Tag Archives: responsibilities

Debt Ceilings and Spend-Thriftiness

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One hundred and three House Republicans have signed a letter committing themselves to never vote for a debt ceiling increase under any circumstances. Forty-six Senate Republicans have signed a substantially similar letter.  (Aside: the nine Republican Representatives and four Republican Senators should be asked why they’re not signing on.) The signatories

will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, whether that increase comes through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any other vehicle.

Of course, Congressional Progressive-Democrats are in a snit over that. Their beef centers, amorally, on “You guys are spendthrifts, too!”

They say most of the spending that will cause a breach of the debt limit later this year was passed on a bipartisan basis before President Biden assumed office.
They also note that Republicans significantly increased the deficit when they were in power during the first two years of former President Donald Trump’s term….

True enough. Both parties are guilty of spending American taxpayers’ money like it’s all Modern Monetary Theory’s bottomless bank of monopoly dollars. That, however, is no excuse for continuing the fiscal—and national economic security—folly.

Progressive-Democrats are in control now, with a majority in the House and control of both the Senate and the White House.

Progressive-Democrats have, today and in the coming months, the political capacity to show that they’re not just a bunch of woke virtue signalers and to live the virtue they claim. Today and in the coming months, the Progressive-Democrats can adjust their spending ways to limit themselves to the existing debt ceiling.

An Example

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…of what an honorable government does. This is the Republic of Korea.

From Laura Bicker, @BBCLBicker, via Lyman Stone @lymanstoneky:

@BBCLBicker
380 Afghans who worked for the Korean government in Afghanistan will arrive in South Korea tomorrow according to MOFA [Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs]. They will not be entering as refugees, but as people of merit to the country says the Foreign Ministry.
9:20 PM · Aug 24, 2021

@BBCLBicker
The 380 are currently at Kabul Airport and will arrive in Incheon tomorrow by military plane. These are Afghans who have worked for years at the Embassy, KOICA, Bagram Korean Hospital, Bagram Korean Vocational Training centre, Chairkar Korean Provincial Reconstruction Team.

@BBCLBicker
The Afghan staff and families will go through the quarantine process as soon as they arrive in Incheon Airport and will then be moved to government owned temporary housing. All notes from MOFA briefing monitored by @HosuLakeLee

Unfortunately—dangerously—we have the Biden/Harris administration instead.

Two Congressmen Went on a Trip

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Congressmen Seth Moulton (D, MA) and Peter Meijer (R, MI) went to Kabul, Afghanistan to see for themselves the situation there. They didn’t want to rely solely on President Joe Biden’s (D) word, or those of SecDef Lloyd Austin or JCS Chairman General Mark Milley. Even worse, they didn’t say, “Mother, may I” before heading off.

What’s really bad, though, is that Biden, et al., weren’t interested in what Moulton and Meijer learned on their trip—it was the fact of the trip itself and that the travelers bypassed the Wonders of the Potomac in the going. In fact, the Biden/Harris administration quite angry about the Congressmen’s impudence.

Biden administration officials were furious about the trip, claiming that the arrival of the men caused a distraction for the personnel on the ground attempting to do a job amid chaos. One senior official told the Washington Post, “They’re taking seats away from Americans and at-risk Afghans—while putting our diplomats and service members at greater risk—so they can have a moment in front of the cameras.”

This isn’t just disingenuous, it’s utterly dishonest. No seats were taken away from at-risk Afghans, not when Biden has abandoned them completely in his panic to get our military out of Afghanistan by the end of the month, on Taliban orders.

Even worse is that lack of interest in what the two observed:

leaving on a passenger flight [but only if that ride had three empty seats] and being taken to an area where evacuees are being temporarily relocated will provide them with on-the-ground knowledge of what the rescue process looks like, and aid their ability to deliver oversight.

Biden, et al., already know all the answers; they have no interest in facts.

We’re So Special

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That’s the attitude of Progressive-Democrats, as illustrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA).

She held an expensive fundraiser last weekend while her constituents [were] still bound to COVID-19 regulations, which require, among other things, masks to be worn when people are in close proximity with each other.

The principals, from Pelosi to her bank book-opening attendees were maskless. Every single one of them.

On the other hand, the wait staff—every single one of them—had to wear the masks. Because they’re just hir’d he’p; they don’t matter so much.

Congressman Byron Donalds’ (R, FL) description is spot on and broadly inclusive:

They make all their rules for the American people but they don’t follow them. They tell the poor of America what needs to be done but they don’t actually do it themselves. So, they love having crystal on a table and getting jumbo lump crab and all that good stuff without masks, but when it comes to the American people, like let’s say in the city of New York, they are not allowed to go in a restaurant if they don’t present their vaccine card[.]

Because our Betters are Special.

Somebody’s Racism in Action

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Progressive-Democrats; their communications organ, the Press; and the Left generally accuse former President Donald Trump of racism. They hardly pass up a chance to make the accusation, even today.

A just completed Federal Reserve analysis of the just completed Federal census and a Brookings Institute (no right-leaning organization that) say otherwise.

While income inequality exists among racial and ethnic groups, the Brookings Institute points out in several reports that black and Hispanic households have made statistically significant economic progress especially in the years prior to pandemic-related shutdowns in 2020.
An analysis by the Federal Reserve, for instance, found wealth for African Americans and Hispanic Americans grew far faster during the Trump years than for whites.
Between 2016 and 2019, median wealth rose for all race and ethnicity groups, the Fed report states, but growth rates during this period “were faster for Black and Hispanic families.” Wealth increased for Black families by 33% and for Hispanic families by 65% during this period, compared to white families, whose wealth only increased by 3%.

And

[The minority] poverty rate reached record lows in 2019, according to Census data. The Black poverty rate of 18.8% was the lowest it has been since 1959 when poverty estimates were first recorded for this group.
In 2019, the poverty rate for Hispanics, 15.7%, was also the lowest on record since data for this group was first recorded in 1972. The poverty rate for Asians was also the lowest on record of 7.3%. The poverty rate of 7.3% for non-Hispanic Whites in 2019 was the same as the poverty rate of 7.3% in 1973.

It’s not just relative wealth, either. The economic upward mobility that Americans used to enjoy, and then lost in recent years, was greatly improved, also.

…84% of the middle class in 1979 was white, 2% was Black, 2% Hispanic, and 2% “other.”
By 2019, whites had fallen to 59% of the middle class, while 12% was Black, 18% was Hispanic, and 10% was listed as “other.”

The list goes on in the JtN article.

If Trump was being racist, he sucked at it, achieving precisely the opposite for minorities.

No, the racism in action is that of the Progressive-Democrats; their communications organ, the Press; and the Left generally with their routine manufacture of a race beef where they knew, and know today, full well none exists.