Carpetbagger

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D)—and former Mayor of South Bend, Indiana, which is of singular importance here—wants to run for Senator in…Michigan. He’s leading all the other current Progressive-Democrat contenders according to some polling data.

The Progressive-Democrats in the State don’t seem to care about Buttigieg’s carpetbagger status.

Progressive-Democrats do care about other carpetbaggers, though:

• Pennsylvania Senatorial candidate Republican Mehmet Oz (R) was accused by Progressive-Democrats and their supporters of carpetbagging because he had a house in New Jersey
• Michigan Senatorial candidate Mike Rogers was accused by Progressive-Democrats and their supporters of carpetbagging because he also has a house in Florida
• Wisconsin Senatorial candidate Eric Hovde (R) was accused by Progressive-Democrats and their supporters of carpetbagging because has a house, also, in California, and a business in Utah
• Montana Senator Tim Sheehy (R) was accused of carpetbagging against the State’s incumbent Progressive-Democrat Jon Tester for the sin of having grown up in Minnesota, never minding that Sheehy had been a Montana citizen for the 10 years before his campaign and election
• Ohio Senator Bernie Moreno (R) was accused by Progressive-Democrats and their supporters of carpetbagging because he had stakes in multiple properties from Costa Rica to New York City to the Florida Keys.

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians’ hypocrisy is embedded in nearly everything they say and do.

NGOs and Funding

Non-government organizations—are they non-governmental, or are they not?

President Donald Trump (R) has ordered all Executive Branch Departments and agencies to review their funding of non-government organizations (NGOs). His order has this:

The United States Government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people.

It’s time to stop Federal transfers of taxpayer monies to NGOs. Emphasize—enforce—that “non-” part. Being affiliated with government—even if only through government financing of part of their operation—denies the “non-” part of their designation.

If us average Americans think an NGO’s activities are appropriate, we’ll support it voluntarily with our own, direct, donations. If we do not, we should not be dragooned into supporting it anyway by having our tax dollars shunted off to it.

Whose Misunderstanding?

A letter writer in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wondered whether DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard understand[s] the difference between domestic investigative warrants and surveillance warrants abroad. He went on to opine [emphasis added]

For US citizens within the country, warrants support ongoing investigations, whereas warrants abroad monitor for possible terrorist activity and are justifiable on less than probable cause. Domestically, the goal is to prosecute criminals after they have committed crimes. Abroad, the goal is to stop terrorists before they can act. That is reason enough to permit warrants for American citizens abroad.

It is not Gabbard who misunderstands, it is this letter writer.

Americans do not give up our American rights and protections against American government transgressions just because we are overseas. Americans do not give up those rights and protections under any circumstances.

Blame Ducking

It’s not blame shifting or blame casting, even though it might seem so. Those are just tools, though, employed in the cause of ducking blame. Pennsylvania’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Josh Shapiro, has provided the latest version.

Electricity rates are spiking in the State over which he rules. PJM Interconnection, the State’s largest power provider, has approved 38 GW of new generation, but the generators are not being built: high interest rates and inflation, not Shapiro’s fault but demonstratively that of his party’s actions at the Federal level, have made the building too costly, even with the plethora of green subsidies.

Shapiro has, though,

pitched an energy plan to fast-track the construction of renewables and a cap-and-trade program that would effectively subsidize them by punishing fossil fuels. Such policies would likely lead to the retirement of more base-load fossil fuel generators….

And that restriction on energy supply can only further drive up energy prices for Pennsylvanians. This sort of thing already has done so, in fact, hence the present spike for the State’s citizens.

Now Shapiro is blaming PJM for those rising prices while ducking away from his own green policies, and his party’s national-level policies, that are the actual cause of the straits in which Pennsylvania’s citizens find themselves.

This is the Progressive-Democrat mantra: it’s not their fault; it’s never their policies. It’s always and everywhere someone else’s fault.

Eliminating DoEd, or Not

As part of the ongoing…discussions…regarding the elimination or broad curtailment of the Department of Education, even news writers are getting in on the gaslighting. One such example:

It [the Department of Education] has released guidance saying it would evaluate claims of sex discrimination based on the “objective immutable characteristic of being born male or female” as opposed to gender identity. This effectively ended Biden-era protections for gay and transgender people in education.

Of course, it ended no such thing. What the guidance did—all that it did—was restore protections for boys and young men and for girls and young women, especially the latter, in spaces that must be reserved for girls and young women: restrooms, locker rooms, girls and women athletics. The Biden-era actions actively attacked with intent to destroy precisely these protections for girls and young women.

Protections for gay and transgender students remain in place where moves against discrimination matter: the selection or non-selection based on sexual orientation in the classroom, in discipline, in in- or after-school job opportunities, and on and on.