Monthly Archives: May 2019

An All Too Common View

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In a Wall Street Journal article reporting on President Donald Trump, some of his family members, and his businesses suing a couple of banks to block Congressional subpoenas for 10 years worth of business records, a commenter in the comment thread had this to say:

The lawsuits by POTUS, et al., are an admission of domestic tax and business fraud.

This is a broadly held view by folks on the Left.  Objections of innocence are admissions of guilt.  Attempts to protect proprietary materials from prying eyes are admissions of guilt.  Attempts to protect privacy are admissions of guilt.

After all, goes their…logic…if someone hasn’t done anything wrong, if there’s nothing to hide, that person shouldn’t object to Government rummaging through his stuff.  Privacy, proprietary-ness—these aren’t things to be kept private or proprietary.  Let Government have a peek.

More dangerous than that severe danger, because it’s both more insidious and has broad-ranging implications, is the concept that if a Government issues a subpoena, it must be obeyed forthwith; it’s wrong to challenge it.  If that becomes the case, though, then the subpoena process will be reduced to a formality: everything in a man’s, or a business’, life will become free for the formal demanding by an unchallengeable Government.

That failure easily extends to the 4th Amendment: warrants will issue as easily as ever, but they cannot be challenged, either, even after the fact.  To do so would be another admission of guilt; after all, if the person or business has nothing to hide, then Government should be allowed to rifle through persons, houses, papers, and effects, only satisfying the formality of a claim of probable cause—which claim also must be beyond question.

Fueling the Housing “Crisis”

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California’s Progressive-Democrats are at it again; although, this time they’re not active only in California.  Now they’re looking to

expand subsidies to middle-class families—some with six-figure incomes

under the pretense of “helping” folks afford housing in this manufactured crisis of housing.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed funding housing for families whose income normally wouldn’t qualify them for assistance programs. Last month, his administration set aside $200 million for middle-class families in a $750 million package meant to combat the state’s housing crisis.
DC Mayor Muriel E Bowser has proposed a $20 million workforce fund to help families earning up to $141,000.

Boston and Philadelphia city governments are pushing the same sort of nonsense for the same sort of reason.

Aside from money spent on this pandering is money not spent on serious problems, these moves will only make the problem worse. The moves only increase demand for a not very flexible or easily expanded supply—and so supports, and increases, price, and so exacerbating the problem.

The way to address housing costs for the residents of a city—and the citizens of States like California—is to get the governments out of the way.  That means reduce duplicative regulations associated with housing and housing construction and eliminating regulations that exist solely for the benefit of unions and other special interests.  It means reducing zoning limits that drive up the cost of building and of living in a neighborhood.

Banning Workers’ Freedom

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That’s what two Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates want to do.  Here’s Kamala Harris, who’s doubling as a California Senator:

The barriers to organized labor being able to organize and strike are something that have grown over a period of time[.] … It has to be about, for example, banning right-to-work laws[.]

Here’s Social Democrat Bernie Sanders, doubling as an Independent Senator from Vermont while, once again, masquerading himself as a Progressive-Democratic Party member for this campaign, calling for:

a federal ban on so-called right-to-work laws in a Monday [1 Apr] speech.
Speaking to the International Association of Machinists at the union’s conference in Las Vegas, Sanders said as president he would push legislation in Congress to prohibit the laws.

And

…the trade union movement must be in the middle of all of those discussions.

Aside from blatant attacks on all workers’ 1st Amendment right of freedom of assembly, these are obvious and petty attempts at pandering for the votes of blue collar workers.

The attempts also are dishonest in their cynically deliberate distortions of the situation.  Right to work laws guarantee workers’ right to work without paying dues to unions to which they do not belong and their right to work without being forced against their will to join unions.

Those right-to-work laws do not bar workers from joining unions; on the contrary, they explicitly allow them to—that 1st Amendment bit, again.  Instead, the laws simply enable workers to support their families without having to join a union as a precondition for doing so.

Oh, and it’s all about the Benjamins, too.  Unions fund the political campaigns—and other expenses—of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.  Those forced dues that freed workers no longer have to pay were a significant fraction of the funds used to pay those politicians; and those politicians are desperate to recover the money.

Why Biden Can’t Apologize to Hill

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In 1998, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden told then-Senator Arlen Specter (D, PA), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee which Biden chaired during Justice Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings, what he, Biden, thought of Anita Hill’s testimony:

It was clear to me from the way she was answering the questions, she was lying.

Then he called Hill and “apologized” for the way she was treated—but carefully not for his part in that supposed mistreatment.

Then, a few days ago, he said this on The View:

Not only didn’t I vote for Clarence Thomas, I believed her [Anita Hill] from the beginning.

Those two statements are too diametrically opposed and too carefully stated for there to be any alternative interpretations—they can’t both be true.  One of them is false, and under the care with which both statements were formed, that one must be a lie.

Hill couldn’t believe Biden’s apology were he to offer one.  And neither could anyone else.