Tag Archives: politics

Hostage Takers

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As Florida state and local officials scramble to contain a Zika virus outbreak in Miami Beach—a serious threat to the region’s $24 billion-a-year tourism industry—congressional lawmakers from both parties continue to be locked in battle over a billion dollars in vital funding that experts say is needed to keep the virus from breaking out across America.

This is a misleading opening paragraph in the Fox News article.  Congress isn’t deadlocked.  The House already has passed a Zika funding bill.  Democrats in the Senate are blocking the bill over wholly unrelated matters: Planned Parenthood funding, which the Zika bill cuts off, and birth control funding in bankrupt Puerto Rico, which the Zika bill provides.

No, Democrats are holding the welfare of the citizens of Florida and Puerto Rico, and our citizens in the other States at risk, hostage both over Democrats’ fight to have Federally funded abortions and their hypocrisy in demanding health coverage providers provide premium-free birth control coverage while denying access to birth control in one of our territories.

Death Tax

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Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton demurs from Republican Party Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s plan to repeal the death tax—the 40% tax on a man’s estate that the government currently claims because the man was rude enough to die.  Never mind that the man’s heirs might have a claim on the money—no, it’s Government’s money, says the Progressive Democrat.

Clinton claims she wants to build schools, cancel student loans, and provide health care to veterans with the proceeds from that death tax.

Let’s review the bidding.

Clinton has no intention of building voucher or charter schools; she only wants to build “public” schools run by her supporting teachers unions—crony capitalism in our education system.

Clinton’s wish to cancel student loans sends an equally terrible signal: that private citizens aren’t responsible for their own debts or their own actions: government will take care of it for them.  Which puts government in charge of those citizens’ choices, too, but carefully elides that part of her wish.

Clinton’s claims regarding our veterans’ health?  Compare that with the Democratic administration’s handling of the Veterans Affairs and its abject failure regarding our veterans’ health.  The Obama administration has taken no meaningful steps to correct that disaster (some might say refused to take steps), and she brags about wanting to continue President Barack Obama’s (D) policies.  And she says nothing to reconcile the opposition between her veterans-related claims on the one hand and her veterans-related claims on the other.

There’s another aspect to this death tax of hers, too.  Most of the estates being inherited (or which inheritance is blocked by the death tax) are in the form of small, family businesses and farms—businesses which usually have to be sold off to raise the cash to pay the vig tax.  And that leaves the surviving families, those heirs, without the means to earn their livelihood.

The Progressive Socialist Goal Made Manifest

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In the context of Aetna’s decision to sharply curtail its participation in ObamaMart—because such participation was costing Aetna millions of dollars—Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) has said openly

The provision of health care cannot continue to be dependent upon the whims and market projections of large private insurance companies whose only goal is to make as much profit as possible.

Because making money—the engine of economic growth and the economic welfare of all Americans—is inappropriate when it’s done outside Government control.  American businesses and Americans can’t be allowed to earn more than Government deems fit.  President Barack Obama (D) has held this before Sanders became a public fixture:

I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrat Obama considered it to be Government’s role to determine the goodness of that product or service, not the private citizens choosing to buy, not to buy, that product or service.

Sanders’ disdain for private insurers’ market projections and their goal to make as much profit as possible are easily extensible to the economy as a whole.  That Progressives in the Democratic Party are demanding a government option to “compete” with private enterprise in ObamaMart is a clear demonstration of where that Party will take our economy the moment they gain control of our government.

You can bet Progressive-Democrat and Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton soon will be echoing Sanders’ call for government control of our economy in her effort to retain Sanders’ supporters and to extend Obama’s policies.

This will be the Progressive Socialist economy.

SEC and Boardroom Diversity

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The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to reach inside corporate governance some more because it Knows Better how to run a company than do the leaders and managers of that company.  The latest travesty is a new rule requiring disclosure of the diversity—by which the SEC means ethnic and gender diversity—of a public company’s board of directors.  This would be an expansion of the SEC’s existing 2009 rule requiring companies to disclose their plans for diversity.

Berkshire Hathaway took the correct position in its SEC disclosure regarding those plans:

Berkshire does not have a policy regarding the consideration of diversity in identifying nominees for director. In identifying director nominees, the Governance Committee does not seek diversity, however defined. Instead, as previously discussed, the Governance Committee looks for individuals who have very high integrity, business savvy, an owner-oriented attitude and a deep genuine interest in the Company.

This, though, isn’t politically correct enough to suit the SEC; hence the new rule under consideration.  It isn’t enough that a company should seek actual talent and skill, it must seek the government-directed correct balance of gender and ethnicity.

This raises a question in my mind: would that be biological ethnicity and gender or self-identified ethnicity and gender?

For the record, I self-identify my ethnicity as American, and I self-identify my gender as The US Male.

The Non-Ransom Ransom

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As part of the Iran nuclear weapons deal done by President Barack Obama (D) and his Secretary of State John “Motorboat Skipper” Kerry, the US ransomed four prisoners held by Iran.  Of course, Obama denies that the $400 million payment that…coincided…with the prisoner release was a ransom.

In fact, this part of the nuclear weapons deal was a carefully scripted exchange little different from any pirate’s ransom exchange.

US officials wouldn’t let Iranians take control of the money until a Swiss Air Force plane carrying three freed Americans departed from Tehran on Jan 17. Once that happened, an Iranian cargo plane was allowed to bring the cash home from a Geneva airport that day.

And [emphasis added]

One of the Americans released in January as part of the prisoner exchange, a pastor named Saeed Abedini, said he and other American prisoners were kept waiting at Mehrabad airport from Jan 16 to the morning of Jan 17. He said in an interview that he was told by a senior Iranian intelligence official at the time that their departure was contingent upon the movements of a second airplane.

So—who are we to believe, Obama or Abedini’s lying ears?