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First Amendment rights insider corruption national politics & policies

Worse Than Hypocrisy

“You shouldn’t accept any money from a Super PAC,” former Vice-President Joe Biden claims he advised his presidential rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, “because [if you do] people can’t possibly trust you.”

Now it must be impossible to trust Mr. Biden.

“Joe Biden is apparently dropping his long-held opposition to the creation of an outside group,” the media tepidly informed last week, “that would supply an infusion of money to benefit his campaign.”

That is: the dreaded Super PAC.

In his 2017 book, Biden claimed he would not have accepted such “outside” support had he entered the 2016 contest — even though he “knew there was big money out there for me.” 

Why not? “[I]n a system awash with money,” the former VEEP wrote, “the middle class didn’t have a fighting chance.” 

What changed? Now this drowsy Democrat actually needs campaign cash! 

“Biden has struggled to raise money, and last week, his campaign reported having $9 million on hand,” reports The Washington Post, “roughly a third as much as some of his top Democratic rivals.”

Necessity is the catalyst of hypocrisy?

“As president, Joe Biden will push to remove private money from our federal elections,” his campaign explained. “He will advocate for a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and end the era of unbridled spending by Super PACs.”

Your private money and mine has as much right to engage in federal elections as Mr. Biden does. And I’ve warned  many times about the free-speech repealing amendment the doddering Democrat frontrunner is pushing.

There may be worse things than hypocrisy, but there are few things worse than opposing First Amendment rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies term limits

Cool Car and Hot Coffee for President Cool

The President of the United States claims to be very popular with “the zero to eight demographic.” The kids like his name, which they say in an unbroken string of syllables: Barackobama.

Politics is a lot like football.

Teddy Roosevelt was the coolest president . . . until Barackobama.

All this, and more, we learn from the latest episode of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Jerry Seinfeld’s online interview show, in which Jerry drives a comedian to a coffee shop for a video-recorded chat.

In the recent Barack Obama episode, the comedian and the Commander in Chief drive inside the confines of the White House fences in a nice silver blue 1963 Corvette Stingray . . . and then go for a coffee inside the White House. Seinfeld’s excuse for this special episode is that the Prez has gotten off just enough funny lines to qualify.

Some of us wonder whether Mr. Obama could be planning an entertainment career after being ejected from office by the normal workings of presidential term limits. As this and other one-on-one interviews have shown, he gives great repartee.

But back to term limits. Aside from the football comment, Seinfeld’s chat did indeed yield a few substantive ideas. Such as:

JS: How many world leaders are completely out of their minds?

BO: A pretty sizable percentage.

And Obama knows why: “The longer they stay in office, the more likely [going bonkers] is to happen.”

“At a certain point,” Obama explains, “your feet hurt, your have trouble peein’, you have absolute power. . . .”

Good thing we have term limits!

Here’s to a future episode of Former Presidents in Limos Getting Lattes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Common Sense government transparency national politics & policies

What a Day for an Insult

Much of politics is timing. When you release information is key.

One favorite “statesman” trick is to bury unflattering information by “releasing” it on a Friday, right before the weekend.

This gives politicians a respite. Surely world events will have spewed up some worse (that is, more interesting!) story over the weekend, so on Monday, when journalism and its followers are back into the work week, coverage will be distracted and lessened.

I guess that’s why the White House waited till last Friday to explain it was officially removing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from the burdens on its Office of Administration.

Barack Obama, when he was running for office, proclaimed that his administration would be “the most transparent in history.” But he’s been following President Bush in keeping the administrative side of the White House as opaque as possible.

White House flunkies say this “cleanup” of FOIA regulations is “consistent with court rulings that hold that the office is not subject to the transparency law.”

Accept that, arguendo, and it still looks bad for the “most transparent” prez of all. He didn’t have to do this. He just wanted to.

Adding insult to injury, as noted by Gregory Korte in USA Today, “the timing of the move raised eyebrows among transparency advocates, coming on National Freedom of Information Day.”

This all relates to the current Hillary email scandal, too. It just so happens that the White House office now unencumbered by FOIA requirements is in charge of filing . . . old emails.

Coincidence?

Perhaps that’s why they risked announcing this on Freedom of Information Day. The irony was lost over the weekend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Accountability folly ideological culture too much government

Pot, Kettle; Obama, Putin

President Calvin Coolidge looks more like a sage every day. Confucius would’ve been proud of Silent Cal. Today’s top politicians might take a cue from the man: When you don’t have much to say, say nothing.

President Barack Obama, whose popularity in America up until recently rested, in part, on his sounding more intelligent than his predecessor in office, had the reckless temerity — the audacity of dope, perhaps — to float the notion, in an interview the other day, that Russia’s top banana Vladimir Putin had made a “strategic mistake” by annexing Crimea, and said the latter-day Tsar was “not so smart”:

Those thinking his Russian counterpart was a “genius” had been proven wrong by Russia’s economic crisis, he said.

For my part, I hope that a collapsed economy in Russia is the least we have to fear. The story isn’t over, and I wouldn’t be gloating over a half-hatched batch of eggs just yet.

Which brings to mind the title cliché: pot and kettle, each calling the other black. Here we have a world leader with a horrible economic track record, in addition to a chaotic diplomatic strategy, calling his chief competitor for public adoration (yes, Putin’s acolytes are just as besotted as Obama’s) something of a fool.

Well, the man so involved with a disaster to have it named after him, Obamacare, and who hailed extravagant “stimulus” as a cure for a depression that still lingers — reminding us again of the longest Depression, the Great, and the wrong-headed policies of Hoover and FDR — should know when to keep mum.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies

Aeschylation

“In war,” the Greek dramatist Aeschylus told us, “truth is the first casualty.”

This came to mind when Secretary of State John Kerry testified in the Senate last week.

The new Iraq War has been pitched exhaustively to the American people as “only air strikes” and “absolutely no boots on the ground” — even as the Obama Administration continues to send additional U.S. military advisors to place their boots on Iraqi sand (and, at least once thus far, to engage ISIS directly via Apache attack helicopters hovering above Iraqi ground.)

Kerry again assured senators that the president “has been crystal clear that his policy is that U.S. military forces will not be deployed to conduct ground combat operations against ISIL.”

Strangely, however, the Secretary most adamantly urged Senators not to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that would restrict President O from doing precisely what he has so often and emphatically pledged not to do: put combat boots on the ground in Iraq.

The fact that the Obama Administration has foreclosed any possibility of putting US troops on the ground to fight, according to Sec. Kerry, “doesn’t mean that we should preemptively bind the hands of the commander in chief or our commanders in the field in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.”

Impossible to foresee? Yeah, right. The “no boots” promise provides all the stability of leaves in the wind.

Having any trust in this administration is impossible to foresee.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment Tenth Amendment federalism

Keep Your Money

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

So says Michigan State Representative Tom McMillin to President Barack Obama.

In response to the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and its aftermath, and then the non-indictment of the officer involved, and its aftermath, President Obama requested that Congress fund a new $263 million Justice Department spending package. Part of the spending, a total of $75 million, would put federal dollars toward outfitting 50,000 local policemen with body cameras.

Rep. Tom McMillin, a Rochester Hills Republican, has introduced House Bill 5970 to require all gun-toting state and local police in Michigan to wear body cameras. The legislation would mandate that video footage be destroyed within weeks except in cases where police use force, make an arrest, a complaint is filed or a request is made by a citizen.

McMillin thanks Obama for supporting the idea of body cameras, but the state rep argues that “providing body cameras to state and local police officers in Michigan isn’t a proper role of the federal government,” adding: “We could figure out how to pay for it here in Michigan.”

“Frankly, the feds have put me and my kids in enough debt,” he says, “I wouldn’t want them adding to it.”

Great point. Plus, the federal government really doesn’t have to pay for every single thing that happens in this world.

I’ve advocated the cameras, calling them “justice vision.” Where tried, the video system has served to protect citizens and police and improve public confidence.

But doing the right thing in our hometowns doesn’t require a Washington bribe.

That’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.