Monthly Archives: December 2024

Sulk on the Sidelines

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Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) has decided to take her marbles and go home in a snit. Not literally, she’ll remain, formally, a Republican, but

she won’t sit on committees or caucus with the House Republican Conference for the time being and will instead focus on working with the new “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency” caucus on cutting spending.

She says, in so many words,

I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing[.]
I do not need to be involved in circuses.

She’s not far wrong about the circus aspect, especially with the ego-driven Chaos Caucus continuing its knee-jerk obstructionism. Quitting the game, though, instead of staying in it, doing her best to reduce, if not eliminate, the circus aspect, is the move of a coward.

Pushing the DOGE spending cuts—whatever they are; so far, all we have is news outlet claims—all by her august self is a move borne of self-important arrogance. Demanding things be done her way or she’ll go sulk in her room is not the definition of leadership governing; it’s just more personal aggrandizement.

She doesn’t want to be just one voice in the cacophony. However, with her ducking out, she’s left the serious caucus with one less voice for functional governance.

Spartz is betraying her constituents.

She’s also contributing to Progressive-Democratic Party continued control of the House, given the Republican Party’s miniscule majority, and the Chaos Caucus’ preference for that over compromise with their fellow Republicans. That’s another betrayals of her constituents.

Misaimed Suit

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Recall, in the late runup to the Presidential election last month, the Des Moines Register published a poll by the once-respected pollster Ann Selzer that had Progressive-Democrat Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three percentage points, which represented a significant swing from a month prior poll that had Trump leading by a significant margin. Selzer’s early November poll was a definite outlier; all of the other polls of the time had Trump leading by a little.

Now President-elect Donald Trump (R) is thinking about suing the Register and Selzer for election interference in publishing that poll. This time, I side with the news outlet. The Register only published the poll. If there was election interference being attempted, it would have been by Selzer through her poll. Selzer is the only one who should be the target of any sort of election interference beef here.

Legalized Extortion

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Elon Musk says he’s been ordered/threatened/whathaveyou to “settle” an SEC beef, or else. The SEC’s capo, Gary Gensler, has told Musk he must agree within 48 hours to either accept a monetary payment or face charges on numerous counts.

This is the Federal government, which has no authority to do so, requiring a settlement be agreed. This is more than just an effort to stampede a defendant so an arm of government can avoid the embarrassment of taking a weak case to court and getting a public failure and a potful of opprobrium when it loses.

This is that arm of government demanding the defendant pay the vig or suffer damage to, if not destruction of, his business. Crime syndicate capi do that. It’s behavior that doesn’t belong in the government of a free people.

Gensler should face far sterner sanction than just loss of his job.

It Takes This Long?

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Our Federal government is just now (as I write on Sunday) starting to thinking about deploying a high-tech drone detection system to New York State.

…federal officials are finally preparing to deploy a high-tech drone detection system to New York State.
The drones that comprise the detection system will ostensibly help both state and local law enforcement figure out what has been going on over the past month or so….

Preparing to deploy. This, after weeks of National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby and Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh insulting our intelligence by feeding us utter BS about nothing to be seen here, we don’t know what these things are (maybe commercial aircraft!), but they’re not dangerous.

Sadly, dangerously, this long delay in getting around to deploying even the beginnings of a response isn’t only due to the incompetence of the Biden administration. It’s also from the shameful timidity of the Biden administration in its desperation to avoid even the appearance of offending one or another of our enemies, even before we know who the perpetrator is.

But—and this is the dangerous part—more than either of the above, this delay is from the glacially slow decision-making capability of the Pentagon bureaucracy that has supplanted the decision-making of serious, operational senior officers who are practiced in deciding and acting in fluid environments.

That last, far more important than any wasteful spending cuts (important as those are in their own right) must be the first and primary target of any reform moves, whether from DOGE or from in-government reformers. That bureaucracy, no matter how well intended, must be ripped out root and branch and surrounding dirt, and wholly replaced by those operational officers, men and women who’ve grown up in the combat and combat support branches.

So Long

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And no thanks for the memories.

Many government bureaucrats are leaving their jobs even before the Trump administration gets sworn in next month.

Government bureaucrats are abandoning ship ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, anticipating either their termination or an intolerable upending of the status quo at their agencies.

Not merely leaving in consonance with the change of administration, but bailing out? Well, there is that bit about their Know Better agendas being deleted.

Some key government officials, including those whose posts are not necessarily tied to political appointments, have taken it upon themselves to exit government service in light of the initiative and Trump’s return.

For instance:

  • Christopher Wray is quitting as FBI director
  • FAA chief Michael Whitaker—even though he had widespread support and didn’t seem in line to be replaced before his term was up
  • Gary Gensler is quitting as SEC Chairman

Buh-bye, luv ya, mean it.