An Illegal Strike

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Teachers strikes are explicitly illegal in Washington, but so far that State’s law men and women, at both the State and city level, have lacked the integrity to enforce their law. Thus, Seattle’s children are in danger of being deprived, yet again, of their access to education: the teachers of Seattle’s teachers union voted 91% in favor of striking and are set to walk off their jobs before the current school year starts.

There are two responsible answers to this move, if the union follows through, and both of them should be carried out. One is to fire for cause every teacher who goes on this illegal strike. The other is to decertify the teachers union for carrying out the illegal strike.

There are no other legitimate alternatives. The fact that the State’s and city’s managers have kowtowed to teachers unions in past illegal strikes presents no excuse for letting the union and those of its members get away with its illegal action this time. All acquiescing would do would be to demonstrate, once again, the intrinsic dishonesty of those in the State’s and city’s government.

Update: It appears the school district and the teachers union have reached an agreement. Apparently, the union is getting 9% in guaranteed salary increases, plus added school staff, but no added teachers on anything else to improve the children’s academic performance.

Illegal Aliens and CDLs

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The Federal government is finally cracking down on illegal aliens with commercial driver licenses and the schools that “train” them. The latter cavalierly ignore the grave danger to life and property—to say nothing of the businesses’ cargo that those illegal aliens are hauling around.

It’s good that the Federal government is finally moving seriously to reduce the number of illegal alien CDL holders and the risks to us Americans and our businesses that those illegals represent.

It’s not enough, though. Government isn’t the only player here, nor should it be the primary. Businesses that engage shipping companies to move their goods from port, factory, farm, retailer to stores, factories, assemblers, and end users have their own part to play in this. They should require those shipping companies, as a condition of doing business with them, to certify that they have no illegal alien CDLs on their payroll.

The Left and many of their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians like to talk about noblesse oblige in the context of rationalizing their drumbeat of imposing punishing taxes on the Evil Rich. A broader and far more legitimate onus is characterized by patriotisme oblige. It’s time for businessmen who are Americans to act like it, and to act on it.

Action and Response

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Russian President Vladimir Putin has been stepping up his drone invasions (they aren’t incursions; they’re deliberate and deliberatively provocative), sabotages, cyberattacks, election interferences, and on and on of Europe’s NATO member nations. The reason, Remigijus Bridikis, Lithuania’s State Security Department Director, says is this:

Russia is looking for ways to reduce support among NATO countries for Ukraine and, one of the secondary effects they are also pursuing is spreading panic[.]

The barbarian’s efforts to cow the Ukrainian people into submission with his terror bombing of houses, apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, shopping malls, and on and on is failing miserably. Those folks are too fresh from the Soviet jackboots on their necks to be intimidatable.  The populations of other nations are long gone soft and morally weak, he thinks, coddled as they’ve been, in fact, by American defenses and expenditures, so he’s starting to try those populations.

Putin isn’t far wrong regarding central and western Europe’s populations and government men and women. He’ll find the Baltic and Polish people, though, to be made of the same sterner stuff as Ukrainians and for the same reason.

The question becomes, then, how Germany, France, Spain, Italy, UK, Netherlands, Brussels, et al., will respond to Putin’s lower-key—journalists are pleased to call them “gray zone”—attacks. Those nations and their peoples have two paths along which to respond. One is to slowly back away and reduce support for Ukraine’s fight for its existence, hoping the barbarian at their gates will move on.

The other path is for them to have the moral courage and associated morale to step up their support for Ukraine and to do so materially, not just rhetorically.

That’s an open question, unfortunately.

Progressive-Democrats as Taxmen

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There is a way for the Evil Rich to provide for their heirs in a remarkably tax favored, if not tax-free, way—private-placement life insurance, a customizable insurance contract that allows unlimited investments to grow tax-free. The contents would go to the beneficiary(s) on the account creator’s death as a death benefit, and so be free of income taxes at that point, also. These accounts were designed that way explicitly to encourage folks to provide for their dependents. The tradeoff is that the account must be under the control of an independent account trustee of some sort; the account creator cannot have even influence over how his money is invested within that contract. The mechanics of how this works isn’t relevant to this post. The outcome, though, is.

In one relatively extreme case, one Rich Person’s account, set up in this way,

could [could, mind you; the account’s manager may make bad or unlucky investment decisions] one day be worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and he won’t have paid a dime in ordinary-income or capital-gains taxes on their growth. He can take withdrawals or loans against the policy’s cash value but generally doesn’t expect to tap the proceeds. When he dies those will go to beneficiaries income-tax-free in the form of a death benefit.

Enter Progressive-Democrats with their hatred of the wealthy and their jealousy of the wealthy’s success and their demand to confiscate other people’s money, especially that of the so hated rich.

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) has introduced legislation that would separate these insurance policies from traditional life insurance, making those earnings and losses taxable to the policyholder as they are earned each year.
“We cannot have a bunch of ultrarich tax dodgers abusing its special tax treatment to set up tax-free hedge funds and shelter mountains of cash[.]”

It’s abuse to follow tax law? And: why can’t we have successful people take advantage of the government’s tax law to take care of their families? Never mind that. The Evil Rich Man cannot be allowed to pass his good luck on to his dependents. He owes Government and must pay the Progressive-Democrat government’s vig.

Naked Extortion

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This is the new fund-raising technique of the Progressive-Democratic Party—new for Party, but a much older mechanism for other families. The not very veiled threat comes from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY):

The era of unbridled corruption visited upon the country by the Trump cartel will soon come to an end[.]

Then,

Expected targets for House Democrats include companies that have made large donations to Trump or Trump’s projects and those tied to Trump’s family members or children of the president’s senior aides, including Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick.

The threat made explicit: Cooper Teboe, a Silicon Valley donor adviser and Progressive-Democratic strategist said it straight out:

His advice to companies who’ve been publicly cozying up to Trump and ignoring Democrats: “Get right with God.”
“You’re going to be totally f—ed next year or you’re going to figure it out this year and you’re going to make amends—and amends are going to be much more costly than they were previously[.]”

Companies are starting to pay the vig:

Meta Platforms and others are writing big checks for [Progressive-]Democrats ahead of the midterms, according to people familiar with the matter, a counterbalance to the tens of millions they gave to the White House ballroom and Republican initiatives.

Companies like Paramount Skydance and Kalshi are accepting Party-designated consiglieri—excuse me, Progressive-Democrat advisors—into their management teams to “help” them run their businesses.

Nice company ya’s got there. Be too bad if somethin’ was to happen to it.