Tag Archives: political parties

Dangerous Naivete

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has it. During a 60 Minutes interview, the man actually said that our nation does not have the luxury of not dealing with China.

That’s a blatantly raised straw man. No one is arguing that we should have no dealings with the People’s Republic of China. The debates are centered on how we should deal with it. Leave aside the fact that a total boycott of trade with the PRC is dealing with it, rather than not dealing with it, a means that no one is touting.

Instead, the debates involve moving our supply chain away from the threat the PRC poses, as illustrated by that nation’s attempt to cut off supplies of rare earth metals to other nations. They involve jawboning businesses to stop doing business with PRC suppliers operating with Uyghur slave labor. They involve how to pressure the PRC to desist from its Uyghur genocide in progress. They involve how to respond to the PRC’s occupation of the South China Sea and the islands within it that are owned by other nations (even if ownership is often disputed among those other nations.

Blinken said this, too, in that interview.

I want to be very clear about something. Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold this rules-based order that China is posing a challenge to.

This, especially, is an example of Blinken’s naivete. Our purpose most assuredly must include containing the PRC, holding it back. At least until it’s ready to stop being our enemy, to stop its genocide, to stop its slavery, to leave the South China Sea and respect the ownership of sovereign nations’ territory.

In fine, until the PRC is ready to join the community of civilized nations.

The full interview can be seen here.

Fair Share and Government’s Revenue

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President Joe Biden’s (D) Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Cecilia Rouse had some very instructive things to say on Fox News Sunday last weekend.

One was this:

The idea is to make sure that corporations are paying their fair share, to button up some of the loopholes, which have meant more corporations were actually putting more money offshore—off of US soil—and having a global minimum tax so that we’re working with the rest of our trading partners, so that we’re working with the rest of the world so that corporations are paying their fair share worldwide[.]

Couple things on this. One is that business of “paying their fair share.” Once again, a Progressive-Democrat declines to say what that “fair share” is, leaving us to conclude that “fair share” to Party is “more” until Government is getting all of it.

Sadly, too, Fox News Sunday‘s host Chris Wallace chose not to ask her what she considered to be that fair share, choosing instead to let that slide.

Another instructive remark from the FNS segment was this one by Rouse.

Yes, internationally we don’t want to be disadvantaged, so he’s also working with other countries so that we have a minimum tax internationally so there’s not a race to the bottom.

This is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians pushing us to be more like the European Union. Every nation must charge high taxes with no economic competition among the nations to attract real innovation, real business, real economic activity which can only redound to the citizens of each nation.

Rouse, like the administrative state running the EU from Brussels, insists that a tax rate race to the bottom, a race to leave ever more money in the hands of the folks working to earn that money, is somehow a bad thing.

And that flows from a third instructive Rouse statement.

What we’ve seen over the past several decades is that the wealthiest Americans, the big corporations are getting wealthier, and they’re contributing less in terms of federal revenue[.]

“[I]n terms of federal revenue.” Because it’s not Americans’ money, it’s not (big) corporations’ money, it’s Government’s money.  Never mind that Party (nor Republicans nor Conservatives) have for far too long, justified Government’s claimed need for the money.

Sexism of the Left

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It’s written all across New York City politics, explicitly so in the contest for mayor.

Andrew Yang is running for the Progressive-Democratic Party nomination for mayor. So is Eric Adams. And so is Kathryn Garcia. Both of the first two have said they’d be glad to have the third as their Deputy Mayor should one of those two win the general election for mayor.

Oh, the hue and cry from Garcia. So desperate is she to make a name for herself (she’s down in the weeds, polling at 5% as of last Friday, while Yang and Adams are at 22% and 17% respectively, and five more candidates are between 11% and 7%) during her own campaign, she has chosen to manufacture a sexist beef out of the other two’s willingness to recognize, and to let New York City benefit from, her talents. She cries,

It’s totally sexist. Totally sexist.

And

Are you not strong enough to actually do this job, without me helping you? You should be strong enough. You shouldn’t need me[.]

It’s true enough that a New York City mayor doesn’t need Garcia in particular in the Deputy’s slot. NYC does, though, need a Deputy Mayor.

Yang says through “a rep” that he

has enormous respect for Kathryn Garcia and that’s why he’s often said he’d seek her partnership at city hall if elected mayor.

It could be that Yang is blowing smoke with his complimentary remarks about Garcia. It could be, too, that he’s entirely sincere.

It’s instructive that Garcia has chosen the one interpretation of Yang’s suggestion to push and not the other. (Adams has chosen simply to ignore Garcia’s…claim.)

It’s further instructive that Garcia doesn’t even acknowledge the other interpretation, much less explain why she’s chosen her sexist beef and rejected the sincere (potential) offers.

That’s Garcia’s sexist bigotry—the manufacture of her beef out of whole cloth and without deigning explain her bald claim.

Conversations about Race

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Gerald Seib had an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal that centered on the race conversation that our nation needs to finish having and how Senator Tim Scott’s (D, SC) response to President Joe Biden’s (D) speech to Congress. Seib noted that, while our race conversation badly wants resolution,

in fact, that it may be getting harder rather than easier to resolve.

It’s especially getting harder because of the racists of the Left and the Progressive-Democratic Party’s resident politician racists.

There are the Left’s White Saviors carefully and solemnly explaining that a black man doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he talks about his black experience and about the black experience generally.

There are the black racists being shocked and embarrassed that a black man spoke for himself or calling him “a stone fool,” “slow-witted,” “a token.”

Party racists include the likes of Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D, IL) who said Scott’s police reform proposal was just tokenism and the studied silence regarding the Left’s racial slurs against Scott—Uncle Tim, Oreo, worse—inflicted by Senator Cory Booker (D, NJ) and Raphael Warnock (D, GA).

Not a single black Progressive-Democrat Representative in the House has spoken in condemnation, or even mild objection, to that racist treatment of Scott.

All because a black man dared leave the Left’s cash crop vote plantation and actually think and act for himself.

Mistake

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Congressmen Matt Gaetz (R, FL) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (D, GA) are hitting the campaign trail (a bit early, IMNSHO, but that’s beside my present point), taking their America First Tour to the nation:

The radical left is coming for you. And they know I’m in the way. Come stand with me as we fight back together against this radical president and his far-left agenda[.]

However, and here’s the mistake. They intend, also, to

call out so-called Republicans in Name Only, or RINO’s, and politicians whom they consider part of the country’s “radical left.”

These two need to stay focused on the real Leftist extremists, their Progressive-Democratic Party, and Party’s and Biden’s destructive policies and the destruction they’re trying to wreak with yet more of their extremist proposals.

Hitting RINOs, and other Republicans who are squishier than many of us like, however emotionally agreeable to us, will be counterproductive. Republican majorities—especially strong majorities—in both houses of Congress from 2022 forward is far more important than demanding party purity. That last can only weaken a majority, even put gaining either majority in jeopardy.

Purity-demanding caused a lot of Republican failures in 2010-2016 period when Republicans had majorities. The current crop needs to learn that lesson.