Category Archives: regulation

“We Cannot Erase the Last Four Years”

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That’s Majority Leader Steny Hoyer’s (D, MD) lament as he closed the Progressive-Democrats’ case on the floor of the House during Wednesday’s impeachment “debate.”

We cannot erase the last four years.

Though the Progressive-Democrats tried every day of those four years. They and their Obama Executive Branch bureaucrats spied on the Trump campaign and trumped up charges against General Michael Flynn, false charges it took all this time to clear.

They and their Democratic National Committee commissioned a salacious and false dossier in an effort to besmirch a President and to serve as the foundation of an investigation that culminated in finding that President Donald Trump had done nothing wrong.

They and their FBI agent-assistants lied to courts in order to get subpoenas and warrants to “investigate” Trump’s team.

They ran a sham impeachment.

They obstructed financial aid to Americans fiscally harmed by government shutdowns ostensibly due to the Wuhan Virus situation—done as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) admitted after the election was done solely for the purpose of interfering with Trump’s reelection.

Here’s what Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want to erase.

A major tax rate reduction for American businesses and a major income tax rate reduction for Americans. This kept his campaign promise.

Unemployment endured by blacks, Hispanics, women reduced to historic lows. This kept his campaign promise.

Income inequality reduced to multi-decade lows—by previously unemployed minority citizens actually getting jobs while the rich got no better off. This kept his campaign promise.

Historic support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities by increasing Federal funding support for those schools and making that support multi-year. This kept his campaign promise.

An improved trade deal with Mexico and Canada to replace NAFTA. This kept his campaign promise.

Working toward improving and strengthening NATO by getting the European NATO nations to increase their financial and equipment commitments to NATO—commitments that those nations had voluntarily committed years ago but welched on subsequently. This kept his campaign promise.

Bringing American soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan—for good or ill, but this kept his campaign promise.

Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s trade, technology, intellectual property depredations. This kept his campaign promise.

Overtly and concretely facing the People’s Republic of China over that nation’s seizure of the South China Sea and the islands and resources therein, and its attempts to seize the East China Sea. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthened our ties with the Republic of China. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthened our ties with Japan. This kept his campaign promise.

Improved our defense arrangement with the Republic of Korea. This kept his campaign promise.

Attempted serious diplomacy with northern Korea vis-à-vis that nation’s nuclear weapons program. This kept his campaign promise.

Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, an accord that our compliance with would seriously damage our economy while strengthening, in relative terms, the PRC’s and so increasing its leverage over our Asian allies and over us. This kept his campaign promise.

Withdrawing from the JCPOA, which authorized Iran to freely develop nuclear weapons as soon as it expired. This kept his campaign promise.

Strengthening our physical border with Mexico, thereby strongly reducing illegal entry into our nation by illegal aliens. This kept his campaign promise.

Reducing Federal regulations that interfere with American business development and growth. This kept his campaign promise.

Reducing regulatory barriers to our hydrocarbon-based energy industry, thereby making us a net energy exporter and virtually eliminating our dependence on foreign energy. This kept his campaign promise.

I’m sure there are more; this short list is just the high points.

This is the economic, social, and political strengthening of the last four years that Hoyer and his Progressive-Democrats want so desperately to erase.

A Stolen Laptop

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Senator Jeff Merkley (D, OR), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Appropriations committees, has reported that his laptop was stolen from his office, ostensibly by the rioters who assaulted the Capital Building last Wednesday afternoon. (Ostensibly: frankly, I have no reason to doubt the fact of the theft or which member(s) of which crowd did the theft. However, the deed as theft and who did it remain unproven at this early stage of the investigation.)

Merkley also said he’d left his office unlocked while he went to the Senate floor for the Electoral College vote counting and debates. The importance of that will become clear below.

He apparently isn’t alone in this:

The Justice Department (DOJ) said Thursday during a briefing that “national security equities” may have been among the records stolen during the looting and destruction that stalled the congressional proceedings….

What’s not being reported in the NLMSM is the utter contempt these folks—possibly from both parties—have for our nation’s secrets, our classified information: they won’t even take the slightest pains to protect them.

A laptop unsecured in an unlocked office? Not even in locked away in a safe when the Senator isn’t around? An open office is all the security a Senator—a Senator experienced in handling classified materials, if only by his membership on a foreign relations committee—deems necessary?

Classified “equities” left unsecured in other offices?

How does that work, exactly?

Where are DoJ’s and DIA’s investigations into this manifest mishandling of classified material?

Sound Money and the PRC

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In a Letter to The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, one writer had this on the idea of the People’s Republic of China being a competitor with its renminbi as global reserve currency and its bond market as debt safe haven:

Credible money paired with reduced government spending have long been pillars of conservative rhetoric stateside, and with good reason.

Indeed. However, what the writer elided are the capital risk the PRC poses with its history of limiting or barring repatriation of profit, the economic risk from the PRC’s requirement that foreign companies give up their technologies and intellectual properties to domestic companies as a condition of doing business in the PRC, and the political risk of the PRC’s requirement that companies supply its intelligence community with any information that community “requests.”

The absence of these risks in the US also is an important aspect of conservative economic and political thought—and not just rhetoric.

Communications Security

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Now it appears that DoJ also was compromised—at least a little bit—by the SolarWinds hack. DoJ says its classified systems weren’t affected, but some unclassified email systems were.

There’s this bit, though, that doesn’t appear to be getting sufficient attention.

Even unclassified email accounts, though, can contain sensitive information about investigations and potentially national security related issues, said Chris Painter, a former senior official at the Justice and State departments who worked on cybersecurity issues. “A lot of DOJ work happens on unclassified systems.”

That sort of thing is largely unavoidable. Hence the perhaps too little attended-to need: vastly improved training in and execution of COMSEC principles, for everyone from the Attorney General through the lowest-ranking unpaid intern. That training and required performance must extend, also, to every enterprise and individual doing business with DoJ or wanting to.

A Government “Medical Camp”

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Via Dr David Samadi, a bill proposed in all seriousness in the New York Assembly. It authorizes the Governor, on his declaration of a health emergency, to “remove” and/or “detain” anyone or any group he decides is a threat to the public’s health. The money paragraph comes early on:

UPON DETERMINING BY CLEAR AND CONVINCING EVIDENCE THAT THE HEALTH OF OTHERS IS OR MAY BE ENDANGERED BY A CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER, OR SUSPECTED CASE, CONTACT OR CARRIER OF A CONTAGIOUS DISEASE THAT, IN THE OPINION OF THE GOVERNOR, AFTER CONSULTATION WITH THE COMMISSIONER, MAY POSE AN IMMINENT AND SIGNIFICANT THREAT TO THE PUBLIC HEALTH RESULTING IN SEVERE MORBIDITY OR HIGH MORTALITY, THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE COMMISSIONER OR THE HEADS OF LOCAL HEALTH DEPARTMENTS, MAY ORDER THE REMOVAL AND/OR DETENTION OF SUCH A PERSON OR OF A GROUP OF SUCH PERSONS BY ISSUING A SINGLE ORDER, IDENTIFYING SUCH PERSONS EITHER BY NAME OR BY A REASONABLY SPECIFIC DESCRIPTION OF THE INDIVIDUALS OR GROUP BEING DETAINED. SUCH PERSON OR GROUP OF PERSONS SHALL BE DETAINED IN A MEDICAL FACILITY OR OTHER APPROPRIATE FACILITY OR PREMISES DESIGNATED BY THE GOVERNOR OR HIS OR HER DELEGEE AND COMPLYING WITH SUBDIVISION FIVE OF THIS SECTION.

Notice that. Folks of whom the Governor—or his delegees—disapproves can be rounded up and locked away. The present governor has already attacked many of the Jewish communities in his State for their insistence on acting within their religious requirements—which conflict with the Governor’s personal views.

Notice, too, that once the Governor has declared a health emergency pursuant to a particular disease that’s epidemic, he gets to lock up anyone or any group who have any “communicable” disease, not just the one driving the alleged emergency.

But wait—there’s more.

There’s not a syllable of measures to be taken to protect the new inmates’ medical privacy. Nor can there be: these unfortunates are to be seized, unavoidably publicly, pursuant to a publicly declared “health emergency.”

The newly detained will be “permitted” to identify those friends and family the new inmate wants to be notified of the fact of his seizure. Of course. That way, those friends and family can be more easily rounded up and locked away, too.

The accumulated timing of all the delays to notifications, responses to requests for release from gaol, actual release (if any) lines up well with CDC’s view of the duration of contagiousness. And the Governor gets the first three days of lock-up free: he doesn’t have to do anything in that initial interval. Nor does the clock count weekends and holidays: if the seizure is done on a Friday morning of a three-day weekend, the Governor gets six days.

RTWT—it’s short, and the link is just below.

This is what happens with Progressive-Democrats have both houses of a legislature and the executive’s office. Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) has stolen a march on Governor Gavin Newsom (D).

The proposed bill can be read here.