Category Archives: politics

Rescissions and Politics

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Senator Richard Burr (R, NC), recall, voted against a rescission of $15 billion  in unspent money because he wanted to preserve $15 million in unspent money in the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The good Senator, objecting to The Wall Street Journal having called him out, wrote a Letter to the Editor, explaining himself.  The center of his argument is this:

The LWCF isn’t, as you suggest, a “slush fund” or a “land grab.” Nor is it a piggy bank Washington should raid at its convenience. Instead, it is a rare example of an effective government program that costs taxpayers nothing and benefits them entirely.

So, the Senator voted to tank a multi-billion dollar reclama of unspent money over a bit of trivium with a value of a bare one-tenth of one per cent of the total being reclama-ed.  Never mind that if the LWCF were all that useful, it would have been spending that pocket change, and that if it were that valuable, it could be restored in the next budget.

In any event, the money, not having been used by the LWCF and having been reclama-ed, would have been lost to the LWCF not at all.

Brilliant.

The Supremes Get Another One Right

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Sort of.  Mostly.

A deeply divided Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s latest ban on travel to the US by people from several Muslim-majority countries, in a ruling Tuesday that hands the White House a victory on one of its most central—and controversial—initiatives.

Small point, and it’s on The Wall Street Journal, not the Supreme Court: it’s not a ban on travel, it’s a moratorium.  The moratorium will be lifted on each of those countries when it becomes possible to accurately vet travelers from those countries.  A ban is broad and permanent.

A failure of the Court came from the liberal wing.  Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote, for instance,

A reasonable observer would conclude that the [ban] was motivated by anti-Muslim animus….

And

The majority…turn[s] a blind eye to the pain and suffering the [ban] inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.

This is rank, deliberate emotionalism at the expense of rational thought and objective analysis.  Sotomayor chose not to demonstrate where the animus exists in the Executive Order, choosing instead to bring in outside material not part of the case or of the EO in question.  Campaign rhetoric, which she chose to consider instead of the text in the present case, ceased to have relevance to anything once the election was completed.  Even more, bringing in outside material, evaluating a case on things other than the text of the EO, the law, the Constitution is a violation of the Justices’ oath of office: they’re sworn to uphold the law, the Constitution (and EOs executed in accordance with the Constitution), not to uphold other things convenient to them.

Sotomayor also chose to ignore the “pain and suffering” unvetted entry of terrorists and violent criminals “inflict upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens.”

The larger failure is that this should have been a unanimous decision.  The liberal wing of the Court, though, remained mired in their ideology that the text of an Executive Order (or of a law or of the Constitution) is not the only thing before them in any case: extraneous material convenient to their predetermined opinion also must be brought in for support.

Privatize It

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Among the proposals the Trump administration has offered for drastically restructuring and shrinking the Federal government is one for privatizing the US’ Postal Service.

Of course, the American Postal Workers Union opposes the move, but that’s just wind in the trees and nothing to take seriously.  The union claims that such a move would harm e-commerce and rural America as well as do away with regular mail and package service at affordable costs.  Because competition in the market place doesn’t drive down costs or spur innovation.  And because we all need our regular, daily fix of junk mail.

The administration’s proposal isn’t yet ready for prime time, though.

A privatized Postal Service could be structured like an investor-owned utility and continue to be regulated by the Postal Regulation Commission or another governmental body, “consistent with the existing models of privatization in Europe,” the plan said.

There’s no need for the postal entity to be a regulated monopoly, nor is there any rational reason to imitate Europe for the sake of imitating Europe.

Either privatize the USPS or don’t, but don’t waste even more money on halvesies.

An Ego Move

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…by a flake.  Senator Jeff Flake (D R, AZ) says he’s going to block any and all judicial nominees until he gets his way.

Myself and a number of senators, at least a few of us, will stand up and say let’s not move any more judges until we get a vote, for example, on tariffs[.]

This is just another ego move by a flake Senator.  Were Jeff Flake serious about this, he would have moved before he rendered himself a lame duck Senator; there were plenty of questions on which he could have done this sort of thing besides tariffs.  He chose to wait, though, until there would be no consequences for his ego trip.

Now he’s ready to destroy the judiciary, to let it get populated by a later administration with activist judges and Justices for whom the law and the Constitution are mere suggestions, to be disregarded when they become inconvenient to those activists’ personal agendas.

“Freedom”

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Here is the freedom the Progressive-Democratic Party and its Leftist supporters will allow.

The Association of Library Service to Children‘s (ALSC) board voted unanimously on Saturday to rename the “Laura Ingalls Wilder Award” as the “Children’s Literature Legacy Award.”

Why?  Because her books depicted the stereotypes of a bygone age, and so she must be purged.  This is on a par with “liberal” schools purging books by “old, dead, white guys” from their literature curriculum, as though those thoughts, ideas, philosophies had no impact on the evolution of Western Civilization.

We have the Southern Poverty Law Center labeling Conservatives variously as terrorists or Nazis.  We have Facebook and Twitter censoring conservative news reports and accounts, all in the name of blocking “fake” news.

 

Then there’s the Progressive-Democrat Congressmen.

Recall the intern who yelled “Mr. President, f— you!” across the Capitol Rotunda.  She works—still—for Senator Maggie Hassan (D, NH).  The intern was suspended, but Hassan has kept her on Hassan’s payroll.

There’s House’s Hispanic Caucus heckling President Donald Trump in the Capital Building, disrupting his activities.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D, CA) has called for anyone working in the Executive Branch to be harassed wherever they go—restaurants, gas stations, department stores, she named it.  And not just protest: harass and drive, physically, from the public square.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress actively oppose any sort of immigration reform—especially including securing our borders—in large part because they oppose anything Republican, but in equally large part because they don’t want the US to have secure borders; they don’t believe we Americans should be able to determine for ourselves who we let in and under what circumstances.  Never mind that this includes violent criminals, drug purveyors, terrorists.  It’s true that these are a small minority of those who want to enter the US, but the damage these persons do to our communities can be catastrophic.  Those Congressmen don’t seem to care, though, so deeply imbedded are they in their open borders ideology.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) even has said in so many words

The only way we’re going to work with him [Trump] is if he moves completely in our direction and abandons his Republican colleagues[.]

 

Violence is well within the Progressive-Democrats’ and their Leftist supporters’ tool kit.

We have the Left driving a White House Press Secretary and her family from a restaurant, with the restaurant owner’s enthusiastic assistance.  We have Left thugs physically confronting the Florida Attorney General and her family at a movie theater.  We have Left thugs driving the DHS Secretary and her family from a restaurant.  These thugs also “gathered” at her home to continue the assault.

Keep in mind Waters’ call.

We have BLM assaulting speakers and preventing them from speaking.  We have Antifa thugs attacking conservative rallies.  We have Left thugs bringing flamethrowers to a far right rally.

And a Leftist murderer wannabe shot up a Republican baseball practice, wounding several and nearly killing House Republican Whip Steve Scalise.

 

We have the Left publishing the (stolen) personal contact information—including home addresses—of the men and women of ICE and their families with “encouragement” to go to those homes and harass the agents and their families.

Hollywood especially enjoys attacking the women of the Trump administration.

Chelsea Handler called Sarah [Sanders, WH Press Secretary] a “harlot” and “trollop” on her show.

And

Jimmy Kimmel mocked her [Melania Trump’s] accent

And Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c___.”

And Peter Fonda called via his Twitter account to “rip Barron Trump from his mother’s arms and put him in a cage with pedophiles.”

 

The NLMSM is in on the act, too.

Jennifer Rubin wrote that it is “both natural and appropriate for decent human beings to shame and shun the practitioners” of Trump’s immigration policy.

And there’s Ali Watkins, late of The New York Times, who had affairs with two of her…sources…in order to get “leaks” of anti-Trump information.  It’s true enough that Watkins is no longer with the NYT, but only because she got caught.  The NYT turned blind eye to her escapades for as long as they could.

 

This is what we can look forward to if the Progressive-Democrats gain control of the House or Senate, much less if they gain control of both.  Not only will we be free to speak only what the Progressive-Democrats permit us to speak, to read only what the Progressive-Democrats will permit us to read, to worship only within the parameters permitted by the Progressive-Democrats, they will violently suppress any effort to do otherwise.

Make no mistake, either: this will come to pass if we sit on our hands come voting time this fall.