Category: insider corruption

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insider corruption national politics & policies

Dystopia de la Brazile

Juvenal, bread and circuses, Covid

“When will the check arrive?”

That’s what “voters want to know,” former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace yesterday.

Not whether President Joe Biden is dodging the media’s questions, as Wallace had inquired of his panel of Washington experts, after explaining that Biden now holds the modern record for longest time as president without facing reporters in a news conference.

“Well, it’s no surprise,” offered Jonathan Swan, national political correspondent for Axios. “It’s an extension of what he basically did throughout the campaign, which was very minimal — he basically didn’t subject himself to extended, tough questioning.” 

GOP strategist Karl Rove went further, arguing, “he’s just not up to it . . . at the age of 78 he’s lost a few steps and he’s not going to look good in a news conference.”

But Brazile was having none of it. Citizens are laser-focused, she contends, on being shown the money . . . and really aren’t too concerned as to whether their commander-in-chief, the sleepy fellow in possession of the nuclear codes, might be suffering something approaching early dementia.

People do like money. But to what degree is she really correct? With palms greased will the public look the other way? How many votes have Democrats bought?*

Don’t think Brazile is alone, either; as I pointed out recently (“Big Bucks Buy Votes”), too much of Washington actually thinks purchasing apathy, support, votes is how Washington should work.

They marvel as modern political statecraft transcends the hubbub of bread and circuses with electronic direct deposits of spendable cash into bank accounts. But with the same hoped-for result.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* And ask the same question of Republicans who voted for sending similar checks to everyone when they controlled the Senate and the White House last year. 

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insider corruption partisanship

Member-Directed Funding

earmark, Congress, corruption

“Congress is about to bring back its secret weapon,” CNN headlined a column yesterday.

Congress? Weapon? 

Be afraid. 

Be very afraid. 

“Earmarks are back,” Chris Cillizza immediately informs readers . . . you know, “what is technically known as ‘member-directed funding.’” 

Before you can say “terrible idea,” the cable channel’s editor-at-large does admit that “members securing money for pet projects in their districts could go wrong.”

Yeah. Right. Has gone wrong. Will go wrong. Is wrong.

“This is a sneaky big deal,” offers Cillizza nonetheless. “And a massive win for party leaders of both parties.”

Cillizza argues that it was a big mistake for Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership in Congress to take away their ability to reward individual congresspeople by stuffing a couple multi-million-dollar pet projects into the budget. What’s not to like for an incumbent politician? They get to hand out money right in their districts, with their name attached to it. 

As long as a member of Congress plays ball.

The way the party bosses say.

In return, that incumbent can likely stay in this nation’s heralded leadership for years, decades.

When “you realize that in taking away earmarks,” explains Cillizza, “Boehner robbed party leaders of their most potent weapon to keep their rank-and-file in line on key votes.”

Is it even plausible for the functioning of our democratic republic that “party leaders” — nowhere mentioned or given any power in our Constitution — leverage our tax dollars to essentially buy off our representatives in order to keep our representatives “in line” on other important votes?

No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption Voting

Democrats’ Shadow Play

shadows, Democrats, Democrat Party

There is more than one way to rig an election.

Sometimes all you need is a monkey wrench. A little chaos might help you get your way.

Last February 3, Democrats voted in the Iowa caucuses, placing Bernie Sanders in the lead. But a major “foul-up” occurred. “The state party was unable to report a winner on caucus night,” explains Tyler Pager at Politico, “the mobile app to report results failed to work for many precinct chairs, the back-up telephone systems were jammed and some precincts had initial reporting errors.”

The chaos certainly did not help winner Bernie Sanders, disabled from making publicity hay while the sun shined. There was enough darkness for democracy to die in.

The Iowa Democratic Party commissioned an audit to throw some belated light on the brouhaha, and the results are in: the Democratic National Committee is mostly to blame. 

“According to the report, the DNC demanded the technology company, Shadow, build a conversion tool just weeks before the caucuses to allow the DNC to have real-time access to the raw numbers because the national party feared the app would miscalculate results.” But the DNC and Shadow used incompatible database formats, spawning chaos. 

In a generous mood? Call it sheer incompetence. 

But the mess sure . . . smells . . . suspicious.

“The caucuses are a cherished tradition for Iowans,” reports Reid J. Epstein at The New York Times, “but an increasing number of national Democrats say they are outdated and undemocratic.”

Well, they are when you make them so.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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insider corruption

Titanic Hits Ice Cream

Nancy Pelosi, ice cream

A recent email from Amy White of MoveOn.org — an activist outfit that got its start defending Bill Clinton’s sexual indiscretions — theorized that, this election, “the GOP strategy to win is to use their billionaire donors to flood battleground states with fearmongering, racist ads. . . .”

The snuck-in assumption that Democrats lack Billionaire Donors is important, for the actual Trump strategy is to attack Democrats for their rich elitism. A Trump campaign ad targeting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous-like ice cream obsession is quite powerful.

And Pelosi’s flaunting of expensive freezers and confections is not mere fluke.

You see, Speaker Pelosi (D-Calif.) also smarts from recent revelations that she had flouted California lockdown rules and mask-wearing mandates to illegally rendezvous, sans mask, at a hair salon, speakeasy-style.

While MoveOn’s Ms. White seeks to “put an end to Donald Trump’s authoritarianism,” what she seems oblivious to is her own side’s elitism.

As shown in Pelosi’s hometown. San Francisco’s government-run gyms catering to police officers, judges, lawyers, bailiffs, and paralegals have been open for months — while privately owned exercise establishments serving the hoi polloi have been shut down the whole time.

“It’s shocking, it’s infuriating,” one gym entrepreneur told a TV station. “Even though they’re getting exposed, there are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking.”

But it’s not. 

Trump got into office because he was seen as an outsider. Insiders like Pelosi and Frisco “public servants” have special rules for themselves, while sticking it to the rest of us. We peons. We outsiders.

It’s old school classism, as in the “classless” Soviet Union or Marie Antoinette’s France.

Not a good look.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Right Here in Corruption City

Kevin Clinesmith, FBI, investigation,

Former FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith pled guilty earlier this week to making a false statement to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) — often called the FISA court after the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that created it.

“According to the court documents, Clinesmith inserted the words ‘and not a source’ into an email from a CIA liaison that described the relationship between Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page and the CIA,” reported The Epoch Times. “As a result, an FBI special agent relied on the altered email to submit a warrant application to the FISC, which described Page as a Russian asset without disclosing that he was an approved operational contact for the CIA who reported on his interactions with Russian intelligence officers.”

While one intelligence agency, the FBI, was declaring to a FISA judge that Carter Page was not a source for the intelligence community and, instead, was a likely Putin stooge, Page was briefing another intelligence agency, the CIA.

A big fib told to surveil him.

And by extension the Trump campaign.

“At the time, I believed that the information I was providing in the email was accurate,” Clinesmith told the court, “but I am agreeing that the information I entered into the email was not originally there and that I have inserted that information.”

Had the forgery been accurate, of course, it is still clearly wrong to surreptitiously alter documents being presented to a judge. 

Whatever one thinks of President Trump — innocent victim of a 22-month special counsel witch hunt or Putin asset still at large — we can all agree that this is Trouble with a capital T and that . . . doesn’t stand for Trump.

It rhymes with D and that stands for Deep State.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

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ballot access insider corruption

Corruption, an Opportunity

Orange Man, Trump,

The president’s July 30 tweet reminded us he can still manipulate the news cycle.

“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”

Reactions ranged from dismissal to outrage — and assurances of no schedule change — but the most obvious thing about the tweet was the “made-you-look” aspect. By focusing on the rapid deployment of new-old technology (the mail-in ballots) to handle the public’s panic over the now–waning pandemic, Trump does several things at once: 

  • shows a danger posed by lockdowns and social distancing;
  • calls attention to an under-investigated phenomena, voter fraud and vote-count rigging; and
  • provides an excuse for his possible failure in November.

The Democrats think this latter is the biggest danger. But they’ve a funny way of raising the alarm, considering their recurrent expressions of fear that President Trump “wouldn’t step down” if defeated.*

Apparently, calling into question the election mechanisms of the states is considered ‘going too far’ — not because it isn’t worth being vigilant about, but because questioning election integrity might undermine regime legitimacy.

The bipartisan regime.

The Epoch Times’s article on the president’s tweet concludes this way: “Attorney General William Barr said last week that there is ‘no reason’ to believe any election rigging is afoot.”

Well, Trump himself provided the reason: it is an obvious opportunity. 

An opportunity that some unscrupulous partisans no doubt have little compunction about trying. Making the subject not worth discussing — a ‘third rail’ — actually makes election corruption more likely by removing some of the risk.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Hillary Clinton came out with this again, in July. This sort of thing does not help Democrats much, for it was they who, last time, could not accept defeat: antifa violence at the inauguration, followed by fake scandal-mongering and a failed impeachment made them look worse than their target.

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