Category Archives: ethics

Coverup

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And so it begins in earnest, again.

The Biden administration will ask U.S. attorneys appointed by President Trump to resign from their posts….

In particular,

…John Durham, the US district attorney in Connecticut who was named special counsel to investigate the origins of the FBI probe into the 2016 election, will resign from his position, but he will stay on as special counsel….

Special counsel. Sure. With much more circumscribed authorities and duties. Durham’s investigations will be slow-walked, now.

As will DoJ’s “probe” into Hunter Biden’s tax behaviors, People’s Republic of China business dealings, and “other transactions”. Even though the prosecutor overseeing that activity will stay on that task, look for it to be slow-moving as well, ultimately just petering out quietly.

Needed Stimulus

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…or not. Mostly—nearly entirely—not.

real per capita disposable income in [Wuhan Virus situation-ridden] 2020 grew 5.5%

The Wall Street Journal noted that this is all before the December-passed $900 billion stimulus “took effect.” It’s also after that stimulus—which still hasn’t had much effect since much of that money hasn’t even been sent into the economy by Government.

What happened to the $2.6 trillion Government had already lobbed into the economy?

Preliminary data for 2020 show total savings for 2020 was $1.6 trillion higher than in 2019.  And that was before the $900 billion stimulus.

It’s also after those $900 billion….

Some folks are squawking that the money wasn’t really all that stimulative—it was saved rather than spent, which was the purpose of the stimulus. Some folks misunderstand. Savings do get spent—in the short term, if not immediately, on short-term needs and wants. Savings that aren’t quickly spent become deposits in financial institutions, where they join the pool of what economists call loanable funds—and get lent to borrowers, who then spend. Loanable funds might not be promptly spent, but they most assuredly do get spent.

Given this and the fact that the December stimulus remains uncommitted to the economy, why the urgency, and the need, for an additional $1.9 trillion in stimulus? According to the CBO,

The office said gross domestic product would return to pre-pandemic levels by mid-2021 and will continue growing until 2026 as a vaccine reduces the number of new infections and the need for social distancing.

And

Labor market conditions continue to improve. As the economy expands, many people rejoin the civilian labor force who had left it during the pandemic, restoring it to its pre-pandemic size in 2022[.]
The unemployment rate gradually declines throughout the period, and the number of people employed returns to its pre-pandemic level in 2024[.]

All that without the $1.9 trillion mess currently being rammed through Congress by Progressive-Democrats.

Why, then, do we need the additional $1.9 trillion national debt stimulus? We don’t. Progressive-Democrats do, or rather they want the money, so they can continue to virtue-signal. Those new trillions that Progressive-Democrats are insisting they’re going to jam down our throats, and rip from our children’s and grandchildren’s wallets (not that I mix metaphors or anything), in a strictly partisan fashion will be, in the longer run, nothing but destructive of all things economic.

There is urgency: to stop the train wreck that is this new $1.9 trillion package of froo-froo.

Bipartisanship the Biden Way

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Then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden campaigned on—bragged about—his ability to work with Republicans, to get bipartisan deals done, because he claimed, bipartisanship was best for the nation.

Here’s an example of that bipartisanship in the true Biden way, centered on the nearly $2 trillion Wuhan Virus “relief” bill the Progressive-Democrats are pushing in Congress. It comes on the heels of Biden’s Monday meeting with 10 Republicans regarding their far cheaper relief proposal, a meeting in which Biden paid lip service to hearing what Republican had to say and to offer. Speaking through his White House Press Secretary, Jen Psaki, Biden said,

he will not slow down work on this urgent crisis response….

He will not wait on Republicans to get on board with Party requirements. His Unity Platform partner, Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) also has made clear that Party must proceed without Republican input if that slows down the Party virus legislation. Sanders was characteristically blunt:

Well, I don’t know what the word compromise means[.]

Biden, through his equally characteristic silence, shows that he fully agrees with his partner.

On top of that, neither Biden, nor any of his advisors, nor any Progressive-Democrat Congressional powers are willing to explain the urgency behind their $2 trillion virus spending plan, given that the vast bulk of the already passed $900 billion virus spending plan remain unspent, even in some cases unallocated.

A Trump Legal Legacy

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Brent Kendall had a piece in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal, Trump Appointees Poised to Influence Legal Outcomes for Decades to Come, that explored this item. It’s well worth the read.

One statement in particular caught my eye, though.

Republican and Democratic [judicial] appointees often embrace differing legal philosophies that lead to divergent results.

This is at the core of the problem. As our Constitution’s Article I, Section 1 makes clear, there is only one legitimate legal philosophy for judges and Justices. They’re sworn to uphold the Constitution, not some mythical document that better comports with what they want to uphold.

Thus, they must apply the Constitution and the statute(s) before them as they’re written, not as they wish they were written; not as “adjusted” to fit a judge’s personal view of what society needs, as articulated by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and acted out by Chief Justice John Roberts; not Thurgood Marshall’s you do what you think is right and let the law catch up.

All of those…philosophies…are political decisions well outside the ken of the judiciary and solely within the scope of the political branches of government and of We the People, who hire and fire those political personages.

Not a Mixed Message

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Amazon insists it’s only censoring violent speech, and claimed that when it tossed Parler off its AWS cloud hosting facility, thereby denying (as Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s MFWIC, knew full well at the time) Parler and all of its primarily conservative participants any voice on the Internet.

Just the News says that with the tossing of sites like Parler while hosting other sites like Twitter, Amazon is sending “mixed signals.”

Here are some tweets that still are up on Jack Dorsey’s Twitter, that’s now on Amazon’s AWS cloud hosting facility:

Actor and liberal activist George Takei on Sunday referred favorably to Paul’s assault in a tweet in which he wrote: “Admit it. These days we all sort of wish we had been Rand Paul’s neighbor.”
Podcaster Amy Westervelt, meanwhile, wrote: “Where is Rand Paul’s neighbor when you need him.”
Author Brandon Snider tweeted in favor of a “GoFundMe for Rand Paul’s neighbor to finish the job.”
Author Mark Sarvas wrote that Paul’s neighbor should “kick his racist ass again.”

JtN is misapprehending the situation. Amazon is not sending any mixed signals at all; Bezos’ message is quite clear: Conservatives have nothing to say and no voice to say it as far as he’s concerned. He freely allows violent messages on his facility—so long as they’re spoken by the “right” persons.