Tag Archives: political parties

Christine Wilson’s Weak Apologia

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Soon to be ex-Federal Trade Commissioner Christine Wilson issued her “explanation” for quitting her post as FTC Commissioner. Her lengthy rationalization of her decision to walk away from her responsibilities as FTC Commissioner aggregated to as a minority member of a Left-dominated Commission, she was unable to get the FTC Chairwoman to change her ways.

This is how the Left wins. Putative Conservatives turn tail and run when things get tough, cutting and running especially during a time when the erstwhile Conservative chair will be sat in by a Progressive replacement.

I have failed repeatedly to persuade Ms Khan and her enablers to do the right thing, and I refuse to give their endeavor any further hint of legitimacy by remaining. Accordingly, I will soon resign as an FTC commissioner.

Any excuse to run away. Staying on would give legitimacy only if she meekly acceded to Khan’s misbehaviors. If she kept the fight going, even if losing the fight, she would be lending no legitimacy to Khan; on the contrary, she would be highlighting Khan’s misbehaviors. But it’s just personally easier to…quit.

Caveat Emptor

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In a Wall Street Journal editorial centered on the rule-making moves by the Biden administration’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Trade Commission to cap or to outright ban so-called junk fees, there’s this tidbit offered in all seriousness by the FTC’s Lina Khan (the WSJ didn’t directly attribute this to her, but she’s the FTC’s Chair, so the tidbit wasn’t offered without her prior permission):

Consumers who select and travel to dealerships based on an advertised offer, only to learn late in the process (if at all) that the advertised offer does not apply, have often spent hours trying to purchase a car[.]

This, of course, is nonsense. Every car maker in the US, from “ordinary” car makers and dealers to luxury car makers and dealers, offer on their Web sites options to “build your car” for every model on offer, and the build options present every option available to the model along with the effect of option’s inclusion or removal on the car’s final price. Consumers who select and travel to dealerships, even if the selection is originally based on an advertised offer, will have already built their going-in preferred model and have their eyes wide-open to counteroffers and to other options offered or no longer available—together with their costs and savings identified during those discussions.

These proposed rules are nothing more than Government attempting to dictate to businesses how they must operate and to us average Americans what we will be permitted to buy. And that’s not just the exampled car-buying, it’s how this government wants to control how we do our banking, our investing, how we and our businesses in general operate in an economy.

Maybe it’s not caveat emptor. Maybe it’s cave imperium that we should operate under.

Debt Ceiling “Negotiating”

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In a Wall Street Journal op-ed centered on ways to “save” Social Security and Medicare, Progressive Policy Institute‘s Director of the Center for Funding America’s Future, Ben Ritz, opened with this bit for his lede:

The Biden administration has sensibly rejected attempts by some far-right Republicans to hold the full faith and credit of the US hostage in exchange for spending cuts. The administration now must show it will be open to good-faith budget negotiations after the impasse over the federal debt limit is resolved.

Leave it to a Left-winger to say, once again, “Trust us.”

No. Debt limits are reached and need lifting because of prior spending excesses.  And continued spending excesses because there follow no “good faith” budget negotiations from the political Left after the impasses. The current debt-ceiling is no exception.

It is the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, from the White House on into both houses of Congress, who are holding our nation’s credit-worthiness and our economy as a whole hostage against their demand to continue their profligate spending.

The debt ceiling cannot be lifted, sensibly, without being paired with actual spending cuts (not reduced rates of increase) as part of the package so as to obviate future need to raise the limit once again.

If the Progressive-Democrats were serious about our credit-worthiness and our economy, they’d get out of the way of serious negotiations.

“Prerogatives”

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The Just the News lede lays the matter out clearly and in its most basic terms. In an article centered on FBI whistleblowers blowing the whistle on the FBI’s intrinsic political bias, that lede read

House Republicans think federal agencies have become a weapon against their own apolitical employees and the constitutional rights of Americans. House Democrats think House Republicans have become a weapon against the prerogatives of federal agencies.

There it is in stark terms. Republicans (not just House Republicans) and Conservatives strongly favor limited government. Progressive-Democrats (not just House Progressive-Democrats) and the Left generally strongly favor expansive government.

It doesn’t matter to those Progressive-Democrats and their Leftist supporters that the prerogatives of federal agencies are strictly limited by the bounds of the statutes that create those agencies and that then give them the frameworks within which they engage in their statutorily mandated and limited activities. Neither does it matter to them that the prerogatives of the Federal government are just as strictly limited by our Constitution, which strictly enumerates the powers of government in Article I, Section I, and then creates a wide and deep moat around those enumerated powers with the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.

The Republicans and Conservatives in the House, far from being a weapon against agency prerogatives, are finding their own voice as the voice of We the People, who as the sovereign in our nation determine what prerogatives our government and any of its agencies may (not can) have and for how long.

‘Twarn’t Me

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President Joe Biden (D), in a backhanded acknowledgment that classified documents in his possession got mishandled as he left office in January 2017, now is blaming his staff for the…error.

One of the things that happened is that what was not done well is, as they packed up my offices to move them, they didn’t do the kind of job that should have been done, to go thoroughly through every single piece of literature that’s there. To the best of my knowledge, the kind of things they picked up are things, they’re from 1974, stray papers. There may be something else, I don’t know.”

Couple things about that. One is that it was Biden’s office, not theirs; it was his responsibility to see that the packing was done properly. That’s not a responsibility he can pass off onto others.

The other thing, the larger thing, is why Biden still had those classified documents still in his possession at that late date? Why hadn’t he already returned them, signed them back into their vault?

And: now he’s saying he might still have classified documents from as far back as 1974? Might? Doesn’t he know?

Whatever. Those will be somebody else’s fault, too.