Monthly Archives: February 2017

A Terrible Nightmare for Bureaucrats

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Here’s Joe Pizarchik, ex- Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement Director in the Interior Department, for all of the Obama years:

My biggest disappointment is a majority in Congress ignored the will of the people.  They ignored the interests of the people in coal country, they ignored the law and they put corporate money ahead of all that.

Wow.  Just wow.  Because the people, exercising their will in electing the majority of Congress—all the members of Congress, come to that, every single one of them—had their will ignored when the majority that they elected executed on their will by rejecting a bad regulation.

Again, wow.  Just wow.  Because that Congress, in executing on the will of the people by acting within a previously enacted law and rescinding a regulation, ignored the law.

A third time, wow.  Just wow.  Because Congress, in acting on that Congress-passed law and rescinding a coal job-killing regulation, acted against the interests of the people in coal country, people whose livelihoods were threatened by that regulation.

Of course Pizarchik worked for seven years—seven years!—on his regulation, only to have Congress get rid of it.  That’s not fair!

Now he’s working on a replacement rule for submittal under a future President:

I believe there’s a good chance that, in a legal challenge, that a court will overturn Congress’ actions here as an unconstitutional usurpation of the executive branch’s powers[.]

Never mind that the Executive Branch’s rule-making authority is solely a delegation from Congress and that the Executive Branch is required to remain wholly within the scope of the law which its regulation is intended to implement.

Plainly, eighth-grade civics was not a safe space for Pizarchik.

And there’s this pit of worry: Ross Eisenbrey, Policy Director in OSHA from 1999 to 2001 asks

Why would an administration risk putting all the years of effort into a rulemaking, all the political capital to do it, knowing somebody could take the rule to district court and have it blocked in an instant because the judge says it’s similar enough?

Why, indeed?  It is to hope.

 

h/t Don Surber

Another “Drop Dead” Moment for New York City?

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That was The New York Daily News‘ cynical characterization of President Gerald Ford’s refusal to waste taxpayer money on the city’s profligate irresponsibility with its own budget and spending habits.  Is Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) exposing New York City to another round of badly needed tough love from the Federal government?

One New York City Council member wants to expand a summer jobs program for youth.
Another is seeking millions to push the city’s bike-share program deeper into poor neighborhoods.
And another wants to increase funding to legal services for immigrants and adult literacy programs.
Such is budget season at City Hall, where the budget is expected to grow substantially for the fourth year in a row, to some $84.67 billion, up from about $70 billion for fiscal year 2014….

There is some pushback:

Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras-Copeland [D], who chairs the body’s finance committee, has said the city should be putting aside even more in the face of potential cuts under the new president.

And some pushback to the pushback.  Councilman Jumaane Williams (D):

I’m very concerned if we don’t expand these programs now what will happen in future years.  And we should do it while we have it.

[sigh]

We may get to see whether New York City not-so-favorite son President Donald Trump will have the same strength that Ford showed.

Mexican Terror Threat

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Mexico is upset with President Donald Trump’s efforts to tighten border security and especially with his efforts to deal more thoroughly with illegal aliens present in the US, many of whom are Mexican.  A coalition has formed—a group of Mexican officials, legislators, governors and public figures planning to meet [in the US] with migrant groups—to plot ways in which to interfere with our enforcement of our immigration laws.

One of those ways was described by Mexican ex-Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda:

The backlog in the immigration system is tremendous [the idea is to double or triple the backlog]….

Notice that: the idea isn’t to protect and enforce such rights as illegal aliens have in the United States, but simply to overburden our court system.  That’s nakedly cynical, but that’s mild.  This coalition is plotting worse.

Here’s Senator (Party of the Democratic Revolution) Armando Ríos Piter and an attendee of the coalition’s meetings in Phoenix over the weekend:

Mexico is helping on the fight on terror and that collaboration should be put under review given the attitude of Trump.  It’s important to make clear to them the possible consequences if Trump keeps a hostile and aggressive stance.

American government plans and methods for dealing with illegal aliens are certainly legitimate subjects for discussion and debate.  Threats to increase our vulnerability to terrorism unless we surrender our law enforcement to Mexican demands are unacceptable in those discussions and debates and anywhere else.

We should—at the least—accelerate our enforcement against illegal aliens who are Mexican citizens or who entered the US illegally via Mexican routes until the Mexican government publicly and explicitly repudiates Piter’s threat and any others like it.  With regard to Piter, we have laws against making terrorist threats, and they should be enforced against everyone in the United States.  Including Mexican government officials.

Is the Department of Education Living on Borrowed Time?

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Probably not but Congressman Thomas Massie (R, KY) has introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to eliminate it.  It’s unlikely to pass, more’s the pity, but we can hope.  Massie’s bill is short and sweet, too, consisting of this in its entirety:

The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2018.

I’d add a second sentence, though: “All employees and associates of the Department of Education shall be returned to the private sector and not reassigned elsewhere in the Federal government.”  I’d also add a third sentence: “All rules and letters promulgated by the Department of Education shall be null and void.”  The third one may be unnecessary from a strictly legal standpoint, but I think it’s necessary for absolute clarity.

The Wall Street Journal, in the op-ed at the link, had a slightly different view:

Our view would be to put Representative Massie’s close-down bill on hold for at least four years, while the rest of us give Mrs DeVos a chance at making good on reforms that put the students at the front of the line.

I disagree. As long as it exists, the DoEd will be a Progressive-Democrat threat to our children.  More, the Federal government has no place in our education system; eliminate its presence in altogether—no matter the good intentions of an incumbent Secretary.

There’s not even a need for a rump Department to issu[e] block grants to states based on population and performance of education systems at state level, as one commenter at the op-ed suggested.  There should be no Department, rump or full-up, and there should be no Federal money transfers at all. Aside from those block “grants” never appearing without Federal strings, there’s no reason a New York tax payer should be paying into Texas’ education system, or a Californian paying into Illinois’, or….

Silencing Warren

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A couple days ago, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) was disparaging a fellow Senator, Jeff Sessions (R, AL) who was being advised-and-consented regarding his nomination for Attorney General.  Senators objected, and then the Senate voted to require her to be silent for the remainder of that debate when she persisted in the disparagement.  Understand, too, that whatever we might think about the Senate’s rules against disparaging a colleague, the rules are quite clear and quite well known to all Senators and their staffs.

There are two things about the way the NLMSM is “reporting” on this as most of it lionizes Warren over her having been sent from the Senate podium for a few hours.  One is that the NLMSM is reporting only on the fact of the silencing, which occurred during her attempt to read portions of a 30-year-old letter from Coretta Scott King urging the Senate to deny Sessions’ nomination to a Federal judgeship. The NLMSM is choosing not to report on the behavior that preceded Warren’s attempt to read those excerpts that also included disparagement, behavior that included Warren’s calling Session “disgraceful” and “racist” and accusing him of pushing a “campaign of bigotry”—not even her citing someone else as possessing that opinion; those were her words.

The other is the NLMSM’s decision to not report another King family member‘s current view of Warren’s behavior.

Dr Alveda King, niece of Dr Martin Luther King Jr…said Senator Warren is using the King named to play the race card and stir up emotions.

“In that letter [Coretta Scott King] would be referring to some of [Senator Jeff Sessions’] comments,” King told the FOX Business Network’s Neil Cavuto. “However, she would agree today that he of course ended some [school segregation and] he worked to prosecute members of the KKK.”

King added: “It’s almost like a bait and switch, stir up the emotions, in the name of King—and my name is Alveda King…[and] play the race card, which she was attempting to do.”

Hmm….