New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams says he’s down with raising New Yorker’s already sky high taxes along with firing city employees, including cops—[Asked “where the layoffs would begin,” Adams only repeated, “Everything’s on the table”]—and he’s blaming the Federal government for his budget failures. His statement on that last is the tell-all:
Our insurance policy was the federal government. They’re not paying us[.]
It doesn’t get any clearer than this.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R, TN) is bent on impeaching DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his palpable, and dangerous, failure to perform. This is, at best, a fool’s errand since the votes don’t exist in the Senate to get even a serious trial, much less a conviction.
I have a better idea, because of course I do.
Instead of wasting time on impeaching Mayorkas, Green, and the House at large, should exercise the House’s Constitutional control over government spending and move to cancel all funding for much of the Department of Homeland Security until Mayorkas and his Deputy and Assistant Secretaries are gone and the Department has materially improved its performance related to keeping illegal aliens from entering our nation.
Specific DHS agencies that should receive full, if not increased, funding include these:
All the other agencies—and there are 16 more of them, including such strongly overlapping agencies as the Management Directorate, the Office of Legislative Affairs, the Office of Partnership and Engagement, and the Office of Public Affairs (there’s a hint there regarding how bloated the Department has become)—should have their funding zeroed out.
Further, the House should refuse to pass any DHS-related bill that does not include these funding reductions.
Javier Milei, the newly elected Argentine President, is, indeed, talking a good game. It’ll be well worth watching to see if he can deliver—and he has many large obstacles in his way, including (this is far from an exhaustive list) opposition to his wish to get rid of the nation’s central bank (and the economic pitfalls associated with it, both near term as Argentina’s economy adjusts, and longer term with currency controls devolved to the provincial banks or to individual banks (some of which may already be too big to control without stern measures aimed at them in particular)), opposition parties bent on restoring/maintaining their own political power, general resistance—both political and popular—to any change of such magnitude, and his own political inexperience and naivete.
With that rambling lede, here’s an excerpt, via RealClear Politics, from an interview that that Milei had with Argentine TV host Alejandro Fantino just before Thanksgiving:
We aren’t above the ones we represent. In financial terms, “The derivative is never worth more than the underlying asset.” The derivative exists because the underlying asset exists. We exist as representatives of the people because the people exist. It is madness, it is delusional, to think that a representative of the people is above the people he represents themselves. It is a delusion in which the political caste exists.
The full hour-and-a-quarter interview, in Spanish, can be seen at the link at the bottom of the linked-to article. That YouTube link also is this.
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.
NSC spokesman John Kirby was asked at a recent press conference, point blank, by Fox News‘ Peter Doocy,
The people in this country making violent antisemitic threats. Are they domestic terrorists?
Kirby’s answer was stark:
I don’t know that we’re classifying people as domestic terrorists for that. I mean, that’s really a question better left to law enforcement. I’m not aware that there’s been such a characterization of that[.]
Apparently, such people aren’t even extremists. When Doocy asked White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre that question at another presser, she answered,
I have been very, very clear. We are calling out any form of hate, any form of hate. It is not acceptable. It should not be acceptable here. And we are going to continue to call that out[.]
But apparently such folks aren’t even extremists, just deserving of opprobrium for their rude talk.
Mothers zealously, loudly, objecting to school board policies while at school board meetings, though, are domestic terrorists, according to AG Merrick Garland.
Go figure.