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.

Victory vs Diplomacy

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The headline laid out the…dilemma.

Trump Pivots Back to Diplomacy as Iran Victory Eludes Him

This is a false dichotomy, and it’s leading to exceedingly higher costs in weapons expenditures, dollars, destruction, and casualties.

Per Clausewitz, war is merely the continuation of policy by other means. What gets left unsaid is that policy—diplomacy—is merely the continuation of war by other means. What gets missed as a result of missing the unsaid is that war and diplomacy can occur simultaneously. That’s especially true when politicians, particularly President Donald Trump (R), recognizes that war and diplomacy are the same thing operating through different tool sets.

That’s where Trump is going wrong in the conflict with Iran, and it’s where politicians of both parties have been wrong all along. Victory is not eluding the US or Trump, but it’s being delayed by Trump’s either/or procedure in this conflict with Iran. He needs to do both, simultaneously, and with our own maximum effort all across the kinetic and cyber spectrum. Likely, too, he’ll need to do both until Iran is completely disarmed with no remaining physical ability to act kinetically at all. That’s what will produce the maximum pressure on the terrorists reigning over Iran.

Go to Trial

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In the “legal” battle between Larry Ellison’s Paramount on the one hand and California, et al,, on the other over whether Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Brothers amounts to an anticompetitive monopoly, as California AG Rob Bonta claims, Ellison is pushing for a 4 November trial start date while Bonta and his fellow attorneys general in this case are holding out for a 5 April of next year start date.

Consider, though: Paramount, as part of the acquisition deal, agreed to pay Warner Brothers $650 million per quarter for every quarter the deal stays unclosed after 7 September this year, and a final payment of $7 billion, if the deal collapses or remains unclosed by June of next year. That’s what put the quote marks around the legal part just above.

If the defendant is ready to go to trial in early November, then that’s when the trial should start. That the defendant shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury is explicit in our Constitution for criminal cases, but the principle holds just as firmly in civil cases. California, et al., don’t get to delay the trial at government’s convenience.

Aside from that, they were ready to go to trial, tautologically, when they filed their suit. Delaying five months is nothing but an unethical effort to delay, delay, delay for the sole purpose of running up the costs to the defendant—hoping, perhaps to spend the defendant into giving up—for its impertinence in insisting on defending itself.

A Success from which to Learn

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This bit, regarding Ukraine’s battlefield success flowing from Ukraine’s achieving drone dominance in the barbarian’s invasion lays out the success in question:

Ukraine’s rapid adoption of drone technology in warfare, as well as its rapid manufacturing build-out to produce them, is a success that US military officials wish to learn from in order to boost America’s own production and prepare its troops for future conflict.

Some factors of that success obtain in Ukraine that don’t exist in the US. One, that overarches the rest, is Ukraine’s smaller size, relative to us.

Another is that Ukraine’s government has—with that nation’s existence on the line and so clarifying many minds at the top—far less bureaucracy in the way: no acquisition bureaucracy in contrast with our Pentagon’s acquisition satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf than they are in getting weapons for our military, no contracting bureaucracy in contrast with our Pentagon’s contracting satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf than they are in getting effective weapons contracts signed to produce weapons for our military, a design bureau (for lack of a better term) that produces, authorizes, and encourages input ranging from ideas to developed designs from soldiers at the combat front and the supply and logistics front, in contrast with our Pentagon’s design satrap whose bureaucrats seem more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf while being, at the same time, entirely too malleable by large defense contractors who constantly evolve their designs in order to plus up their contracts and the income from them, than those bureaucrats are in getting quality designs for our weapons and then freezing those designs for actual production.

Then there’s the political aspect. Ukraine’s size isn’t conducive to balkanizing supply chains and production facilities in response to its politicians’ push to get those projects for their districts. American politicians are infamous for holding up, even killing, useful weapons projects if they can’t get some or all of a project’s production set up in their State or district.

These are obvious lessons, easily learned, but they won’t be easily implemented.

One More Thought on our Second Amendment

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The thought coalesced, finally, on reading a post over at Grim’s Hall, a blog I strongly recommend on GPs.

A problem I’ve had with Bruen from the start, hanging its hat on historical tradition as it does, is that the opinion, thereby, accepts as constitutionally legitimate any weapon regulation, so long as it’s been historically long-standing.

The Second Amendment carries no such caveat or exception, though. Its bar on the government is universal and unequivocal: the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. The first attempt to regulate that right should have been ruled unconstitutional. It’s not too late today.

…7th Circuit recently upheld Illinois’ ban, noting that the ubiquitous firearm from 1791 through the mid-19th century was a single-shot muzzleloader. AR-15s with large-capacity magazines, the majority said, are “a far cry from these antecedents.”

This seems to me a patently erroneous argument by the Sages of the Seventh Circuit. The Founders, along with, especially, those members of the first Congress who wrote the Second Amendment, along with the People who ratified it, were no strangers to innovation and to technological advancement. Yet no one in any of the courts that I’ve seen have addressed the premise that with that broad awareness, and against the backdrop of so many of the Continental Army’s and Navy’s large weapons systems employed in the just-concluded Revolutionary War were privately owned, the Amendment was written to be technologically agnostic.

That backdrop, those large weapon systems being privately owned, strikes me as the only valid historical tradition.