch.

Don’t condemn the congresswoman, argues former Texas legislator Jonathan Strickland. “Six years ago (as an elected official who worked regularly with/​around her) it was obvious she had serious memory issues. She has had no idea what was going on for a while,” he explained, blaming “her friends, family, and staff” who “left her in office for their own benefit.”

The last six years in Congress … without … cognition. (Is that about par?)

Utah Senator Mike Lee, a fellow Republican, says Granger makes a “compelling case for term limits.” Yes. Sure. Of course. 

Even if these over-​the-​top instances of incumbency running amok overtime weren’t spilling out so often, however, we would still need term limits. 

The fact that things have gotten this bad is a sign we’ve needed term limits for a very long time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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crime and punishment education and schooling national politics & policies

Forever Be Changed

Kamala Harris, power

I’ve discussed Kamala Harris’s support, as district attorney and attorney general in California, for an abusive law enabling the arrest of parents if their children miss “too much” time at school, how the law has been deployed against parents like Cheree Peoples, whose daughter has sickle cell anemia.

I’ve quoted Harris’s words.

Now I will quote more of them. But let’s also listen to those words and observe her demeanor and tone, how Kamala Harris gloats about her use of power.

“As a prosecutor … I have a huge stick. So I decided I was gonna start prosecuting parents for truancy.… ‘If you don’t go to school, Kamala’s gonna put you and me in jail.’ [laughs] … I said [to prosecutors] ‘when you go over there, look really mean.’

“I learned that with the swipe of my pen, I could charge someone with the lowest-​level offense. That person could be arrested, they could lose time from work and their family, maybe lose their job. They’d have to come out of their own pocket to help hire a lawyer.… Weeks later, I could dismiss the charges. But their life would forever be changed.”

Video of Harris saying such things is part of a political attack ad about why men needn’t be prejudiced against female candidates in order to oppose giving Kamala Harris power over everyone in the country.

In the waning days of the campaign, we could do worse than to share this evidence, her own candid, joyous testimony about herself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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.

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