Disregard and Pass Their Own

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DoD has submitted a budget request that includes $114 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion claptrap [emphasis added].

The Defense Department’s fiscal year 2024 budget request shows the federal agency’s emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion, including “ensuring accountable leadership with continued emphasis and investments in sexual assault and harassment prevention, suicide prevention, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA), and Insider Threat Programs.”
The DOD document shows that DEI is at the forefront of DOD policy.
[The request said] The Department will lead with our values—building diversity, equity, and inclusion into everything we do[.]

And this:

Six months ago, President Joe Biden asked for cuts in federal spending for border control [and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended them], which had lawmakers asking questions about why the president was reducing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) budget when the border was out of control.
[Now,] Mayorkas told the House Homeland Security Committee last week that his department was “under-resourced” and needed $14 billion in emergency funding to address the situation at the border.

These are two more reasons for the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to simply and routinely ignore Biden administration budget requests as wholly unserious. The House, instead, should put together its own budget de novo and pass its own dozen allocation bills within that framework.

Federal Revenue

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The Wall Street Journal is concerned about the IRS exercising its claimed authority to delay implementation of some tax requirements for which Congress had set strict enforcement deadlines. Apart from the question of whether the IRS actually has that authority, the concern centers on how the agency moves might impact revenues for the Federal government.

…the tax agency’s moves frustrate lawmakers’ attempts to raise revenue and plug gaps in tax compliance.

The real question, though, centers on an aspect of Federal revenues about which I’ve written before. This is the claim made in the linked-to article’s headline, and which is repeated in the body of the article:

It Could Cost $8 Billion

And

The Internal Revenue Service has now postponed them [certain rules for tax collections] all for two years—which could cost the Treasury more than $8 billion.

This is risible on its face. Aside from the fact that the Federal government has not established any need for the money, say the dollar value of the claim is accurate. Those $8 billion are the sole property of us taxpaying Americans. It doesn’t cost the Federal government one single copper penny—or copper-plated zinc penny in today’s currency—to not receive what doesn’t belong to it in the first place.

Further, while the IRS’ delays might reduce, in the immediate term, revenues to the Federal government, the delays result in those $8 billion being left in the hands of us taxpayers—who know much better than Government how to spend those dollars, or save them, on our individual needs and wants. That leads to increased activity in our private economy, and that leads, in the mid- to longer-term, to net increases in revenues to Government.

It would lead to even more revenues to Government were the IRS’ delays functionally made permanent by eliminating altogether those tax items for which the IRS is delaying collection. That increase in certainty regarding the reduction in Government confiscation of our dollars in the form of taxes would lead to even greater private economic activity, and so to even more revenue, on net, to Government.

Customer Choice

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New Mexico’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has gotten to be enacted rules mandating battery cars and trucks in New Mexico.

Starting in calendar year 2026, 43% of all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks shipped to New Mexico auto dealerships by national auto manufacturers must be zero emission vehicles. Similarly, beginning in calendar year 2026, 15% of all new commercial heavy-duty trucks shipped to New Mexico auto dealerships by national auto manufacturers must be zero emission vehicles. These percentages gradually increase over time.

“Increase over time:” by 2031, those 43% rise to 82%. By 2034, the minima for Ford F-250, Ford F-450, and tractor-trailer type trucks rise to 55%, 75%, and 40%, respectively.

Disingenuously, Lujan Grisham says regarding those limits on choice,

The adoption of these rules is a victory for customer choice….

That’s the Progressive-Democrat’s definition of customer choice: the State taking on the burden of choosing, thereby relieving its subjects citizens of that burden.

No. I decline to use Lujan Grisham’s Newspeak Dictionary. I’ll stay with American English dictionaries and their definitions of “customer choice:” us ordinary Americans acting on our own selections.

That choice is clear, too, for the good citizens of New Mexico, who’ve already made theirs: less than 1% of the 650,000 vehicles registered in New Mexico, despite tax credits, are EVs. Those good citizens do, however, need to select better at the next ballot box.

Who Needs Knowledge?

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Plainly not teachers union teachers, at least according to the union. The New Jersey Progressive-Democratic Party-run State legislature agrees with them, too, which says volumes about the contempt Party has for ordinary Americans.

A major New Jersey education union is pushing Democratic Governor Phil Murphy to sign a bill into law that would eliminate the basic skills test requirement to become a teacher in the state.
The New Jersey Senate and state Assembly passed a bill in June that would allow the State Education Board to issue an alternative certificate to a teacher candidate who meets all eligibility requirements except for the requirement to achieve a minimum basic reading, writing and math skills test score.

The New Jersey Education Association union, via its political arm, the New Jersey Education Association Action Center makes the claim explicit.

[T]he basic skills test was an “unnecessary requirement” and it “created an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.”

The only qualification a person needs to teach our children is a union membership certificate.

It’s not necessary to be able to cipher in order to teach arithmetic.

It’s not necessary to be literate in order to teach reading or writing.

It’s not fair to require these things.

A Voting Rights Discrimination Case

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The 8th Circuit has ruled that private parties cannot bring suit over voting rights discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act; only the US Attorney General can. The 8th Circuit stands alone among courts and against long-standing precedent here. It’s still correct on the matter.

The court’s decision, in summary, said the

Arkansas branch of the NAACP and another organization couldn’t challenge the district lines drawn for the Arkansas House of Representatives after the 2020 census.

Circuit Judge David Stras, for the majority:

If the 1965 Congress “clearly intended” to create a private right of action, then why not say so in the statute? If not then, why not later, when Congress amended § 2?

Indeed. What does the text of the law say, rather than what do judges want it to say? What the law says, as Stras says, is clear. § 2 and the 15th Amendment to our Constitution both prohibited purposeful discrimination in voting rights and district boundary-drawing, and enforcement of that was put squarely in the hands of the US Attorney General and nowhere else. Congress subsequently amended § 2 to add a discriminatory-effects test. Congress did not, though, broaden who had authority to bring suit under the section, not even to add State Attorneys General, much less private parties.

My concern here, though, is the logic of the dissenting judge, Chief Judge Lavenski Smith [ellipses in the quoted part, which Smith is quoting from Singleton v Merrill, are Smith’s].

“Since the passage of the Voting Rights Act, federal courts across the country, including…the Supreme Court…, have considered numerous Section Two cases brought by private plaintiffs.” … Rights so foundational to self-government and citizenship should not depend solely on the discretion or availability of the government’s agents for protection[.]

Regarding that last, I repeat: what does the text of the law say, rather than what do judges want it to say?

Regarding Smith’s prior reference to precedent, he’s right about the importance of precedent. However, it doesn’t matter how long is the line for an existing court precedent; if the precedent was wrongly decided (or if the conditions warranting it no longer exist), that precedent is legitimately, and must be, overturned.

The 8th Circuit ruling can be read here.