Still Waiting

President Joe Biden (D), ‘way last summer, in the middle of his panicky running out of Afghanistan, promised those Afghanis who had worked with the US and with US forces there over the preceding 20 years that they would find welcome in the US.

He lied.

Afghan citizens who worked with the US are still waiting in third-party countries for their promised American visas eight months after leaving Afghanistan.

And this from Biden’s State Department:

After taking office, we worked to reduce the processing time for SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] eligible Afghans, while keeping in place our robust security and medical screening processes[.]

Eight months. Vetting certainly needs to be done thoroughly, but there’s no reason to dither about it. These folks already have been vetted to a considerable degree over those years that they had worked with/for us.

This is just more of Biden’s betrayal of those who helped us.

Just Be Quiet

…and do what you’re told. We wouldn’t have accused you if you weren’t guilty.

The SEC’s Director of the Division of Enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, doesn’t like it when lawyers defending their clients from SEC accusations get too much in his way.

The SEC also is seeing instances where lawyers repeatedly interrupt witness testimony to lodge frivolous objections….

Of course, it’s Grewal’s definition of frivolous. If he were serious, he’d be in court getting the frivolity sanctioned. And this:

In some instances, lawyers are representing companies and individuals in cases where they have a conflict of interest[.]

If that were true, he’d be objecting in court. Where are his objections?

And some lawyers are asserting legal privilege to shield documents from the eyes of SEC staff in cases where that privilege doesn’t apply[.]

Again, that’s Grewal’s position. And he asserts it as if, because he’s asserted it, it must be so.

And this:

Mr Grewal said he had recently learned about an entity with billions of dollars in assets that produced a mere 200 documents in a six-month period, after being served with a request for customer account and trading data.

Grewal is being disingenuous on two counts with this bellyache. One is that he’s been the Enforcement Director for nearly a year; how is it that he’s only just “recently” learning of this situation? Is he in charge, or isn’t he? If he is, does he read his staff’s input, or doesn’t he?

The other count is his beef that this represents an accused company’s delaying tactic. If he didn’t like it the slow production, why did he allow it to persist for so long? Why wasn’t he trying to force the pace—in court if necessary?

Grewal gave the SEC’s game away with these, as cited by the WSJ:

…[he] called on lawyers to work more cooperatively with the agency….

And

Lawyers who do cooperate in a genuine way with the SEC are better positioned to win credit for their clients in the form of a more lenient resolution of the agency’s investigation

This is one more reason the SEC cannot be trusted. I’ve mentioned another earlier.

So Will All Americans

The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board is concerned about the House of Representatives’ abuse of its subpoena power. Rightly so, but they’re too narrow in their concern.

Republicans are sure to see the subpoenas [of five Republican Representatives, by the January 6 Committee] as a case of turning the investigative power of the House against the opposition party.

So are will Americans see this abuse.

Republicans will argue that any such effort [to hold Representatives refusing to answer the subpoenas in contempt and seek their prosecution] is a violation of the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause.

So will Americans see this abuse.

Inflation Ain’t Joe Biden’s Fault

Illustrated in two graphs. The first is the overall Producer-Price Index performance over the last 11 years.

The second breaks out services from goods, the latter absent food and energy.

Now certainly, in addition to the immediacy of expectations, there are lags of some weeks to months in our economy, and it can take time for policies to have impact.

Oh, wait—notice those periods before the current inflation began spiking: the PPI was declining through the year-and-a-half before President Joe Biden (D) won the election. The PPI began its sharp rise right after that on expectations of Biden’s policy implementations, and it continued unabated as those expectations were realized and began their material impact on our economy.

Look, too, at the steadiness of the PPI rise. Neither supply chain disruptions nor Putin’s war have had any impact on the inflation rise. Look again at the 18 moths preceding Biden’s election. The pandemic, too, is wholly irrelevant to this hard rise.

This round of inflation really is Joe Biden’s fault, no matter how deeply he ducks under his desk, or how many times he scurries off to Delaware to avoid facing us average Americans.

Because Housing Price Inflation Isn’t High Enough

California State Senate Leader Toni Atkins (D) wants to exacerbate it with $10 billion more thrown at the State’s housing market to create even more buying demand for this supply-limited product.

Democratic State Senate Leader Toni Atkins on Wednesday unveiled details of a proposal she’s pushing to create a revolving fund that would provide interest-free loans for up to 30% of the purchase price of a home for low- and middle-income households.

Even spreading the money over 10 years would throw $1 billion per year at a housing market that’s already suffering enormous inflation—nearly 12% just since last August—due to the limited supply of houses for sale vs the burgeoning number of buyers, both institutional (viz., Blackrock) and individual.

That won’t add to the inflation of housing cost will it?