Tag Archives: politics

How Good is Good Enough?

Posted on by
Reply

The EPA has finalized, despite a plethora of public comment decrying the move, a pollution regulation that, among other things, tries to vastly reduce the amount of soot particles in the air we breathe. Vastly reduce: from the current standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 9 micrograms per cubic meter—from almost nothing to even more almost nothing.

Never mind that the ordinary march of technology and ordinary free market forces have already reduced the amount of soot in our air by 42%, or that there’s vanishingly small [sic] room between the existing almost nothing and nothing.

Never mind, either, most of these fine particles are produced by construction sites, unpaved roads, and agriculture fields.

As much as 30% of all counties in the US…would have to block permitting of manufacturing facilities and new infrastructure projects.

So much for Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s highly touted infrastructure project spending. There is an upside, though. John Kerry and his climatista syndicate would be moved closer to their goal of putting farming out of business.

What is this EPA’s limiting principle? It doesn’t have one.

This Is Why Unions Need to be Busted

Posted on by
Reply

Iowa State Senator Adrian Dickey (R, Packwood) has introduced SF 2374, which is a bill that would

require each public employer to “submit to the [Public Employee Relations Board, or PERB] a list of employees in the bargaining unit” within 10 days of a union recertification election.

Never mind that Iowa’s taxpaying citizens have every right to know what their tax dollars are being used for and who’s being paid with them. Never mind, either, that the bill requires public employers, not unions, to submit lists of eligible employees. Never mind, either either, that unions insist on precisely this information when it’s useful for them; unions just call it card checking.

Jesse Case, Teamsters Local 238 Secretary-Treasurer, says that everything—including strikes—are on the table if that’s what it takes to stop the bill. He’s even proposing some wildly inappropriate, deliberately dangerous, union actions if his union doesn’t get its way:

Let’s say you’re a water treatment person and you get a call at three in the morning that says, “The water supply’s going down,” you’re not obligated to answer that call and that’s not a strike.
It’s not a work stoppage because you’re not getting paid at three o’clock in the morning to answer your phone. In fact, it’s against the law to make somebody answer their phone if they’re not receiving pay.
…
It’s [sic] there’s a blizzard moving in at three in the morning, you can go into work at seven or six or your regular scheduled time—call Senator Dickey to come plow your streets.

The union doesn’t care about the risks to businesses or lives; they want their way. The union doesn’t care that those hours already count as serious overtime, emergency or not, with serious extra pay associated.

These strike threats, these union flu work slowdowns, this you can’t have anything unless we get everything ideology, this legalized extortion—nice business/state/whatever you got there, be too bad if something was to happen to it—is exactly why today’s unions need to be busted.

The Iowa legislature and Governor need to stand tall and pass the bill and apply the consequences to these unions.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Posted on by
Reply

Oops, he said it again. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has told Russian President Vladimir Putin not to deploy his newly developed nuclear-armed antisatellite weapon. Biden’s words were sent secretively through his NSA Jake Sullivan and his CIA Director William Burns among others.

Tellingly, Biden only spoke to Putin—even then only through surrogates—after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R, OH) exposed the Russian weapon a week ago.

What’s the or else, you might ask. What will Biden do if Putin goes ahead with his deployment? It seems the paper pussy cat in our White House has no consequences in mind, only his words of Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Even were Putin to say he agreed to not deploy his nuclear weapon in space, how would us ordinary Americans know whether he did or not? This is the same Biden administration, after all, that tried to hide a PRC spy balloon from us until a Montana citizen spotted it and exposed it. Putin’s space-based weapon system will be much harder for us citizens to spot.

This is Why…

Posted on by
Reply

…Israel can’t have nice things, things like peace and security within their own nation, under a Joe Biden regime.

Three Palestinian gunmen killed one person and wounded eight more on Thursday when they opened fire at motorists near an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank.

These particular Palestinians aren’t Hamas terrorists? There would be far fewer Palestinian terrorists operating in the West Bank if there were no Hamas to support them or to egg them on.

Hamas praised the attack, according to Reuters, calling it a “natural response” to the ongoing war….

Yet Biden is demanding that Israel let up on Hamas, let the terrorist organization survive to perpetrate ever more October 7s in Israel.

Republican Timidity

Posted on by
Reply

Recall that ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy committed to individual floor votes on each of the dozen separate appropriations bills. His position, and he was right IMNSHO, was that lumping them all together into a single omnibus spending bill only led to increased Federal government spending by preventing Congressmen from debating and voting on those bills individually—omnibus made the lot of them an all or nothing proposition.

Now Republican House management (they’re not leaders) are skittering away from that commitment. Instead, under the artificial deadline of a government shutdown due to lack of funding (itself a coarse distortion, since the government would only partially shut down, and separately, there is plenty of revenue flowing in under current tax law to fund most of the present government), those Republicans look like they’re preparing to cave and give the Progressive-Democrats everything they want. Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R, MN)

confirmed to Fox News Digital that passing minibuses is “on the table” and blamed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) for not working with the House on its individual spending bills.
“Due to the Schumer Senate’s inability to pass individual appropriations bills and the tight timeline we’re working with, all options are on the table including minibus appropriations bills. Thanks to Speaker Johnson’s leadership, the days of massive omnibus bills are behind us.”

No. This is excuse-making for the Republicans’ timidity. This is abject surrender to the Progressive-Democrats. There is no tight timeline—the partial shutdown won’t be a disaster, as prior shutdowns—the Schumer Shutdown and the Obama Shutdown before that—have amply demonstrated. To the extent there is any sort of deadline, it’s on the Progressive-Democratic Party for refusing to negotiate spending cuts in any serious fashion and on Schumer for forcing through the Senate an irresponsibly spendthrift bill. And on weak Republican Senators for negotiating so poor a foreign aid and border (in)security bill in the first instance.

And this, from a Republican Congressman who was too timid, or too lacking in moral courage, or both, to allow himself to be identified:

These negotiations are less focused on getting 216 Republicans to vote for them and more on getting the majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats to vote for them, and that concern about voting on all 12 is not going to be as prominent.

This is just a sellout of those commitments.

These managers need to find the courage of the convictions their mouths utter and hold 12 individual floor votes, or they need to get out of the way. These managers currently are on track to make Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY) Speaker, by a wide margin, and what a disaster that would be for our republic.