Monthly Archives: November 2023

So It Should Be with General Infrastructure

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The subheadline outlines part of the problem:

Companies often need to show progress to get government cash but struggle without it

In the body of the Wall Street Journal article at the link is this:

Some of the companies are in Catch-22 situations. Washington won’t issue them loans until they raise outside money and move ahead with projects.

It’s true enough that big, established companies are better able to game the situation. It’s also true that high interest rates—especially after an extended period of no- to low rates—and inflation have hurt, but these only emphasize my point in this post.

It isn’t just “clean” energy: the problem is both broader and more narrowly defined.

What needs to happen regarding Federal funds transfers needs to happen all across the infrastructure terrain, whether the transfers are to individual businesses or to States more generally. Contracts must be let and particular projects must have a minimum of six months of concrete, publicly measurable progress before any taxpayer money can be transferred to the individual business executing the project.

Regarding States in particular, any taxpayer money must be sent directly to the business carrying out the State-identified infrastructure project (and only after the business has satisfied the above criterion), and the State must have already transferred State taxpayer funds to the particular business. Finally, before any Federal taxpayer funds can flow, the business must have a minimum of six months of concrete, publicly measurable progress with the State’s taxpayer money before any Federal taxpayer money can flow to the business.

Sent directly to the business: it’s important, too, that Federal funds entirely bypass the State and go directly to the business in question. Even in honest circumstances, the State’s middlemen siphon off entirely too much of the Federal taxpayer’s money.

They’re Confessing Their Crimes

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They’re really quite blatant about it, too.

A ransomware gang claimed this past week that it broke into the systems of the fintech platform MeridianLink. The breach has been reported to regulators.
The company didn’t report it, as new rules will require them to do. The hackers did.

AlphV (or Black Cat, depending on who’s speaking for the gang) aren’t the only criminal hackers to do this sort of thing. Other hackers are joining in on telling the cops of their deeds, as a means of pressuring the victims to pay up. Or their security failures will be made public.

Aside from only cowards meekly surrender and functionally if not legally aiding and abetting the criminals by paying, and the situation is straightforwardly enough greatly mitigated by those companies getting serious about their IT security, a separate question exists.

These criminals have all confessed their crimes. Where are the regulators? Where is DoJ? Certainly, it’s hard to identify the members of these criminal organizations, but hard means possible. In the meantime, these crime syndicates can themselves be traced back and their accesses to the Internet hindered severely, if not outright blocked. And their identities publicly disclosed.

What’s He Doing with this Responsibility He’s Taking?

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In a video to staff, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg piously asserted that he “took responsibility” for the toxic workplace he has fostered and for his own toxic behavior.

As chairman, I am ultimately responsible for the actions of our agency, both good and bad. I bear responsibility for setting the tone for our culture. … I want to assure you that I’m committed to addressing these issues, including my own shortcomings[.]

Be still, my heart.

But what is Gruenberg actually doing with this responsibility he’s claimed to take? What measurable, concrete actions is he taking to correct those organizational and personal issues?

Gruenberg told lawmakers this week that the investigation and disciplinary process for complaints is typically handled by the legal division, and that the board is “generally kept out of that.”

He’s continuing to not do anything concrete about his toxicity; he’s only yapping. He’s deflecting concrete actions to the FDIC’s “legal division,” washing his hands of the matter. And he’s continuing to refuse to resign over his failures, which seem to me to be irretrievable.

Martin Gruenberg is doing exactly nothing with the responsibility he claims to be taking.

Pipe Dreams

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The Editors of The Wall Street Journal have laid out their view of how Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden Can Deter China with respect to the Republic of China. They pushed forward a series of actions that Biden could take vis-à-vis arming the RoC and rebuilding our own defense establishment. I’ll elide the extended time frame such actions would take to come to fruition, even were the Progressive-Democrats in Congress to allow those actions to move apace, without holding them hostage to their extremist projects.

No, the editors are acting from a false premise—that Biden actually could deter People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping.

On the contrary, Biden is incapable of deterring Xi, and Xi knows it. Biden already has allowed himself to be intimidated by Russian President-for-Life Vladimir Putin into not supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs at the rate it needs them in order actually to defeat the barbarian. Biden is supplying the materiel only at a rate to keep Ukraine fighting and bleeding—and thereby letting the barbarian win through attrition.

Biden already has allowed the mullahs of Iran to intimidate him into not materially responding to Iranian/proxy repeated attacks on US forces in the Middle East beyond taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant buildings.

Biden already has allowed his own Executive Branch staffers to intimidate him into pressuring Israel to accede to a ceasefire, knowing full well that the sole beneficiary of such a thing would be the terrorists seeking to exterminate Israel.

When Xi invades the Republic of China, Biden will already have been intimidated into doing nothing more than taking a couple of for-show potshots at a couple of unimportant PRC buildings, and then meekly accepting the destruction of the RoC.

Best we can hope for is that Xi won’t move for a couple more years and that we get a President with more self-respect, more love of the US, more respect for our friends and allies. And more courage.

“The conflict erupted in the wake…”

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The Just the News subheadline continued:

…of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

The subheadline is no accident, either. JtN repeated the distortion in the second paragraph:

The conflict erupted in the wake of an October 7 Hamas raid on Israeli territory that saw its forces seize roughly 200 hostages and kill about 1,200 civilians.

Distortion: the conflict erupted when that terrorist gang broke into Israel and butchered those 1,200 men, women—many of whom were raped first—and children—many of whom were babies whose heads were hacked off—with many from each of those categories tortured on the way to their deaths, and kidnapped those additional 200 victims. Butchered victims that JtN so saccharinely euphemizes as “civilians,” with no clarification regarding who those terrorism victims were. “Hostages” that JtN so cynically lists separately rather than including them in the count, as though they aren’t, as a group, “civilians,” though some few of them were soldiers.

This is disgusting, and JtN should know better. The article itself centered on Vermont Progressive-Democratic Party Congresswoman Becca Balint’s coming out in favor of an Israeli-Hamas ceasefire. Her foolishness, though, is beside the point of this post.