Author Archives: eehines

Arizona Governor’s Absence

Posted on by
Reply

Arizona’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor Katie Hobbs was absent from duty last Wednesday evening through Thursday mid-morning, and the State’s Treasurer, Kimberly Yee, assumed the duty as Acting Governor for the period.

I have questions.

One question is one that several folks are asking: where was she? Neither Hobbs beforehand nor Yee currently has been willing to say.

Another is what happened to the State’s Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, another Progressive-Democrat, and the Attorney General, Kris Mayes (also a Progressive-Democrat)? This is what Arizona’s constitution, Article 5, Section 6, Clause C says regarding succession:

If a vacancy in the office of governor occurs with or during a vacancy in the office of lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, the attorney general, the state treasurer or the superintendent of public instruction shall, in the order named, succeed to the office of governor.

(Arizona won’t have a Lieutenant Governor until 2026, which is when a constitutional amendment (Proposition 131) creating the position takes effect.)

And Clause E, to saucer and blow this succession matter:

In the event of the impeachment of the governor, the governor’s absence from the state or other temporary disability to discharge the duties of the office, the powers and duties of the office of governor shall devolve on the same person as in case of vacancy, but only until the disability ceases.

Skipping two levels of succession to get to the Treasurer? Were those two absent from duty, also? If so, why? If not, why were they skipped?

Don’t Take that Federal Money

Posted on by
Reply

That’s what Tennessee is considering regarding Federal education funding transfers—$1.8 billion worth, especially since the money comes with mandates and other strings. Breaking the addiction to Federal dollars will sting: Tennessee has collected some $14.85 billion in its own tax revenues through August of this year, which projects to about $22.28 billion for the year; those $1.8 billion represent about 8% of Tennessee’s domestic income.

To see if such a rejection is “feasible,”

Tennessee lawmakers appointed a 10-member panel to determine whether the state can reject $1.8 billion in federal education funding over mandates attached to the money, such as standardized testing.
The group, which consists of five senators and five representatives and includes two Democrats, will “report on the feasibility of the state rejecting federal funds and recommend a strategy to reject certain federal funds or eliminate unwanted restrictions placed on the state due to the receipt of such federal funds if it is feasible to do so[.]”

Tennessee’s House Speaker Cameron Sexton (R, 25th District):

Any time the federal government sends money, there are always strings attached to those dollars, and there is always a possibility that it opens the state up to other regulations or restrictions[.]

The sting would be worth it, though. Any time it’s possible for a State to get its domestic affairs out from under the Federal government’s…thumb…is a good time to do so. I know of no statute, Federal or State, requiring any State to accept Federal transfers. In the event, it’s straightforward for a State to adjust or rescind any State law that applies such a restriction.

Furloughs and Redundancy

Posted on by
Reply

If the government is partially shut down by Progressive-Democratic Party Congressional politician obstructionism, millions of federal employees could face furloughs, some federal offices may close or work shortened hours.

Those furloughs and closures would give us some interesting data on the usefulness/criticality of those furloughees and offices. Here’s what Slate found regarding these items during the Obama “shutdown” some 10 years ago:

Notice a couple of things here regarding Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s threat to stop paying our military members and Party politicians’ threats regarding the VA (right click on the graph and select Open Image in New Tab to get a bigger image). One is the Veterans Affairs level of furloughing: all of 4%. That’s not importantly different from the ordinary absentee rate due to illness, vacation, and so on.

Then look at the Defense line and the Note at the bottom of the graph, the latter which says Department of Defense total includes military personnel. Half of civilian personnel have been furloughed. The civilian furlough rate of 50% is a strong indication of how many of those civilians really are needed in the Pentagon and elsewhere in DoD. The military side of DoD can easily continue being paid out of current tax law-driven revenues flowing in to the government.

Finally, notice the furlough rate at so many of those Federal Agencies. That’s also a very strong indication of how many employees are truly unnecessary. Certainly, short-term furloughs overstate the degree of redundancy, but they give a very good index into how many truly are excess.

What He Said

Posted on by
Reply

The subheadline on Columbia Law’s School Maurice & Hilda Friedman Professor of Law Philip Hamburger’s Tuesday Wall Street Journal op-ed is spot on.

The First Amendment protects the right to hear alternative views, not merely to express them.

Hamburger went on:

People can’t develop their views with any sophistication unless they can consider opinions that enlarge, refine, moderate, or challenge their own. So, when government demands the suppression of some speech and chills even more, it reduces the diversity, value, and moderation of opinion—and thereby diminishes the opportunity for every individual to develop and express his own considered views. Censorship inhibits the output of critical voices, which lessens Americans’ intellectual input, which in turn limits their intellectual output. Reading and speaking are inextricably linked in conversation.

If we’re blocked from hearing another’s speech, however uncomfortable it might be to us, neither we nor the speaker have free speech.

Yet that’s the goal of the Biden administration: pressure speech outlets, especially social media platforms, to erase and to block future attempts to publish unpopular speech, speech the Biden administration personages cynically euphemize as “misinformation, disinformation, malinformation.” Never mind that those terms are defined by those same Leftist cronies in the administration.

Never mind, either, that the optimal response to misinformation, disinformation, malinformation—however defined—is with speech the hearer, or better, the listener—considers to better address the question than that objected-to speech. Simply suppressing objected-to speech isn’t mere laziness; it ranges from cowardice to naked power grabbing.

What Hamburger said, indeed.

Fundamentally Transforming America

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written elsewhere of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s goal, and of the destructive nature of that goal.

Here is the rank and file of the Progressive-Democratic Party, demonstrating how deep-seated is that desire to destroy our Republic:

  • nearly half of Democrats (47%) support censorship, and think speech should be legal “only under certain ­circumstances”
  • one-third of Democrats (34%) think Americans have “too much freedom”
  • 75% think government has a responsibility to censor “hateful” social media posts
  • a majority of Democrats (52%) approve of the government censoring social media posts “under the rubric of protecting national security”

It isn’t possible to fundamentally transform something without first destroying it so that the transformation can be done from the ground up. This assault is on that path if we choose wrongly in the fall of 2024.