Monthly Archives: June 2025

All Too Typical

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Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for New York City mayor and currently sitting City Comptroller says it’s remarkable that he was arrested by ICE agents, two of whom were themselves immigrants, for his obstruction of their arrest of an illegal alien and that he’s sad and angry over the arrest.

This is all too typical of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians: they profess to see no difference between immigrants, such as those two ICE agents, and the illegal alien whom those agents were arresting.

It’s also all too typical of Progressive-Democratic politicians that they think laws, especially laws about obstructing law enforcement personnel, don’t apply to them.

These are just two more examples of Party’s intrinsic disdain for those law and order that isn’t of their construction.

No Way

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President Donald Trump (R) says “Iranian officials” had offered to travel to the White House to negotiate amid ongoing missile exchanges with Israel.

Trump should not waste his staffers’ time on meetings with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s staffers. If there’s to be a meeting, it should be between Trump and Khamenei, face to face. It also should not occur in the White House or Camp David or Mar-a-Lago.

Maybe such a White House meeting could occur, if it took place in the kitchen, or in a back hallway. Maybe, instead, hold it in a ground floor room in one of the rebuilt World Trade Center buildings.

Disingenuous

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The press is at it again, this time on the subject of death estate taxes. In a WSJ article centered on the House-passed reconciliation bill and the parallel (on the subject of estate taxes) Senate Finance Committee-passed proposal, the news writer wrote

The estate tax cuts are a boon for the richest….

as she blithely parroted the talking-point criticism of the Leftist Samantha Jacoby, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities‘ Deputy Director of Federal Tax Policy:

They went out of their way to expand tax cuts for the wealthy on a permanent basis, but some new tax cuts for modest income people are temporary[.]

Both, beyond the bit about temporary tax cuts, are nakedly disingenuous.

A person’s estate is much more than just cash and stocks and bonds. Those estates include mom-and-pop businesses that have grown to modest levels of valuation, exceeding the current and expiring threshold of $14 million, the proposed threshold of $15 million, and especially the $7.14 million threshold that would resume were nothing done.

Those businesses’ values do not exist as money or as stocks and bonds that can easily be sold to raise the money with which to pay the tax bite. Those businesses, which are almost the entirety of a decedent’s estate, exist as operations with inventories, employees, sales prospects. And they would have to be sold by the decedent’s heirs in order to raise the cash necessary to pay the Federal government, utterly destroying that estate. That there are far more such mom-and-pops at risk than there are Evil Rich Folks who would benefit as a side effect of the proposed threshold increase is of no interest to the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.

These Big Government persons have defined what is Government’s due (rather than the people’s due), and they are demanding it. Never mind how many average American heirs would be hurt or ruined by the demand.

This Should Not Be

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Iran is saying that it’ll negotiate—”this time we really mean it”—if the US stays out of the Iran-Israeli war whose current stage is in progress.

In the midst of a ferocious Israeli air campaign, Tehran has told Arab officials it would be open to returning to the negotiating table as long as the US doesn’t join the attack, the officials said.

I’ll leave aside the mullah’s cynical non sequitur that our participation in the war or not is a negotiable matter.

The mullahs of the Iranian government have welched on every agreement they’ve made with us, with Israel, with the West in general. Their word is worthless. It would be worse than a waste of time to pause the fighting now in favor of more Iranian dissembling under the guise of negotiating. It would cost even more friendly lives as Iran stalls, recovers it ability to build nuclear weapons, and then delivers them.

Apart from that, in addition to it, the US should play a limited offensive role. Iran’s Fordow nuclear weapons plant is under a mountain. Israel does not have the bombs or the delivery systems needed to attack it beyond (temporarily) closing its entry/exit points and, if they can spot them, the air vents. The US has the Massive Ordnance Penetrators capable of getting down to and destroying the Fordow facility, and we have the delivery systems. It would only take 3-5 of these MOPs to destroy that facility. If it isn’t destroyed, Iran would be able to resume building its nuclear bombs after the current stage of its war on Israel is concluded regardless of any other damage the Israelis could inflict.

The US should deliver those MOPs.

For Whom Does He Work

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For whom do they work, come to that? “He” is Dr Marty Makary, the FDA Commissioner. “They” are the bureaucrats of the FDA.

[C]hanges are coming so swiftly, and often without input from career scientists, that Makary faces declining staff morale threatening to stymie his efforts. He must also contend with the administration’s staff cuts at the FDA….

Career scientists—that’s the press’ euphemism for entrenched bureaucrats who happen to have medical or science degrees.

Lowering employee morale, as opposed to bureaucrats’ morale, is an important problem. It is, however, most optimally solved by either or both of two items:

  1. the bureaucrats figure out that they’re not the ones in charge, they must work within an operational hierarchy and either follow the instructions of those placed above them or resign their positions
  2. the remaining bureaucrats and those newly hired, the latter whom lack the habits of entrenchment, get actually productive and do their jobs more efficiently, which can be facilitated by astute use of AI
  3. That last, of course, requires that Makary implements AI as a tool and not as a decision maker itself

Regarding the opening question, “he,” Makary, works for the HHS Secretary, who in turn works for the President, who works for us American citizens. Makary, thus, works through his chain of command for us average Americans and for our benefit, not that of those bureaucrats. Neither the FDA nor government at large are jobs welfare programs; the incumbents are there for our weal, not their own benefit.

I’m not too worried about the morale of entrenched bureaucrats. I’m concerned about their actual performance of their duties.