Category Archives: politics

Rent Freezes

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Are rent freezes unconstitutional? The question comes up in my pea brain by the moves of Democratic Socialist and Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s move to freeze rents in New York City (though he’s merely expanding on prior city administrations’ rent freezes) and of Democratic Socialist and Progressive-Democrat candidate for Florida Senator Angie Nixon, whose campaign platform plank was a national rent freeze.

The Fifth Amendment says, in part, nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. A rent freeze plainly caps a landlord’s income, blocking him from increasing it at will or even consistently with market values or imperatives.

Nah—that won’t work. Government can’t take what doesn’t exist, and those increases are purely speculative.

But those rent freezes lead to reductions in value of the landlord’s property through denial of the revenue increases required, not merely useful or even needed, to maintain his rental properties in the face of rising costs of maintenance through aging degradation, misuse or abuse of the property by the tenants, and inflation which drives the prices plumbers, electricians, etc must charge.

Surely that freeze-driven devaluation of the property constitutes a taking within the meaning of the Amendment.

Probably not here, either. For one thing, the government wouldn’t be taking for public use, it would be just taking. That’s a technicality. One the merits, it likely isn’t a taking at all. All government regulations in one form or another impact the value of the businesses in the industries being regulated. In some cases, those regulations actually increase the value of the regulated industry participants. If regulatory caps are takings, then regulatory-prompted gains would seem to be taxable capital gains.

But those gains aren’t transfers by government to the regulatees anymore than the regulation-driven losses are takings.

Rent freezes are bad for business, bad for tenants in the long run, and bad for government revenue, but they aren’t unconstitutional. Just monumentally stupid.

SNAP Reforms

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The Senate’s Progressive-Democrats object to States having even minimal fiscal responsibility for managing Federal outlays to them for welfare programs. Their latest objections concern reforms to SNAP payments. Currently, the Federal government forks over 100% of the funding for a State’s SNAP program, and the State is solely responsible for disbursing those funds to eligible recipients. The current reforms, enacted last year, require those States with error rates—paying out to fraudulent recipients, for instance—above a low level (10%) to begin picking up a small part of the SNAP tab, with effect in 2028.

Progressive-Democrat Senators, en masse, object, and they’re blocking a farm bill unless they get that deadline extended. Their real goal is to functionally eliminate the deadline.

There is an alternative that would render this sort of Progressive-Democrat…foolishness…moot, and it’s one I’ve proposed before. Maybe its time has come, in response to Party’s studied intransigence to any reform that would reduce dependency on Party government.

Designate a nearby year as Year0, and add up all the Federal funds transfers for any purpose to each State in that year. Lump that sum into a single payment for the year. In each subsequent year, reduce that lump sum payment by 10% of the Year0 transfer, until the transfer is reduced, in about 10 years, to $0.00.

Federal transfers—taxpayer dollars—in general should not be getting made to any State except in exigent circumstances. The good citizens of Texas should not see their tax remittances pushed on over to New York or California. The good citizens of New York and California should not see their remittances relayed to Illinois or Iowa. Each State and territory in our union should keep its citizens’ tax remittances solely for the benefit of that State’s/territory’s citizens.

Exigent circumstances: when a State-wide or region-wide emergency arises that’s beyond the resources of that State or region, then Federal transfers (a going in allocation, to start the discussion, would be 50% grant and 50% loan at market interest rates) would be an appropriate means of assisting the State or region in dealing with the emergency.

The Senate Filibuster

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section wants the Senate to convert to a talking filibuster rather than the current format of requiring a 60 vote majority for a bill o proceed to a second floor vote for an up or down decision on the bill in question. His view is that Senators aren’t serious about their opposition to a bill unless they talk to exhaustion on the Senate floor.

That’s a process that’s doomed to cancel altogether the purpose of the filibuster.

Talking filibusters die from opposing Senator fatigue, and then the majority party gets to dictate its will and impose unilaterally the filibustered bill without change or compromise, albeit with some small and inconvenient delay.

The current form of the filibuster requires some measure of bipartisanship in order to pass a bill.

The quaint talking filibuster was an artifact of a time when political parties and their members actually were interested in national good rather than party good and were willing to compromise; it was a time when there was a measure of collegiality in the Senate. Today’s political environment is entirely too divisive, with both parties demanding its way or nothing at all with each strongly willing to accept nothing at all if it means, at the least, blocking the other party.

Republicans’ fear of a unilateral-minded Progressive-Democratic Party majority, which would result from a revival of the talking majority or the elimination altogether of the filibuster should be matched by Progressive-Democrats’ fear of a unilateral-minded Republican majority.

It’s instructive to see that the Progressive-Democratic Party is the one willing to roll the dice on its getting that majority first, from which they can impose one-party rule for generations, while the Republican Party, for the most part (there are some Weak Ones) continue to fight for the current filibuster system and a degree of compromise, however forced.

Operating in a Hostile Drone Environment

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The US Army tried that in an exercise in Germany in which Ukrainian drone operators were the OPFOR. The OPFOR won that engagement very easily, and in a real world shooting fight, it would have been a disaster for the US forces.

Because of that—all of us learn more from our failures than our successes—the exercise, Combined Resolve, was a treasure trove of learning opportunities regarding ground forces operating in a hostile drone environment.

Exercises like Combined Resolve are run precisely so that forces can experience realistic combat conditions. Army leaders in Europe over recent years have taken advantage of having Ukrainian forces on hand to participate and impart their hard-won skills to US and allied troops in practice, on simulated battlefields. The expectation is that failures are educational. British and Swedish exercises have also resulted in easy Ukrainian triumphs.

The problem with this, though, is identified by Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich, Commander, United States European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander Europe:

You can’t get training like this in the United States.

Grynkewich added that after NATO forces exercise against Ukrainian forces, “The change is remarkable.”

Why can’t we get that sort of training stateside? The USAF has stateside exercises where the OPFOR fly the actual aircraft of enemy nations where we have examples of them, and uses USAF aircraft flown by pilots steeped in enemy tactics and doctrine where enemy aircraft aren’t available. The Navy’s air forces do the same.

America pioneered using long-range drones in war. The Pentagon has recently spent billions acquiring new drone and counterdrone technology and formed special units to operate it.
Still, in the Middle East this year, the US has struggled to defend against Iran’s long-range drones, which have killed and injured soldiers and destroyed aircraft.

Why don’t we have drone exercises—especially with the short-range drones optimized for attacking close-in OPFOR or OPFOR in contact with our formations—to train for dealing with, operating in, and defeating enemy forces operating under or behind their drones?

One answer to my question, I freely speculate, is that there are too many bureaucrats, both uniformed and civilian, in the Pentagon. These folks are clogging up mission development, weapons design and development, and weapons acquisition, and therewith are badly slowing down field training for this environment by denying our field personnel the requisite equipment.

Another answer, which dovetails with that Pentagon bloat (again, I freely speculate), is that there is too many politics involved in the development and acquisition of these systems. Congressmen and Senators fight for the associated spending to be done in their districts and States, too often balkanizing the whole process, slowing it down, making it less efficient, and driving up costs entirely artificially.

Clear those two, and the situation, both in the training and on the battlefield, will greatly improve.

Examples of Progressive-Democratic Party Thought

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This is what some Progressive-Democratic Party candidates for office, some of whom have won their primaries and others of whom have significant leads in their primaries, are campaigning on. Keep in mind that party primaries are where party voters choose who they want to represent them.

Darializa Avila Chevalier Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a US Congressional seat from New York:

  • government ownership of the means of production
  • prison abolitionist
  • police abolitionist
  • proud of wiping her dirty hands on the American flag
  • open celebrant of Hamas butchery

Francesca Hong, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for Wisconsin’s Governor:

  • abolish the Senate
  • police exist to uphold white supremacy
  • canceling Thanksgiving as a colonizer holiday
  • canceling Halloween and Christmas just because

Christina Bohannan, Progressive-Democratic Party’s choice for a seat representing Iowa in the US Congress:

  • patriotism is a sensitive and controversial subject
  • 1619 Project is preferred history of the US

Party has selected or is close to selecting similarly disposed candidates in other States—viz., Angie Craig for US Senate and Ilhan Omar for US Congress in Minnesota, Pramila Jayapal for US Congress (again!)—and it already elected the dual-membershipped (DSA and Party) Zorhan Mamdami. That’s only so far in this election cycle.

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party stands for, made explicit by its taking the Democratic Socialists of America into its bosom.

It’s true that Republicans picked Victor Marx as their candidate for Colorado governor, but he’s a clear exception to what the party stands for. Those others are typical of Party.