Tag Archives: ethics

Eight Ways

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The Biden administration, through Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is pushing Israel, even as that nation is in the early stages of a war for its very survival, to concern itself with what happens afterward, should it win that struggle. Never mind that this is a Party that has never had a coherent strategy for exiting a war, much less any idea of what victory conditions would look like, from Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War and Party’s refusal under Ford to give the south a survivable way off the field, to Barack Obama’s disastrous decisions in quitting Iraq, to Joe Biden’s cut-and-run from Afghanistan.

Blinken’s diktats include no less than Five Nos and Three Musts, to use The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial terminology:

No forcible displacement of Palestinians from Gaza…. No use of Gaza as a platform for terrorism or other violent attacks. No reoccupation of Gaza after the conflict ends. No attempt to blockade or besiege Gaza. No reduction in the territory of Gaza.

And

must include the Palestinian people’s voices and aspirations at the center of postcrisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. And it must include…a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in states of their own, with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity and dignity.

Whether or not any of those Nos or Musts are good ideas, it is not for this administration to dictate terms to Israel. It’s solely Israel’s responsibility to dictate terms to Hamas.

Instead, Blinken, to paraphrase a French President and philosopher:

…is not really engaged in responsible behavior. His is not well brought-up behavior. He missed eight good opportunities to keep quiet.

Who Needs Cops?

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Plainly not Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City, not when he considers taking care of the City’s burgeoning illegal alien population to be far more important than protecting the Americans and legally present foreign nationals who are already in the City. Thus,

A freeze on new NYPD recruits is among the “horrendous” budget cuts expected to come down Thursday—as the Big Apple grapples with the soaring cost of the migrant crisis, The Post has learned.

And

The budget slashings come after Adams estimated the surging [illegal alien—my term, not Adams’ euphemism] crisis will set the city back $12 billion over the next three fiscal years.

It’s true enough that Adams claims he also intends to slash [illegal alien] spending by 20%, but that’s money that never should have been spent for that in the first place, and would not have been but for Adams’ loud and proud continuation of his predecessor’s—another Progressive-Democrat—designation of New York City as a sanctuary for illegal aliens, and his continued refusal to rescind that designation.

Never mind, though. [C]rime jumped 30% during his first year in office; Adams plainly believes that there’s more room to grow.

Jayjuz

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Here’s a pretty dispositive demonstration of the destructiveness of Progressive-Democratic Party economic ideology policies. The Transparency Foundation notes that

Our methodology calculates that a typical middle-class family of three earning $130,000 a year faces a “Cost of California” penalty of $26,478.72 versus if they simply paid the national average of cost in each category[.]

And

In California, renters pay 47% more than the national average, while homeowners pay 32% more, healthcare services cost 42% more, and state and local taxes are 14% higher[.]

Even areas where California citizens supposedly pay less than the national average, health insurance and homeowner’s insurance, the claims of lower costs are deceptive.

Health insurance is heavily subsidized by taxes on all Californians, and those taxes generally are elided when State officials calculate the insurance cost.

With homeowner’s insurance, costs to California’s citizens are artificially suppressed by State government mandated rate change limits. With insurers not allowed to charge risk-based premiums—risks that include State officials’ interference with forest and water management practices, interference that then runs up the likelihood of fires and broadens the extent of damage caused by those more frequent fires that do occur—insurers are leaving the State. Those departures, in the medium- and long-term, make Californians increasingly dependent on the State’s government for homeowner’s insurance.

$26,478.72. The 2023 Federal Poverty Guidelines for a family of 3 puts the 100% Guideline at $24,860. The 250% Guideline, used by so many government welfare programs as their upper bound, is $62,150, just a bit over twice that California Penalty.

Progressive-Democrats are actively inflicting poverty on American citizens, and the only rationale (I do not say moral or ethical) motive for this is to create dependency in order to control votes and to preserve Leftist political power.

A Sanctuary State Governor Doesn’t Like Being Called on to Deliver Sanctuary

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Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Maura Healey is upset that so many…persons…are accepting her invitation, via her State’s determined sanctuary status, to come on in. The State’s right to shelter housing requirement is just fine. Until it isn’t.

[T]he governor of the “right-to-shelter” state is suggesting there are “a lot” of other places in the US migrants should be sent.

Sure. But there are only sanctuary States and cities for illegal aliens to go to. And Massachusetts is one of them.

There are a lot of places in the country where people can go once they cross into the United States[.]

You bet. And folks who come into our nation legally go there promptly, and they don’t contribute to overwhelming their destination’s facilities. As for the illegal aliens, once they cross into the United States, there are three primary places to which they can, or should, go: one is to border detention facilities, where they should be processed for immediate deportation. Another is to jail in the jurisdiction in which they’re caught, where they can be processed for prompt deportation. The third place is to sanctuary jurisdictions—like Healey’s Massachusetts in the present case—that make themselves accessories to the crime of illegal entry into our nation, and those sanctuary places can suffer the fiscal, if not legal, consequences of their aiding and abetting.

“Just Another Use of Fossil Fuels”

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There’s a move afoot to produce hydrogen as an energy source by fracturing natural gas into its hydrogen and carbon and oxygen components, the latter two typically as CO2 (and then capturing the CO2 and sequestering it). The foolishness of trying to use hydrogen as an energy source is for another day. What interests me here is the beef from the Global Warming Know Betters who see [fracturing natural gas] as just another use of fossil fuels.

Those august persons, then, must object to our several materials industries, in which natural gas, oil, and coal are major inputs to plastics.

Oh, wait—they hate plastics, too.