Corruption, Thy Name Is…

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The lede lays it out in no uncertain terms.

Arizona’s largest county suffered a significant breach of its election data in the days before the 2020 presidential election when a self-described hacker foiled security and obtained 633,000 voter registration files but the Biden Justice Department and local prosecutors declined to bring charges even after the FBI got the suspect to confess, according to declassified documents made public Thursday by the White House.

And this:

FBI Director Kash Patel sent a letter to that task force this week stating the bureau spent “significant resources” but could not get the US Attorney’s Office in Phoenix, the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, the Maricopa County Arizona Attorney’s Office or the Pinal County, Arizona Attorney’s Office to bring charges despite an admission from the alleged hacker.

The Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians insist that our election system is entirely secure and there’s no need for a SAVE Act to secure it. Never mind that the hacker suspect described just how “secure” the Maricopa County setup was (and is?):

The suspect, who described himself as a “hacker or tinkerer,” told the agents that he first discovered the vulnerabilities in Maricopa’s website about two months earlier, in September 2020. “He noticed his voter ID appeared in the URL” after entering his own voter information and “tested the vulnerability by entering several seven-digit numbers into the URL path resulting in access to different voter registration information,” the agents wrote.

That lack of security is so bad it has to be deliberate. The software designer, tester, and their supervisors, along with the Election Monitor chief all need to be on trial for that criminal negligence.

Lose the ad Hominem

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Michigan’s Republican nominee for US Senate, Mike Rogers, commented on his now opponent, Democratic Socialists of America nominee, Abdul el-Sayed (formally, the Progressive-Democratic Party nominee), for the same seat.

The choice this November is simple: common sense or complete insanity. For more than 25 years, one party has controlled Michigan’s two Senate seats—and they’ve run our state into the ground. They’ve driven 200,000 manufacturing jobs out of Michigan. They’ve dropped our schools to 45th in the nation. They’ve saddled families with the highest utility rates in the Midwest. Working people are paying more, earning less, and getting left behind.

Rogers’ statement would have been just as effective, if not more so, had he left off the ad hominem phrasing after that colon. He’ll be much more effective if he sticks to the policy failures of the Progressive-Democratic Party and the destructive nature of the DSA’s goals—which include elimination of the Senate for which seat the two are competing—and the already empirically demonstrated failures of the economic policies which el-Sayed espouses.

Rogers does not need the ad hominem foolishness. Using that just diminishes him and dilutes his case when it isn’t distracting from it.

Desperation

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After enduring weeks of deprecation and outright denigration at the hands of Michigan’s Democratic Socialists of America (formally, Progressive-Democratic Party) nominee for US Senate Abdul el-Sayed, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has…come out in support of el-Sayed for Senate. This, even after el-Sayed campaigned on, among other things, his commitment to ensure his first vote in the Senate would be against Schumer continuing as Leader, whether Minority or Majority.

It’s unseemly, and it’s sad, to see an old man so desperate to keep his leadership job that he’ll toady up to those who so openly don’t like him.

Hold Who Accountable, Again?

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Over the last month, or so, there has been a spate of cyber attacks against our nation’s infrastructure, culminating in a series of attacks a variety of water distribution networks causing shutdowns of several cities’ water supply, primarily in Minnesota, but spread also across seven States.

It’s not like these attacks came out of the blue, though. Ever since Colonial Pipeline, the executive management teams of utilities—of all private enterprises, come to that—have been on clear notice that well that cyber attacks were a thing; they would occur; and by the success of that attack, they were encouraged by Colonial’s—at then-President Joe Biden’s (D) pressure in his own abject meekness in front of Russia—weak-kneed payment of the demanded ransomware, matched by Biden’s surrender to Russia regarding Nord Stream 2.

And yet, these latest attacks occurred and successfully shut down those physical networks.

The failure of these management teams is reprehensible, given their apparent cavalier attitude—criminally negligent attitude, in my opinion—toward cyber security and securing their networks against cyber intrusion, cyber vandalism, cyber-instigated shutdown. This lack of effort by those managers should result in stern sanction, including jail, against them.

Their decision to not bother with any serious security measures is a failure of their fiduciary duty toward their shareholders. More than that, their failure, especially in the water distribution cases, puts their customers who depend on them for water at serious risk. Above even that, their negligence represents a threat to our nation’s security. The one is criminal, if proven, and the others are unpatriotic and especially unacceptable.

And yet, to date, no one is being looked at for sanction or even civil liability.

Wrong Solution

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New York City’s Socialist (officially Progressive-Democrat) Mayor Zohran Mamdani published an extensive list of residences which he claimed were secondary residences—pieds-à-terre—owned by the Evil Rich, together with his intention of taxing them heavily for their existence. It turns out his minions didn’t trouble themselves to proofread the list, and it contains massive errors.

In his magnanimity, Zohran’s administration granted a reprieve, of sorts.

Homeowners across New York City now have an extra month to prove their primary residency and avoid Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new pied-à-terre tax, an extension triggered by mass confusion over a publicly posted tax roll.

This is Leftist government being Leftist. It shouldn’t matter how much time a city resident has in which to prove the home in which he lives is his primary residence and not the part-time secondary abode that the city claims it to be. This is a reversal of our national tradition—and legal requirement—that it’s the government’s task to prove its charge is correct and not the accused’s task to prove it incorrect.

Mamdani’s administration should be required to prove—in court and city expense—that the home in question is, indeed, the pied-à-terre that the city clams it to be. There is no excuse for shifting that most basic requirement of government off onto the citizen. That’s the attitude of Ruler regarding his Subjects.