Tag Archives: regulation

A Couple of Illustrations

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Taken from a Wall Street Journal article otherwise centered on the alleged pitfalls of calling an end to the Wuhan Virus situation. First up:

“We’re in uncharted waters. There’s not a blueprint to say, ‘OK, this is how this politically unfolds, coming out of a pandemic’,” said Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster.

Politically unfolds. Not how it unfolds from a health perspective, or from a national benefit perspective, or even from what’s good for a politician’s constituency. No, what matters to the politician is how this unfolds to the benefit of a politician’s personal standing in office or in gaining/retaining office.

And this one, in which the journalism guild is an enthusiastic participant.

For example, some moderate Senate Democrats and most Republicans who voted to end the federal mask mandate last month are now calling on the administration to keep in place Title 42—which is predicated on the idea that the country faces a Covid-19 emergency.

No, Title 42 is a law, long predating the Wuhan Virus situation, that was designed to bar from entry into our nation those wanting to immigrate from nations with their own health emergencies. The press is actively complicit in distorting that law’s invocation as a means of dealing with our own emergency. Title 42 was invoked during the just concluded “emergency” (concluded in fact if not by political recognition) to keep those from nations with major Wuhan Virus outbreaks from coming here and making our own situation worse.

It’s certainly true that some of the invocation was motivated as a means of illegal alien entry control and that some of the invocation was motivated by the existence of our own virus situation. Those, though, were and are secondary to the simple fact that the law is designed, and presently used, to protect us from immigrants and illegal aliens potentially bringing with them disease outbreaks in their countries of origin.

Illegal Aliens and Endangered Plant Species

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Now President Joe Biden (D) is trying to block border enforcement by using his Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the prostrate milkweed to be an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. In conjunction with this, he’s moving to declare some acreage along the border between two Texas counties and Mexico as “critical habitat” for the plant.

All of that is a naked move to try to prevent Texas from building a border wall using Texas resources, so that Biden-Harris can continue to flood our nation with illegal aliens (who aren’t required to be vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus, even though legitimate travelers and returnees to our nation are so required. See nearby).

This time, though, the Biden-Harris cynicism, though, can be used against him.

If he truly is concerned about the welfare of the prostrate milkweed, then Biden-Harris must take concrete steps to close those stretches of the border in order to keep the illegal aliens from trampling the plants as they come across.

Duplicity

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DHS continues to require legitimate travelers to our nation and legitimate returnees at the end of their overseas travels to prove their vaccination status against the Wuhan Virus as a condition for their entry.

[T]ravelers entering the US through legal ports of entry will continue to be forced to show proof of vaccination….

But that doesn’t apply to those entering our nation illegally. The illegal aliens get a free pass in to go with their existing free midnight flights to the interior destinations of their choice.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to “apply CDC guidance through its Pandemic Response Requirements,” under which “ICE cannot mandate individuals in detention consent to be vaccinated,” according to the agency.

Who says crime doesn’t pay? It plainly does when Progressive-Democrats are running the show.

Local Control vs Federal Funding

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Tennessee’s General Assembly is considering a bill that would indemnify teachers and all other employees of public schools and local education agencies against civil liability or “adverse job actions” if they refer to a student by pronouns consistent with his biological sex rather than by his preferred gender pronouns. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee noted that the bill

could violate Title IX and would put at risk the state’s federal funding, which for the current school year is more than $5 billion.

That’s the important aspect of this bill, and it has much broader implications for all State-level legislative actions. The $5 billion might seem like a lot of money for a State, but it pales against the long-term cost outcomes of a State accepting any Federal funds under any guise: the more money a State accepts from the Federal government, the more control over its own internal affairs the State surrenders to the Federal government.

The Feds are acting entirely legitimately when they attach strings to the money they provide the States, or to any non-State entity. Anyone providing money to anyone or anything else naturally gets to specify the manner and purpose for which the money is to be used. It’s the existence of those strings, not what they require, that should give States pause in the decision to accept any of the Federal government’s money.

In the end, States that want to retain control of their own intra-State affairs should reject Federal funds transfers—and join with other States in efforts across the legal spectrum to end Federal transfers of State tax remissions to other States altogether except in the event of an emergency declaration. Nor should any exceptions to the bar be allowed: once carve-outs are begun, in very short order, the bar will be so exception-ridden as to cease to exist in any meaningful form.

Discrimination

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Recall the California law that requires (required) the boards of directors of California-headquartered public companies to have at least one member of an “underrepresented” race, ethnicity or sexual orientation, and two to three for larger boards. Recall further that California Superior Court Judge

Terry Green judge struck the law for violating California’s constitution.

Now The Wall Street Journal includes a bit of the judge’s reasoning from his opinion.

the judge says no one “appears to have made any effort to identify, define, or survey the qualified talent pool for director positions.”

Oops.

In an associated footnote, the judge went on, with clarity that even a California Progressive-Democrat should be able to discern.

Some of the experts have identified common feeder positions (such as “C-Suite” executive roles) and academic qualifications (such as an MBA), but there appears to be no one single” gatekeeping “qualification that could be used to define the pool in the way that a license might for lawyers and medical professionals, or a credential might for teachers.

Then he drove the point home in his conclusion.

Corporations Code § 301.4 [the board of directors membership law] violates the Equal Protection Clause of the California Constitution on its face. The statute treats similarly situated individuals—qualified potential corporate board members—differently based on their membership (or lack thereof) in certain listed racial, sexual orientation, and gender identity groups. It requires that a certain specific number of board seats be reserved for members of the groups on the list—and necessarily excludes members of other groups from those seats.

It’s hard to get any clearer than that, but if the California Progressive-Democratic Party legislators are true to their history, they’ll work hard to find a way to be confused.