Tag Archives: political parties

A Foolish Question

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors note that California’s Progressive-Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has waived some permitting requirements for some folks to facilitate their rebuilding efforts in the wake of the fires burning to ashes some suburbs of Los Angeles. Then they ask

Why not ease regulations for all projects if the rules are such a barrier to development?

It’s clear enough why not. Newsom hasn’t had the epiphany the editors’ headline at the link claims; he’s pandering to the uber-rich and to the upper middle class folks in what is really a narrow slice of the whole of California. Those rich who’ve lost their homes to the fires are major donors to him and to Party. The waiver is limited to these panderees because throughout that whole of the rest of California, Green groups and unions operate, and they’re major donors, also, to Newsom and to Party.

Cynical Failure

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Say they really believe their climate-cause claims.

The theory is that climate change caused two especially wet winters in California in 2023 and 2024.

And

[C]limate change explains wet and dry seasons, which follows the progressive line that climate change is responsible for every natural disaster….

It doesn’t matter if they actually believe that. If the California Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and the climatistas really believed that climate was at the root of the wildfires that have beset the State over the last couple of years, the one collective would have taken proactive steps, and the other collective would have supported those proactive steps, to protect the State’s citizens and their property from the ravages of those wildfires—the alleged outcome of “climate.”

They—both collectives—consciously, with forethought, chose not to take those steps. The question is why. One motive is increased power for the political collective through ranting about climate and how they’re the only ones able to deal with it and more “climate”-combating funding for the climatista collective who insist they are the only ones qualified to devise the ways with which to deal with it—and people and property be damned.

SALT Tax

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Short, brief, sweet, and redundant.

One thing threatening serious tax reform—which is to say making permanent the tax rate reductions that otherwise expire near the end of this year, reducing those rates further, and flattening the rates further—is the kerfuffle over the SALT (State And Local Tax) tax deduction cap, currently at $10,000.

I sympathize with the Representatives and Senators, especially the Republican ones, in those States most impacted by the cap. Their wealthier constituents want the cap raised significantly if not eliminated. These politicians, though, must understand that as members of our national Congress, their responsibilities to our nation as a whole runs a very close second to their responsibilities to those individual constituencies.

The business of cap raising/eliminating is nonsense for a couple of reasons. One is that there is no reason at all for the rest of us taxpayers to subsidize those in States with profligate spending and already high taxes. Those Congressmen would do better using their Federal influence and bully pulpit to convince their State and local governments to mend their spendthrift ways and lower their tax rates—the latter which several States (tellingly, mostly Republican led) already have done or are doing.

The other reason is that, aside from empirical evidence that lowering tax rates actually increases revenues to the Federal government from the increased private economic activity that results from more money being left in the hands of us private citizens, revenue reductions—if any—from lowered tax rates is easily covered by reduced spending in general and reduced, if not eliminated, subsidies and tax credits for “green” energy solar and windmill farms, battery cars, federal deductions for non-federal tax collections, and other such tax engineering froo-froo.

Indeed, with sufficiently reduced spending, badly needed increased spending on national defense still could occur.

Raising the SALT tax cap wouldn’t be tax reform, it would be tax deform. In fact, reform here would be eliminating the SALT deduction altogether.

End Congressional Oversight of the District of Columbia?

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Washington, DC, delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) wants an end to Congressional oversight of the District of Columbia, and she’s moving to revive earlier legislation that would to do so.

The congressional review period for DC bills is onerous for the District, and rarely even used by Congress, causing DC bills to be unnecessarily ensnared in congressional bureaucracy for months[.]

It’s already the case, though, that the oversight is so rarely used—only twice in the last 30 years has Congress moved to overrule a DC-passed ordinance—that the district already is, functionally, self-ruling.

However.

The move, even were it a good idea, would require an Amendment to our Constitution. Here’s Art I, Sect 8 on governance of the District of Columbia:

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings

Holmes has a beef, in that there are too many bureaucrats involved, and it is much to slow to get anything done. Those 60 days to review an ordinance proposal are patently excessive, especially in this day of computers and Congressional staffs so bloated that staffers are scratching for things to do. I’ll go out on a limb: it shouldn’t take more than a week (Sundays excepted) to do the review and either approve or reject the ordinance.

Those interferences, those delays, badly want reduction.

There is a Parallel

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Virginia Republican legislators are looking at updating and tightening Virginia law regarding fentanyl deaths.

Under current case law, it is difficult to charge a drug dealer with the murder of a user who died from fentanyl they had purchased unless they are in the proximity of that dealer, according to GOP legislators.

Thus:

State Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-New Kent, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that Virginia hopes to address that legislative insufficiency.
“This [new] [law] would say if you sell the drugs, it doesn’t matter if you’re in physical proximity,” he said.

When a person is killed in the course of a crime of which he’s a victim or bystander, all of the participants in that crime are as guilty of murder as is the one who did the actual killing. This is well established case law.

It’s eminently sensible that participants in a drug activity (and not just involving fentanyl) during the course of which or as a result of which a person is killed by the drug should all be guilty of the murder as is the individual who was proximately involved in that killing. Bullets and knives have, in the main, pretty prompt effects from having been delivered in the moment. Drugs, though, have prompt effects when taken, the taking often is delayed. Hence the need to expand that proximity to the dealer bit. The drugs the dealer delivered might well have their prompt effect later, when the addict takes the metaphorical bullet/knife stab.

Unfortunately, though, this law has little chance of passage in the current Virginia legislative session: the Progressive-Democratic Party will hold a one-seat majority after a pair of special elections are completed. Party has shown over the last four years that it has no stomach for punishing criminals, lacking even the stomach to hold them in jail pending trial, or even to bring them to trial at all.