Tag Archives: ethics

Bitter is…

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…as bitter does.  There’s much to be made of former President Donald Trump’s (R) keeping on about whether the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. (He thinks so, and there was a potful of sloppiness, error, fraud, and illegal changes to the mechanics of voting, but in this not so humble blogger’s view, not enough to aggregate to a “stolen” election.)

Let’s look, though, at soon-to-be former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney and her behavior following her decisive loss in the just concluded Wyoming primary (so desperate was she in the runup to actual voting that she was…asking…members of the Progressive-Democratic Party to cross over and vote for her in the primary).

The Wall Street Journal claims

Ms Cheney is a conservative by any measure and she has the courage of her convictions.

The first part of this is plainly not true. Were she truly conservative, she would have adhered to her implied commitment to the citizens of Wyoming to represent them, a commitment made by the fact of her campaigning for and election to Congress in prior cycles.

The second part of that is either plainly not true, as well, or she has badly misplaced convictions. Had she the courage of her convictions, she would have represented her bosses, those Wyoming citizens. In the alternative, her convictions centered on putting her personal positions ahead of—in place of—those of her bosses. If those two sets of convictions truly were that incompatible, a person of truly conservative principles would have resigned her Congressional seat and pursued her convictions as a private person, where it would be legitimate to represent herself instead of her fellow Wyomingians.

Instead, she abused her position, participating in a by design one-sided House J6 Committee until the very last day, and only then pursuing her convictions as a private person.

And what is that personal conviction? It’s nothing that benefits people generally, or Wyomingians in particular. Her conviction—her single goal in life—is to be in the way of a politician whom she hates so viscerally.

Ms Cheney’s concession speech suggests her mission in politics now is to prevent Mr Trump from becoming President again.

In fact, no suggestion at all:

Immediately following her loss to Harriet Hageman in Wyoming’s Republican primary, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., unveiled her next move, launching a new organization with the primary goal of keeping former President Donald Trump from regaining the presidency.

In fine, Cheney has spent years letting her bitterness vis-à-vis Trump govern her Congressional behavior and her behavior while campaigning.

Rearranging the Furniture

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CDC Director Rochelle Walensky now claims she’s going to reorganize the CDC after saying that her agency did not reliably meet expectations during the course of the Wuhan Virus Situation.

The changes will include elevating the laboratory division to report to the CDC’s director and restructuring the communications office….

Because the CDC needs to do a better job of selling its claims. And this bit:

shift the CDC’s culture from highly academic to focus more on preparedness and response

And

Dr Walensky also wants additional funding and more authority for the CDC on matters including mandating data collection from states….

There it is. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s go-to solution for all of our ails—more government funding and more government power.

No.

Aside from the interest in being better at the agency’s used car salesman patter, the wasteful increase in taxpayer money coming her way, and the dangerous increase in government power, mechanically, this is just a cosmetic rearrangement of the furniture. The CDC needs reorganization, but it needs to be seriously reorganized.

There’ll be no culture change so long as the personnel of the current culture remain. Any reorg must begin with personnel, not a change of office symbols. That beginning, then, must be the termination, for reasons ranging from cause to what the military refers to as the good of the service, of the agency’s managers, from Walensky and her staff through her deputies and their staffs on down through (not to) middle management.

Every single one of them needs to go. And then Walensky’s replacement as Director, before any additional hiring occurs, needs to justify in concrete and measurable terms, line by line and position by position, why the personnel slot for that proposed new hire needs to exist.

Only with that change in personnel and that streamlining can the CDC become an efficient and effective organization and an organization us American citizens can trust.

Just the News Has a Question

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The news outlet ran a poll over the weekend. The question was this:

How concerned are you that additional IRS funding through the Inflation Reduction Act will lead to more audits for typical taxpayers?

As of Sunday morning, the enormously unscientific poll—consisting solely of JtN readers—was running 96% Extremely concerned.

Keep in mind that the IRS has been targeting Conservatives and conservative organizations at least since early in the Obama administration (if not sooner; that’s just when it became exposed).

Keep in mind, too, that Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, since Obama’s first Presidential campaign, have characterized typical taxpayers as merely bitter Bible- and gun-clinging denizens of flyover country, as irredeemable and deplorable, as 15% of us being just no good.

How is this even a question?

It’s Not Just the Moms

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First, the President Joe Biden/Attorney General Merrick Garland (each Progressive-Democrats) Department of Justice designated angry and enthusiastic mothers at school board meetings as domestic terrorists and Garland had his FBI begin investigating them as such.

Now the Biden administration are hinting around that average Americans who are angry over the FBI raid in former President Donald Trump’s (R) Mar-a-Lago home and the exploding security failure at our southern border might be terrorists, also.

Americans angry about the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Florida estate and insecurity at the southern border pose an increased risk of domestic terrorism, the Biden administration warned in a series of bulletins sent to federal and local law enforcement over the weekend.

And

“Last night, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice issued a Joint Intelligence Bulletin, accessible via the Homeland Security Information Network, providing information on the potential for domestic violent extremists to carry out attacks on federal, state, and local law enforcement and government personnel or facilities,” CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus wrote in a memo to 60,000 employees.

This is a general warning about all of us Americans, not just the tiny few who are prone to violence. A tinier few than the antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al., arsonists, rioters, terrorists toward whom Garland and his FBI have chosen to turn a blind eye.

Magnus, again:

Since the search, the FBI and DHS have observed an increase in violent threats posted on social media against federal officials and facilities.

Yet, the FBI has chosen, repeatedly, to not “observe” the violent threats posted on social media by individuals who engaged in mass shootings or those posted by antifa, BLM, Ruth Sent Us, Jane’s Revenge, et al.

We’re all terrorists, those 10s of millions of us average Americans who won’t kowtow, according to this Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled government.

0% Inflation

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That’s what President Joe Biden (D) said, just a few days ago, when overall inflation came out unchanged in July vs June. (I’ll elide, here, the year-on-year inflation rate of 8.5% in July, which is a little different from 0%.)

Today we received news that our economy had zero percent inflation in the month of July. Here is what that means: while the price of some things went up last month, the price of other things went down by the same amount.

Among those things whose price went up is food, which all of us need for survival, even as we don’t need gasoline or airline tickets just to survive.

…in July, food prices accelerated further, the Labor Department reported on Wednesday. The food at home category, which tracks the cost of groceries, surged 13.1% over the last year, the most significant increase since March 1979. On a monthly basis, prices jumped 1.4%.

The increase in the cost of food for our families was somewhat more than zero. In fact, annualized, that 1.4% month-to-month increase works out to 18.2%, even larger than that realized annual increase of 13.1%.

Biden is determined to make a big deal about one short-term inflation statistic, and he’s equally determined to pretend another short-term inflation statistic, one that’s critical to families, doesn’t exist. He’s speaking Newspeak, not English.