Tag: Washington DC

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insider corruption partisanship

The Precedentedness of It All

Washington, D.C., corruption, politicians, deep state

When Democrats impeached President Donald Trump for pushing Ukrainians to look into Hunter Biden’s Burisma deal, the outcry was Orange Man is prosecuting his political rival! The enormity! The unprecedentedness of it all!

Now, Trump is being prosecuted for mishandling classified documents upon leaving office, and only Republicans cry “prosecution of a political rival!”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden just received something close to mere admonishment for his not paying taxes on his loot. And no charge for lying on a federal gun application. The Administrative State favors its own.

“The real difficulty, in my view, is trying to figure out how to hold people accountable for their conduct,” said former Special Counsel John Durham in his recent testimony to Congress. “It’s not a simple problem to solve.”

Durham was talkingabout the Russiagate panic that Democrats in government, media, and Congress exhorted for years. “If there was something that was inconsistent with the notion that Trump was involved in a ‘well-​coordinated conspiracy’ with the Russians and whatnot, that information was largely discarded or ignored and I think, unfortunately, that’s what the facts bear out.”

Functionaries in the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice “investigated” — but merely to find evidence to bolster a pre-​selected story that they could use to oust a president they did not like.

What to do?

Clean house: fire the worst offenders. 

Who can do that?

Any president could hire an Attorney General and directors of the FBI and CIA, each with broom in hand.

And Congress could actually do its job. You know, legislate in the public interest.

But we possess neither, and so we persist in the current stalemate.

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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First Amendment rights

Protest Hits the Pavement

Black Lives Matter, Washington D.C.

Social justice activists and Washington D.C. city officials have collaborated to paint the slogan “Black Lives Matter” on 16th Street near the White House. 

The city has also allowed the words “Defund the Police” to be painted on the street.

Does this mean that the roadways of our nation’s capital city are now a public forum accessible to anyone who files the proper forms?

So far, doesn’t look like it. 

So Judicial Watch (JW) is suing for the right to paint its own motto, “Because No One is Above the Law,” on a DC street. JW went to court because its applications to perform a similar paint job have fallen on deaf ears.

It contends that its First Amendment right of freedom of speech is being violated.

“We have been patient,” Judicial Watch says. “We also have been flexible. We have stated our willingness to paint our motto at a different location if street closure is necessary and the city is unwilling to close our chosen location. All we ask is that we be afforded the same opportunity to paint our message on a DC street that has been afforded the painters on 16th Street.”

I can’t wait until all this gets cleared up. I suppose it’ll be one or two paint jobs per applicant. 

“ThisisCommonSense​.org” has a nice ring to it, eh? 

Something about “unalienable rights [to] Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” would also be a great message, assuming it’s still legal to quote the Founders whose legacy we celebrated over the weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access national politics & policies

The State of X and Y

Jefferson, Washington DC, statehood,

“I was born without representation, but I swear,” Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser vowed last week, “I will not die without representation.”

She has a point: 700,000 D.C. residents lack a voting representative in Congress. 

On Friday, the U.S. House passed legislation — 232 to 180 with 19 members hiding in the cloakroom and refusing to vote — to make the nation’s capital city the 51st state. Not merely garnering a U.S. Representative, but also a lifetime guarantee of two U.S. Senators. 

“D.C. will never be a state,” counters President Trump, explaining that Senate Republicans would be “very, very stupid” to allow two new U.S. Senators who are nearly certain to be Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly announced the Senate would not take up the bill.

But Republicans are not the only ones blocking representation. 

As Rep. Andy Harris (R‑Md.) pointed out, Maryland had originally ceded some of the land to create the federal District of Columbia, and could now take back the residential areas. Those citizens would add their own House rep for Maryland and be represented by Maryland’s two U.S. Senators.

Democrats refuse. Why? Because it is not about representation. The city must be turned into a state so that two new Democratic U.S. Senators can be pulled out of a hat.

There is yet another path to representation. Make a bi-​partisan deal to add two states. In addition to the State of Columbia (51), add the State of Jefferson (52) — comprised of 21 northern counties trying to secede from the rest of California. 

Better representation. No partisan advantage. Problem solved.

If anyone were interested in that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption

Capital Jack

Jack Evans, corruption, Washington D.C.,

“If I can make it there,” goes the song New York, New York, “I’ll make it anywhere.”

But, when it comes to self-​dealing, corrupt politics, isn’t it really Washington, D.C. that deserves the moniker of Big Rotten-​to-​the-​Core Apple?

Meet Jack Evans, who is making it … er, competing … for a seat on the city council in the nation’s capital city. 

Which seat, you ask? 

His own. 

For the last three decades, 29 years to be precise, Evans represented (theoretically, at least) Ward 2 … the council’s longest serving member. 

Until Councilmember Evans resigned his position mere weeks ago, on January 17. Under pressure, both from constituents by way of a recall petition and from the council, which was set to expel Evans, after finding him guilty of “prolonged and egregious wrongdoing.”

Not to mention that Evans is also the subject of a federal probe, with the FBI raiding his home last year. And Evans had previously resigned his position as Chairman of the Board of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) for the same longstanding pattern of egregious influence peddling.

Now Capital Jack enters the political arena anew as the consummate professional, undaunted by his unfitness for gainful employment outside of politics.

“It is tremendous chutzpah to do that,” one Ward 2 resident observed of Evans’ quick comeback.

Not to mention that the special election for Mr. Evans to compete for the council seat he resigned from in disgrace will cost city taxpayers a cool million bucks.

“I want to wake up in a city” — hum a few bars! — “where corruption never sleeps.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Jack Evans, corruption, Washington D.C.,

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insider corruption

A Safe Bet

Washington DC, corruption, sports gambling,

“We certainly cannot comment,” said a spokesman for the Chief Financial Officer of the nation’s capital city, “on documents that are not supposed to be public.”

Welcome to Washington, D.C., where governing is done opaquely.

In a typically shady political maneuver, a $215 million contract was awarded to Intralot, a Greek company, to manage the region’s newly legalized sports gambling. 

Citizens were not supposed to learn that Intralot subcontracted with city political insiders.

“Confidential city records obtained by The Washington Post,” the paper reported Saturday, “show that those who would benefit from the no-​bid contract include a former D.C. State Board of Education official, the head of a marketing company that worked on the political campaigns of Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and her protege, council member Brandon T. Todd (D‑Ward 4), and an executive whose company lost a contract at a city homeless shelter because of allegedly falsified documents.”

“Every time, there will be politically connected CBEs attached to a contract of this size,” Council Chairman Phil Mendelson generously explained. “It’s how business is done everywhere.”

“This is why we have a competitive process to begin with,” Councilmember David Grosso countered, “to make sure that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen and you don’t give a contract to your friends.”

The sports betting bill was introduced by Councilmember Jack Evans, who just resigned from the troubled Metro transit system after an investigation found he “knowingly” broke ethics rules. He is also “the subject of a federal probe into whether he improperly used his public office to benefit paying clients of a consulting business he owns.” 

All in a day’s work.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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government transparency too much government

Fill Up the Swamp Some More

drain, swamp, Trump, Donald Trump, Washington DC

Donald Trump’s “drain the Swamp” promise was good rhetoric, great politics — because nearly everybody knows that the federal government just cannot restrain, constrain, or re-​train itself.

So it would have to take an outside force.

Along comes said Outside Force — the current president — yet the Swamp remains.

Unfortunately, too few of the president’s most ardent supporters see the deepest part of the Swamp.

That is, the Department of Defense.

“Less than a week after calling the Pentagon’s $716 billion budget ‘crazy’ and indicating that he wanted to trim it, President Donald Trump is reportedly proposing to push America’s military spending to greater heights,” writes Eric Boehm at Reason. “Trump told Mattis to submit a $750 billion budget request for next year — well in excess of the $733 billion level that had been previously planned.”

And he does this despite the fact that just recently this military establishment failed to give a competent accounting of its spending.

Sadly, poor accounting is rigged into the Department of Defense, as demonstrated in an important exposé last month.

“For decades, the DoD’s leaders and accountants have been perpetrating a gigantic, unconstitutional accounting fraud,” The Nation explains, “deliberately cooking the books to mislead the Congress and drive the DoD’s budgets ever higher, regardless of military necessity.”

Even the imperiled Social Security juggernaut is not run as badly as the Pentagon. We at least know where its funds go and have gone.*

It may be that a real leader — with substantive ideas, reliable information, and a sense of the enormity of governmental carelessness — will inspire Americans and challenge the Deep Swamp, er, State, before catastrophe.

Unfortunately, Trump is looking less and less like that drainer.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* One recipient of Social Security “contributions” has been, in fact, the Pentagon, since budget deficits have been at least partially covered by congressional borrowing from Social Security’s “surpluses.”

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Accountability ideological culture Tenth Amendment federalism

Return to Federalism

As we make sense of this week’s sea change — of the Great Shellacking Democrats took on Tuesday — some caution is in order.

In 2006, voters did not choose the Democrats because of what they were or what they promised, but because of what they weren’t: corrupt, clueless Republicans. Now, Republicans should remember that they were mainly chosen because they aren’t Democrats: that is, hopelessly narrow-​minded, self-​righteous, and corrupt.

So, what should Republicans do?

Maybe it’s not to start out of the gate by repealing Obamacare, which its namesake would simply veto.

In Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC, voters approved the legalization of recreational marijuana use. In California, with Proposition 47, Golden State voters ushered in a new regime, downgrading many, many drug violations and former felony crimes to misdemeanor status.

This is the people of the states leading.

They are rejecting the “get tough” approach both parties have supported for decades, an approach that has had the dubious result of being most popular with public prison workers’ unions and the private prison lobby

Opposing drug use may be socially “conservative.” Politically speaking, however, granting government nearly unlimited police powers, and without regard to objective results, is not.

If the Republicans want to lead in Washington, they should follow the people in these bellwether elections. Back them up. End the Drug War and, with it, the Prison-​Industrial Complex. Return criminal justice back to the states, where the Constitution originally put it. And where modifications can be more easily made.

Return to federalism. Return to reason.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption

On the Other Hand

To start off this New Year, I admit that I missed some very thrifty actions taken by elected officials in 2011.

Though I often commented on California legislators, regrettably, I failed to mention their frugality. Last May, they unequivocally said, “No” to Senate Bill 18, which would have cost $200,000 for enforcement of the legislation’s gift ban.

These eminent elected officials would doubtless like to have SB-18’s restriction on lobbyists and special interests plying them with free tickets to sporting events, rock concerts, and other expensive entertainment venues, but were unwilling to place the high cost of policing their behavior onto the backs of taxpayers.

Nor are politicians always careless with tax dollars. In Washington, D.C., Council Chairman Kwame Brown gets the city’s money’s worth.

He had the city order him a Lincoln Navigator, loaded with a DVD entertainment system, power moon-​roof and polished aluminum wheels. But, when the vehicle and its $1,900 a month lease arrived, the interior was gray — not black as requested. Brown wouldn’t stand for being shortchanged. So, a new SUV was ordered, with both exterior and interior black. It was driven from Michigan to Washington for an extra $1,500.

The city was stuck paying two luxury vehicle leases, but it’s the principle that counts. Chairman Brown informed the Washington Post that dark interiors hold their value better.

This year, let’s acknowledge the good elected officials do and not just harp on the bad. After all, nobody’s perfect.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.