Monthly Archives: February 2025

Some Trash Removal Progress

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With DoJ’s order to the Southern District of New York prosecutors in Manhattan to drop their bribery case against New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams, six of those prosecutors resigned in protest. Exemplifying the trash cleanout nature of these failures and of their arrogant insistence that the prosecutors of that Southern District are independent of the DoJ, however, are the words of the seventh prosecutor to resign, Hagan Scotten, in his letter of resignation, as quoted by The Wall Street Journal.

Our laws and traditions do not allow using the prosecutorial power to influence other citizens, much less elected officials, in this way.
If no other lawyer within earshot of the President is willing to give him that advice, then I expect you will eventually find someone who is enough of a fool, or enough of a coward, to file your motion. But it was never going to be me.

The former often is true, but regarding the naked, uncaveated, nature of it, it’s also true that prosecutorial power is, in fact, often used to influence other citizens: such influence is the stuff of plea deals, particularly those involving agreements to cooperate here in return for prosecutorial discretion there. That discretion can reach as far as completely dropping the charges against the one agreeing to cooperate. That’s number one, as someone was wont to say.

The other thing is Scotten’s name-calling and virtue-signaling that is his latter bit. That he has to call names against those who disagree with him, including those misbegotten superiors of his so impudently insisting that the heretofore far too independent-acting district should actually be subordinate to the DoJ, merely demonstrates the intellectually and legally bankrupt nature of his objections.

These seven were members of DoJ’s Public Integrity Section, consisting of roughly two dozen lawyers.

In the end, Edward Sullivan, of that section agreed to be the one to sign the filing that would ask the presiding just to drop the case. His reason for doing so, here as cited by the WSJ, is instructive: to spare other career staff in the section from potentially being fired.

The insubordinates—all seven of them—are well removed from the Department. Sullivan’s rationalization for his going along, though, suggests that the entire Section wants close inspection and further rooting out, perhaps complete replacement of the remaining incumbents.

In Which a District Judge is Mistaken

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DC District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from firing any CFPB employee except for cause, and cannot proceed with any large-scale reduction-in-force of staff. The judge is badly mistaken here.

The question centers on this: either the CFPB is part of the Executive Branch, or it is not. The answer is muddied, though not badly, by the then-Progressive-Democrat-controlled Congress’ cynical creation of the Board as funded by its own draws on the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States—draws of whatever magnitude the Board demands and that the Fed would be bound to pay up—and of its Chairman being unremovable by the President.

If the Board is not a part of the Executive Branch, then by its Design Specification, it is a fourth branch of the Federal government. It was designed to operate wholly independently of the Executive Branch and given free reign [sic] to operate similarly independently of Congress, which has wholly yielded up its purse string control of it. That would make the Board an unconstitutional creation whose existence must be ended on that ground.

However, the Supreme Court has ruled that, contra that Congress’ construction, the Board Chairman can, in fact, be removed by the President for any or no reason at all, because the Board is, in fact, an Executive Branch agency, and so under the control of the President, just the same as are all other agencies and Departments of the Executive Branch.

Since the Board is an Executive Branch agency, the President has the hiring and firing authority he needs to terminate any and all Board members and employees, subject only to already existing due process requirements. These requirements are in flux, too, as the President has considerable, although not total, authority to alter the nature of those requirements.

I look for the Supreme Court to rule in the administration’s favor (the DC Circuit is unlikely to overrule her).

Bad Logic of the Progressive-Democrats

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There is a strong Republican move to completely eliminate the death tax the Federal government charges against heirs when their love ones die.

Supporters of the federal estate tax point out that it affects a relatively small number of estates.

Leave aside the simple fact that the death tax too often forces mom-and-pop business owner-inheritors to sell that business—their livelihood—just to raise the tax vig due under current law.

The tax only affects a few? That’s their logic? The tax only hurts a few Americans, and so it’s entirely OK to keep? Progressive-Democratic Party politicians won’t even offer any serious benefit to having this death tax. Their only claim here is that the inheritors don’t deserve the inheritance since they didn’t earn it, only inherited it. Sell that nonsense to the mom-and-pop inheritors.

This is yet another Party example of why it’s so hard for our nation to have nice things.

Arab Plan vs Trump Plan

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President Donald Trump (R) has laid out his plan for recovering the Gaza Strip from the devastation that Hamas has caused with its war on Israel and with its reign over the Strip for the decades preceding its war. The surrounding Arab states don’t like that plan, for all that Jordan has agreed to accept 2,000 children from the Strip.

Trump then said words to the effect of, if they don’t like his plan, come up with one of their own.

All of a sudden, they’re working on one.

Egypt has launched a diplomatic blitz to corral support for an Arab-led and funded initiative to rebuild the Gaza Strip, setting aside old political concerns in hopes of boxing out a Trump plan that is wildly unpopular across the Arab world.

And

Egypt is also seeking to separate out the question of Palestinian statehood and put it on a different track from the effort to rebuild Gaza[.]

Put up, or shut up. Maybe the Arab states are choosing, finally, the former. Until now, far from shutting up, they’ve been happy to virtue-signal among themselves by yapping from the safety of the sidelines rather than stoop to get their own hands dirty while the Palestinian residents of the Gaza Strip, about whom they pretend to care, continue to be butchered by Hamas.

Reciprocal Tariffs

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National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett says that negotiations are underway with a variety of nations regarding tariffs.

Reciprocal tariffs are absolutely a high priority for the president, [they] have been forever. You know, our trading partners charge us way more in tariffs than we charge them. And it’s something he talked about before[.]
…
And there’s got to be a lot more action on it today[.]

A lot more action. Recall that, during his first term, President Donald Trump (R) offered the G-7 nations and EU a tariff-free trade zone. All of those nations and the EU blew him off.

It’s time to renew that offer: let tariffs reciprocally drop to zero and create a true free trade zone. See if those nations, and especially the EU are serious about doing honest business with us. American producers will have no trouble competing in that zone.