Tag Archives: government

Progressive-Democrat Lawfare Harassment of Political Opponents

Posted on by
Reply

They’re spreading their warfare-via-law against political opponents far beyond former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. Now they’re attacking ex-Congresswomen who were treacherous enough to leave Party and to speak for herself and for average Americans even though she remains left of center.

Against the backdrop of the Biden-Wray FBI releasing into our nation a Pakistani, under “parole,” who was known to be plan[ning] an assassination of Donald Trump and other politicians, the Progressive-Democrat administration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is having their Transportation Security Administration place former Democrat Congresswoman and Army Reserve Lt Col Tulsi Gabbard onto the TSA’s Quiet Skies watchlist. That program is for TSA officers in airports to look hard at travelers [who] present an elevated risk to aviation security. The program also has

armed undercover marshals in airports and on planes keep tabs on passenger behaviors and movements they deemed noteworthy—including abrupt change of direction in the airport, fidgeting, having a “cold penetrating stare”, changing clothes, shaving, using phones, even using the bathroom—and send detailed observations to the TSA.

TSA is executing with enthusiasm, as Gabbard has confirmed:

She described how when she boarded a flight, TSA agents conducted a thorough screening, patting down every inch, searching all corners of her luggage, and individually inspected her electronic devices.
“I’ve got a couple of blazers in there, and they’re squeezing every inch of the entire collar, every inch of the sleeves, every inch of the edging of the blazers. They’re squeezing or padding down underwear, bras, workout clothes, every inch of every piece of clothing.”

Because Gabbard is that suspicious, while the assassin wannabe targeting a senior Republican politician, is none of that.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party that wants to be the only party in power, controlling our House of Representatives, our Senate, and our White House, and from where they intend to castrate the final check on their government power, our Supreme Court.

Dictating the Terms of Business

Posted on by
Reply

The Progressive-Democratic Party is at it again, trying to dictate how private businesses in our, so far, substantially free market economy will be permitted to operate. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden intends to dictate to landlords:

Today, I’m sending a clear message to corporate landlords: if you raise rents more than 5%, you should lose valuable tax breaks.

This isn’t just the big landlords, either, bad as that would be by itself. Biden’s proposed cap would apply to half the rental market in the country.

We’ve known this for a while. Here’s then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeting:

Joe Biden @JoeBiden · 14h
We’re going to beat Donald Trump. And when we do, we won’t just rebuild this nation—we’ll transform it.

He’s talked about fundamentally transforming our economy in his State of the Union addresses, also.

One More Thought

Posted on by
2

Or maybe two….

My first concerns Corner Post, Inc v Board Of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that newly created businesses really are allowed to argue against decades-old regulations, here the Fed’s long-standing cap on credit card fees that card issuers are allowed to charge.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent,

The tsunami of lawsuits against agencies that the Court’s holdings in this case and Loper Bright [which removed Chevron defense] have authorized has the potential to devastate the functioning of the Federal Government.

In an era of burgeoning regulatory, vice Congressional, governance of our economy, and in an era where Federal government officials routinely ignore Federal law (immigration) and Court rulings (student debt “forgiveness”) to go about doing whatever an official feels like doing whenever one of them feels like doing it, it’s hard to see the downside of limiting the functioning of the Federal Government, much less to see any “devastation.” The tsunami of lower court lawsuits is simply the dam holding back private citizens’ and our businesses’ objections to such overreach finally bursting. The flood has every chance of flushing away a large part of that overreach detritus before it abates. And abate it will, just as even tsunamis do.

My second thought concerns the worry of Kevin King, a partner with Covington & Burling, regarding the Federal government’s reduced legal ability to blow off the objections of us private citizens and our businesses to government behaviors and the resulting potential for significant differences in interpretation of statutes by courts to develop:

The risk is that you’re going to get variation over geography, a patchwork of decisions[.]

Again, I say, “Yeah, and?” King’s worry seems centered on the possibility that the federated republican democracy nature of our constitutional governance, where the several States are, in their aggregate and individually, the equal of the central government regarding domestic matters might be starting to reassert itself. Furthermore, those geographic disparities are simply the noisy nature of democracy and a reflection of the plain fact that the citizens of one State might not have the same imperatives as the citizens of other States.

There’s also that Commerce Clause in our Constitution, a clause too long dormant, that can be put to the use for which it was devised and included—to smooth over (not paper over) the larger differences among the States where those differences too much impact the separate doings of other States.

Both of these are outcomes to be welcomed, not feared. Especially are they not to be obstructed.

Mostly Immune

Posted on by
Reply

The Supreme Court, last Monday, issued its ruling on former President Donald Trump’s (R) Presidential immunity case. In a 6-3 ruling, the Court held that he has that for official acts committed while in office. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the Court, in part:

Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of presidential power entitles a former president to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts.

The necessity of a strong measure of (criminal prosecution) immunity is absolutely essential. Roberts made this point early on [citations omitted]:

The President “occupies a unique position in the constitutional scheme,” … as “the only person who alone composes a branch of government,”[.] The Framers “sought to encourage energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy execution of the laws by placing in the hands of a single, constitutionally indispensable, individual the ultimate authority that, in respect to the other branches, the Constitution divides among many.”  They “deemed an energetic executive essential to ‘the protection of the community against foreign attacks,’ ‘the steady administration of the laws,’ ‘the protection of property,’ and ‘the security of liberty.'” The purpose of a “vigorous” and “energetic” Executive, they thought, was to ensure “good government,” for a “feeble executive implies a feeble execution of the government.”
…
Appreciating the “unique risks to the effective functioning of government” that arise when the President’s energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” we have recognized Presidential immunities and privileges “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.”

It’s necessary to keep in mind, too, that the Framers wrote President as an energetic, vigorous, decisive, and speedy executer of the laws and as one whose ability to act decisively and speedily is necessary to the protection of the community against foreign attacks in an environment of a failing Articles of Confederation. That treaty didn’t even have a feeble executive, rather it was devoid of any sort of Executive or executive power altogether. The treaty itself was so feeble that it was powerless to fund itself; and it was (soon to be) fatally unable to act against the steady drumbeat of British violations of the Treaty of Paris that codified our independence and against British incursions into our nascent nation’s western territories.

I have a problem, though, with absolute immunity for anyone for criminal acts, whenever they may have been conducted. A line does need to be drawn—and I don’t have any ideas on where, yet—between prosecuting a President for his criminal acts and making up crimes, à la Jack Smith, in order to prosecute a President that some don’t like.

Maybe a line drawn on consequences: the prosecutor and “senior” members of his team who go after a President or former President on some alleged criminality, on that President’s/former President’s acquittal, go straight to jail to serve, without parole, the mid-range sentence that the alleged crime calls for. Consecutively, if multiple crimes are charged and acquitted.

One of the questions that follow this ruling will hinge on the circle: is a criminal act an official act? Can it be? There is some case law that bars things done “under color of law;” that principle would seem to apply to “under cover of official act.”

It’s not going to be an easy question to resolve.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.

Terminology…and a Solution

Posted on by
Reply

Two questions sit before Congress over the coming year, as posed (correctly IMNSHO) by The Wall Street Journal in its headline and lede:

Republicans’ $4 Trillion Question: Should They Pay for Extending Trump Tax Cuts?

And

Republicans want to extend the Trump-era tax cuts that lapse after 2025. A big point of debate now: should they cover any or all of the $4 trillion cost—and how?

The terminology confusion is illustrated by the WSJ‘s change in wording from “pay for” in its headline to “cover” in its lede.

It’s long been my contention that it doesn’t cost the government anything to not get what doesn’t belong to it in the first place; there’s nothing for which government need pay. On the other hand, there’s the real world imbalance between tax collections and spending when the latter exceeds the former, as any grade schooler understands when he wants to spend more than his allowance will cover, whether he’s saved fractions of his allowance against an upcoming large expenditure or he’s spending as he gets. And, yes, the analogy is that direct.

There’s also the real world, empirically demonstrated, fact that within broad limits, the more money left in the hands of us average Americans and our businesses—the nation’s private economy—the more economic activity, now including government spending, there is overall, and from that increase, revenues to government, those tax collections, increase even in the face of reduced tax rates. The broad limit is the minimum of tax collections—the allowances we grant the government—needed to cover the constitutionally mandated spending requirements of paying the government’s debts, providing for an adequate national defense, and paying for the constitutionally defined items constituting the general Welfare.

Given the government’s current spending levels, that increased economic activity-driven increase in revenues to government won’t cover all of the government’s spending. That spending includes vast amounts of welfare spending. In the early days of our republic, we couldn’t afford any welfare spending, to the point that then-Congressman James Madison made a constitutional argument against helping Haitian refugees in the aftermath of an earthquake. From the Annals of Congress, House of Representatives, 3rd Congress, 1st Session:

Mr Madison wished to relieve the sufferers, but was afraid of establishing a dangerous precedent, which might hereafter be perverted to the countenance of purposes very different from those of charity.  He acknowledged, for his own part, that he could not undertake to lay his finger on that article in the Federal Constitution which granted a right of Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.

The inability to identify the Article remains today, but that notwithstanding, our republic’s weal has improved to the point that we can, as a nation, afford a measure of welfare for our citizens (and for other nations, but that’s for another discussion). But not too much. The external threats to our nation have grown immensely, and so has the cost of our defending ourselves against them. Profligacy in spending, especially after WWII, has so far exceeded tax collections that our national debt has exploded, and the need to pay that down and then off, also has grown commensurately.

Spending outside those three constitutional mandates needs to be greatly cut back. There are three types of that extra spending that come to mind out of the myriad of them. These are Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, and infrastructure.

I’ve written before about those first two; I’ll only summarize here: privatize Social Security and Medicare, which will be deucedly expensive in the transition, but that cost will only get worse with delay—and doing nothing will itself result in a 25% cut in Social Security payout, anyway, within the next 10 years, and an even more severe cut in Medicaid, if after a longer delay. Medicaid transfers to each of the several States should be converted to block transfers on an annually declining basis until the block grants have bee eliminated altogether. Medicaid is after all, and as it should be, a State-run program.

Regarding infrastructure, all Federal transfers to the States should be on a matching basis, with the States required to make the first and then sustained moves: no money should flow from Federal coffers to a State until the State has let contracts with the builders; ground has been broken; and concrete, publicly measurable and assessable progress has been made in the building. The match itself should be no more than 50% of what the State has spent and subsequently spends in accordance with its contracted schedule, and those subsequent Federal transfers should flow only after the State has spent its own citizens’ tax remittances on the State’s contracted schedule.

None of that is possible, though, without clearing up that terminology confusion. As long as politicians think tax monies remitted to government are owed to and are the property of government, they’ll spend and tax without limit.