Category Archives: ethics

Harris’ Position on Israel

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was asked in a Sunday 60 Minutes interview whether the US has any “sway” over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the war against Hamas continues. The show’s host asked about Netanyahu not listening to Harris’ and Biden’s administration demands.

Harris’ answer, in part:

Now the work we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles, which include the need for humanitarian aid, the need for this war to end, the need for a deal to be done which would release the hostages and create a cease-fire. And we’re not going to stop in terms of putting that pressure on Israel and in the region, including Arab leaders.

Except for a couple of things: the Biden-Harris administration (or the Harris-Biden administration, as Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden occasionally puts it) has put no pressure at all on the Arab terrorist entities Hamas and Hezbollah, and they’ve wholly ignored non-Arab Iran, except in one way noted below. The Biden-Harris administration has put tremendous pressure on Israel—Netanyahu—to agree a cease-fire.

Another thing is that a cease-fire would benefit only the terrorists by giving them time to reconstitute, refit, rearm, and attack again, while giving Israel no respite at all, and yielding only minimal—at best—kidnap release.

Aside from that, keep in mind that Kamala Harris is a very intelligent, very committed woman and would make a wonderful President, according to her Progressive-Democratic Party compatriots. That makes her seeming word salad response not empty-calorie rhetoric at all but a deliberate obfuscation of her disdain for Israel and her sub rosa support for terrorist Hamas and Hezbollah, and it puts her in league with Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s overt protection of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

ILA Featherbedding

Posted on by
Reply

Railroad unions are pikers here.

[T]here were 50,000 or so ILA strikers but only 25,000 or so port jobs. That’s right, only about half of the union’s members are obliged to show up to work each day. The rest sit at home collecting “container royalties” negotiated in previous ILA contracts intended to protect against job losses that result from innovation.

This ILA monopoly abuse is aided and abetted by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden. Biden, far from invoking Taft-Hartley, which he doesn’t believe in, openly made his own extortionate threats against management:

President Biden had threatened the United States Maritime Alliance (USMX) with legal action this week if it didn’t give in further to union demands. “My Administration will be monitoring for any price gouging activity that benefits foreign ocean carriers, including those on the USMX board,” he said in a statement. This was a direct threat to Maersk and other ocean carriers if they added a surcharge because of the disruptions from the ILA strike.

Keep in mind, too, that this was just for the precondition the ILA demanded in order for the union to agree to negotiate at all. The union will be back with its still-open strike threat on 15 January. And to hell with the rest of us Americans:

Mr Daggett [the ILA MFWIC] was happy to put countless truck drivers, warehouse employees, retail clerks, and auto workers out of work so he and his “connected” members can buy another yacht.

This is what a Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Federal government will do to all of our economy and to us American citizens’ right to work and to choose for ourselves whether to join a union or not—and to keep all of our paycheck if we choose to not join a union.

“I Don’t Believe in Taft-Hartley”

Posted on by
Reply

Those were Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s words when a reporter asked him if he’d intervene in the now in progress International Longshoremen’s Association strike against East and Gulf Coast ports.

Q    Mr. President, will you intervene in the dockworkers strike if they go on strike on Tuesday?
THE PRESIDENT:  No.
Q    Why not?
THE PRESIDENT:  Because there’s collective bargaining, and I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley.

Taft-Hartley authorizes a President to intervene in strikes that create a national emergency—such as, for instance, a strike that shuts down all of our ports on the East and Gulf Coasts, a strike that thereby cuts imports of food, vehicles, heavy machinery, construction materials, [and] chemicals as well as cutting off critical supply chain imports needed for those and for other products all across our economy, which is still in a fragile state, for all the headline numbers. The strike also cuts off all our exports to trading partners, friends, and allies that would leave from those ports. Those exports include products like oil and LNG destined for Europe, whose economies are in a fragile state from the reduced energy availability due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

This is Biden is proclaiming his disdain for a law he’s sworn to enforce. That disdain is consistent with his disdain for immigration and border control laws and, by extension, for our laws in general.

This is the Party that wants to reign over us for the next four, and more, years.

There Is a Solution

Posted on by
Reply

Department of Education Miguel Cardona continues to interfere with—to obstruct—House investigations. This time, he’s interfering with subpoenas the House’s Committee on Education & the Workforce has sent to five separate student loan servicers (Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority; Nelnet Servicing, LLC; Maximus dba Aidvantage; Edfinancial Services; and Central Research, Inc) to compel their testimony regarding…student loans. Cardona is trying to block their appearance under the risible fiction that his Department has legal authority to review and approve materials before they are sent to the committee, including documents sent by the servicers and held by DoEd personnel.

There is a solution to this, and I’ve written about it before.

The House can use the Jurney v MacCracken case to arrest Miguel Cardona; his Department legal counsel, Lisa Brown; and her unnamed Department contract officer and haul them before the relevant House committees to testify under oath regarding their obstruction. Applying Jurney to sitting government officials may be a stretch, though.

On the other hand, Jurney is directly applicable to those five student loan servicers, and that would emphasize the criminal nature of Cardona’s obstruction as well as force the servicer personages to testify regardless of Cardona’s obstruction.

There are statutes barring obstruction of Congressional investigations by individuals, including government officials. There also are contempt of Congress statutes, applicable even to government officials. Unfortunately, they depend on enforcement by the Biden-Garland DoJ, and that’s entirely too questionable.

Jurney, however, would allow to House to skip over Garland’s lack of performance, to ignore his DoJ altogether: under that Supreme Court ruling (in a Senae case, but it would apply to both houses of Congress), the Speaker can send the Sergeant at Arms and sufficient Capital Police to go get the managers of the five loan servicers, under arrest if necessary, and detain them in House facilities until they’ve testified, and produced originals of the documents currently held up by Cardona’s DoEd.

On Whose Side…

Posted on by
Reply

…is the Biden/Blinken State Department?

Mistakes happen, even egregious ones, even with matters of security. This one, though, should get some folks fired, for cause, and charges brought for the breach [emphasis added].

The independent watchdog for the State Department says the agency deviated from standard policy in the security clearance suspension of Biden Iran envoy Robert Malley, permitted the advisor access to classified meetings, and allowed him to continue work on sensitive issues while he was under investigation.

How does that work, exactly? This is, however it works, sadly typical of the lackadaisical attitude toward national security across a broad range of security milieus held by this Biden-Harris administration and Antony Blinken’s Department of State.

The…screwup…in more detail, from House Foreign Affairs committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R, TX) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch (R, ID) [emphasis added]:

The State Department IG’s report is disturbing and sheds light on the multiple ways the State Department grossly mismanaged Mr Malley’s case and intentionally misled Congress. Mr Malley, a political appointee and close associate of the secretary, was treated very differently than a civil servant or foreign service officer.
Among the new revelations in this report, Mr Malley conducted sensitive government business and was allowed to utilize his official email account after his clearance was suspended. As the report noted, this was done out of fear that Mr Malley might “conduct government business on a personal email account.” This concern was valid because it is one of the primary things Mr Malley did to get his clearance suspended in the first place.

The illogic of that last—that it was necessary to let Malley have the access because without it he might have conducted his business through his personal communications (and which he already was doing, but let’s not talk about that)—is so ludicrous that it had to be deliberately done from malice toward our nation’s security.

Hence my opening question: on whose side are Malley’s supervisor, that supervisor’s supervisor, and the official who restored Malley’s accesses and clearance in mid-investigation? They’re plainly not on the side of the United States of America.

Malley’s supervisor and that supervisor’s supervisor should be fired, those who misled Congress on the matter belong in jail for their perjury in their testimony, and individual who reinstated his clearance in mid-investigation needs to be arrested and put on trial for his espionage-related behavior.

Sadly, no State Department personnel will be harmed in the making of this breach.