Tag Archives: political parties

What He Said

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Rick Wallace has the right of it—and exactly so—in his Letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section:

The Republicans should be sending one message to the American people loud and clear: The Democrats want to cut your Social Security benefits by 26% in 10 years. There is no other pertinent debating point. If the GOP is going to be vilified for trying to save the program with responsible alterations, the alternative should be made clear. Should the Democrats have their way, the program will collapse, and everyone will face major cuts to their benefits. That’s their Plan A. The GOP offers Plan B.

Those 26% are the size of the reduction in Social Security payouts to then-existing retirees when the Social Security Trust Fund runs out of money in those 10 years, and payouts after that come solely from incoming payroll tax collections.

The Progressive-Democratic Party politicians in both houses plainly don’t care about that damage to our retirees, preferring instead to keep the threat of reduction as an active cudgel with which to attack their political opponents. That’s why they react to loudly against any effort by Republicans and Conservatives to adjust Social Security in order to save it and avoid that 26% cut in benefits.

The Republicans and their Conservative allies, though, do need to stop cowering behind glittering generalities and instead be explicit in their solution, how it will work, and when/over what schedule it will be implemented.

Lobbyists

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In particular, lobbyists representing the interests of the People’s Republic of China and companies domiciled there.

It turns out that the multinational retail and tech conglomerate Alibaba—headquartered in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, PRC—has lobbied, and donated lots of money to, American politicians, to the tune of $2.5 million just last year.

And this, via Voice of America:

Public information shows that Mercury, a lobbying firm, lobbied the White House repeatedly on behalf of Alibaba on technology policy issues, access to US capital markets, issues related to e-commerce, and small- and medium-sized enterprise export promotion.

That brings me to my beef about lobbyists and the White House. It’s one thing (however questionable or legitimate) for lobbyists to jawbone White House officials on behalf of companies, whether foreign or domestic. It should be unacceptable for lobbyists to jawbone White House officials on behalf of foreign governments—which in the case of the PRC, includes all businesses domiciled there, since all of those businesses are arms of the PRC’s intelligence community under that nation’s 2017 national intelligence law.

Foreign governments, in particular the PRC government, already have professional, talented, and perfectly suited lobbyists to White House officials: those governments’ Ambassadors and ambassadorial staff personnel. No one else should be lobbying.

Yet Another Reason

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…to stop trading with and to bar exports altogether to (and imports from) the People’s Republic of China.

A US manufacturer of X-ray equipment had a decade-old patent invalidated by a Chinese legal panel. A Spanish mobile-antenna designer lost a similar fight in a Shanghai court. Another Chinese court ruled that a Japanese conglomerate broke antitrust law by refusing to license its technology to a Chinese rival.

This is the PRC weaponizing its legal system as that nation prosecutes the economic axis of its cold war against the US and against the West in general.

This goes further, to include efforts to extend PRC legal jurisdiction into other nations:

In December, the EU sued China in the World Trade Organization on behalf of Swedish telecom-equipment maker Ericsson AB and other companies, complaining that China has barred EU companies from suing to protect their patents in courts outside China. The EU called China’s policy “extremely damaging,” saying Chinese companies requested the intervention “to pressure patent right holders to grant them cheaper access to European technology.”

This is just naked theft by a nation that insists on using its laws and courts as weapons of war rather than as tools for protecting its citizens.

It’s time for us and for the EU to stop technology transfers—under any guise—to the PRC, and that must include what I wrote in my lede: bar all exports to the PRC and stop trading with that enemy nation. The transition will be deucedly expensive, but it’ll only get more so the longer we dither and delay taking that step.

A Terse View of Law

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This is from Ron Wyden, a Progressive-Democratic Party Senator from Oregon:

In the coming days a lawless Trump-appointed judge is expected to ban access to abortion medication nationwide. I’m calling on the FDA to protect the safety of every woman in America by keeping the drug on the market no matter the ruling.

He insists that doctors also ignore the court’s ruling, and the law of the land, if that ruling goes against the Progressive-Democrat’s personal views.

This is the contempt that Party has for law, for court rulings, for our Constitution, and for us average Americans. Law, courts, our Constitution are not even suggestions; they’re simply to be ignored because these Know Betters are above all that petty stuff.

We need to remember this despotic attitude of Party in 21 months. And inject backbone into our non-Progressive representatives at all levels of government in the meantime.

Maybe End a Boycott?

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San Francisco is beginning to contemplate ending its travel ban to States of which the city’s governing Council disapproves because those States hold values that are too conservative to suit the Councilmen.

The move was largely seen as a boycott to pressure other states and prevent the city from engaging in business with those whose values it deemed antithetical to its own.

City Administrator Carmen Chu issued a report that suggests a negative outcome of the city’s move.

No states with restrictive LGBTQ rights, voting rights, or abortion policies have cited the City’s travel and contract bans as motivation for reforming their laws.

And especially [emphasis added],

Since 12X [the banning ordinance] became operative, the number of banned states has grown from 8 states in 2017 to 30 in 2022. This increase suggests that the City’s threat of boycott may not serve as a compelling deterrent to states considering restrictive policies. Only 1 state has ever been removed from the list.

Ya think?

However.

Even if San Francisco does lift its boycott, I still won’t travel to that city. The crime rate remains shockingly high, the threats of harassment and of assault by the homeless remains rampant on the city’s sidewalks, drug use and the threat of drug infections—even from the used drug needles lying about on those same sidewalks—remains too widespread, the vast piles of human and other animal feces on those same sidewalks remains too thick; the risks go on and on.

Further, San Francisco’s mayor and city council, despite all of that, continue to disparage the police and limit their ability to function.

San Francisco remains not worth the trouble of traveling to, much less doing business in or with.