An Anonymous Letter

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A bunch of staffers in a broad reach of offices in the Biden administration Executive Branch have signed a letter. Carefully anonymously.

Four hundred government officials from 40 departments and agencies within President Biden’s administration signed a letter opposing the president’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war and demanded a cease-fire.
The Tuesday letter, first reported by the New York Times, includes officials from the State Department, White House, National Security Council, and the Justice Department. The signatories of the letter remained anonymous to protect against professional retaliation.

They…wish to see…President Biden to

urgently demand a cease-fire; and to call for de-escalation of the current conflict by securing the immediate release of the Israeli hostages and arbitrarily detained Palestinians; the restoration of water, fuel, electricity, and other basic services; and the passage of adequate humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip[.]

It doesn’t matter whether a ceasefire is in any way legitimate, or whether the items demanded are in any way practical to impose.

What matters is the illegitimacy of the letter, via the signatures affixed.

These cowards have hidden their faces, worn masks, ducked behind a wall—whatever metaphor you wish—with their refusal to put their names to their demands. These cowards have put their careers ahead of their morality, which demonstrates that they have no sense of morality.  That alone removes any legitimacy of their position re cease fire or any other matter.

The White House has yet to respond to the letter.

Which Biden and the rest of the Executive Branch should continue to do. The Coward’s Missive is beneath contempt, and it should be beneath notice.

Who Needs Cops?

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Plainly not Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams’ New York City, not when he considers taking care of the City’s burgeoning illegal alien population to be far more important than protecting the Americans and legally present foreign nationals who are already in the City. Thus,

A freeze on new NYPD recruits is among the “horrendous” budget cuts expected to come down Thursday—as the Big Apple grapples with the soaring cost of the migrant crisis, The Post has learned.

And

The budget slashings come after Adams estimated the surging [illegal alien—my term, not Adams’ euphemism] crisis will set the city back $12 billion over the next three fiscal years.

It’s true enough that Adams claims he also intends to slash [illegal alien] spending by 20%, but that’s money that never should have been spent for that in the first place, and would not have been but for Adams’ loud and proud continuation of his predecessor’s—another Progressive-Democrat—designation of New York City as a sanctuary for illegal aliens, and his continued refusal to rescind that designation.

Never mind, though. [C]rime jumped 30% during his first year in office; Adams plainly believes that there’s more room to grow.

Jayjuz

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Here’s a pretty dispositive demonstration of the destructiveness of Progressive-Democratic Party economic ideology policies. The Transparency Foundation notes that

Our methodology calculates that a typical middle-class family of three earning $130,000 a year faces a “Cost of California” penalty of $26,478.72 versus if they simply paid the national average of cost in each category[.]

And

In California, renters pay 47% more than the national average, while homeowners pay 32% more, healthcare services cost 42% more, and state and local taxes are 14% higher[.]

Even areas where California citizens supposedly pay less than the national average, health insurance and homeowner’s insurance, the claims of lower costs are deceptive.

Health insurance is heavily subsidized by taxes on all Californians, and those taxes generally are elided when State officials calculate the insurance cost.

With homeowner’s insurance, costs to California’s citizens are artificially suppressed by State government mandated rate change limits. With insurers not allowed to charge risk-based premiums—risks that include State officials’ interference with forest and water management practices, interference that then runs up the likelihood of fires and broadens the extent of damage caused by those more frequent fires that do occur—insurers are leaving the State. Those departures, in the medium- and long-term, make Californians increasingly dependent on the State’s government for homeowner’s insurance.

$26,478.72. The 2023 Federal Poverty Guidelines for a family of 3 puts the 100% Guideline at $24,860. The 250% Guideline, used by so many government welfare programs as their upper bound, is $62,150, just a bit over twice that California Penalty.

Progressive-Democrats are actively inflicting poverty on American citizens, and the only rationale (I do not say moral or ethical) motive for this is to create dependency in order to control votes and to preserve Leftist political power.

Ungrateful and Entitled

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New York City’s housing facilities for NYC homeless are full up with illegal aliens coming into the city. Why Progressive-Democrat Mayor Eric Adams favors these lawbreakers over the homeless in the city over which he reigns isn’t the point of this post, however. I’m writing about the flip side of that item.

Despite the stresses the influx of illegal aliens, in concert with Adams’ policies, have inflicted on the city’s facilities and finances, Adams functionally continues to welcome them, and he’s caused a makeshift tent city to be set up in Floyd Bennett Field, in Brooklyn. The Field is an erstwhile airport that now houses units of the NYPD, New York City Department of Sanitation, and United States Park Police. The tent city was built there to house 2,000 illegal aliens.

Shortly after 12:30 pm, Sunday, dozens of migrant families arrived at the remote housing site and wanted no part of it upon arrival.

They turned up their noses at the arrangement and got right back on the bus that brought them.

Because these illegals’ tastes are much too refined to be housed in mere tents. And they’d be surrounded by all those Evil Cops. Never mind that the Sanitation Department also is right there, to pick up after them. They’re entitled to much better handouts in recompense for their illegal entry into our nation.

No.

The recompense to which these folks are entitled, the recompense they must receive, is prompt deportation back to their home countries, or at the least back into Mexico, through which most of them so freely traveled—after having become illegal aliens in Mexico, first, via their illegal entry into that nation.

But don’t hold your breath, so long as Progressive-Democratic Party politicians rule over these “sanctuary” jurisdictions.

Contract Discipline

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Amtrak is in the hole to the tune of $140 million in maintenance costs for its current fleet of trains because the contractor Amtrak hired to build and deliver uprated replacement trains is having trouble with testing requirements and production defects and so is nearly three years late on delivery.

Amtrak is also losing even more revenue in anticipated ticket sales from the new, larger trains that were supposed to enter service in 2021. And the railroad is missing out on other revenue because some older Acela units have been pulled from service to be cannibalized for spare parts.

One way for our government to deal with such things is with fixed price contracts, under which the contractor gets a sum of money and must satisfy the production requirements of the contract within that sum. These contracts, though, don’t make the contractee whole from the contractor’s failure.

Here’s another way: write into the contract that the contractor is responsible for the contractee’s maintenance and other costs attributable to the contractor’s failure to meet deadlines. Such a move would make future contractors, e.g., France-based Alstom in the Amtrak case, responsible for Amtrak’s $140 million, and more, inflicted on it by Alstom’s failure to perform. If no contractor is willing to incur that risk, that contractor need have no business from the government at all.