Our Woke DoD Managers

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Here’s Lloyd Austin’s Pentagon in action, via a memo he had sent to the public affairs offices of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and National Guard on Feb. 10:

In recent years, many sponsors of sporting events have instituted a tradition of requesting uniformed military members to unfurl and hold giant, horizontal US flags during events as an expression of patriotism and love of the country[.]
While many, including military members, view these displays as inspiring and patriotic…uniformed service members may not participate directly in the unfurling, holding, and/or carrying of giant, horizontal US flags that are not displayed during community outreach events.

View these flag displays as patriotic. Not just view them as patriotic, these flag displays are patriotic. Austin’s memo is disgusting. Barring our military personnel from participating in these flag displays—displays of the flag which symbolizes the nation for which these men and women are sworn to defend, even to die in the defense—is too woke by half. Austin needs to be dismissed. Not allowed to resign, dismissed.

Full stop.

In Which I disagree with DeSantis

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has written in his new book, The Courage to be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for American Revival, that (Fox News‘ paraphrasing)

…left-wing company employees pressuring their executives to reflect their political values and “woke” CEOs using their corporate bully pulpit to exert their influence.
“This is especially true as the movement for [ESG] responsibility within corporate America has gained traction[.]”

I disagree, and this is a much broader problem than the ESG movement. Company executives who understand who is in charge of the companies they run only feel the political or “social justice” pressure of their employees that they choose to feel. The employees work for them, and they work for the companies’ shareholders. There is no bidirectionality to the governing hierarchy.

Company executives who surrender to their employees’ political/social justice demands are unfit for their roles in company governance: they’re abject cowards.

An Empty Gesture

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OMB Issued a memo barring the installation of TikTok on most Executive Branch facilities and the removal of currently installed TikTok from those facilities.

Most of them.

…limited exceptions to the restrictions outlined in this memorandum for law enforcement activities, national security interests and activities, and security research.

Never mind that TikTok is subordinate to, a subsidiary of, ByteDance, a People’s Republic of China-domiciled company. ByteDance, as a PRC-domiciled company, is bound by the PRC’s national intelligence law that makes it beholden to the Communist Party of China’s intelligence community to conduct intelligence-gathering as demanded by that intel community. Never mind, either, that as a subordinate facility of ByteDance, TikTok is required to conduct that espionage whenever ByteDance passes the requirement along.

Why, then, is the Biden administration allowing this enemy nation espionage tool to penetrate our own police forces and intelligence community?

“Ran out of Time”

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The Washington, DC, City Council, dominated by the Progressive-Democratic Party as it is, voted a month ago to allow non-citizens, including illegal aliens, to vote in city elections, so long as they have been “resident” in the city for at least 30 days.

Congress has a 30-day review window during which it can override DC Council-passed laws and remove them.  The Republican-led House did so, but the Progressive-Democrat-led Senate…did not. As Fox News meekly put it, the Senate ran out of time before the review period ended.

No, the Senate didn’t run out of time. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) wouldn’t even let the matter come to the floor for a vote. Apparently, he didn’t want his majority caucus to have to be on the record as favoring non-citizens voting in American elections.

This needn’t be the end of the matter, though, the 30-day window is a statute, not a constitutionally set limit. Here’s what Art I, Sect 8, of our Constitution has to say on the governance of the District of Columbia:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States….

That exclusive legislation over the District means that a later Congress can withdraw DC laws allowed under prior Congresses. This business of allowing non-citizens—including those illegal aliens—to vote in American elections, a quintessential factor in being an American citizen, needs to be rescinded. Elections have consequences, and we have another one coming in a year-and-a-half.

I have a caveat to this, though. Some might suggest that DC’s voter rolls might be useful things to search for illegal aliens in the District, round them up, and deport them. That must not happen. Government must not run around searching jurisdictions’ voter rolls to find illegal aliens, no matter how convenient such a search might seem.

Government must never be allowed to any search voter roll for groups of folks of whom Government, from administration to administration, disapproves and…silencing…them. The only purpose for a voter roll, the only legitimate purpose for local government searches of them, is to establish eligibility to vote in a jurisdiction and to remove individuals who are not eligible from those rolls. The Federal government must not be involved in such searches.

What He Said

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Rick Wallace has the right of it—and exactly so—in his Letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section:

The Republicans should be sending one message to the American people loud and clear: The Democrats want to cut your Social Security benefits by 26% in 10 years. There is no other pertinent debating point. If the GOP is going to be vilified for trying to save the program with responsible alterations, the alternative should be made clear. Should the Democrats have their way, the program will collapse, and everyone will face major cuts to their benefits. That’s their Plan A. The GOP offers Plan B.

Those 26% are the size of the reduction in Social Security payouts to then-existing retirees when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money in those 10 years, and payouts after that come solely from incoming payroll tax collections.

The Progressive-Democratic Party politicians in both houses plainly don’t care about that damage to our retirees, preferring instead to keep the threat of reduction as an active cudgel with which to attack their political opponents. That’s why they react to loudly against any effort by Republicans and Conservatives to adjust Social Security in order to save it and avoid that 26% cut in benefits.

The Republicans and their Conservative allies, though, do need to stop cowering behind glittering generalities and instead be explicit in their solution, how it will work, and when/over what schedule it will be implemented.