Author Archives: eehines

Why do we Care?

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President Donald Trump (R) is moving to transfer as many as 30,000 illegal aliens with violent criminal histories to Guantanamo Bay for temporary housing until their final disposition is determined. A couple of Fox News‘ news writers are in such a tizzy over the prospect that they enumerated the 15 remaining prisoners—terrorists, the lot of them—along with brief biographies, who are still housed there. The writers seem worried in some inchoate manner about the potential for interaction between the two groups. The writers don’t say so in so many words, but why else would they feel constrained to point out the juxtaposition?

The larger question, which apparently hasn’t occurred to those writers, is this: why would any of us care that violent illegal aliens are being housed in the same facility as violent terrorists? After all, the former already are hardened criminals in their own right.

It Could be made to Work

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President Donald Trump (R) wants a sovereign wealth fund for “promot[ing] fiscal sustainability,” “establish[ing] economic security for future generations, and promot[ing] United States economic and strategic leadership internationally.” This is a slush fund with a gussied up label.

It could work, nonetheless, under a very narrow Critical Item-level set of circumstances.

• slush fund dollars can be loaned only, not committed as grants or investments
• slush fund purposes and scope clearly defined and limited
• scope and types of enterprises to which slush fund dollars may be loaned clearly defined and limited
• slush fund loans to be made at annually adjusting rates equal to the prime rate plus 12.75%, which is roughly comparable to today’s credit card interest rate markup
• slush fund loans to be repaid in full within two years
• principle to be returned to the slush fund; interest payments to be sent to Treasury for the explicit purpose of paying down the national debt
• bankruptcy can be used to discharge slush fund loans, but only via liquidation bankruptcy

Those are stiffly limiting criteria for a Federal government slush fund, but the WSJ editors are correct in every respect in their concerns about the dangers of such a fund. Setting up such a device under these criteria is likely a pipe dream chasing a chimera, but the idea is worth serious consideration: under these criteria, the idea could work; alternatively, the idea could be put to rest for a useful period of years.

NGOs and Funding

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Non-government organizations—are they non-governmental, or are they not?

President Donald Trump (R) has ordered all Executive Branch Departments and agencies to review their funding of non-government organizations (NGOs). His order has this:

The United States Government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people.

It’s time to stop Federal transfers of taxpayer monies to NGOs. Emphasize—enforce—that “non-” part. Being affiliated with government—even if only through government financing of part of their operation—denies the “non-” part of their designation.

If us average Americans think an NGO’s activities are appropriate, we’ll support it voluntarily with our own, direct, donations. If we do not, we should not be dragooned into supporting it anyway by having our tax dollars shunted off to it.

Whose Misunderstanding?

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A letter writer in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section wondered whether DNI nominee Tulsi Gabbard understand[s] the difference between domestic investigative warrants and surveillance warrants abroad. He went on to opine [emphasis added]

For US citizens within the country, warrants support ongoing investigations, whereas warrants abroad monitor for possible terrorist activity and are justifiable on less than probable cause. Domestically, the goal is to prosecute criminals after they have committed crimes. Abroad, the goal is to stop terrorists before they can act. That is reason enough to permit warrants for American citizens abroad.

It is not Gabbard who misunderstands, it is this letter writer.

Americans do not give up our American rights and protections against American government transgressions just because we are overseas. Americans do not give up those rights and protections under any circumstances.

Blame Ducking

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It’s not blame shifting or blame casting, even though it might seem so. Those are just tools, though, employed in the cause of ducking blame. Pennsylvania’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Josh Shapiro, has provided the latest version.

Electricity rates are spiking in the State over which he rules. PJM Interconnection, the State’s largest power provider, has approved 38 GW of new generation, but the generators are not being built: high interest rates and inflation, not Shapiro’s fault but demonstratively that of his party’s actions at the Federal level, have made the building too costly, even with the plethora of green subsidies.

Shapiro has, though,

pitched an energy plan to fast-track the construction of renewables and a cap-and-trade program that would effectively subsidize them by punishing fossil fuels. Such policies would likely lead to the retirement of more base-load fossil fuel generators….

And that restriction on energy supply can only further drive up energy prices for Pennsylvanians. This sort of thing already has done so, in fact, hence the present spike for the State’s citizens.

Now Shapiro is blaming PJM for those rising prices while ducking away from his own green policies, and his party’s national-level policies, that are the actual cause of the straits in which Pennsylvania’s citizens find themselves.

This is the Progressive-Democrat mantra: it’s not their fault; it’s never their policies. It’s always and everywhere someone else’s fault.