Tag Archives: morality

Transparency and a Phony Scandal

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Here‘s some more on President Barack Obama’s phony scandals—the IRS one.

The House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee letter directly blames acting Commissioner Danny Werfel for the “systematic manner” in which his agency has “attempted to delay, frustrate, impede and obstruct” the committee’s investigation, despite his promising just weeks earlier to fully cooperate.

“The actions of the IRS under your leadership have made clear to the committee that the agency has no intention of complying completely or promptly with the committee’s oversight efforts,” wrote committee Chairman Congressman Darrell Issa (R, CA).

Indeed, Werfel has only delivered some 12,000 pages of the requested 64 million—less than 2 hundredths of a single per cent of the request—and many of those are merely duplicates or so badly redacted as to be useless.

This is transparency of Orwellian proportions.

Pollution and China

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Estimates from state-affiliated researchers say that anywhere between 8% and 20% of China’s arable land, some 25 to 60 million acres, may now be contaminated with heavy metals.  A loss of even 5% could be disastrous, taking China below the “red line” of 296 million acres of arable land that are currently needed, according to the government, to feed the country’s 1.35 billion people.

And

Mr. Zhuang [Guotai, head of the Ecological Department at the Environment Ministry], of the environment ministry, said at his recent news conference that only 35% of the fertilizer used in China was being properly absorbed by crops.  The remaining 65%, he said, was being discharged as pollution that was seriously tainting China’s farmland.  Runoff of nitrogen fertilizer, among the most widely-used varieties in China, can contaminate water sources and lead to soil acidification, soil erosion and lower crop yields.

And

China has long sought to industrialize its countryside, dating to Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward beginning in 1958, when he sought rapid industrialization by urging peasants to set up backyard steel furnaces at the expense of agricultural output.  The cumulative impact of decades of building up rural industry is now taking an environmental toll, particularly as industrial growth surges forward in China’s breadbasket.

Because some things are more important than others, and Government Knows Better what those things are:

effort to keep urbanites comfortable and well-fed has also led to the poisoning of parts of the food chain, and some of the pollution is traveling back to the cities in a different—and for many, more frightening—guise.

Cadmium, arsenic, lead, chemical waste from chemical factories, and waste runoff from excessive use of chemical fertilizers—these are all now in the PRC’s food chain, from the soil up.

Unfortunately, the old are much more vulnerable to the privation of inadequate food supply than are the younger and healthier.  The coming starvation from this food debacle might alleviate the coming demographic implosion of the PRC’s aging population, but it’s the wrong way for demographics to be adjusted, even where that’s not the intent.  At least as bad, the children and babies also are extremely vulnerable to the ravages of privation.  Their coming starvation will leave little or no capacity in the population for recovery on the far side of the disaster.

This is an inevitable outcome, if not in detail, of a Know Better government that dictates rather than protects individual capacities.

It Isn’t Your Money

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Or, gimme, gimme, gimme.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told “Fox News Sunday” that President Obama will neither sign government funding bills that slash domestic spending nor negotiate with Republicans over spending cuts to reduce the federal debt limit.

That’s not all.  He told ABC’s “This Week”

I think the president has made crystal clear, he’s not going to negotiate over the debt limit.

But he’s willing to “work with” all comers.  Sure.

This President, and his cronies in the Senate, are perfectly willing to blow up our credit rating (or what’s left of it after their last fiasco just a couple of years ago) and shut down the government if they’re blocked from taking more of your money away from you (in their demanded higher taxes) or taking more of your children’s money away from them (in their demanded continuing borrowing) and spending ever more of your money (their demanded spending increases).

All because these…politicians…think they know better than you—or your children—what that money should be spent on, and they’re convinced it’s their money and not yours in the first place.

Cynical Goals for our Economy

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Most Democrats want tax-overhaul efforts to fund government programs or contribute to deficit reduction.

Indeed.  In addition, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, UT) demands that any tax “reform” raise Federal revenues ($975 billion more over 10 years is his minimum bid) for the purpose of supporting increased Federal spending.

“Contribute to deficit reduction.”  How disingenuous.

Here’s a thought: how about tax reform that reduces rates against a backdrop of reduced/eliminated government “programs,” so that the Federal government is out of the way (or at least less in the way) of our economy?  The result would be a robust and growing economy that would both raise revenue for the Feds from that increased activity and that actually would eliminate the deficit instead of cynically perpetuating it.

And from that deficit elimination, facilitate actually paying down a ruinous Federal debt.

Know Betters Who Know Better

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg had a few things to say, in the context of an AP interview about the Supremes’ VRA ruling last month, about voter ID and the sanctity of the individual vote.

Texas’ decision to implement its voter ID law hours after the court struck down a key provision of the Voting Rights Act last month was powerful evidence of an ongoing need to keep states with a history of voting discrimination from making changes in the way they hold elections without getting advance approval from Washington.

Because acting on being newly freed from the shackles of government is somehow nefarious.

The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t make any sense to me[.]

Because we’re irretrievably beyond redemption, men cannot change away from the mistakes of a distant past, and it takes an enlightened Progressive to instruct and guide us.

It’s inconceivable to Know Betters that such seigniory might not actually be necessary.