Cynical Failure

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Say they really believe their climate-cause claims.

The theory is that climate change caused two especially wet winters in California in 2023 and 2024.

And

[C]limate change explains wet and dry seasons, which follows the progressive line that climate change is responsible for every natural disaster….

It doesn’t matter if they actually believe that. If the California Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and the climatistas really believed that climate was at the root of the wildfires that have beset the State over the last couple of years, the one collective would have taken proactive steps, and the other collective would have supported those proactive steps, to protect the State’s citizens and their property from the ravages of those wildfires—the alleged outcome of “climate.”

They—both collectives—consciously, with forethought, chose not to take those steps. The question is why. One motive is increased power for the political collective through ranting about climate and how they’re the only ones able to deal with it and more “climate”-combating funding for the climatista collective who insist they are the only ones qualified to devise the ways with which to deal with it—and people and property be damned.

Some Misapprehensions

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors have a couple regarding Pete Hegseth and his nomination for SecDef.

Mr Trump seems to want someone to take on the “woke” policies of the military under President Biden, and they are problems. But retired four-star Army General Jack Keane says this can be quickly addressed. Give the order, and the brass will follow and so on down the chain of command.

It’s not at all a given that “the brass” will follow orders, from General Douglas MacArthur, whom then-President Harry Truman had to fire over his subordination on forward to General Mark Milley who insisted on pushing woke readings onto our military members. Of course there could have been a perfectly fine reason for that—it’s necessary to know our enemy, a concept as old as Sun Tzu—but he chose to be defensive about his reading list rather than make that point during Congressional hearings. Those pushing the woke policies—and they include far more flags than just Milley—need to be fired, not just given different orders or assignments.

Mr Trump has nominated Stephen Feinberg, the CEO of Cerberus Capital, to fill the management gap as deputy secretary. Mr Feinberg is a highly successful manager, but he also lacks familiarity with the vast Defense Department. Such experience is crucial lest Mr Hegseth be swallowed up by the bureaucracy.

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy badly wants serious and deep culling, anyway, and those who openly oppose Hegseth or Feinberg, or anyone serving as Trump’s SecDef or DepSecDef, or slow walk their decisions, or engage in passive-aggressive (or merely passive) resistance to their decisions need to be fired forthwith, not wrestled with. The smaller bureaucracy that would result would be the easier to manage, especially in the absence of so much dead wood and wasted payroll.

Not Entirely

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It seems the deep state is alive and well, and its denizens are loudly proud of themselves.

The vast majority of federal government managers who supported Kamala Harris as the Democrat presidential nominee plan to resist Donald Trump’s second presidency, according to a new poll released Monday.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen on responding to the intended overt sabotage (my term, not his):

But the biggest way to address those problems with the federal government managers who are going to be resisting is to succeed[.]

It’ll be easier to succeed if these…managers…are not in the way. The best way to succeed, thus, is to fire those managers who insert their positions in the way of their bosses, who slow walk decision implementation, who engage in passive-aggressive resistance.

Return them to the private sector, and let them do their nefariousness on someone else’s payroll than us taxpayers’.

SALT Tax

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Short, brief, sweet, and redundant.

One thing threatening serious tax reform—which is to say making permanent the tax rate reductions that otherwise expire near the end of this year, reducing those rates further, and flattening the rates further—is the kerfuffle over the SALT (State And Local Tax) tax deduction cap, currently at $10,000.

I sympathize with the Representatives and Senators, especially the Republican ones, in those States most impacted by the cap. Their wealthier constituents want the cap raised significantly if not eliminated. These politicians, though, must understand that as members of our national Congress, their responsibilities to our nation as a whole runs a very close second to their responsibilities to those individual constituencies.

The business of cap raising/eliminating is nonsense for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no reason at all for the rest of us taxpayers to subsidize those in States with profligate spending and already high taxes. Those Congressmen would do better using their Federal influence and bully pulpit to convince their State and local governments to mend their spendthrift ways and lower their tax rates—the latter which several States (tellingly, mostly Republican led) already have done or are doing.

The other reason is that, aside from empirical evidence that lowering tax rates actually increases revenues to the Federal government from the increased private economic activity that results from more money being left in the hands of us private citizens, revenue reductions—if any—from lowered tax rates is easily covered by reduced spending in general and reduced, if not eliminated, subsidies and tax credits for “green” energy solar and windmill farms, battery cars, federal deductions for non-federal tax collections, and other such tax engineering froo-froo.

Indeed, with sufficiently reduced spending, badly needed increased spending on national defense still could occur.

Raising the SALT tax cap wouldn’t be tax reform, it would be tax deform. In fact, reform here would be eliminating the SALT deduction altogether.

End Congressional Oversight of the District of Columbia?

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Washington, DC, delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) wants an end to Congressional oversight of the District of Columbia, and she’s moving to revive earlier legislation that would to do so.

The congressional review period for DC bills is onerous for the District, and rarely even used by Congress, causing DC bills to be unnecessarily ensnared in congressional bureaucracy for months[.]

It’s already the case, though, that the oversight is so rarely used—only twice in the last 30 years has Congress moved to overrule a DC-passed ordinance—that the district already is, functionally, self-ruling.

However.

The move, even were it a good idea, would require an Amendment to our Constitution. Here’s Art I, Sect 8 on governance of the District of Columbia:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings

Holmes has a beef, in that there are too many bureaucrats involved, and it is much to slow to get anything done. Those 60 days to review an ordinance proposal are patently excessive, especially in this day of computers and Congressional staffs so bloated that staffers are scratching for things to do. I’ll go out on a limb: it shouldn’t take more than a week (Sundays excepted) to do the review and either approve or reject the ordinance.

Those interferences, those delays, badly want reduction.