Federal Intimidation

The Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden now is trying to cow school districts into pushing Progressive-Democratic Party gender identity and sexual orientation ideology by threatening to withhold Federal funding from the districts’ free and reduced-price school lunch programs.

This is Party using children as hostage in its push for that destructive claptrap. Those programs often provide the only healthy meal those children get in a school day, and denying those children is a blatant attempt to intimidate those districts into compliance with Party ideology. Party’s ransom demand is the surrender of those children to Party diktat.

Aside from that deep immorality, the move also is illegal. South Dakota v Dole made clear that the Federal government cannot use threats of withholding funding in order to coerce compliance with Federal diktats regarding intra-State, or local, behaviors. Dole was a case in which the Federal government withheld a percentage of Federal highway funding from South Dakota over its refusal to comply with a then-recently enacted alcohol drinking age limit, and South Dakota objected to the withholding. The ruling held that the Feds could, indeed, withhold a percentage of Federal funding, but it could not do withhold a high enough fraction to be coercive. Withholding all of the school lunch funding is plainly coercive, and it’s intended to be so.

Not Radicalized

Recall the…incident…a few days ago in which a Hillcrest High School teacher was terrorized, solely for her support of Israel during the current Hamas-instigated war against Israel, and driven into a locked room for her own protection when 400 of the high school’s students rioted and targeted her, threatening to kill her, while waving Palestinian flags.

New York City Schools Chancellor David Banks is vociferously denying that those students were radicalized; he’s insisting, instead, that

This is a really good school with wonderful young people. And I’m so taken aback by this notion that these kids are terrorists…or radicalized.

Say Banks’ claim is true, and these antisemitic, terrorist-supporting, rioting students aren’t radicalized. What does that say about what is going on in Hillcrest High, one of the NYCSchools for which Banks is responsible, that their antisemitism, their support for terrorism, their rioting actually is their normal behavior?

What does that say about Banks that he considers their behavior to be unradicalized?

Chickens….

This move by Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden and his FLOTUS Jill Biden really sinks low.

Recall the utter immorality of the Bidens’ so-long refusal to acknowledge their granddaughter Navy Joan, daughter of the Bidens’ son Hunter. Recall further, how they made that refusal explicit during last year’s Christmas season hanging of stockings from the State Dining Room fireplace mantle—stockings carefully labeled with the names of their other grandchildren, but no stocking for Navy.

Now, despite finally having acknowledged their little granddaughter—Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy—apparently that best doesn’t include a place on the mantle. In fact, Jill and I‘s disdain for their granddaughter extends to the point that they’ve chosen not to hang Christmas stockings at all, so they can continue to deny Navy a place.

That really is a chickenshit move by Joe and Jill. (For those of you pedants who squawk that Christmas decorations are a FLOTUS task, you know full well that POTUS, at the very least, has serious input into such things. Especially where his granddaughter is concerned.)

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

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.

“The conflict erupted in the wake…”

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.