Category Archives: politics

Cowardice and Bigotry

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The US Army’s 10th Mountain Division has a Facebook page, and its main page used to have videos posted by Division chaplains Major Scott Ingram and Captain Amy Smith suggesting some prayers.

Of course, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation objected, demanding the posts be taken down and put somewhere else. Such religious bigotry is standard fare for the Left.

What’s especially despicable, though, is the response of those in charge of the Division. Instead of fighting the bigotry, those managers answered the objections by taking the posts down.  Michael Berry, General Counsel for First Liberty Institute, has the right of it.

I cannot believe the legendary US Army’s 10th Mountain Division raised the white flag of surrender to an anti-religious freedom zealot.

Perhaps the Division commander needs to be relieved of his duties. He plainly doesn’t have the…heart…for a leadership post.

What a Concept

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A legal, permanent resident immigrant with a prior criminal record, has been ordered deported, and the Supreme Court has upheld the deportation order.  Because it’s the law.

Writing for the Court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had this [emphasis added]:

Removal of a lawful permanent resident from the United States is a wrenching process, especially in light of the consequences for family members. Removal is particularly difficult when it involves someone such as Barton who has spent most of his life in the United States. Congress made a choice, however, to authorize removal of noncitizens—even lawful permanent residents—who have committed certain serious crimes. And Congress also made a choice to categorically preclude cancellation of removal for noncitizens who have substantial criminal records. Congress may of course amend the law at any time. In the meantime, the Court is constrained to apply the law as enacted by Congress.

The law does matter. At least to some of us.

Unsurprisingly, the four liberal Justices, voted against the Court’s ruling. Which is entirely consistent with their view that laws don’t matter when they’re in the way of the Justices’ personal views of social needs.

The case is Barton v Barr, and it can be read here.

Drug Approvals

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Dr Henry Miller, ex of the FDA where he founded the agency’s Office of Biotechnology, had some thoughts on how to speed up vaccine approval procedures in his Wednesday op-ed. They’re good ideas; although many of them only niggle around the edges of a long-ish procedure.

I have an additional idea.

Allow doctors to broadly prescribe the vaccine—or any drug—once it’s been shown to be safe. Such drugs should be clearly marked, and the patient clearly advised, that while the vaccine has been shown to be safe, it hasn’t been shown to be effective.

This would vastly broaden the subject base for assessing effectiveness, and so greatly accelerate the assessments, and it would put what turns out to be effective drugs into the hands of doctors and patients much sooner.

Patients that get what turns out to be ineffective—but safe—vaccines will be no worse off than they would have been had no drug been permitted yet.

The market place should determine what should be available as effectiveness or ineffectiveness of particular vaccines becomes widely known rather than leaving the decision solely to government bureaucrats, no matter how well-intended they might be.

“State Governments are Broke”

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That’s New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s (D) claim as he pitched President Donald Trump for a Federal bailout of his State.

“You know the state governments are broke, to use a very blunt term. You know the state governments are now responsible for the reopening and the governors are going to do the reopening, and they have no funds to do it,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said….

No, no one “knows” that State governments are broke. They most assuredly are not. Not as long as they have taxing power, which they do.

Not as long as they have absolute control over their own spending, which they do.

Cuomo knows this full well. He’s just ducking away from having to make those hard decisions and ducking away from the fight with New York’s legislature as those politicians duck just as thoroughly from the same decisions.

All the politicians populating those governments need do is have the political will and the integrity to act on those authorities.

Sunset Clauses

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Here’s another example of their utility. To help out the furloughed and fired during the current Wuhan Virus situation, the Federal government enhanced existing unemployment insurance payouts with an extra $600 per week. The plus-up doesn’t expire until the end of July, more than three months hence.

Many businesses, especially the small and mom-and-pops that are at the heart of our employment environment, are starting to re-open as they figure out ways to operate at least partially or as State-level restrictions start to ease.

However.

Employees say they’ll take the unemployment check for as long as they can make more money by not working. One internal Trump Administration analysis estimates that this work disincentive applies to millions of Americans.

That’s not laziness, as the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial correctly emphasizes. That’s workers making economically sound, rational decisions. Especially at the lower end of the economic scale, taking a functional pay cut to go back to work is…suboptimal.

Such a plussing up of unemployment payouts could have been made marginally acceptable—this particular jobless spike came about due to Government fiat rather than business decisions or economic cycles—had the addenda been accompanied with a hard milestone rather than an arbitrary date. A milestone like, oh say, an employer being ready to hire back and offering to do so, or a more blanket State-level easing of restrictions that would allow ranges of businesses to start re-expanding their operations or re-opening altogether—and so hiring or re-hiring.

It’s possible this oversight can be fixed in the next round of Wuhan Virus situation responses, but I’m not holding my breath.