Categories
government transparency

Now A Straight Answer?

Last week, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), “America’s civil space program and the global leader in space exploration,” got in on the UFO disclosure racket.

Why that word, “racket”? 

UFO skeptics and mockers have been using that sort of word to describe the subject itself — unidentified advanced aerial phenomena on the planet — but now we hear UFO “nuts” useit to describe NASA’s announcement. 

“A crock,” says Tyler Glockner of the popular SecureTeam10 channel, reminding us of NASA’s nickname: “Never A Straight Answer.”

Many UFO researchers believe that NASA has been “in” on “the UFO cover-​up” from the beginning of its mission.

I know nothing about that, but I do know that we cannot trust government. 

While rumors about NASA programs to scrub photos of the Moon and Mars to get rid of alien structures on the surfaces of those two bodies, as well as alien craft, are outlandish, so to speak — it surely looks like something is going on regarding UFOs.

While NASA insists that it “is not part of the Department of Defense’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force or its successor, the Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group,” which have so far dominated recent UFO news headlines, it does proclaim that it is coordinating with other agencies. 

More significantly, physicist Michio Kaku recently changed his tune on UFOs, and is talking of an independent research group that confirms the physical reality of UFOs darting about with advanced physical attributes.

Not new, I know: same thing French scientist Jacques Vallee wrote in the 1960s, and General Twining apparently memo’ed in the ’40s. 

In covering this issue for the last few years, my point has been: government transparency. Let’s remember the long history of government agencies stringing us opaquely along.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
government transparency international affairs

No Reason?

“Are we ever going to find out the truth of where COVID-​19 came from?” Sophie Raworth, host of the BBC’s Sunday Morning, asked Dr. Anthony Fauci recently.

“Given the fact that there are such restrictions on ability to really investigate it,” the chief medical adviser to the president admitted, “I’m not sure.” Still, Fauci argued, “the data are accumulating over the last few months much more heavily weighted that this was a natural occurrence from an animal species.”

“However,” he added, “we must keep an open mind.” 

Is Fauci’s mind open? His “data” argument is ridiculous bull

Raworth then pointed out that World Health Organization “investigators” who traveled to Wuhan “were prevented from seeing key details and from speaking to key people. Why do you think the Chinese government did that?” 

“You know,” replied Fauci, “I don’t want to create any or mention any disparaging remarks about that.”

No?

“But the Chinese are very closed, in a way of being very reluctant, particularly when you have a disease that evolves in their country,” he went on, “they become extremely secretive — even though there is no reason to be secretive.”

No reason? How does Dr. Fauci know that the genocidal totalitarian Chinese Communist Party has no motive behind their opaque response to the origin of COVID-​19 (about which, remember, he has a completely open mind)?

“So, when they see something evolving in their own country,” Fauci explained, “they tend to have a natural reflex of not necessarily covering things up but of not being very open and transparent.” 

Get that? A completely innate thing, totally unavoidable.

Fauci himself has long seemed “closed, in a way very reluctant” on the subject. Why? Not because “the disease” “evolved” in his labs, but because he and his colleagues outsourced work on bat coronaviruses to China.

Both parties have every reason to be … less than transparent.

With no Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
Accountability

Sinkhole States

What do citizens lack most at all levels of government? Truth in accounting. 

So Sheila Weinberg really has her work cut out. This very morning, her Chicago-​based research-​tank called, not coincidentally, Truth in Accounting released its annual Financial State of the States report. The new data shows that “the total debt among the 50 states decreased by $62.6 billion in FY 2018 due to a prosperous economy.”

But that’s where the good news ends. “Every state, except for Vermont, has balanced budget requirements,” notes the report, “yet even with these rules in place, states have accumulated more than $1.5 trillion in debt.”

Almost entirely from unfunded pension and employee benefit liabilities. 

“At the end of the fiscal year (FY) 2018, 40 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills. This means that to balance the budget … elected officials have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers.”

Put another way: Your government is lying to you.

One interesting feature of the analysis is its top five “Sunshine States” —

  1. Alaska
  2. North Dakota
  3. Wyoming 
  4. Utah
  5. Idaho 

— and its bottom five “Sinkhole States” — 

  1. Hawaii
  2. Massachusetts
  3. Connecticut
  4. Illinois
  5. New Jersey

Fun fact: It just so happens that all five of the top states have a statewide process of voter initiative and referendum, while none of the “sinkhole states” have this democratic check. 

The new online State Data Lab has the skinny on every state. Compare your state against the rest. 

Be brave.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Truth in Accounting, states, debt,

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts


Categories
Accountability government transparency

Put the Public in Public Policy

“Negotiations are impossible without trust,” wrote Leon Panetta in a Washington Post op-​ed.

What with all his experience, Mr. Panetta has some reason to be trusted on his chosen subject, government shutdowns. The California Democrat spent 16 years in the Congress before joining the Clinton Administration as Director of the Office of Management and Budget and later serving as White House Chief of Staff. He was Obama’s first CIA Director and then Secretary of Defense.

But not every one of the sage’s pronouncements passes muster. 

“Never,” he advised, “negotiate in public.” 

He is of course referring to the hilarious chat President Trump had with two Democratic leaders . .  . and a bland, bored, and blank Vice President Pence.

“The talks to avert a shutdown got off to a terrible start,” Panetta argues, “when the president, during an Oval Office meeting with likely incoming speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.), began arguing his position in front of White House reporters.… In all the negotiations on the budget that I took part in as both House Budget Committee chairman and the director of the Office of Management and Budget, not one took place in front of the media. Public shouting matches usually guarantee failure.”

The implication? That these previous negotiations were “successful.”

To those with careers ensconced in Washington power, they worked out just splendidly, I’m sure. But the aftermath of these private, secretive agreements on the rest of us? It can be quantified: $21 trillion.

In federal debt. 

We do not need more of that “success.”

Let’s put the public back in public policy decisions.  “It’s called transparency,” President Trump said. 

Yes. 

More of that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


PDF for printing

Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, secrecy, transparency, negotiations

See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts

Categories
government transparency national politics & policies

Full Frontal Negotiations

Last week’s political circus reached a new level of Big Top.

Or three rings, as President Donald Trump hosted two Democratic leaders in the White House, debating border security and government shutdown — in public. House Minority Leader, soon-​to-​be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D‑Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D‑N.Y.) were somewhat uncomfortable with Donald Trump’s decision to hash out their differences in front of the cameras and the American people.

It was quite the comedy. Yet Vice President Mike Pence all but snored. While many pundits once again expressed their frustrations with a lack of solemn decorum from Trump, Pence provided not solemnity but somnolence.

The idea of government negotiations being done out in the open isn’t new. Transparency is good, if rarely practiced. But it did not take long for Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer to express alarm at this foray into Reality TV. 

“We’re here to have a conversation the careful way,” Pelosi informed the president, “so I don’t think we should have a debate in front of the press on this.”

Once upon a time, Dems promised transparency. Barack Obama campaigned on negotiating health care reform on C‑SPAN — only to renege on that pledge when the negotiations got going.

In olden days, Democrat President Grover Cleveland practiced political transparency when he was governor of New York (1883 – 1885), pointedly leaving the door to his office open whenever discussing any subject whatsoever with anyone.*

And let’s tip the hat to Mike Pence. Ridiculed when it came out that he would not meet in private with any woman not his wife, upon the arrival of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings, Pence appeared genius.

If a sleepy one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* Cleveland was not so transparent when, during a crisis in his second presidency, he secretly had his jaw operated upon in a boat in international waters.

PDF for printing



See all recent commentary
(simplified and organized)

See recent popular posts


Categories
Accountability nannyism national politics & policies tax policy

The Year of Translucency

Barack Obama promised transparency in government. He didn’t deliver.

But others stepped up to the plate.

It’s now possible to see through a lot of political, elitist, and bureaucratic bunk courtesy of fugitives like Snowden, convicts like Manning, and citizens using FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) procedures.

And we are learning more about Hillary Clinton with each info dump from Julian Assange’s Wikileaks and every court-​ordered disclosure thanks to lawsuits to enforce FOIA by organizations like Judicial Watch.

Some folks demand that Donald Trump release his tax returns. On the one hand, hooray for public demands for more information about candidates. But on the other hand, the richer you are, the longer and stranger your tax returns become. One shifts income around to avoid taxes — indeed, you take every “loophole” the law allows. As Justice Brandeis advised. Some folks may be shocked by Trump’s creative-​but-​legal accounting.

To avoid future confusion, we should demand simple tax returns from the rich. That would require jettisoning most of the tax code, simplifying the system. But ask your congressional representative why he or she will not support such a reform.

The reason we have an opaque and complicated tax code is … well, transparent. Under a simple tax system, there would be fewer favors to “trade” … and thus less power to accumulate, less oomph to parlay into pomp and splendor.

Which is why politicians rarely provide much transparency, and why it must often be wrested from them.

Merely by being merchants of opacity, our pols reveal, if inadvertently, the nature of our Too Big Government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


Printable PDF

tax code, power, politicians, transparency, illustration