Tag Archives: government

Fundamentally Transform America

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That’s what ex-President Barack Obama (D) bragged was about to occur shortly before his 2008 election victory. He got a major step of that transformation when he nationalized roughly one-sixth of our economy with his nationalization of our health care coverage industry with his Obamacare.

Now the Progressive-Democratic Party is on the verge of finishing the transformation as they sit on the knife’s edge of a sweeping election victory next week. The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial headline lays it out:

[Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala] Harris has already endorsed President Biden’s plan to impose “ethics” rules on the Justices that would invite political harassment and compromise judicial independence. Now she won’t disavow packing the Court. She has called for Democrats, if they keep the Senate in November, to bypass the 60-vote filibuster rule, letting them enact such bills without even a modicum of compromise.

Those would be the final two straws in the destruction of our federated republican democracy form of government. It would be the institution of one-party rule, with the minority party not even a loyal opposition but merely irrelevant, and the conversion of our Supreme Court and of our Federal judiciary in general from its current status as an independent, coequal check on the power of the central government into a rubber stamp of Party decisions.

The WSJ editors aren’t given to hyperbole, and they’re not being hyperbolic in their closing paragraph.

Democrats are serious. They say Mr Trump is a threat to democracy and US institutions, while they’re pledging to restructure the judiciary wholesale. Do they notice the cognitive dissonance? Apparently not. But voters might.

That’s what’s at stake next week.

A Question of Border Security

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This question has been rattling around, sub rosa, in my pea brain for some time, and it’s finally percolated to the surface. Texas, in particular, has spent some billions of dollars on its own direct effort to seal its southern border against the flood of illegal aliens allowed in by the Biden-Harris/Harris-Biden administration. Several other States have spent significant dollars sending units of their respective National Guards to Texas and Texas’ southern border to support Texas’ efforts. Florida and South Dakota come particularly to mind, although those are far from the only States to send Guard units. Those units, too, serve to improve the sending States’ own security.

The proximate question is this: should the Federal government reimburse those States for their expenses in guarding our national southern border, expenses necessarily incurred as a result of the present administration’s decision to abrogate its security responsibility?

That raises an overarching question: precisely who is responsible for maintaining the security of our national borders?

Were the Federal government to reimburse, that would be tantamount to asserting a strictly Federal responsibility for border security. Texas’ Governor Greg Abbott (R) has a valid point too, though: Texas has a responsibility to see to the security of its borders, particularly that portion that coincides with the national border with Mexico.

Given the flow of illegal aliens throughout our nation, much of that flow actively and deliberately abetted [sic] by the Biden-Harris administration in transporting illegal aliens from the locations where they’re caught and temporarily detained to a variety of destinations in our interior (along with the flow of gotaways and of an unknown number of undetecteds), by extension of Abbott’s point, all 50 of our States have a responsibility to see to the security of their borders—and their interior—with respect to the illegal aliens in their midst.

The answer, it seems to me, is that border security in our republican federal democracy is a responsibility shared between the central, Federal, government and our several State governments. That leads me to lean toward no Federal reimbursement, per se. However, it may be appropriate for our national defense budget—not any part of a Department of Homeland Security budget—to allocate some border security funds explicitly to the States to defray, not reimburse, some of the States’ costs in securing their own borders.

Has FEMA Gone Racist and Sexist?

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The Biden-Harris’ Federal Emergency Management Agency has gone from aiding Americans in regional emergencies to emphasizing Americans who happen to be black or female for such aid before it gets around to helping other Americans in the same emergency region.

[A] closer look at FEMA’s recent internal documents, spending, and public actions shows that FEMA has broadened its focus to handling the flow of migrants into the US and attempting to double down on DEI initiatives on gender, sexuality, and race.

FEMA’s strategic “plan” for the period 2022-2026—we have far too long yet to go under this piece of work—makes the agency’s bigotry clear:

In its first goal, the plan promised to “Instill equity as a foundation of emergency management.”
Its second named priority is to “lead whole of Community in climate resilience.”
FEMA’s “readiness” comes in as the third goal in the plan.
“Diversity, equity, and inclusion cannot be optional; they must be core components of how the agency conducts itself internally and executes its mission[.]”

This is an agency that badly wants a complete revamp, with wholly new personnel in supervisory positions. The bigotry of those managers has gone entirely too far, and their redemption isn’t possible from within government positions.

Disinformation Purveying

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Randy Manner (Maj Gen, ret) accused, in his Wall Street Journal…op-ed…former President and Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump of spreading disinformation regarding the Federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene. Tellingly, he opened his jeremiad with his own disinformation.

Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would dismantle these lifelines and force communities to face disasters on their own.

There is no connection whatsoever between Trump and Project 2025. Both Trump and The Heritage Foundation, authors of the document, say so. The only ones who claim otherwise are the press’ imaginary “folks who know” and Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who quote that press.

Manner’s disinformation extends into Project 2025 itself.

Project 2025 would push the privatization of disaster-relief functions currently managed by FEMA….

It’s instructive that Manner chose not to quote the project where it proposes that. He cannot because the project proposes no such thing. Project 2025 itself (pgs 133-134) actually proposes dismantling DHS, which it says is dysfunctional, while saving FEMA by alternatively moving it to the Department of the Interior or combining it with CISA and moving the combination to the Department of Transportation.

Regarding Manner’s dishonest claim regarding privatizing FEMA, what the project actually proposes (pg 135) is

privatizing…the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Flood Insurance Program….

This is far from privatizing FEMA. Beyond that, letting insurance entities compete in a free market would bring down the costs to insurees, and to us taxpayers regarding government insurance entities, of insurance.

Manner’s distortions and disinformation peddling brings dishonor on the uniform he used to wear.

Regarding shifting FEMA spending, the project does propose

shift[ing] the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government….

But that’s where the responsibility should lie in our republican democracy. The State and local governments are the entities on the scene (on-scene command is a concept with which an ex-flag officer should be familiar), they know far better than the Federal government what the needs of their citizens are, and being closest to the scene of the disaster area and to those citizens within it, they are far better positioned to provide the immediate aid and targeted support those citizens need than is the Federal government. The Florida State and local governments are empirical demonstrations of this.

Only a Big Government enthusiast, who sees States merely as districts to facilitate the purposes of the central government (as John Jay would have had it at our Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia), would act as though we’re not a republican democracy, not a republic.

Manner should be ashamed of himself for writing such a jeremiad.

What Happens…

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…when government is the definer of a citizen’s, or of citizens’, rights? One outcome is illustrated by this particular enumeration of rights granted by Government:

The Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens

Citizenship
Voting requirements
Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Religious freedom
Freedom of person
Freedom from insult
Inviolability of the home
Privacy of correspondence
Right to petition the state
Right and duty to work
Right to rest
Protection of retirement
Protection of old, ill, disabled
Right to and duty of education
Right to pursue art, science
Equal rights for women
Protection of marriage and family
Protection of Chinese while overseas

That list of Government-created and -granted rights is then followed and superseded by this:

When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

What Government giveth, Government taketh away. In the same breath in this case. As is apparent from that last clause, this is what the constitution of the People’s Republic of China does.

This is the risk we run as we allow to our government increasing authority to define our needs, our purposes—our rights.