Monthly Archives: September 2017

State’s Obligations

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These are the flip side of the 10th Amendment States Rights mantra that State government personnel are starting to tout.  And that makes State governors’ and legislators’ objections to the Trump administration’s moves to clip the intrusive wings regarding investment advice to retail investors and who should be permitted/required to give it a bit ridiculous.

[T]he Obama Labor Department’s fiduciary rule requires brokers to act in the best interests of retirement savers rather than sell products that are merely suitable and potentially more lucrative for the brokers.

Never mind that this would tacitly limit a retail investor’s investment options, limiting him to too-conservative alternatives, and price many out of the investment advice market.  Big Brother knows better.

Individual States are fully capable of enacting their own fiduciary rules, as Nevada and Connecticut have done, for better or worse for their citizens, and as New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California are considering doing, as is their right, and obligation to the extent they seriously see such a thing as a public good and not just a shower look good, under the 10th Amendment.

I think such overregulation is idiotic, as well as insulting to American citizens.  We don’t need Government looking over our shoulder or telling us what to do and not to do in every aspect of our lives.  But let’s find out.

Patchwork regulation if the States are left to their own devices?  So what?  Let the 50 laboratories of democracy try out their various ideas.  We Americans can vote with our dollars as well as our feet regarding which experiments work and which don’t.

Barbara Lee Wants Her Obamaphone

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Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D, CA) thinks it’s cold blooded to view an economy in terms of dollars and sense.  In particular, she thinks President Donald Trump is “heartless” for taking that perspective on an economic question.

When it comes to federal spending, one thing has become clear over the past month. Republicans and this heartless president, they think about budgets in terms of dollar signs and decimal points, but as I’ve said over and over again, budgets are moral documents. They put on paper the principles and the priorities of the nation[.]

No, what’s heartless is spending money we don’t have until we’re so broke as a nation we can’t help anyone.  The first ones to help cannot be government, anyway; no matter how hard government personnel try, no matter how good the intentions of government personnel, they can only be second onto the scene, sometimes tragically late.  The non-government, citizen response to Harvey and Irma demonstrate that to all willing to see.

No, what’s immoral is a government mandate to give “assistance” to Government-favored groups and to do so in Government-mandated ways.  There is no more moral economic system than a capitalist, free market system, where each party to an economic arrangement, because it’s a voluntary arrangement, comes away better off than he was before the agreement.

And this from Lee:

Regardless of who you are, no child should go hungry at night. These devastating cuts are just the tip of the iceberg.

Indeed, no child should grow hungry at night.  And in a free market economy, unburdened by excessive Government regulation, unburdened by excessive Government spending-driven crowding out, and so prosperous economy, there would be far fewer hungry children to begin with.  And by “heartlessly” cutting out the $200 billion worth of fraud, waste, and abuse from Government’s plethora of duplicative food and other “welfare” programs, those $200 billion would be available for spending on a variety of truly useful programs—like those much fewer hungry children, like hands up (not hand outs) to folks who need a hand up and don’t want the trap of hand outs.

No—Lee just wants her Obamaphone, because manna from Leftist heaven.

And this, from House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D, MD):

Although we are in the minority, let me remind you of what I said at the beginning, the Republicans have not passed a fiscal bill, a continuing resolution, an appropriations CR or omnibus without significant Democratic votes and, in some instances, not in every instance, with the majority of votes being cast for that bill being Democrat votes.  So we have a lot of leverage…and we intend to use it.

Here is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s promise of continued obstructionism.  So much for any useful outcome of the deal President Donald Trump struck with the Progressive-Democrats.

But, But….

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Cops act out of ignorance, a famous man said.

No, they don’t.  They act out of honor and integrity, especially when the chips are down.  Or the storm is up.  Follow the link in the quoted paragraphs.

Dramatic footage shows a Florida sheriff’s deputy saving an American flag that was being battered in Hurricane Irma’s powerful winds.

The video, which was posted to the Martin County Sheriff’s Office, shows Lt. Danny Cunningham running from his car into strong winds and rain to retrieve the beaten flag from a pole.

“I couldn’t watch it get blown apart,” Cunningham reportedly said.

And this bit by an Aransas Pass cop during Harvey.

Progressive-Democrat Bigotry

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Senator Diane Feinstein (D, CA) during her inquisition of Judge Amy Barrett, who was appearing before the Senate Judicial Committee pursuant to her nomination to the 7th Circuit:

Why is it that so many of us on this side have this very uncomfortable feeling that—you know, dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. The law is totally different. And I think in your case, professor, when you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country.

Feinstein is projecting.  What Barrett has said in those speeches is that where the Constitution or statute would require a judge to go against his religious beliefs, that judge must recuse himself.  There’s no conflict here.

Senator Dick Durbin (D, IL):

Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?

Or possibly, Congressman Dick Durbin in a bygone era: Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?

Senator Al Franken (D, MN) accused Barrett of belonging to a hate group.  The group in question was the Alliance Defending Freedom, an organization that supports [ahem] religious freedom and on which ground that paragon of Leftist virtue, the Southern Poverty Law Center, labeled it a hate group.  And Franken took the SPLC seriously.

With this hearing, not only have Progressive-Democrats exposed their religious bigotry, they’ve exposed their disdain for the Constitution.  Here’s Article VI on religion:

…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Which, of course, Progressive-Democrats in the Senate—every single one of them—know full well.

A Misconception

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The Wall Street Journal wrote an op-ed about Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’ speech at George Mason University regarding her intent to withdraw the Obama administration’s infamous Dear Colleague Letter that threatened the due process rights of students accused of sexual assault.  In it, though, the WSJ included a misconception.

The Obama Education Department’s response was to circumvent Congress and neglect normal executive-branch rule-making procedures mandated in the Administrative Procedure Act, such as soliciting public comment. Instead, it simply jammed the policy through by sending out a “Dear Colleague” letter, including an explicit threat that noncomplying schools could lose federal funding.

It takes two to tango.

The op-ed implied that the university/college recipients of the Letter were somehow bound by it.  This is not true: the Letter was not, and could not be, binding in any way shape or form exactly because the procedure for promulgating it by-passed statutory requirements: the Letter was no more than that, and certainly not a regulation implementing a statute.

The folks sitting in the management chairs at those universities and colleges knew this full well at the time, and they know it today.  The Letter gained force only from the cowardice of those folks sitting in those chairs.  They had only to push back and to refuse to comply with the urgings of the Letter.

Even the threat to withhold funds could never have effect since it was, and is, an entirely unenforceable claim, coming as it does as part of a non-binding Letter that could only urge an action.  The threat, inconvenient as it might have been to resist, had and has only the effectivity of a bully’s threat given it by a coward’s surrender to that bully.

It takes two to tango.  But it only takes one to duck and cover.