What you are saying falls right in line with my theory about Jagger.

My theory (so far not disproved by the evidence I have seen) is that Jagger appears to be primarily about link validity and the weight Google places on them, if not entirely about that.

Government and Educational sites, as authorities, have longer lasting and more natural links from places with steady page rank of their own.

The only completely uniform fact I have found so far that I can attribute to Jagger is that the number of IBLs that Google says it knows about has dropped at least 20% per client across the board since the update (counting them the same way I did before the update). Especially for any clients who were part of any organized linking systems (AKA paid programs).

I think Google must have started discounting about 20% or more of the links out there, anything it now considers dubious. Just a guess. I suspect that we won't really know for sure until Jagger is fully finished unveiling.

But the cogs in this head are spinning and have developed my theory on why Jagger is doing what it's doing. Still too early to tell, though.