Tag Archives: politics

Couple Thoughts re Ramaswamy’s Thoughts

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Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has some ideas about what to do were he to be elected President. I have some ideas about those ideas.

Let’s have a reasonable path to peace. Make a permanent commitment that NATO will not admit Ukraine to NATO, but in return, require Russia to exit its military partnership with China. Now that weakens China. Now, Xi Jinping is gonna have to think twice before going after Taiwan.

This is breathtakingly naïve. On what basis does Ramaswamy think Putin would honor any agreement? Russia already has welched on the Budapest Memoranda, Minsk I, and Minsk II, and he faked his 2014 “referendum” that he used to rationalize his occupation of Crimea. That’s just Russia’s recent history with Ukraine. Then there’s Putin’s avowed goal of reconstituting the Russia’s Soviet (Union) empire. Ramaswamy’s plan for this “peace” of his also includes an in-place cessation of the fighting—forcing Ukraine to surrender the 20%, or so, of its territory that Putin currently occupies to him, which only rewards Putin for his invasion.

Then there’s the bit about Russia leaving its alliance with the People’s Republic of China, which he alleges would weaken the PRC. What makes Ramaswamy think that alliance itself doesn’t weaken the PRC? Russia desperately needs money and weapons/ammunition. Iran and northern Korea can’t supply any of that in sufficient numbers; only the PRC can—at the expense of its own finances and military equipage. Beyond that, the PRC already is spending treasure propping up the Russian economy and war effort.

Finally, there’s the fact that Russia winning in Ukraine—getting to keep those 20%—would only embolden Xi, not give him pause.

…doubling down on his promise to shrink the federal bureaucracy by 70%….

This actually is a worthy goal. However. There are some 2 million civilians employed by the Federal government. Assume, arguendo, he’s capable of getting rid of those 70%. What’s his timeline for terminating 1.4 million civilians? He never says. What will be the impact (viz., unemployment insurance, food stamps) of dumping 1.4 million out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either. How will he handle the nation’s economic dislocation resulting from dumping 1.4 million more out-of-work workers onto the private economy? He never says anything about that, either.

Why Isn’t It a Concern?

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Crime in the District of Columbia is rampant and rising. DC isn’t alone in this regard; that’s the case in a broad variety of Progressive-Democratic Party-run cities. The remark of DC’s Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, Lindsey Appiah, is strongly illustrative of the general problem, though:

I definitely think public safety has been and continues to be the No. 1 concern for district residents[.]

However.

In DC,

  • 216 homicides this year, 38% more than at this point in 2022
  • robberies are up 70%
  • car thefts have more than doubled

Why don’t the persons of the DC government also think public safety has been and continues to be the No. 1?

Choosing not to Understand

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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has broadened an existing injunction that bars various Federal agencies from colluding with social media to censor speech to include the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. The court wrote, in part,

CISA used its frequent interactions with social-media platforms to push them to adopt more restrictive policies on censoring election-related speech. And CISA officials affirmatively told the platforms whether the content they had “switchboarded” was true or false….
Thus, when the platforms acted to censor CISA-switchboarded content, they did not do so independently. Rather, the platforms’ censorship decisions were made under policies that CISA has pressured them into adopting and based on CISA’s determination of the veracity of the flagged information. Thus, CISA likely significantly encouraged the platforms’ content-moderation decisions and thereby violated the First Amendment[.]

Here’s the Federal government’s overt decision to not understand the matter of free speech as it appeals the ruling to the Supreme Court [paraphrased by Fox News]:

the government faced “irreparable harm” because [5th Circuit Federal Judge Terry, who ordered the first injunction] Doughty’s order may prevent the federal government from “working with social media companies on initiatives to prevent grave harm to the American people and our democratic processes.

This is, to use the legal jargon’s term, a steaming crock. The order in no way bars the Federal government—its bureaucrats and its political appointees—from working with social media companies. It only bars the Federal government’s from defining what speech constitutes “grave harm,” and it bars those personnel from pressuring social media to implement those definitions and then to censor speech based on those definitions.

The order in no way bars the Federal government’s personnel from working with social media companies to publish, also (not instead of), those folks’ own, answering, speech that debates the information an original speaker has offered and with which the Federal government’s bureaucrats or politicians disagree.

The Biden administration personnel know that full well; hence their conscious decision to pretend to not understand the basic principle of free speech and why the Federal government is Constitutionally barred from interfering with it. The grave harm stems from those government personnel’s attempt to disregard the First Amendment.

The 5th Circuit’s ruling can be read here.

Why Lend?

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How can a financial entity lend? Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden now is moving to hide individuals’ medical debt from potential lenders.

[P]roposed regulations would prohibit consumer reporting companies from including medical debts and collecting information on consumer reports that creditors use to make underwriting decisions. Creditors would also be barred from using medical collections information when evaluating borrowers’ credit applications.

This on the heels of his constant attempts to render student debt holders unaccountable for their debt.

Since lenders are increasingly being denied recourse, and now they’re to be denied useful information about a potential “borrower’s” ability to repay a debt a priori, why—how—could any lender make a decision to lend, other than to raise its interest rate very high, commensurate with the very high risk being inflicted on that lender by Government?

Look for the Biden administration to start trying to cap lending interest rates, next.

See No…, Hear No….

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Differing opinions, that is, along with actual facts. Apparently, Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are so weak of character that their Party leader, President Joe Biden, feels constrained to protect their tender eyes and ears.

The White House is prohibiting senior administration officials from traveling for international energy engagements that promote carbon-intensive fuels, including oil, natural gas and coal, Fox News Digital has learned.

The bar came from Biden’s National Security Council because, you know, differences are anathema to Biden’s concept of security. Which isn’t far wrong, given Biden’s assessment of the fragility of the players in his Cabinet.