Politicizing Things

Congressman and Vice Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee Jake Auchincloss (D, CT) had an op-ed in Tuesday’s Fox News Online in which he complained about the lack of bipartisanship regarding and the politicization of the current inflation period—and blamed it all on Republicans.

Never mind the irony of decrying partisanship and politicization while blaming partisanly.

But the irony—no, the dishonesty—didn’t stop there. Here are just a couple of examples; he led off with them.

…game of chicken with the debt-ceiling….

Here is Auchincloss’ first move of partisanly politicizing the dire strait of our economy. There’s no game of chicken here; the Progressive-Democrats have the votes to raise the debt ceiling. All they need to do is to set their number for the raise, and then vote it into law. Auchincloss knows that full well.

Then there’s this:

First and foremost, that means working together to shift consumer spending towards services and away from goods.

Because the Progressive-Democrats, with their Big Government ideology, insist they know better than us ignorant average Americans what we want—what we should want—than we do. They’re looking to dictate to us what we will buy, with the money they choose to leave us after they’ve taken most of it via their taxes.

Auchincloss’ nonsense went on in that partisan, wholly political, vein.

This self-absorption, if not outright duplicity, is all too typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Grassroots Infiltration

Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA), of FOXLA, known also for his reporting from our border along the Rio Grande Valley, had this Twitter thread concerning the close ties the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors has with the People’s Republic of China, especially as concerns Americans’ DNA records. I’ve reproduced the thread below, absent the tweeting headers for easier reading.

One other thing: the Los County County Supervisor at the end of the thread that Melugin tried to contact, Hilda Solis, is the same Hilda Solis (D) who sat in ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) Secretary of Labor chair and did so much damage during his first term.

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NEW: The L.A. County Sheriff has notified L.A. County that LASD will not work w/ a genetics firm the County hired for mandatory COVID-19 testing/registration of County employees after he received a recent briefing from the FBI warning him about the firm’s links to China.Over the last several weeks, I’ve been contacted by multiple L.A. County employees who are furious about Fulgent Genetic’s disclaimer about sharing their medical information outside the United States. All 100,000+ L.A. County employees mandated to register with Fulgent.

On August 4th, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors issued an executive order mandating all County employees provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19, or face potential termination. L.A. County awarded a no-bid contract to Fulgent to provide testing/registration services.

I’m told some L.A. County departments have already started registering with Fulgent. An employee in the D.A.’s office sent me this letter showing he has already been threatened with disciplinary action & termination for failing to register his information with Fulgent.

Fulgent Genetics was also awarded a contract to provide COVID-19 testing for New York City public schools through the 2021 school year.

ir.fulgentgenetics.com: https://ir.fulgentgenetics.com/news-releases/news-release-details/fulgent-genetics-extends-partnership-new-york-city-test-and/

Fulgent Genetics Extends Partnership with New York City Test and Trace for COVID-19 Testing,…

Following a competitive process, Fulgent was selected to extend its support of the NYC DOE public school testing managed by the NYC Test and Trace Corps with on-site staffing and RT-PCR tests through…

UPDATE: FBI Los Angeles spokesperson tells me:

“While we routinely provide briefings to partners, I decline to comment on the letter tonight.”

I have also reached out to LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis’ office for a response to the Sheriff’s letter. Waiting to hear back.

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This is how deeply the People’s Republic of China is penetrating even our local government jurisdictions.

Government Subsidies for Local Newspapers

Dean Ridings, CEO of an organization self-absorbedly called America’s Newspapers, thinks it’s a terrific idea that the Federal government (presumably, government at any level) should…subsidize…local newspapers.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act will provide the local news industry time to continue its transition to a more digital future and to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation or other means, to be paid when Google and Facebook use its content. It is not a permanent handout.

It is not a permanent handout. That’s just risible; Ridings knows better. It would be both a handout and permanent.

And this: time to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation….

Just what we need—a Government Press for the locals: Local Izvestia, Local Russia Today, Local China Daily, Local People’s Daily in the US. Even if the legislative aspect didn’t come to fruition, the strings will be attached to the subsidies from the start.

No.

If the locals want a local press, they’ll have one through a free market. No government funding—which is to say no taxpayers’ money from outside the community, from entirely different States, from clear across the nation—is necessary or even useful.

An Important Point

Deroy Murdock made one.

Recall that the City Council of New York City is contemplating—seriously—letting noncitizens, all 808,000 of them in New York City, vote in city elections.

Yet, as Murdock emphasized, there is no such thing a as a noncitizen.

Rather than non-citizens, these people are foreign citizens. While they are not American citizens, they remain citizens of the foreign nations from whence they came—Mexico, Haiti, Russia, Singapore, New Zealand, and dozens more.

He went on:

The New York City Council aims to dilute the local votes of American citizens by extending the franchise to 808,000 foreign citizens. This would include letting approximately 117,500 citizens of communist China select the mayors, City Council members, district attorneys, and other officials of America’s most-populous municipality.

Imagine the citizens of our enemy nations selecting who governs us. These elections, so far, are at the local level, but it’s the local levels that are the foundations on which are built that our higher jurisdictions.

It’s at the local level that our ordinances and laws are created—by elected lawmakers that citizens of our enemies have a say in electing. Which gives those foreign citizens a say in the local ordinances and laws that govern us. Those local ordinances and laws are the foundation on which the statutes enacted by our higher jurisdictions are built.

One city, albeit one of our largest, might not seem much of a threat, and it’s not. But it’s more than a start: Progressive-Democrats in other local jurisdictions have already done the deed. They’ve

already empowered foreign citizens to vote for San Francisco school board and in local races in two Vermont cities and 11 Maryland communities.

More Disingenuosity of the Left

Buried in the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill that they’re so desperate to hurry up and get passed before anyone can peruse it is this payoff to unions:

The bill the House passed would allow union members to deduct up to $250 of dues from their tax bills. The deduction is “above the line,” meaning filers can exclude the cost of dues from their gross income. In other words, union dues would get the same treatment now reserved for things like insurance premiums and retirement contributions.

The Progressive-Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, claims it’s no payoff at all; it’s because

Unions are the backbone of the middle class. This legislation would put money back in the pockets of working families.

Never mind that union membership in the entire private sector is only a bit over 6%, not close to any sort of middle class backbone.

What the Progressive-Democrat carefully ignores, too, is that absent the vast increase in taxes included in the reconciliation bill, there’d be no need to put money back in the pockets of working families because that money wouldn’t be leaving those pockets in the first place.

The WSJ has the right of it:

The true goal of the tax break is to fill union coffers by making dues less of a deterrent to joining. The incentive would be particularly strong in 23 states without right-to-work laws, where workers pay partial union fees whether or not they’re members.

(Keep in mind, too, that the Progressive-Democrats also are pushing legislation that would eliminate right-to-work laws in those 23 States and nation-wide.)

Bread and circuses. Vote buying.