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Accountability government transparency media and media people

Transient Stars

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, UFOs and “flying saucers” made newspaper headlines, and government officials had contradictory things to say about them. Then, soon after 1952’s summer UFO flyovers of Washington, D.C, the government got into the denial game, and the general tenor of the conversation changed.

The federal government, it seems, had instituted a policy of “cover-up.”

This has changed in the last few years, after a military investigation into UFOs went public, and as Congress began making public and confidential inquiries.

What do we really know?

Not much.

Still, that startling 1952 UFO wave appears to have received some additional evidence . . . from an unexpected quarter.

A team of astronomers compared old sky plates from the Palomar Observatory —photographed in the 1950s — to modern digitized pictures of the heavens, searching for “vanishing stars.” Appearing and disappearing stars are a fascinating study, in this research the aim being to detect “instances where a star directly collapses into a black hole.” The scientists found none of these “failed supernova” events. 

But what they found surprised them: “several images where multiple star-like objects appear in a single snapshot of the sky, never to be seen again.”

They tested many possible explanations for the mysterious data, and then an automated search coughed up a doozy: “The image showed three bright and beautiful objects looking just like stars in a POSS-I image from the 19th of July 1952 that appeared and vanished within a plate exposure. . . . The three bright objects seemed as real as Betelgeuse itself.”

These were not single bright dots on photographic plates, but multiple simultaneous dots.

As scientist Beatriz Villarroel writes, “our two most prominent and brightest cases of multiple transients coincided in time with the two weekends of the renowned Washington UFO flyovers.”

One wonders whether later mass-sighting events, such as the “Belgian Wave” (November 1989–April 1990) and Arizona’s “Phoenix Lights” (March 13, 1997), might have recorded similar transients above, ready for study. 

Thankfully, we do not need to rely directly upon government agents to do the research.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability general freedom

The S-Word in California

Frédéric Bastiat called it “spoliation”; California’s Democratic politicians call it social justice.

A bill went into effect last week, offering complete medical coverage to an estimated 700,000 undocumented — illegal — immigrants.  The price tag? 3.1 billion dollars.

Well, not “price tag”: call it a subsidy tag.

California taxpayers will pay for it. Or perhaps U.S. taxpayers will end up with the bill, as Dagen McDowell insisted on Fox News, prophesying that the program “will turn into a national issue” that will, inevitably, “swamp the federal budget.” 

Ms. McDowell also noted that the state’s targeted sugar daddies, the wealthy, “are going to other states, so much that they’ve lost a congressional seat,” all of which must lead to insolvency.

Indeed, the state is running far into the red — the color of the ink on budget columns, not voting columns. The state faces not merely annual deficits and a huge debt, there is also this looming trillion-dollar debt implied by the unfunded liabilities of the state employee pensions.

There is an old pattern here, which is why I brought up an old author in the first sentence.

First we subsidize the poor. Then we extend the subsidies up the income ladder. Now we give huge subsidies to those who enter the country illegally.

It’s as if Californians have forgotten the nature of income redistribution: you have to have income to redistribute. At some point the wealth being taken from the productive vanishes, as society becomes unproductive and descends into ruin.

There are two meanings of Bastiat’s “spoliation”:

noun
1 the action of ruining or destroying something.
2 the action of taking goods or property from somewhere by illegal or unethical means.

The two are linked. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability general freedom

Goods, Services, and Other Crimes

The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has announced a lawsuit against bus companies for providing bus services.

The bus companies are selling transportation not to gangs of thieves that the companies know to be on their way to rob banks but to the government of Texas. Texas has been sending people arriving in Texas from the other side of the border to the Big Apple, a self-proclaimed sanctuary city.

New York City is suing 17 bus and transportation companies for a total of more than $700 million. It wants the money to help take care of the people on the buses.

Apparently, Adams is one of that species of politician who has no standards — who will lurch in any direction at any moment, clutch at any straw, heedless of the rights of others, just as soon as an advisor says “Hey, let’s try this . . .”

Hey. Sue the federal government for its border policies, Mr. Mayor, if you object to those policies. Don’t sue bus companies and road pavement companies and restaurants and toll booths because they enable people to get from point A to point B.

My advice to the bus companies: countersue.

Many things bother me about the mayor’s ugly action. One is his indifference to the precedent being set, especially if the lawsuit succeeds. Doesn’t he care about the long-range effects of suing people for millions of dollars just for earning their living in a legal, peaceful way?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability government transparency national politics & policies

If/Why

“This is about accountability, and about transparency,” said Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), at yesterday’s House Oversight Committee’s bipartisan press conference on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP’s) — “about holding the Deep State to task for their refusal to declassify information that the American people need to know, that Congress needs to know.”

He paints the same picture of the UAP/UFO issue that has been rumored about for nearly 80 years: “Foreign objects are buzzing around in our airspace, and Joe Biden’s over 30 generals have not only been silent on the issue, but have yet to play ball with Congress.”

The tenor of the presser was summarized early by host Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.): “It is unacceptable that any mid-level, unelected bureaucrat staffers can tell members of Congress that we are not allowed to access information about UAP’s.” 

Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has pushed a disclosure procedure on the order of The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, but these representatives scorned that notion, arguing there remains too much secrecy surrounding the 1963 event in Dallas. 

“So, whether it’s little green men, American technology, or worse — technology from the CCP — we need to know,” insists Rep. Ogles.

“I think the American people have a simple question,” Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) hazarded, “which is ‘if none of this exists, if this is all false, why, at every turn, are there people trying to stop the transparency and the disclosure? Why are folks who are in charge of committees, whether they are in the House or in the Senate, opposed to this disclosure?’ And it’s that point alone that piques the interest.”

Indeed it does. 

It’s time for the people to find out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability crime and punishment international affairs

Stuck With It?

Poland told Pfizer to stick it elsewhere. Now Pfizer’s suing for failure to pay for all the jabs . . . that Poland didn’t use. Or take. Or even allow in the country.

Pfizer’s a big company, of course, but you know we’re not talking about Celebrex or Fentanyl Citrate or Sonata here. We’re talking about The Jab. The one developed with BioNTech and contracted for by governments around the world.

As near as I can make out, it’s a breach of contract case.

But with a wrinkle.

Poland put a halt to pushing Pfizer’s COVID vaccine in April of 2022, and the people generally seem just fine with it, seeing as how they have a much, much lower rate of excess deaths now than does, say, Sweden, which pushed the vax for far longer. 

But why couldn’t Poland simply stop usage of the jab? 

After all, a customer shouldn’t be forced to take a medication, right? 

Well, the contract was not between Pfizer and Poles individually — this is the modern, statist world, after all — or even collectively, corporately, through the state. The contract was between Pfizer and the European Union!

And elements were secret

The Polish government, placed on the hook for the drug, was not allowed to see the whole contract.

Think of this as just one of the many ways that politicians who bash Big Pharma bent over backwards to give Big Pharma cushy, cushy deals.

But in court, how will those secret clauses play? I suspect that Pfizer’s prognosis may be negative.

Which would be a healthy outcome.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability crime and punishment

The Bums’ Rush

Californians have long been talking about cleaning up San Francisco from the waste laid to the city by its well-compensated bums along with coddled criminals, entitled inebriates, and the happy homeless. 

And then last week it happened. The city got cleaned up and scrubbed down. Darn quick.

All it took was the arrival of the President. 

Of China.

Xi Jinping touched down just days ago for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, at which our own Somnambulant-in-Chief also teetered around, so the clean-up crews worked overtime to make a good impression.

There’s been a lot of speculation about it all. Couldn’t those who have been creating this filthy and dangerous environment on the streets of San Fran have been dealt with (and not pampered) a long time ago?

Many have remarked: so it’s Xi whom San Francisco Democrats really look up to? Not their own citizens? Everyday San Franciscans don’t matter? Only The Eastern King of Genocidal Totalitarianism?

“Is the president embarrassed,” a reporter asked National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on Monday, “that an American city needs to go through a total makeover to be presentable for his out-of-town guests?”

No real answer.

But what did the city do, exactly?

Moved the homeless out of the way, first. 

And then the streets were hosed off, the graffiti sanded or painted over.

Arguably, corralling the homeless from sector to sector of the city would be one way to disincentivize squatting, as would arresting and trying street-dwellers for public drug use and excretion — for some things must be kept private, not engaged in helter-skelter. 

Things like defecating. 

Sexual intercourse. 

Shooting up.

Years ago, no one had to explain this to anyone.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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