Tag Archives: political parties

Achieving Energy Security

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm thinks it would be good for our energy security were we to eliminate the 60% of our oil-centered energy that we import and switching over to 100% clean electricity by 2035.

It’s true that wiping out that 60% of our oil imports would help our energy security, but only if it’s done right. We shouldn’t be importing any energy, much less from enemy nations or from nations vulnerable to enemy nations. The right way to eliminate those imports is to release our own oil—and natural gas and coal, come to that—producers to produce from our own, domestic, hydrocarbon-based sources. It’s highly important, too, to get the regulators out of the way of our producers’ ability to produce nuclear power. Sadly, though, Granholm—Energy Secretary Granholm, mind you—seems unable even to say the words “nuclear power,” or at least she never does say them.

The problem with Granholm’s wish to supplant those imports with 100% clean electricity—as even Granholm knows full well—is that the raw materials needed for “renewable,” or “green,” or “clean” energy production come from Peoples Republic of China mines, or PRC-controlled mines in Africa and Siberia (the latter are not yet developed, but they will be). Beyond that, far too many components for “renewable” energy production come from PRC-domiciled factories. Granholm’s move in no way reduces our dependence on enemy nations for our energy.

It is, however, a distinct elimination of our ability to have energy security.

My Mistake, You Pay for It

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That’s New York’s Progressive-Democratic Party governor Kathy Hochul’s solution to the illegal alien influx her State faces.

I’m fully aware that New Yorkers are concerned that over the past year, more than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in our state, requiring a historic humanitarian response. Moments ago, I issued a letter to the Biden administration formally requesting that it take executive action to address New York’s migrant crisis.

The prior mayor of New York City, the core of the State’s illegal alien “crisis,” the Progressive-Democrat Bill de Blasio, declared the city to be a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. Current Progressive-Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, has openly, loudly, continued the city’s status, inviting the influx of illegal aliens to continue and expand. It’s true enough that Adams is lately whining that he and his city can’t take it anymore, but he’s holding fast to the sanctuary city status.

The larger problem is that New York City and New York State brought this situation on themselves with their carefully, deliberately, done open invitation to all those illegal aliens, whom the Leftist politicians ruling the city and State euphemistically—dishonestly, I say—call “migrants.”

And now, with awesome gall, they demand that the rest of us ordinary Americans pay the costs of their foolish mistake. No. The rulers of New York City and of New York State created the mess they’re in; no one should pay the costs of that mess but the residents of the city and the citizens of the State who elected those rulers. There must be no consideration of any other funding source unless and until those rulers openly repudiate that sanctuary status and just as openly act on the repudiation.

Nationalizing Private Enterprise

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OK, State-ifying private enterprise, for now, if this proposal goes through. Some California Progressive-Democratic Party legislators are setting up legislation that would have California pay unemployment benefits to strikers. The move also would put businesses and workers, both, at some risk from Government control, but never mind that.

A group of California Democrats are expected to propose handing out unemployment benefits to striking workers.
Language expected to be released in the coming days or weeks to provide striking workers with benefits from California’s unemployment insurance program that is $18 billion in debt. The move comes amid historic strikes by both screenwriters and actors, forcing many movies and TV shows to halt production.

This move would lessen the incentive for workers and their unions to build up strike funds. Uncle Sugar—or for now Daddy Gavin—will pick up increasing portions of the strike tab.

But this move is more dangerous than that in the longer term. This is an active assault on the free enterprise system that’s at the center of our economy, whether that’s the intention of this move or not.

Workers pay each other during strikes. That’s what a significant fraction of their union dues are for: setting up a strike fund so while workers are on strike, and so not being paid by their employer, still have money coming in to cover their critical expenses. The bigger the strike fund, the longer the strike can last, and the more the business(es) being struck can be damaged. It’s hard to find a bigger strike fund than Government’s control of its citizens’ tax remittals, which under this proposal would supplant union dues.

This move, if realized, would lead to Government saying to any business, individually or collectively, “Nice business you got there. Be too bad if your employees didn’t come to work for a while.”

This move also would put the labor force at risk of government control. With strike funding coming from Government under the guise of unemployment benefits, Government would be in a position to reward workers for not working striking, when Government wants to use them to pressure a Government-disfavored business. On the other hand, Government would be in a position to punish withhold benefits from workers who don’t strike this time from those who do strike on their own initiative at a later time, or who strike without Government’s prior permission.

Making Joe Biden Testify

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It’s been suggested in the press that early on when Federal prosecutors let slip that they had enough evidence on which to base serious indictments of Hunter Biden, Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark “threatened” David Weiss, the US Attorney for Delaware with this:

President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial. This of all cases justifies neither the spectacle of a sitting President testifying at a criminal trial nor the potential for a resulting Constitutional crisis.

Weiss promptly folded, spent some more years pretending to work the case, and then agreed a plea deal that gave sweetheart plea deals a bad name. Only the acumen of the presiding Federal judge prevented the white wash from going through.

Weiss should have called Clark’s bluff. President Joe Biden’s (D) pretrial depositions and Biden-related discovery would have been highly illuminating. That Weiss consciously chose to back down from the threat calls into question the legitimacy of his overall investigation, and whether he really is that timid, or he’s not really on the side of serious investigative lawyering.

The bleat about Constitutional crisis from making a sitting President testify in open court about anything is idiotic, and I’ll deal with it briefly: then-President Bill Clinton tested in court—in front of a grand jury as the subject of that grand jury’s investigation. Of course, Weiss knew this, and he knew that if Clark called Joe Biden, Biden would be testifying as a witness, not as a subject.

That Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss to be a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation charade after Weiss had so cravenly folded is a clear illustration of the Biden DoJ’s effort to white wash anything related to Little Biden and the Big Guy.

Mistake

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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (D) is headed to the People’s Republic of China at the end of this month, ostensibly in an effort to stabilize rocky US-PRC relations.

The long-expected visit is aimed at deepening communications with Beijing, the department said.

And

Raimondo will be the latest administration official to visit China since President Biden met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 meeting in Indonesia last year.

This is a serious foreign policy mistake. The PRC is, as some pundits euphemize, an adversary. I’ll be blunt: the PRC is an enemy nation.

In addition to that, we already know where PRC President Xi Jinping stands—he wants to replace us as the world’s leader, with the outcome that he can dominate us. Xi already knows where President Joe Biden (D) and his Executive Branch cronies stand—Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, for instance, in her remarks at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies:

When necessary, we will take narrowly targeted actions.
…
As we take these actions, let me be clear: these national security actions are not designed for us to gain a competitive economic advantage, or stifle China’s economic and technological modernization.

This is Yellen telling Xi that we might finger wag, but we don’t really mean it.

Biden, by his actions from as far from the PRC as Ukraine, where he’s slow walking delivery, even approval, of the weapons systems that nation needs for outright victory in the war Putin has inflicted out of fear of upsetting Putin too much, to as near to the PRC as the South China Sea, where he has meekly acquiesced to the continued occupation of other nations’ islands and waters by the PRC out of fear of upsetting Xi too much, has made clear that Yellen’s meekness is his own.

The United States doesn’t want conflict with the PRC, and we’ll go to great lengths to avoid it. This is backwards.

Xi doesn’t care one way or the other about conflict with us; he wants to be the sole hegemon in the world, and he’ll go to great lengths to achieve it.

There’s a parable that’s a propos. The mouse says to the owl that its ways are wrong. The owl thinks the mouse is lunch.

No. On the matter of improving relations (including trade, but mostly politically/diplomatically) let Xi and others of his government come to us. They know where we are, and they have our phone numbers. Let the Facts be submitted to a candid world regarding Xi’s and others of his government’s level of interest in improving relations with us.