Tag Archives: ethics

Duplicity

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DHS continues to require legitimate travelers to our nation and legitimate returnees at the end of their overseas travels to prove their vaccination status against the Wuhan Virus as a condition for their entry.

[T]ravelers entering the US through legal ports of entry will continue to be forced to show proof of vaccination….

But that doesn’t apply to those entering our nation illegally. The illegal aliens get a free pass in to go with their existing free midnight flights to the interior destinations of their choice.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to “apply CDC guidance through its Pandemic Response Requirements,” under which “ICE cannot mandate individuals in detention consent to be vaccinated,” according to the agency.

Who says crime doesn’t pay? It plainly does when Progressive-Democrats are running the show.

Local Control vs Federal Funding

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Tennessee’s General Assembly is considering a bill that would indemnify teachers and all other employees of public schools and local education agencies against civil liability or “adverse job actions” if they refer to a student by pronouns consistent with his biological sex rather than by his preferred gender pronouns. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee noted that the bill

could violate Title IX and would put at risk the state’s federal funding, which for the current school year is more than $5 billion.

That’s the important aspect of this bill, and it has much broader implications for all State-level legislative actions. The $5 billion might seem like a lot of money for a State, but it pales against the long-term cost outcomes of a State accepting any Federal funds under any guise: the more money a State accepts from the Federal government, the more control over its own internal affairs the State surrenders to the Federal government.

The Feds are acting entirely legitimately when they attach strings to the money they provide the States, or to any non-State entity. Anyone providing money to anyone or anything else naturally gets to specify the manner and purpose for which the money is to be used. It’s the existence of those strings, not what they require, that should give States pause in the decision to accept any of the Federal government’s money.

In the end, States that want to retain control of their own intra-State affairs should reject Federal funds transfers—and join with other States in efforts across the legal spectrum to end Federal transfers of State tax remissions to other States altogether except in the event of an emergency declaration. Nor should any exceptions to the bar be allowed: once carve-outs are begun, in very short order, the bar will be so exception-ridden as to cease to exist in any meaningful form.

Trump is Wrong

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Former President Donald Trump (R) wants Ukraine and Russia to negotiate an agreement in their war before it is too late.

He warned that if the countries fail to soon reach a peace agreement, “there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage.”

On this, Trump couldn’t be more wrong. There already is death, destruction, and carnage, all inflicted by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s barbarian army wherever it has occupied parts of Ukraine—it’s only necessary to see the butchery of civilians and civilian hospitals, residential neighborhoods, the bodies left lying in the streets of Russian occupied towns around Kyiv, like Bucha, and the occupied parts of Mariupol; and the ongoing carnage as the barbarian continues to target civilians, particularly including women and children, in cities like Kharkhiv, Chernihiv, Mariupol (still), and on and on in southern Ukraine and in the Donbas; and the barbarian’s explicit efforts to raze to the ground major Ukrainian cities like Mariupol and Chernihiv and Kharkhiv; and the barbarian’s agreeing to civilian evacuation corridors and train runs, only to then specifically attack those corridors and trains as soon as they are filled with evacuating civilians.

Trump went on:

The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be DEAD!

On this, Trump is correct, but not in the way he envisions. With only a little exaggeration about the “everyone,” many more Ukrainians will die if Putin succeeds in his effort to conquer Ukraine—see, for instance, his capture and exile into the Russian interior of some 40,000 civilians in what’s left of the barbarian-occupied parts of Mariupol.

There is, indeed, a solution, and it would be, in many ways, better than before the shooting started, even if in other ways, it would not be—cannot be—as good.

That solution is to apply the only negotiation possible between Ukraine and Russia: Putin’s agreement to remove his barbarian army from all of Ukraine, along with Putin’s payment of (not merely agreement to pay) reparations for the death and destruction he’s inflicted.

The former would be an improvement, since it would be a restoration of Ukrainian territory to Ukraine and an acknowledgment of Ukraine’s existence as a separate, independent nation and of its associated national sovereignty. The latter would be a necessary item but the deaths can never be restored, and the destruction will take years to rebuild—years that are lost to the status quo ante bellum Ukraine forever.

Skinflints

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President Joe Biden (D) and wife donated all of 2.8% of their income to charity in 2021. Average Americans in their income level donated 3.1% of their income to charity. Average Americans in the next lower income level donated 2.9% of their income—still more than the Bidens, despite their greater income.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and husband were just as tight. They donated 1.3% of their (higher than the Bidens’ by a factor greater than two) 2021 income to charity.

Just to emphasize how cheap these Progressive-Democrats are, average Americans with income under $50,000 and who still managed to itemize donated 8.4% of their income.

Keep in mind, too, the Bidens and the Harrises don’t have the expenses that us average Americans have. They get all expenses paid houses to live in, free transportation, and not only are their meals entirely free*, they’re catered by top drawer chefs.

But the Bidens, anyway, always have been chintzy with their charity. In 2007, while Joe was sitting in the Senate, he and Jill donated all of 0.3% of their income to charity.

*Free in this context means us American taxpayers are paying their expenses. And they’re still that chintzy.

Russian Territory Is Already Involved

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The Biden-Harris administration has approved an additional $800 million in weapons for Ukraine, the better for that nation to fight against the barbarian’s coming assault on Ukraine’s Donbas region. In conjunction with that, Biden-Harris has moved to increase the level and quality of intelligence shared with Ukraine, the better for the latter to target Russian forces after they’ve broken into Ukraine.

However.

The US, however, will refrain from providing intelligence that would enable the Ukrainians to strike targets on Russian territory under the new policy, a constraint Washington has imposed to reduce the risk of broadening the conflict, US officials added.

This is a continued mischaracterization of the situation, a continued misconstrual that is deadly to Ukrainian civilians, women, children, medical facilities.

The “conflict,” to use Biden-Harris’ carefully vapid term, is already broadened. Russian territory is already a part of the conflict. Aside from the bare fact that Russia is the belligerent in this Putin War, Russian territory is being openly used to assemble, supply, and stage forces that will be used to assault a sovereign nation’s territory.

The Belgorod region just 25 miles from the Ukraine-Russia border north of Kharkhiv, for instance, is a major supply and staging area for Russian units organizing for a spring assault on the Kharkhiv-Izyum region in the northern Donbas. That area, thus, would be a lucrative target that, if struck, would severely disrupt Putin’s planned assault.

Withholding that cross-border intelligence has even worse outcomes. It denies the Ukraine’s ability to know where the Russian units are gathering at their Lines of Departure, so the withholding denies the Ukrainians the ability to anticipate Russian axes of attack, which in turn denies the Ukrainians the ability to prepare their own responses for when those attacks roll. Which, despicably, only runs up friendly force casualty rates and friendly force equipment loss rates.

Denying the Ukrainians knowledge of those gatherings at those Lines of Departure also denies the Ukrainians the ability to launch spoiling attacks–ideally done by air (armed drones, helicopters, the aircraft they have still)–against those Lines to weaken, delay, possibly preempt the attacks before they start.

In no way can any part of Russia be given functional sanctuary status. Except in the fearful imaginations of Biden-Harris and his cronies.