Tag Archives: political parties

They Don’t Clash

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New Jersey has a new gun control law, one which Governor Phil Murphy (D) signed just last week.

Under the new law, concealed carry is not allowed in “high-density” locations, places with vulnerable populations or where there is First Amendment or government activity.

New Jerseyans can’t exercise their Second Amendment rights where they’re exercising their First Amendment rights? How does that work, exactly? The two sets of rights are synergistic, not conflicting.

And of what is Murphy’s government so terrified that his administration’s “activities” need to be protected from the people for whom he works?

There’s this fillip, too:

The new law also restricts who is ineligible to obtain a carry permit, including those with an outstanding arrest [warrant]….

But not convicted of the charge. So much for innocent until proven guilty in New Jersey.

And

…four endorsements of character from non-related references must be provided with applications.

Those four endorsers, too, each will be…interviewed…by Murphy’s government men. Murphy’s government not only is tracking New Jersey citizens who have firearms, now he intends to track those who support those who have firearms, also.

Never mind that the Supreme Court’s rulings in NY State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, District of Columbia v Heller, and McDonald v City of Chicago individually and together acknowledged that the right of us Americans to keep and bear Arms is an individual right rather than a collective one, and that they acknowledged that we don’t have to satisfy Government of any sort of “need” or “suitability of purpose” in our keeping and bearing. Never mind, either, that the rulings also required carry permit issuance to be based on strictly objective criteria, not on a government functionary’s wholly subjective assessment of “character” references.

The opening line of our Constitution—the opening phrase—is We the People of the United States.  It’s our Constitution, not Government’s. We are sovereign in our nation, not Government. It’s our obligation to enforce our rights; Government can act (and should), legitimately, only to assist us, not to usurp our duties. We defend our nation; Government acts in our name for us, not in its own name for itself.

Our Second Amendment rights are critical to all of that. Without our individual, personal keep[ing] and bear[ing] Arms, we cannot do any of that. That’s why our right shall not be infringed. Especially where First Amendment or government activities are occurring.

This is one example of why we can’t trust gun control pushers. They have no understanding whatsoever of our Bill of Rights and, by extension, of our Constitution.

Preventing Future Omnibus Bills

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Chris Jacobs, Juniper Research Group founder and CEO, in his 23 December Wall Street Journal op-ed, offered a solution, but he made this error that’s fatal to his proposal.

But because the Senate parliamentarian allowed Democrats to create new slush funds for domestic spending with a simple majority via budget reconciliation in 2021, a future Republican Congress can do the same….

No. Two wrongs, as the saying goes, do not make a right. Republicans doing this because the other party does it is what Progressive-Democratic Party members do.

Aside from that, it’s simply a wrong thing to do, whether tit-for-tat or simply reconciliation. The better answer is to pass budgets and appropriations bills through truly regular order: get rid of reconciliation altogether and pass the money bills—or not—in the same way as other bills get passed or stopped.

There’s one other step required. One (ideally both) of the houses of Congress needs to enact a rule barring omnibus bills: only the single budget and the dozen separate appropriations bills can be considered.

If government shuts down as a result of money impass, there’s a big so what. The Obama Shutdown, the Schumer Shutdown, all the other shutdowns show how little government is missed.

This—Jacobs’ solution or mine—will remain pie in the sky, though, since we’re dealing with politicians and not persons representing their constituencies. That requires us, We the People, to get off our…couches…and fire those who don’t represent us once they get to DC and hire those who do. That will take two or three election cycles to drive the point home. Three to complete a cleansing of the Senate.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Not Just DoJ

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It has come to light that DoJ prosecutors convened a grand jury and got subpoenas with which to investigate then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R) and a number of Republican Committee staffers during Nunes’ Committee investigations into what are now known to be Progressive-Democratic Party collusion with DoJ to create a false narrative of Republican collusion with Russia.

“The FBI and DOJ spied on a presidential campaign, and when Congress began exposing what they were doing, they spied on us to find out what we knew and how we knew it,” Nunes said. “It’s an egregious abuse of power that the next Congress must investigate so these agencies can be held accountable and reformed.”
The subpoenas demanded a broad swath of records from Google, including “all customer and subscriber account information” for [then-Committee Senior Counsel Kash] Patel and the other staffer, “addresses (including mailing addresses, residential addresses, business addresses, and e-mail addresses,” user names, “screen names,” “local and long distance telephone connection records,” and even the “means and source of payment for such service (including any credit card or bank account number) and billing records.”

That’s bad enough, but I’m especially concerned about another, closely related matter. Retired FBI Assistant Director for Intelligence, Kevin Brock:

A federal grand jury subpoena for records can only be issued after some type of criminal investigation has been opened.  So whoever sought the subpoena will have to be prepared to articulate why they thought these staffers broke the law. And it better be a substantial violation, something more than just a media leak investigation for example, otherwise it will risk being perceived as a gross misuse of the grand jury process to intimidate or chill a congressional committee demanding pointed answers from DOJ.

The larger question in my view—especially if the subpoenas were issued on an allegation of a chump change crime—is who were the judges, if any, who played along and approved the grand jury subpoenas, what were their rationales for their approvals? Also, who were the prosecutors convening the grand jury? It’s possible they came from the DC US Attorney’s Office, but who in particular?

Punishing the Successful

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There are changes to Americans’ 401(k) plans that are included in the Omnibus Spendathon bill currently in front of Congress, and they are IMNSHO highly favorable. (Aside: I hope the Omnibus Spendathon gets killed in favor of a short-term bill—or no bill at all; we won’t miss the Federal government for a few days—that will let the incoming Republican-majority House have its input into the year’s spending. These 401(k) provisions could be brought up and enacted then.)

Among those changes are a raise in the age at which account holders must begin taking their Required Minimum Withdrawals from the current 72 years old to 75 years old.

Cue the outrage from the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and their Leftist supporters, all of whom hate the success of others.

Some lawmakers, academics and policy analysts have criticized some of the provisions, including the move to raise the age of required retirement account distributions to 75. They argue much of the legislation benefits the wealthy and the financial-services industry.
“It will primarily subsidize the wealthy and worsen the racial wealth gap,” said a statement from Americans for Tax Fairness.

Leave aside the racist slur from ATF regarding its manufactured race beef. Never mind that the proposed legislation doesn’t harm anyone, or that it gives a path to greater prosperity to those willing to scrimp more now in favor of greater payoffs tomorrow. Those Progressive-Democrats and their Leftist supporters are desperate to hold back some because others can’t keep up. They can’t conceive of—or refuse to consider—ways to help those others do better.

Progressive-Democrats and their Leftist supporters, at bottom, have nothing but contempt for the capabilities of those of us on the middle and lower economic rungs. We average Americans are simply too grindingly stupid to be able to act on our own; we must be “taken care of” by our Betters on the Left.

Priorities

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Another fail by the Progressive-Democrat Mayor of New York City Eric Adams.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said with the expiration of Title 42, the Big Apple may be forced to cut public services to prioritize an expected influx of an additional 1,000 migrants arriving every week.

He said it explicitly:

Truth be told, if corrective measures are not taken soon, we may very well be forced to cut or curtail programs New Yorkers rely on, and the pathway to house thousands more is uncertain[.]

There’s this bit of context, too:

In the past several months, New York City has already received more than 31,000 asylum seekers….

That in a city with a population of 8.8 million residents, of whom, more than 350 thousand already receive public assistance. And Adams seriously thinks the 31 thousand are a serious drain on so large a city with a welfare system so broad.

Adams seriously thinks American citizens should take a back seat to a small collection of illegal aliens.

Why is this mayor prioritizing illegal aliens over his city’s American residents in meting out his city’s finite support resources? Well, he is a Progressive-Democratic Party politician….