Monthly Archives: July 2021

It’d Be All Right

Posted on by
Reply

The USPS is planning on raising their first class mail rates to 58¢ from the current 55¢ and raising the rates on their other mail classes by 6.8%-8.8%.

This is another example of price-fixing by the Federal government. Maybe the increases are legitimate, maybe they’re not. But we can’t tell because market forces aren’t at work here, only government bureaucrats’ impressions are at work.

It’d be all right if we privatized all of mail delivery. Let a free, competitive market determine prices. Recognize the ubiquitousness of email, texting, Skype, Zoom, etc, etc, etc as competing communications techniques, and let a privatized snail mail system compete in that same free market.

It’s doable; our Constitution only says that

The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

It doesn’t require Congress actually establish Post Offices, much less have the Federal government run them. The establishment (and operation) are easily done by letting free enterprise do them.

All it takes is the political will to do so.

Fascism in Action

Posted on by
Reply

The People’s Republic of China has given its instructions to two of its largest and most prosperous private companies, Ant and Tencent.

China is calling on private-sector pioneers Ant Group Co and Tencent Holdings Ltd to help it develop a state-backed digital currency that threatens the pair’s highly popular payment networks.

Private companies will be allowed to prosper and grow to their owners’ hearts content—so long as they produce what Government instructs them to produce.

Such government control of the means of production by controlling what is produced is at the core of the fascism variant of socialism.

It Doesn’t Get Any Clearer

Posted on by
Reply

The dishonesty of the journalism guild, that is.

Journalism professors at UNC Chapel Hill are protesting a “core values” statement that upholds objectivity as a key tenet of news reporting.

That statement says, in part,

The core values statement, installed two years ago, touts objectivity, impartiality, integrity and truth-seeking….

That business about objectivity and impartiality was scrapped after the journalist “professors” at the school objected. Because, journalists are naturally biased and opinionated (as are we all), and these worthies claim, it would be dishonest for journalists to disguise their biases as well as futile to try. Never mind that opinions could be written on the opinion pages, and even journalists are capable of being objective when they’re writing news articles, which are supposed to be factual.

They just don’t want to be objective or impartial in their…reporting. They want to take sides, they want to push their personal narratives, they want to represent those views as facts. What they insist on reporting are their biases, not the facts of events.

Sadly, though, this is simply an example of how far from Caesar’s wife are journalists and their guild.

Hypocrisy

Posted on by
Reply

Senator Mark Warner (D, VA) claims he now regrets his Progressive-Democratic Party’s push to change the rules governing the Senate’s filibuster.

I would wish we wouldn’t even have started this a decade ago. When the Democratic leaders actually changed the rules, I don’t think we would have the Supreme Court we did if we still had a 60-vote margin on the filibuster, but we are where we are[.]

Maybe never mind, though, since he has his fingers crossed behind his back on that.

But I do believe when it comes to voting rights…if we have to do a small carve out on filibuster for voting rights—that is the only area where I’d allow that kind of reform.

This is the Progressive-Democrat, unwilling to change the filibuster except when a change would be convenient for his personal pet projects.

“Hold the Floor”

Posted on by
Reply

President Joe Biden (D) is pretending he doesn’t want to get rid of the filibuster.

There’s no reason to protect it, other than you’re going to throw the entire Congress into chaos and nothing will get done. Nothing at all will get done. There’s a lot at stake. The most important one is the right to vote, that’s the single most important one.

So far, so good.

But. Because there’s always a but.

Biden referenced former Senator Strom Thurmond (D at the time) of South Carolina, who once conducted a 24-hour filibuster in a failed bid to halt passage of civil rights legislation in 1957.

And then he gave his game away with this:

The president reiterated his stance that lawmakers should be required to “hold the floor,” or deliver continued remarks in the Senate chamber, in order to maintain a filibuster.

What happened after Thurmond’s “hold the floor” filibuster? A straight party-line, strictly partisan vote on that bill. Just as would have been done were the filibuster abolished outright, only with a few hours’ delay.

The point of a cloture vote of 60 or more Senators agreeing to bring a bill to the floor for debate—even strictly partisan debate—is to force a measure of bipartisanship to legislation, even if it’s only a matter of some Senators from the minority party agreeing enough with the bill to debate it.

Requiring “holding the floor,” requiring Senators to speak to exhaustion, as the means of filibustering is no filibuster at all. It only delays the strictly partisan, party line, vote for some hours.

An honest Senate, a truly deliberative body, will keep the cloture vote filibuster.