Tag Archives: ethics

YGTBSM

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And now the Greens, the climatistas, have shown their true colors. Valentin Dupouey, Head of the Communications Unit at European Green Party, say this, as paraphrased by Eric Worrall, writing for Watts Up With That?:

[A] major overhaul of Democracy is required to force acceptance of the economic de-growth required to address the climate crisis.

Because we’re just too screamingly stupid to know what’s good for us, so to hell with us—the Greens will do democracy for us.

And this, a direct quote from the Right Reverend Dupouey [emphasis Dupouey’s]:

we need to be able to say to a Chinese average citizen that he will never be able to reach the material lifestyle of a French minimum-wage worker.

To hell with all of us. No aspiration for better lives—you won’t be allowed better lives.

Wow.

“Novel Ways to Apply Homicide Liability”

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That’s what an ex-federal prosecutor in DC and current “legal” analyst for a broadcast network’s cable outlet says he was always on the lookout for in those unfortunate days of his prosecutor-ness.

Rule by law, instead of rule of law—this ex-federal prosecutor is an example of that.

Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime—this ex-federal prosecutor is the modern example of Lavrentiy Beria.

We have ‘way too many Federal criminal laws, laws, too, that usurp the individual States’ legitimate police powers—this ex-federal prosecutor demonstrates the failure of that and illustrates the need to “quinquagintate” those Federal criminal laws and then target pare from there..

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

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Especially if it can be used for personal political gain.  That’s Congressman Hakeem Jeffries’ (D, NY) empirically demonstrated position.  It seems the Senate—Republican led, mind you—has had the effrontery to begin work on an economic stimulus package subsequent to the one the Progressive-Democrat-led House spent so much time botching and patching before it finally sent that package to the Senate for passage. And they didn’t say Mother May I to the House, first.

That miserable Republican-led Senate has had the initiative and the focus and the desire to support ordinary citizens and our small businesses during this Wuhan virus situation, and that embarrasses (to be generous) some House Progressive-Democrats.  Jeffries:

Just so we’re clear. The Constitution gives the House sole power to initiate spending on behalf of the American people. Not the Senate. And certainly not this President. House Dems will prioritize displaced workers, families & small businesses #Stimulus.

And certainly not this President.  It doesn’t get any clearer than that.

Never mind that the President explicitly proposes spending initiatives—it’s in his annual budget proposal.

Never mind that our Constitution’s Article I, Section 7 opens with this clause:

All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives….

Revenue. Not spending, on which origin our Constitution is utterly silent.

The Right Reverend Jeffries knows this full well.

Reusable Grocery Bags

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…and reusable shopping bags, generally. These are supposedly better for our environment than nominally single-use plastic or paper bags (though both, until they wear out, can serve other purposes than holding food or other goods—usually two or three reuses until they’re truly ready for the trash or the recycling bin).

The serious questions, though, and ones that have been missed until the current COVID-19 situation has exposed them empirically, are:

For whose environment, exactly, are reusable shopping bags better?

Who, exactly, are the ones doing the reusing?

The answer to the first is…germs.

The answer to the second is…germs.

And today, the threat to us short-sighted humans is COVID-19, right along with our old foes, bacteria. CDC has said that COVID-19 can remain viable on a large variety of surfaces for hours to days—surfaces like the burlap or canvas of some reusable bags—and especially on the plastic linings of many more reusable bags.

Researchers at the University of Arizona and Loma Linda University surveyed grocery shoppers and randomly tested their reusable bags. “Large numbers of bacteria were found in almost all bags and coliform bacteria in half,” they wrote in their 2011 study….

And this datum:

In 2013 millions of American piglets died amid an outbreak of novel swine enteric coronavirus disease, and after an investigation the US Department of Agriculture concluded that reusable feed totes were the most likely root cause.

This has been a problem of which we’ve been aware for some years.  And yet….

Does anyone really think these reusables aren’t harboring today’s COVID-19? Or the bug du jour of tomorrow’s outbreak?

Reusable bags have become strongly illustrative of unintended consequence.

A Misstatement of the Case

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Gerald Seib opened his Monday Wall Street Journal piece with this bit:

…Americans have learned they can’t really count on Washington to deal with this crisis for them. Local leaders, businesses, churches, sports leagues—all have taken up the task, and done so more effectively than the political leadership in Washington.

That’s as it should be. Responsibility is individual, personal; we cannot wish any of that off onto others, much less government. All government can do—and it should do this much—is help us satisfy our own obligations.

That help, also, needs to come from the bottom up, with the Federal government’s help coming last. That top tier of our American government hierarchy has national responsibilities, and even with the present COVID-19 situation, conditions on the ground vary widely from locale to locale, State to State. Responses need to be similarly local or unique to each State.

The Federal government can spur development of medical treatments—the public-private partnerships with medical enterprises, for instance—and short-term (I’ll repeat that: short-term, with sunset clauses built in to guarantee shortness) economic measures to mitigate the stresses on our businesses, small and large. It can deploy military mobile hospitals and shelters to particular hot spots, and it can take other such temporary nation-wide steps to mitigate the situation.

Necessary mitigation, even control, of the situation, though, must begin with us as individuals. That mitigation begins with stopping our panic-buying and hoarding of necessary supplies. They continue with looking out for our most vulnerable neighbors: the elderly, the less or non-mobile, the poor among us.  They go further: avoiding large gatherings for the duration (which is not the same as not going out at all, not giving our custom to the mom and pop businesses in our neighborhoods and city regions), seeing to the welfare of neighbors with early grade school-aged children whose schools have been closed for the duration, checking on the older kids.

We need, also, to consider a mantra from a war we fought four generations ago: Is this trip really necessary? (And yes, it is, within the context of continuing to do at least occasional business with those mom and pops.)

In the end, we must revive and live by the words a man spoke some 60 years ago (which I’ll rephrase here): Ask not what your government can do for you. Ask what you can do for yourself and your neighbor.