Tag Archives: government

Distortions

Posted on by
Reply

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) is upset over his administration’s having been called soft on crime by that impertinent man, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  Sessions, after all, said that New York

continues to see gang murder after gang murder, the predictable consequence of the city’s “soft on crime” stance.

De Blasio’s response?  He transferred the target of the remark to the police themselves, pretending to wonder why the AG has

insult[ed] the men and women who do this work every day, who put their lives on the line and who have achieved so much?

Never mind that this is a naked distortion.  Sessions clearly laid the lackadaisical enforcement attitude on the city’s administration—which would include Da Mair (oh, wait—that’s the late Mayor Richard Daley (D).  But who can tell the difference, anyway?).  It’s the “men and women who do this work every day” who are the ones dangerously hampered by de Blasio’s position on law enforcement.

This is an example of why we can’t have nice things in Democrat-run cities and towns.

Shrinking the Federal Government

Posted on by
Reply

…is more than just reducing spending; although that’s a major component of the necessary shrinkage.  Shrinking also must include reducing the physical size of the government, reducing its payroll.  To that end, the moves by President Donald Trump and OMB Director Mick Mulvaney will prove valuable if Congress will cooperate.

The hiring freeze of the last 11 weeks was an important first step, but it produced no actual shrinkage.  Its value consisted in halting the growth in payroll and in demonstrating over the last 11 weeks the lack of need of additional hiring.  In this latter regard, it’s much like the government shutdown of 2013, during which many Departments and Agencies were forced to furlough many of their employees—and still functioned.  The EPA, for instance, furloughed nearly 95% of its employees and ran just fine.  Treasury, Labor, and Interior furloughed over 80% each and those Departments did just as well as before.

Now the broad-based hiring freeze is about to be lifted, but all Departments and Agencies are being required to form plans to do targeted reductions in their work forces in expectation of seeing actually reduced budgets, with effect FY2019, which begins in October 2018.

This is all on the right track.  Now, it’s certainly true that the hiring freeze didn’t reduce the number of folks actually working these last several weeks, as I noted above.  It’s also true that the agencies during the government “shutdown” were on emergency manning and only so for roughly the same number of weeks.  But domestic matters should be handled, in the very large main, by the States.  The Federal government should be involved in domestic matters, in the very large main, only in emergencies.  Thus, the Departments and Agencies, in the very large main, don’t need employee complements much larger (but some larger) than emergency levels.

There are a couple of exceptions to these planned reductions.  Budget increases coupled with commensurate hiring increases will be proposed for Defense and Veterans Affairs.  The VA’s planned increases are from the best of intentions—the nearby backlog of veterans’ claims has exceeded 100,000, and so more bodies added to the payroll would seem to be needed in order to reduce this additional VA wait list fiasco, for instance—but the VA’s long-term, broad, and resolutely uncorrected failure to perform, too often with lethal results, mandates a different outcome.

Eliminating the VA and using its budget for veterans’ vouchers would be entirely consistent with shrinking the government’s payroll, even if spending associated with the VA would not shrink.  But in this case, at least the spending could be known to be going to the purpose for which it was passed originally—our veterans’ well-being, both now and, since the VA manages our military cemeteries, post mortem.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Dismembering Government?

Posted on by
Reply

If the advance word leaks about President Donald Trump’s upcoming budget proposal can be believed, it would appear that his swamp-draining and Government downsizing are about to get start.  And “news” outlets like CNN are getting their panties bunched over the prospect.  This is from this outlet’s piece, tellingly headlined Trump’s plan to dismember government:

It would codify an assault on regulatory regimes over the environment, business and education bequeathed by former President Barack Obama, and attempt to halt decades of steadily growing government reach.

And this:

Slicing up government power is part of a deeper antipathy towards institutions and the political establishment that runs deep in the Trump White House.

Yewbetcha. And among us poor, dumb, gun-toting, Bible-clinging, irredeemably deplorable denizens of flyover country, too.

And this from The Washington Post, albeit a bit less strident than CNN:

President Trump’s budget proposal this week would shake the federal government to its core if enacted, culling back numerous programs and expediting a historic contraction of the federal workforce.

And this from the Post‘s cite of Robert Reischauer, of an earlier time’s CBO:

These are not the kind of cuts that you can accommodate by tightening the belt one notch, by shaving a little bit off of a program, or by downsizing a few staff here or there.  These are cuts that would require a wholesale triage of a vast array of federal activities.

Dismember government: ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished.

Privacy

Posted on by
Reply

Cross-posted from my comment on the matter at Grim’s Hall and based on a CNN article.

From Comey’s quote as provided by CNN:

There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America….

That’s his (cynically offered, because I don’t agree he’s either as stupid or as ignorant as he’d have to be otherwise) straw man; he’ll have to play with his dolly without me.

He also has distorted (deliberately, if not from his lack of understanding, coming from Government’s perspective as he does) what the Founders wrought:

Our founders struck a bargain that is at the center of this amazing country of ours and has been for over two centuries.

No. Not even close. Our Founders allocated to the Federal government a strictly limited set of authorities and powers to execute them. There was, and is, no bargain other than the one that exists between any employer and employee: do your job, or I’ll fire you. And as one of our social compact documents puts it on two occasions, at gunpoint if needs be.

Full stop.

Perhaps this distorted view of things is near the core of his failures to perform–three times–vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and again since the inauguration.

Who Works for Whom?

Posted on by
Reply

John Curtice, writing in The Guardian, in the land where John Locke was borne, seems confused on the question.  His proximate piece is his missive on the nature of referenda in Great Britain.  He began that piece with a false premise of very large proportion, and that—as false premises are wont to do—set the tone for the rest of his op-ed.

In the Commons debates on Brexit during the last fortnight, many MPs have found themselves voting for something they do not believe in. Instead of being their constituents’ “representative”, they now appear to be no more than the people’s “delegate”.

Yet, what else can a representative of constituents be but their delegate?  Unless Curtice means an MP must be the front for their constituents—to “represent” by doing in Parliament what he deems best for them regardless of what they might think is best for themselves.

The thing went downhill from there; he identified four aspects of the referendum on Great Britain’s choice to go out from the EU or to remain within its confines that he considered “cause for concern.”

First, the promise to hold one [the Brexit referendum] was only made because David Cameron found it politically convenient to do so.

Because that motive somehow invalidates the concept of the British people having a voice.  Sure.

Second, the campaign period was relatively short. Only five months….

Because a mere commoner is just too ignorant or stupid to understand a simple question like “Do you want to stay in the EU or go out from it?” unless their betters, their…MPs…and the Curtices of the nation complexify the thing and then “explain” it to them.

Third, unlike most previous referendums, voters were being invited to endorse the status quo rather than a proposal for change.

Yeah, that’s a confusing change-up.  Uh, huh.  Oh, and no plan for going out were that choice voted up despite the confusion?  That’s part of the Betters’ effort at complexifying.  The question was go or stay, not what to do if the choice selected were go or stay.

And this:

Fourth, though often forgotten, the EU vote was the second referendum bite at the European cherry. The issue had supposedly been settled by the referendum Harold Wilson called in 1975.

Because once taken, a decision can never be changed.  The grandchildren must never be allowed to change from their grandparents’ path.  Well, I suppose that’d be one way to decomplexify the thing.

…it is time to lay down some systematic rules about when a referendum should be held – and should not.

How else to have the commoners’ Betters keep control of the outcome, after all?

Not allowing referendums to take place when there is no detailed proposal for the change in question might be a good place to start.

Who gets to decide the adequacy of the “detailed proposal?”  Who gets to demand that there be voice of the people, no referendum, until a satisfactory “detailed proposal” is sufficiently in place?  And sufficiently debated (by whom)?

You know who.  Because the people exist just to give the Betters in Government something to do.