Tag Archives: political parties

Just a Thought

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California is running a very large budget surplus—$31 billion worth—and the men and women of that State’s government really and truly don’t know what to do with it. Especially since the voter-approved Gann Limit doesn’t let the government run that big a surplus.

Here’s a thought.

Maybe pay a tax refund to the citizens of California, and sock the rest of the surplus away in a State rainy-day fund.

Nah. Waste of money. Those citizens would only waste it on their own needs and wants, rather than spending it properly. And who needs a rainy-day fund? California has droughts.

This Isn’t Ignorance

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The Biden-Harris administration wants our oil companies to produce more because energy prices are too damn high. Never mind that it’s Biden-Harris policies that have crippled American oil and natural gas production and driven those prices so much higher.

The Biden administration says that oil companies face no government constraints on drilling more in the short run, even as it presses the companies to shift long term to cleaner forms of energy in response to climate change.

Which is a complete lie.  Then we get this from Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, via her spokesman:

It’s important for the American oil-and-gas industry to address near-term energy demands while also recognizing that they need to begin transitioning their companies.

How, exactly? The Biden-Harris administration has closed off drilling on Federal lands, it has shut down one major pipeline, and it’s threatening to close off two more.

Oh, wait. There’s this from Granholm, just a few months after she laughed uproariously at a question concerning her plan for boosting our energy production:

Please take advantage of the leases that you have, hire workers, get your rig count up[.]

Leaving aside those lease cutoffs she and her boss, Biden-Harris, have inflicted. That’s not a short-term process; those monies can only be committed for the mid- to long-term. Drilling wells on private land, just like they would have done on the closed-off Federal lands, takes time, equipment, money—and pipelines. And there’s high likelihood that “next year,” Biden-Harris and Granholm will punish those producers for producing so much climate “poison.”

Berating, pressuring, our oil and natural gas producers to produce more after having spent the year berating, pressuring them to cut production, and hamstringing them to ensure they produce less isn’t borne of Biden-Harris or Granholm ignorance.

This is outright dishonesty by those Know Betters in the Federal government.

Contempt

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A Wall Street Journal piece centered on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) supposed plan to bring President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party’s “Build Back Better Act” to a Senate floor vote in January, and therewith dare Senator Joe Manchin (D, VA) to vote against it, had the following highly instructive bit buried toward the end.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D, WA), Chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, castigated Manchin over his decision regarding the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill:

We cannot hang the futures of millions of Americans on the words of one man who represents a state that has a tiny percentage of the country’s entire population.

Never mind that Senators and Representatives, at least nominally, work for their constituents and not for Party or the nation at large. Never mind, either, that pesky 10th Amendment, much less the 9th Amendment.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for our Constitution and for the federal republican structure of our government that our Constitution creates.

This is the utter contempt that Progressive-Democrats have for us average Americans.

Everything from the center, and the center over everyone.

Laws and Rules

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The Progressive-Democrats are unhappy that they haven’t had their way with our government, and so they insist on changing the rules so they can get their way forever after. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) took note of this from the Senate floor last Thursday.

In the span of a few hours, one Senate Democrat had renewed calls to nuke the Senate and break the rules, and another published a national op-ed arguing that Democrats should attack the rule of law and pack the Supreme Court.
Two frontal assaults on two branches of government, proposed in the space of about two hours. Entire generations of statesmen would have seen either one of those unhinged proposals as Armageddon for our institutions.

But this is the Progressive-Democratic Party. If they can’t have their way within the law, within the rules, they’ll change the law, change the rules. If they can’t change the law or the rules, they’ll simply ignore them.

The government of the People’s Republic of China, and of the predecessor nation on the mainland, operates and operated the same way. If the men of those governments don’t—didn’t then—like the outcomes of specific laws, or if the people become too unruly (in those government men’s eyes) under existing law, they alter the law to suit those men.

This is not to say the Progressive-Democratic Party is the same as the Communist Party of China. The attitudes and techniques of the two, though, are quite similar, and they produce the same outcome: a nation whose citizens are ruled by government men rather than a nation under law where all citizens are equal, including those government men, and government is subordinate to the citizens.

Ego and Job Avoidance

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The Senate has before it some 50 nominees for various ambassadorships that still need floor confirmation votes. Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX) is holding them up by refusing to give unanimous consent to their confirmation unless and until he gets a floor vote on sanctioning constructors of the Russian Nordstream 2 pipeline. In response, Majority Chuck Schumer (D, NY) is…threatening.

Democrats are working to clear as much of the backlog as possible by consent. If we cannot make much progress, we may need to stay and hold votes on nominees this weekend and next week until we do[.]

That would really eat into Senators’ Christmas break. Oh, the angry sacrifice.

At 30 hours of debate per confirmation vote, though, those 50 nominations would require more than just a couple of weeks’ intrusion into playtime. Those 1,500 hours accumulate to a bit over two months to get all of them voted on, even were the Senate in session 24/7 for those two months.

Unanimous consent occasionally is an administrative convenience for getting minor matters done—post office and park namings, for instance—however, it’s far too often a mechanism for ducking being on the record on substantive issues. Nominee confirmation votes on controversial nominees, for instance.

Cruz is entirely correct to not give his unanimous consent, especially given his terms.

All Schumer has to do is allow a vote—a vote, mind you, not a guarantee of passage—on a Nordstream 2 sanction. The Progressive-Democrat Senators and the Progressive-Democrat Vice President would promptly vote down the sanction, and the nomination consents could proceed. Of course, this would put the Progressive-Democrat Senators on the record as opposing sanctioning Putin’s pet project, and that might not play well in Arizona, or Georgia, or Nevada, or….

Apart from any of that, this is just Schumer exercising his ego in trying to face down a Republican Senator.

It’s not all bad, though. If Schumer backs up his threat, at least the Senators would remain in session doing their jobs, which includes voting, explicitly on the record, on substantive matters so their constituents have material with which to evaluate them in the coming election.