Category Archives: ethics

Private Charity

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Readers of this blog know that I’ve long championed private charity as better suited to working our social ills than Government welfare—better economically, better for individual liberty, better for personal responsibility/morality.

Karl Zinsmeister, Editor in Chief of Philanthropy Magazine, offered some ways in which this is shown empirically to be true in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, which was adapted from his piece in the magazine’s winter 2020 issue.  One statistic that jumped out at me is this one:

77 million citizens volunteer time and labor [annually]

At Progressive-Democrats’ minimum wage, that works out to just under $1.2 billion per year that’s donated freely and on individual initiative. At current minimum wages, that still comes to nearly $560 million donated freely—at greater personal cost, too, to hear those pushing the higher minimum wage insist no one can live on such a puny wage.

Those numbers understate the donated time and labor contributed.  Many of those tasks done voluntarily are skilled tasks, and so are worth more in the doing.  Many of those volunteering time and labor are skilled individuals drawing high pay, and so their donated labor is worth far more.

But this is what progressive editorialists and political candidates openly call[ing] for deep cuts in the charitable deduction, an end to tax protections for churches and other charities, the taxing down of personal fortunes, and new regimes in which government becomes the sole ministrant of societal needs want to do away with.

Because these Know Betters are the font of what should be the target of largesse, who should pay for that largesse and how much, and how that largesse should be delivered—not the folks whose money, time, and labor would be confiscated.

A Retreat

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In the aftermath of killing Qasim Soleimani, the Iranian government is trying to create the impression of subsequent American retreat from the Middle East.

Certainly Iran’s leaders already are working to create that impression. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, citing the angry reaction to the Soleimani killing within Iran and Iraq, tweeted Monday that the “end of malign US presence in West Asia has begun.”

Iran’s government isn’t the only one trying to manufacture the impression.  See Gerald Seib’s characterization of Soleimani in his piece at the link:

Iran’s top military leader, Maj Gen Qassem Soleimani

and

the surprise attack that killed an Iranian leader

No, Sir. Soleimani was Iran’s top terrorist leader; the attack killed an Iranian terrorist leader. That he also was a high leader in the Iranian government means only that the Iranian government is terrorist in its bent and action.

Seib’s gentling description of a powerful and prolific terrorist, of a piece with the press’ characterizations of al-Baghdadi as an “ascetic religious scholar” and the recent attackers of our Baghdad embassy as “mourners,” is symptomatic of the NLMSM’s expanding manufacture of a US in full retreat.

It’s shameful.

Two Impeachment Moves

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Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO) has introduced a resolution to dismiss all impeachment charges if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) continues to obstruct the Senate trial by refusing to submit her caucus’ Articles of Impeachment to the Senate.  Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Senator Lindsey Graham (R, SC) says he’ll work with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) to change Senate rules to allow the Senate to begin the impeachment trial.

Hawley has proposed

So here’s what I think needs to happen. We need to change the Senate rules to allow the Senate to dismiss this case if she refuses to send the articles over[.]

Of the two, Graham’s is the more substantive.

What I would do, if she continues to refuse to send the articles as required by the Constitution, I would work with Senator McConnell to change the rules of the Senate so we could start the trial without her, if necessary[.]
…
If we don’t get the articles this week, then we need to take matters in our own hands and change the rules, deem them to be delivered to the Senate so we can start the trial, invite the House over to participate if they would like[.]

We need to hold the trial. President Donald Trump is allowed to be vindicated by trial; simply dismissing the charges leaves them hanging. It also would give Progressive-Democrats opportunity to bellyache about unfairness. They’re going to do anyway on acquittal, but since they will, they might as well do it on their failed case, rather than on something nebulous.

Contemptible Average Americans

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It’s well-known that the Left and its political organ, the Progressive-Democratic Party, have nothing but contempt for the rest of us, from the NLMSM referring to Tea Partiers as tea baggers, through Barack Obama’s dismissal of Middle Americans as Bible- and gun-clingers (bitter ones, at that), through Hillary Clinton’s irredeemable and deplorable slur.  We also get House Progressive-Democrats loudly questioning the integrity of House Republicans who don’t agree with them on impeachment.  The list is interminable.

Here’s one of the latest, this one from Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator (D, MA) Elizabeth Warren:

[T]he Republicans in Congress have turned into fawning, spineless defenders of his [President Donald Trump] crimes.

So, because Republicans disagree with her, they’re contemptible.  And—which she knows she’s doing, words being her stock in trade—she’s slandering all of us Americans who support this or that Republican or the Republican Party in general.

Oh, and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden told his New Hampshire audience that there are some really decent Republicans that are out there still.

Right.  Biden harkened back to a “compliment” with which persons of his (and my) generation are well familiar: those Republicans are a credit to their…party.

This is the arrogance of the Left, and the contempt for us average Americans in which the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party politicians hold us.

Remember this in the fall.

Maybe Build Their Own Connections

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Idaho wants to connect several of its western communities to a renewable energy hub in eastern Oregon, and the green citizens of eastern Oregon agrees with the sentiment.  Just don’t use actual power lines to do the connection.  Brian Kelly, Restoration Director for the Greater Hells Canyon Council in eastern Oregon:

We need to develop more renewable energy, of course, but it shouldn’t come at the cost of damage to our last remaining wild places….

Yep.  Dan Shreve, Head of Global Wind Energy Research at Wood Mackenzie:

Regardless of where you go, there’s always some issues—whether it’s bats, whether it’s birds, whether it’s wealthy landowners who don’t want their view interrupted. As a consequence, you see these initiatives drag on forever.

These worthies put greater value—economic and otherwise—on sights and terrain than they do on actual power to support the folks living there to enjoy those sights and that terrain, as well as telling others elsewhere that local sights and terrain are more important than those others’ access to power.

Perhaps utilities should walk away from such areas, build their hubs and their transmission lines elsewhere, and let these folks who think energy is not all that important develop their own clean power sources and provide their own accesses to them. Surely, they’ll be able to do so much more cheaply and efficiently while preserving their views than can utilities.