Threshold Questions

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors opined on the Supreme Court and Mifepristone in their Monday editorial. Among other things, they wrote that

the threshold question for the Court is whether the doctors have legal standing to sue….

In addition to that, though, another threshold question is whether the Court owes automatic deference to an agency subordinate to a separate branch of government, a branch with which the Court is supposed to be coequal. Especially when that agency has lost as much credibility as has the FDA through its mistakes during the recent pandemic Wuhan Virus Situation.

 

Aside: the WSJ‘s censors wouldn’t allow me to use “Wuhan Virus,” even though they have no problem with Zika, West Nile, or Ebola virus labels. The hypocrisy is strong in the WSJ‘s censors.

Government Influence over the Means of Production

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The Biden administration wants to control—put a leash on—the development of artificial intelligence software, in contrast with the Clinton administration’s hands-off approach to the development of the Internet. That’s the thrust of a Wall Street Journal Monday article.

The matter is far deeper and far broader than that. Biden’s move regarding AI is of a piece with his moves regarding ICE vs battery cars, solar and wind energy vs oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy, and on and on.

In truth, Biden isn’t the first in this; too many prior administrations of both parties, have wanted to…influence…what our private enterprises, especially those that make things, should or can produce—or not produce. The efforts to control range can be indirect—Obamacare’s nationalization of our health provision and health coverage industries, in addition to Biden’s moves—and they reach as far back as Theodore Roosevelt’s unsuccessful effort to nationalize our railroad system, Woodrow Wilson’s and Harry Truman’s outright seizures of a variety of factories and factory systems, ultimately overturned by the courts, and they include prior administrations’ indirect moves of subsidies for some industries—”green” energy, for instance—and no subsidies or significantly smaller subsidies for competing industries.

The matter reaches as deeply and broadly as our tax code, which by design gives overt preference to some industries and de-prefers some other industries.

The Biden administration has only greatly accelerated this trend of government intrusion into the affairs of private enterprise.

This expanding government insistence that private enterprise can make whatever it wants in whatever amounts it wants so long as it has government approval (even if only tacit) to do so is textbook Fascism: private ownership of the means of production, government control of what gets produced and the amounts produced.

Rewarding Illegal Aliens for their Illegality

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Recall that the New York legislature is pushing legislation that would allow [prison] inmates to collect around $400 each month over six months once they leave prison.

New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams just said, “Hold my beer.”

Officials in New York City have begun giving out prepaid debit cards to migrant families residing in the Big Apple.
The first batch of debit cards, which are reportedly meant to be used by the illegal immigrants to purchase food and baby supplies, were handed out Monday to a handful of migrant families in the city, New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ office confirmed to Fox News Digital.
The effort is part of a reported $53 million pilot program to hand out prepaid credit cards to migrant families….

The program…will provide migrant families of four with two children under 5 with up to $350 each week until the end of their stay

(Keep in mind that “migrant families” and “illegal immigrants” are Fox News Digital‘s euphemisms for “illegal aliens,” which is what these persons are.)

Underlying all of that is this demonstration of Adams’ cynicism and his contempt for ordinary Americans:

Under the pilot program, which is expected to last for six weeks, migrants could receive more money from the city than the state gives to low-income and elderly New Yorkers under SNAP benefits.
According to the state’s website, single households are eligible for up to $291 a month in SNAP benefits aimed at providing “low-income working people, senior citizens, the disabled and others” money to buy food products.

All of that favorable treatment for illegals will be paid for…with the tax remittances of the city’s working residents, including the working poor, and by the increased debt the city will incur from the tax remittances’ shortfall—which are themselves future taxes to be imposed on the city’s residents.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party whose politicians are on the ballot this November.

Paying for Illegal Aliens to Move to our Interior

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Republicans managed to get an amendment to a bill to the floor of the Senate that would have bar[red] taxpayer funds from being used to fly illegal aliens to US towns and cities. That’s not just for relocating them from our non-existent southern border into our interior. That bill was to block our tax remittances from being used to charter flights for hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens from their countries directly to American towns.

Not only was the amendment voted against (and so defeated) by the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators as a group, all of them—every single one of them—voted against the bill.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party whose politicians are on the ballot this November.

Misplaced Emphasis

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The house editorial in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal correctly noted the determined shrinking of the Republican House majority by the Chaos Caucus. The editors have, though, laid off the internecine fight to the wrong cause: fear of kamikaze acts like shutting down the government.

That’s the editors’ misplaced cause. That fear exists, but shutting down the government is hardly a reckless move, as past shutdowns have amply demonstrated, for all that Republicans are incompetent in getting their message about such things across to us ordinary Americans.

No, the real cause is the refusal of the Chaos Caucus to compromise with their fellow Republicans within the Republican caucus. They don’t want a unified Republican caucus that moves things along steadily via internal compromise and then exercises its majority control of the House to get those Conservative priorities passed there. Such compromises would move things in the Conservative direction in a step-by-step, and so durable, fashion. Instead, the self-important ones in the Chaos Caucus demand they get what they want in a single giant leap. With that our way or the highway attitude, they’re guaranteeing two things: the Republican caucus gets virtually nothing, and Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, perhaps as soon as this spring or summer.

But wait—Republicans only have a majority in the House; they don’t control the Senate or the White House. That’s true. And that’s where House Republicans could make even better use of their unity: let the Progressive-Democratic Party in the Senate and White House shut down the government—to the extent that would be any sort of disaster—over its refusal to compromise with Republicans.

The Chaos Caucus “Republicans” know that full well. It’s almost like those worthies are Progressive-Democrat moles.