Tag Archives: politics

A Valid Beef, But….

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It seems the FBI—in its ongoing rogue-ness as a Federal government institution—obtained individual bank records of individuals about whom they had some curiosity without the nicety of the legally required court orders.

Legal experts are criticizing the FBI for allegedly obtaining the financial records of US customers with Bank of America “without any legal process” following the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

And

The allegations about subpoena-less bank-records gathering were included in a staff report from the full, GOP-led House Judiciary Committee that was released about an hour ahead of Thursday’s hearing.

From that report:

Just like FBI whistleblowers…retired FBI Supervisory Intelligence Analyst George Hill provided the Committee with detailed allegations of FBI civil liberties abuses. Specifically, he testified that following the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, Bank of America (BoA) gave the FBI’s Washington Field Office a list of individuals who had made transactions in the DC, Maryland, Virginia area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021.
He also testified that individuals who had previously purchased a firearm with a BoA product were elevated to the top of the list provided by BoA.

All of that is entirely valid, but beyond that is Bank of America’s behavior. Where’s the hue and cry over that bank so willingly giving up its customers’ personal records? Why did that bank’s managers choose to not demand the subpoena that is so clearly required before any bank gives to Government—or to anyone or anything—those personal data?

Alan Dershowitz, Harvard University Professor Emeritus in law:

Banks should not be turning records, private records over, the next thing doctors will be turning over private records and priests and rabbis. You just can’t start violating people’s privacy without a court order.

You bet. And Bank of America needs to be held to account, suitably sanctioned, and required to make serious financial restitution to those of its customers its managers chose to victimize. And those managers should be fired for cause and required to misbehave on some other company’s payroll.

A Progressive-Democrat’s Proposal to Combat Shoplifting

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At first glance, this looks like progress after California’s decision to completely condone decriminalize shoplifting if the amount stolen was less than around $1,000 on any single hit. But in reality, it’s just more progressivism.

New York City’s Progressive-Democrat mayor Eric Adams thinks it’s good to deal with shoplifters in the city whose mayoral mansion he occupies in this way, among others:

  • train the shoplifting victim’s employees to de-escalate
  • put kiosks in shoplifting victim stores so shoplifters, at the start of their spree, can call social service
  • allow shoplifters to avoid prosecution or incarceration by “meaningfully” engaging with those services

Unfortunately, this is just more Progressive-Democrat coddling of criminals; it’ll have no useful effect on shoplifting—or on any other NYC crime.

Reparations and Bargaining

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California’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom convened a “Let’s Give Reparation Payments to the Government-Favored” task force. Kenneth Blackwell exposed part of the purpose in his recent Fox News op-ed.

The idea was simple: the task force would deliberate, generating regular headlines, and then eventually propose something. Either the proposal would be feasible, in which case Black Californians would get some nominal amount of money and Newsom could claim a “win,” or it would be outlandish, in which case legislators would balk and Newsom would claim that he had done everything in his power to correct historic injustices.

The intent is in that “either” part: the proposal would be feasible, in which case Black Californians would get some nominal amount of money. In the so-far realization, California citizens identifying as black and having lived in the State for a nominal period would get hundreds of thousands to perhaps millions of taxpayer—fellow citizens’—dollars, ostensibly because of the sins of a century-and-a-half ago and the claimed continued failures ever since.

That’s the strategy, and it’s a standard bargaining technique. Open with a high bid, let yourself get talked down to a lower amount—this charade is far from played out—and walk away with something that you didn’t have any of at the start. And in the present case, still don’t deserve.

The current phase is epitomized by one California citizen’s mantra: Our vote is for sale. No reparations, no vote. Selling their civic duty to the highest bidder.

Each is an example of the cynicism of the Left and its Party.

A Telling Graph

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This one via The Wall Street Journal in an article positing three scenarios regarding our economy and the existing debt ceiling negotiations. The graph, which the WSJ sourced to the Bipartisan Policy Center, is especially dispositive given the backdrop of Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden refusing to negotiate over an already House-passed bill that raises the ceiling along with some initial, and small, spending reforms. That backdrop also includes Biden’s, his Progressive-Democratic Party Congressional cronies’, and journalism’s shrill panic-mongering over default if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.Notice that. Interest on our nation’s debt is tiny compared with the revenue flowing in for June; that means there’ll be no default if Biden and his Treasury Secretary obey our Constitution, the latter which makes the situation plain in the Preamble to Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States….

There’s also plenty of revenue with which to make the scheduled principal payments on our debt. In addition to the lack of default, there’s provid[ing] for the common Defence: DoD, military salaries , and veterans’ benefits together, along with Homeland Security, are similarly tiny compared to the revenue coming in. Biden’s lies about cutting those veterans’ benefits in particular are exposed. Then there’s the general Welfare: these comprise the biggest share of that revenue—and there’s plenty of revenue with which to cover Medicare and Social Security as scheduled and with which to make the Medicaid transfers to the States.

The hard numbers will vary from month to month, but the revenues will be there to make the Constitutionally required payments.

What’s necessary to resolve the current situation are two things: Republicans need to stand firm on passing a debt ceiling increase only with spending reforms in order to reduce the need for future ceiling increases (along with, separately and subsequently, passing out of the House, where such things originate, a budget that reduces spending in the out years. There’s no need to wait for Biden’s foolishness of a sham budget proposal, ever), and for Biden and his Party cronies to get serious about negotiating specifics within that framework instead of blindly following an angry old man’s stubbornness.

Department of State Gaslighting

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This time it’s in the arena of foreign military sales. Arms sales to our friends and allies are approved by Congress and they’re carried out by DoD.

[State] is set to release a 10-point plan to retool its oversight of the process to make it more effective at a time of strategic competition, especially with China, State Department officials said. It calls its new plan “FMS 2023.”
The State Department plans to develop more creative and flexible financing for countries, expanding the view of arms sales to take a more regional approach instead of weighing each country’s request on a case-by-case basis, and prioritizing some cases when they fit squarely into broader national security goals, according to department officials.

State has no need to weigh in on an arms purchase request, whether by country or by region: Congress already has done the weighing, and found the request, which comes through DoD, worthy. All that remains is for DoD to carry it out. State certainly has a role in helping to arrange financing, but that should be on a will-assist basis and not be used as a mechanism for slow-walking a transfer of which this or that State bureaucrat—or anyone in the SecState office—might personally disapprove.

Further, State, by the nature of its mission, already is fully current on the situation of any nation or region of interest to the US or to any of our enemy nations, and it already approves 95% of foreign military sales within 48 hours. To the extent State should remain involved in final approval, it shouldn’t take the Department more than 48 hours to approve or reject the remaining 5%; there’s nothing more to consider” Congress has done that already.

However, State should have nothing to do with arms sales at all beyond quickly and efficiently providing finance assistance: the sales already have been approved by Congress; that should saucer and blow the matter.

What does need to happen is for DoD bureaucrats get out of the way of executing the Congressionally approved sales and transfers.