Don’t Sell F-35s to Turkey because…

Posted on by
Reply

…Turkey still has Russian S-400 air defense missile systems?

The Trump administration is expected to override a decision by a Democratic lawmaker who is blocking a proposed $750 million sale of jet engines to Turkey over concerns about the country’s ties to Russia.
Congressman Gregory Meeks (D, NY) had placed a hold on the sale to Turkey—a NATO ally that is hosting an alliance summit next month—because the country continues to hold a Russian S-400 air-defense system that it bought roughly a decade ago, along with other concerns about Turkey’s role in the region.

That S-400 system, after all, might spy on Turkey’s F-35s and learn how to defeat it.

This is silly. There are reasons to not sell F-35s to Turkey, but the idea that the S-400 can compromise the F-35’s stealth capabilities isn’t one of them, at least not anymore (if it ever was). We’ve sold lots of F-35s to other nations over the years. If the jet’s stealth capabilities could ever be compromised, they already have been, just from their use around the world and our enemies observing their use, including by those objectionable S-400 systems, and collecting data on detecting and otherwise countering the jets. And that foolishly ignores the fact that over those intervening years of F-35 operational use, there have been a plethora of—steadily more and more capable—systems watching and observing and analyzing the F-35 in all its operational flexes.

There are reasons for going ahead with the sale, too, and these should be weighed against those reasons for not selling. The presence of S-400s in the buying nation is not relevant.

What the Progressive-Democratic Party now Stands For

Posted on by
Reply

With Party’s nomination of three Democratic Socialists of America for our nation’s House of Representatives, its election of DSA member Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor, its all but election of a DSA supporter as mayor of DC, and its nomination DSA acolytes for positions up and down the ballot across America, the Progressive-Democratic Party has made plain what it has chosen to stand for.

  • open support for Palestinians and Hamas
  • end to support for Israel, which is genocidal and apartheid
  • defunding our police departments, elimination of the police function altogether(!)
  • end to jail/prison for convicted felons
  • open national borders
    • abolish ICE
    • end deportations
  • seizure of the means of production
    • seize apartments, other rentals from existing landlords
  • Medicare for all—provision of a national, government produced, health system
  • push for all union employment, elimination of right to work provisions
  • packing Supreme Court
  • ever higher income taxes and wealth taxes

None of these is good for our nation. Any combination of them will be disastrous.

Confidential

Posted on by
Reply

A fifteen-year-old boy who sued YouTube, Alphabet‘s Google-owned company over YouTube‘s alleged causing [of] mental health harms to children via its also alleged by-design addictive nature, has settled his lawsuit rather than insisting on going to trial. The terms of the settlement are…confidential.

Of course, the boy’s lawyers are taking a victory lap.

YouTube‘s decision to resolve this case before having to face a jury speaks for itself.

On the other hand, José Castañeda, a Policy Communications Manager (III) at Google, speaking on behalf of YouTube and the settlement

said in a statement to FOX Business that the lawsuit had been amicably resolved.

Naturally, the lawyers for both sides would paint the outcome as favorable for their own client. The losers in such an outcome, though, are the public, other children in the boy’s claimed strait, and the boy himself.

By concealing the outcome, it’s impossible for the public—those other children, especially—to know whether YouTube is being suitably punished or the boy’s beef is bogus. That’s all carefully hidden. The concealment reduces a suit and the associated publicity to nothing more than virtue-signaling.

I’m spring-loaded against keeping settlements of civil lawsuits, which themselves are public affairs, hidden away from the public. If the plaintiff(s) aren’t confident of the legitimacy of their plaint, they ought not bring the case in the first place. If they are confident, they should push the pace and go to trial.

False Dichotomy

Posted on by
Reply

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors are at it again. Their lede lays out their (unrecognized) mistake.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon on President Trump’s birthright citizenship order. Win—or more likely—lose, he might take note that the success of the US men’s national soccer team in this year’s World Cup is the product in part of America’s historically welcoming immigration system and automatic grant of birthright citizenship to children born in the US.

Correcting the decades of misapprehension of the 14th Amendment and “birthright citizenship” wouldn’t at all make us unwelcoming. All the correction would do (sadly, the editors are likely correct about the likelihood of a favorable ruling) is eliminate the automatic citizenship granted to babies whose parents, by their own intent and action, hold themselves outside our nation’s jurisdiction, being present only under our nation’s power.

The editors closed their piece with this bit and no trace of understanding of its irony:

America’s World Cup men’s team shows again how bringing in foreign talent can be a win for the individuals and for the country.

Legal immigrants. Immigrant citizens or sons of immigrants (because FIFA’s national teams are required to be citizens, not hirelings), who vastly outnumber the one birthright citizen on the team.

Legal immigrants, after the end of birthright citizenship, would remain highly welcome and encouraged to come and join our great nation. The fact that one of the players on our national soccer team is a birthright citizen is irrelevant to any of that.

There is a Solution

Posted on by
Reply

Crystal FitzSimons, Food Research & Action Center President, is worried that reduced participation in SNAP is not an indication of reduced need for assistance.

[T]the law’s stricter time limits, administrative hurdles, and pending cost-shift to states, along with inadequate benefits, are pushing eligible households off the program.

She correctly outlined the benefits of SNAP (which, I claim, generalize to welfare programs in general):

When investments are made in SNAP, real progress is made toward lifting people out of poverty. …
When SNAP benefits better align with increasing food costs, more families stay above the poverty line. When barriers increase, the opposite happens.

But she proposed the wrong solution.

Through legislation, Congress should ensure that everyone has the nutrition they need to thrive rather than make it harder for families to put food on the table.

No.

In our federated republican form of government, the member States are responsible, each for its own internal affairs. It’s time for them to stop freeloading off the Federal government—freeloading off the citizens of the other 49 States—and start honoring their own obligations toward their own citizens. Each State has the money. It simply needs to reallocate its spending and stop taking ever more money away from its own citizens in the form of ever rising tax rates.