Monthly Archives: April 2017

A Democrat’s Disagreement

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During the recent debate in the Arizona legislature concerning a bill that would allow school vouchers for all Arizona children, Democratic Congressman Jesus Rubalcava wrote on his Facebook page that he wanted to throat-punch one of the sponsors of the bill, Republican Senator Debbie Lesko.  The Arizona Republic captured a screen shot of Rubalcava’s Facebook post:

After Rubalcava’s post began circulating, after the ensuing uproar over his threat of violence against someone impertinent enough to disagree with him, he deleted his post (but not before the Republic had captured that screen shot) and apologized to Lesko.

And so, my comment, was definitely unprofessional, and it was unacceptable.  And I want this body to know that I have apologized to Senator Debbie Lesko for my comment, and I sincerely apologize, I want this body to know.

His apology?  It followed the form of one, but its substance?  Aside from cynically playing his victim card (in his apology he also carefully pointed out that he had been raised by a hard-working single mom, as though millions of Americans—who have not stooped to threats—have not been), he already had misbehaved, and his words of apology do not—can not—undo his threat of violence against a politician whose crime was to disagree with him.

Furthermore, his threat was not uttered in the heat of a zealous debate; not a bit of that.  He wrote his threat on his Facebook page—wrote it, not spoke it—which gave him plenty of time to reflect most carefully about what he was about to publish.  And then he published it.

This is what a Democrat looks like when he has even the merely perceived power of government at his back.  Congresswoman Lesko is a very generous woman, and she accepted this Democrat’s apology.  It’s a fine example, and we all should forgive, as she has done.  But we dare not forget the threats of Democrats when they’re in government.

Nor must we overlook the fact that the Arizona Democratic Party has not yet taken action against Rubalcava.  The Party’s hesitation is instructive in itself.

Spending Our Tax Dollars

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The table below is constructed from the table and data provided by Laura Saunders in her piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.  It shows how $100 in our tax monies paid to the Federal government were spent on a range of government purposes.

Item 2016
Social Security $23.61
Medicare $15.26
National defense $15.24
Medicaid $9.55
Interest $6.25
Other spending $4.94
Veterans $4.58
Civilian federal retirement $2.57
Transportation $2.39
Refundable credits* $2.21
Education $2.08
Food stamps $1.89
Supplemental Security Income $1.53
Justice $1.48
Housing assistance $1.27
Foreign aid and international affairs $1.14
Affordable Care Act subsidies $1.09
Natural resource protection $1.01
Unemployment insurance $0.86
Child nutrition $0.60
Other health† $0.36
National Park Service $0.08
National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities $0.01
Congressional salaries $0.00
                                                            Total: $100.00

Notice some things (I’m going to ignore some things, too, but this is my post on my blog; I get to do that). The bulk of the Federal social safety net—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—comprises in its aggregate nearly half of those hundred dollars.  Yet these are the most easily and directly privatisable, and as a matter of personal responsibility and individual freedom, they should be.  Each State should take care of its own poor: New Yorkers shouldn’t be paying any part of Illinois’ Medicaid costs in this arena, for instance.  Each individual should be paying toward his own future retirement and retired medical costs (and/or the retirement and medical costs of his own parents, if he—not the Feds—wishes) and not for the current retirement and medical costs of complete strangers.

There are far better uses to which the Federal government should be putting those $48+.  One such is plussing up another major component of the Federal social safety net: National defense (OK, I’m not using the standard definition of social safety net here, but I suggest that absent an effective national defense establishment, in very short order there won’t be any social to be kept safe).  National defense currently takes up only a bit over 15% of that C-note, and it certainly could use some increases in order to fund more troops, more and better equipment, and much more rapid and broad R&D.

Then there’s that Interest cut.  Those $6+ dollars are the interest on the national debt, a debt that continues to grow, courtesy of another datum Saunders provided.  It takes an additional $15.24 beyond that Benjamin to cover the Federal budget deficit that’s growing our debt.  A significant fraction of those $48+ could be sent toward the debt’s principle as well as those interest payments—which are only going to get larger as the underlying interest rates go up now that the Federal Reserve Bank (finally) is easing up on its artificially depressed interest rates.

One minor side note: congressional salaries aren’t actually zero; they’re just a good approximation of zero on this scale.  But you already knew that.

Threat or Warning?

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The People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, has…said:

The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering.

If they let war break out on the peninsula, they must shoulder that historical culpability and pay the corresponding price for this[.]

Pay the corresponding price: is the PRC warning northern Korea and us, or is it threatening us in favor of its client—losing face as the PRC will do in the event of an attack by its client and the response that must come?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson would be well advised to insist on a public clarification of Wang’s statement by PRC President Xi Jinping.  Especially since the only entity that will “let war break out” will be the PRC, letting slip its client dogs of war.

A Misunderstanding

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…between the roles of State and Defense and how those roles should be carried out.  The misunderstanding is illustrated in (though it’s not the primary subject of) a Friday Wall Street Journal piece by Dion Nissenbaum and Maria Abi-Habib.

President Donald Trump is (very properly) backing away from a Lyndon Johnson- or Barack Obama-esque micromanagement of what the military is permitted to do, including target selection, timing of engagement, and weapons permitted to be used on those targets.  Instead, he’s encouraging DoD to have its commanders on-scene to exercise more initiative, with less mother-may-I delay waiting for permission from the White House (and notice that use of the chain of command from the top down, too).   From that, as illustrated by General John Nicholson’s decision to drop a MOAB on his own initiative on a Daesh network of tunnels and caves in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, we’re seeing a more aggressive military with more timely activities.

This has led to the misunderstanding.

The firmer military stance has fueled growing concerns among State Department officials working on Middle East policy that the Trump administration is giving short shrift to the diplomatic tools the Obama administration favored. Removing the carrot from the traditional carrot-and-stick approach, some State Department officials warn, could hamper the pursuit of long-term strategies needed to prevent volatile conflicts from reigniting once the shooting stops.

No, he’s not.  What’s being given short shrift is diplomatic dithering.  There’s not just a new sheriff in town, there’s a new pace in town, too: State Department officials working on Middle East policy—along with the rest of State below Secretary Rex Tillerson’s immediate staff—need to push their own pace, too.  A faster diplomatic pace isn’t just a matter of keeping up with the military; State still should lead, for the most part, and the military still should follow State’s lead, for the most part.  There is, though, no need for the slow pace they’ve been accepting.  Our diplomats need to push the pace—they always have needed to do so, even if they’ve not—and put the onus on other nations to respond, to keep up.  Especially regarding our enemies and those nations that support our enemies or host nodes of terrorist network entities like the Daesh or al Qaeda.

Nor has any carrot been removed from the traditional, yet useful, carrot-and-stick technique of pushing, prodding, cajoling, pressuring.  The carrots have merely been pushed farther forward in time: no more slowness.

Contra those State officials, all that has changed are two items: on-scene commanders are being restored to their jobs and initiative (which is not a matter about which State need concern itself), and the pace of development is being accelerated.  The speed of diplomacy should no longer be a good approximation of glacial.

Potemkin Missiles?

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The Yonhap News/Zuma Press image, below, appears to be a new ICBM, and apparently a transportable one, shown in a military parade in Pyongyang, northern Korea, last Saturday.

Also paraded were missile launchers with “never-before-seen missile canisters” (imagery not provided in the Wall Street Journal article at the link).

“Never before seen” and “new.”  Are these truly so, or are they only new to the NLMSM and haven’t actually been successfully concealed from the world’s intelligence services?

Or: are these real weapons, or are they just shams, empty containers?  Inquiring minds want to know.