Tag Archives: responsibilities

Alternatively…

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris held a rally in Houston over the weekend, and Beyoncé appeared with her and announced her endorsement of Harris.

Beyoncé also was going to perform at the rally, and when she didn’t both she and Harris were booed.

But was she going to perform? Who said so?

NBC News‘ Kelly O’Donnell, Monica Alba, Yamiche Alcindor, and Alexandra Marquez were four pressmen making the claim:

Pop superstar Beyoncé will appear with Vice President Kamala Harris at her event in Houston on Friday evening, according to three sources familiar with the plans.
Beyoncé is also expected to perform, said one of the sources, who has direct knowledge of the preparations.

The voices in their heads and their childhood imaginary friends said so—that’s the source of their “information.”

Even Just the News chose to mislead rally goers and the public at large regarding a Beyoncé performance, both in its headline and its lede:

Beyoncé expected to perform at Harris rally in Houston on Friday
Pop music star Beyoncé Knowles is expected to perform at a campaign rally Friday in hometown Houston for Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris.

Expected by whom? JtN didn’t bother to attribute any source at all for its expectation. We’re just supposed to take the outlet’s metaphorical smiling face at its word.

Alternatively, these pressmen and outlet lied and got caught in their lie. Now they are letting Beyoncé and Harris take the heat for the outcome as these wonders scurry away from their own responsibility for the misapprehension.

Regardless of what anyone might think of Harris or former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, this performance is just one more example of why the press cannot be taken seriously.

Government Investment Nanny

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The Federal government regulates who it will permit to invest in private investments—startups, pre-IPO opportunities, loans to private companies, and the like. These are highly risky investments, and they have high payoff possibilities, even if those possibilities are low. The Feds limit those who it permits into these private opportunities to folks with $1 million in net assets, not including their primary home residence, or at least $200,000 in yearly income, or $300,000 for a joint household.

Now there’s a move afoot to add a government-regulated glorified intelligence test as an alternative path for investors to make these investments.

A group of lawmakers has proposed legislation that would allow any investor capable of passing an exam to buy private securities—an array of investments like shares in pre-IPO startups or loans to private companies that are considered riskier because they have looser disclosure rules than public securities and can be harder, and sometimes impossible, to sell in a pinch.

Passing an exam as a prerequisite to being allowed to invest in a class of securities—passing an exam as a prerequisite to being allowed to vote in an election. That Jim Crow era requirement has long since been done away with. Except now Congressmen want to revive the practice for investing.

Private securities—meaning outside the scope of government regulation. This is something far too many politicians can’t stand; it limits their power to dictate to us; it limits their power, period.

The idea is that the ability to make these high-risk, high-reward bets should be open to all sophisticated investors, not just those with the biggest bank accounts.

Of course the definition of who’s sufficiently sophisticated, the definition of “sophisticated” itself is carefully left to government personages.

Patrick Woodall, Americans for Financial Reform‘s Managing Director for Policy (AFR is vehemently pushing for even more government regulation of our financial decisions):

Knowledge cannot protect people from the potential losses if they invest in risky, opaque, and illiquid, private offerings[.]

Neither can government. Nor should government try. The decision to run those risks are ours alone.

This is nanny-state-ism intruding into us private citizens’ own affairs far beyond regulation of public company-related investments. Companies are private rather than publicly owned explicitly to get out from under the government’s thumb, and citizens invest here—or would if we could—explicitly to stay out from under the government’s thumb—especially when that thumb operates, according to government, for our own good.

No.

We average Americans do not need government protections from ourselves. We are fully capable of making our own decisions, and we are fully capable of handling, and fully and responsible for, the outcomes of our decisions. We are not wards of the state, much as one of our major political parties is bent on reducing us to that condition.

Biden-Harris Helene Failure

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Regarding the damage done by Hurricane Helene and recovery efforts by those concerned: don’t count the Biden-Harris administration among those concerned. Cynical Publius noted on X:

This is unbelievable.
XVIII Airborne Corps is located on Fort Bragg (I refuse to call it by that other woke name), a mere 268 miles from Asheville and the worst flooding areas of this Biblical-level tragedy.
The Corps’ capabilities include:

-Extensive medium and heavy lift rotary wing aircraft.
-A theater sustainment command with incredible capabilities for delivery of food, potable water, fuel and construction materials.
-A medical brigade with Level III surgical capabilities.
-An engineer brigade with robust heavy construction assets.
-A military police brigade that can provide traffic control and assist local LE.
-An Airborne Infantry division that has routinely supported disaster relief in years past.
-A world-class command, control and communications HQ capability to make it all work.

NONE OF THAT has been ordered to assist civil authorities? NONE OF IT??????
Fort Bragg has routinely supported domestic disaster relief for DECADES—Katrina, Homestead, you name it.  Hell, I myself have a Humanitarian Service Medal for support to Hurricane Fran relief out of Bragg.
Now we can’t do anything for an epic disaster in the SAME FREAKING STATE?
WTF, over?
This goes beyond mere negligence.  It must be malicious.  Perhaps Kamala and Joe don’t want NC’s rural GOP counties to be able to vote on November 5th?
This is an abomination, and one of the worst derelictions of Presidential duties in US history.

He posted in response to this, in which we have Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s cynical (there’s no reason to believe it’s merely ignorant) claim, quoted from a C-SPAN clip of a reporter’s question and Biden’s response (see the clip itself at the end of the post):

Biden on Hurricane Helene:
Reporter: “Do you have any words to the victims of the hurricane?”
Biden: “We’ve given everything that we have.”
Reporter “Are there any more resources the federal government could be giving them?”
Biden: “No.”

The expression on Biden’s face shows how proud he is of this (lack of) effort.

Hugh Wang added

And a little further east is Camp Lejune and cherry point. II MEF [Marine Expeditionary Force] with an entire Marine Air Wing, trucks, engineers, etc.

This is beyond disgusting.

There’s Always an Excuse not to Bother

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It’s not just the European governments that stand in the way of those nations’ efforts to rearm and to supply arms to Ukraine in the face of Russia’s attempt to conquer Ukraine and the barbarian’s designs on the rest of Europe. True enough, those governments have bureaucratic red tape that stands in the way, along with politicians disinterested in getting that red tape out of the way.

Months after the acquisition of the [ammunition-producing] factory, a majority in the Danish parliament demanded that the government open the process to bidders, rather than settling for the presumed favorite for the job….

Too often, though, it’s those nations’ private businesses that would be important, if not critical, to the rearmament effort, local governments, and the populations themselves.

…some banks won’t lend to defense contractors, making life particularly tough for small companies in the industry’s supply chain.

And

In the German city of Troisdorf, Diehl Defence said it has struggled to get permission to expand a factory in the city center to boost production of detonators and other parts for the Iris T missile-defense system, which has formed a crucial part of Ukraine’s air defenses since the war began.
Troisdorf’s mayor, Alexander Biber, said the community was in constructive talks with Diehl, but asked whether a city center is better suited for homes or businesses than for factories producing explosives.

And

A leading European tank maker, KNDS, was planning to expand a Munich testing range, but had to pause following local complaints, including one from a man who said the work interfered with his meditation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Other residents were concerned that noise from the testing site would affect housing prices.

These are anecdotal, but they illustrate the trends.

This lack of interest in defending themselves, much less help a nation under a barbarian invasion, just further demonstrates the uselessness of NATO and the importance of standing up a replacement mutual defense arrangement involving the Three Seas Initiative, the UK, and the US.

Aww, You Poor Babies

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Baby Boomers are at grandparenting age, but their children aren’t having so many children of their own, so the Boomers aren’t getting to be grandparents. They’re not happy about it, either.

It’s true enough that our nation’s birthrate is well below the rate necessary to maintain, much less grow, our nation’s population, and that’s having detrimental effects on our economy and our ability to support Baby Boomers and subsequent generations of retirees in their dotage. It also makes us more dependent on immigration to fill our labor gaps.

But that doesn’t make women their parents’ baby making machines for the sake of those parents’ wishes to have grandchildren.

Professor Rachel Margolis of the University of Western Ontario:

Almost everyone grew up with at least one grandparent, and when you grow up with a grandparent around, you think about that as part of family life[.]

There’s a hint there. Children no longer want their parents living with them, for a variety of reasons both good and bad. Parents no longer want to live with their children, also for a variety of reasons both good and bad. One outcome of that is 74-year-old Ann Brenoff, whose children have no plans to have children:

I want to tell family stories to my grandkids. I want them to have memories of me. I don’t think it will happen. It’s selfish, I know.

That family life was an ideal environment for passing on family lore and for creating memories that include grandparents, especially so for the grandchildren. That family life also was instrumental in providing the mutual support of adult children for (grand)parents and vice versa along with the large advantages for grandchildren from growing up in three-generation households. Now, it’s supplanted by increasing dependency on charity, or government, or nursing homes and “retirement communities” in lieu of “family” support while actual family falls by the wayside.

For future reference (particularly today’s generation of child-bearing age, and the generation just entering that age): you want the part of family life that is grandchildren, then act like you still want to be part of a family and not like you want grandchildren as your personal entertainment. Do that from the moment you have your own children and revive a sense of family responsibility, instead of inculcating, however sub rosa, an attitude of gotta get off on my own as soon as my children are out of the house, and gotta get out on my own as soon as I’ve left my parents’ house.

You bet it’s selfish to want grandkids just for your personal entertainment.