Tag Archives: political parties

On Whose Side Is He?

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Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) has said he will not vote for the latest Senate effort at beginning the repeal and replace process of Obamacare.  He claims he can’t tell the difference between this offer and the Obamacare that exists because, in part, it leaves some of the Obamacare taxes in place.

Never mind that a critical difference between the offer and Obamacare is that the offer does repeal some of the Obamacare taxes.

The offer isn’t a perfect bill, but it represents progress, and it’s not a final answer—and I know of no one, other than a few Senators, perhaps, who are arguing that it is; that there will be, can be, no possibility of coming back next year to make more progress and coming back in the next Congress to make yet more in each of those two years.

Furthermore, there aren’t enough votes to get all of the Obamacare taxes passed in this bill.  And, at least some Obamacare taxes must be repealed in order to be able to effect significant tax code reform.

Finally, the only politically possible alternative to passing a bill that repeals only some of the Obamacare taxes is to preserve the status quo and all of the Obamacare taxes.

Paul knows all of this, of course; he’s just virtue signaling.

I have to ask, then: on whose side is he?

Misguided Reporting

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A Dodd-Frank requirement to report the pay ratio between a company’s leadership and its rank and file—specifically, the total earnings of the chief executive compared with those of the median employee—is on the chopping block.

Supporters of the rule, part of the post-financial crisis Dodd-Frank Act, hope disclosure at an individual-company level might focus more attention on inequality and sky-high CEO pay.

This sort of pay ratio metric may well have value to a company’s investors, but it has no value at all to the Federal government beyond a cynical social-justice virtue signal kind of mandate from the Progressive-Democrats.  The requirement needs to be chopped (along with the whole of Dodd-Frank, but that’s a different story).

If investors find value in this, they can push the company of interest to publish the ratio on their own; government should not be involved.

Look Who’s Talking

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Congressmen Jamie Raskin (D, MD), Sheila Jackson Lee (D, TX), and Anthony Brown (D, MD), and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, DC) are pushing a bill that would remove President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment because, as these Progressive-Democrats insist, Trump is mentally unfit for office.

Indeed, Raskin has said he’s been thinking about this bill since he was elected last fall.  He insists now

This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him[.]

With no trace of understanding the irony of this person making this claim after having refused to attend the President’s inauguration.  In fact, the only persons Trump is at odds with are Progressive-Democrats like Raskin and his fellows in both houses of Congress, and that only because they’ve made it their business, through their leaders Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), to oppose everything Trump or Republican.

Notice a pattern there?

Paranoia: typically includes thinking of a persecutory nature, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia.

This is a textbook description of the Progressive-Democrats’ mindset ever since they lost the elections last fall, including this time the Presidential election.  This has been what the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have been doing since the Trump administration took office, with one specious (to be generous) charge after another: of “Russia collusion,” of “interfering with Comey’s investigation,” of “Trump obstructing justice,” of “Republicans will kill thousands of people with their health care reform,” of “Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the rich,” all at the expense of doing the people’s business in Congress.

Plainly, there is need of such a bill.  But it needs to be aimed at members of Congress who have put their irrational conspiracy theories ahead of their duties to the point some members are no longer capable even of high functioning.

Sanctuary Cities

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For the Left it means sanctuary from inconvenient laws.  Nevertheless, the House has passed two bills aimed at eliminating such sanctuary by reducing the ability of local cities and counties to give sanctuary to illegal aliens.  One such is the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which looks to persuade—notice that: not force, as many on the Left insist it does—locals to hold folks in jail who’ve already been arrested by locals for local violations for up to 48 hours in response to an ICE detainer.  Kate Steinle was murdered by an illegal alien who had just been released—deliberately in contradiction of an ICE request.  Opponents, though, insist that

cooperation [with ICE] would undermine trust in law enforcement in immigrant communities….

This is just cynical: requiring that laws be obeyed (NSCA, after all, only requires existing procedure be followed) undermines respect for law and law enforcement.  Sure.

The other bill, “Kate’s Law,” for the unfortunate Ms Steinle, whose murderer was a five-times deported and reentered illegally alien, would successively increase the price of repeatedly illegally reentering the US after deportation.  The protests from the Progressive-Democrats in Congress are just as loud and foolish on this one.

It’s stupid, it has nothing to do with the criminal act that was done against Kate Steinle, which was a terrible thing[.]

Except that it has everything to do with that “terrible thing.”  Had the law been in effect at the time, it’s possible—likely, even—that Steinle’s multiply-deported and reentered murderer would have been in jail at time and Steinle would be alive today.  Of course, maybe not, too, but as the Progressive-Democrats are wont to say, “If it saves just one life….”

Oh, wait….

The Health Care Choice

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The Wall Street Journal has the right of it, and it’s a stark one for the Republican Party and for us Americans.  The House and the Senate bills for getting rid of Obamacare and replacing it with something better are far from perfect, but they are significant improvements over the Obamacare assault on Americans’ access to health care, and on individual liberty and responsibility.  Further, the House plan has always been billed as the first part of a three-part effort at complete repeal and replacement; it’s never been claimed to be a final answer.  And the Senate bill on offer is not one, either.  Senate Republicans are well aware of this.

However, posturing Republican Senators from both the Conservative (or so they claim) and the middle regions of the party, no better than the openly kickback-demanding Progressive-Democrats of 2009 Congress infamy, are standing in the way of any progress at all.

Here’s the choice, then, with which these persons are faced: doing the deal and passing an improvement over the disaster that is Obamacare, with its growing loss of access even to health coverage plans, much less actual health care, and coming back next year for further improvement, or inflicting the continued failure of Obamacare on Americans foolish enough to have trusted these guys.

Here’s the collateral damage from failure that would be inevitable from making the wrong choice and the avoidance of which was a major motivation for electing Donald Trump: loss of control of the Senate to the Progressive-Democratic Party, and with that, loss of the Supreme Court for generations, if not permanently.  Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer all are likely to retire in the next three years.  Justice Clarence Thomas may well, also.  The Progressive-Democrats will block conservative, textualist Justice nominations, for whom the Constitution actually matters as the supreme Law of the Land, and will get confirmed—one way or another—three (or four) Justices in the Ginsburg (“the Constitution is a living document that lives through judicial rulings rather than Art V”) or Thurgood Marshall (“I rule and let the law catch up”) mold.  This would be an even worse disaster to our Republic and to our liberty than continuance of Obamacare, which only threatens our fiscal weal.