Tag Archives: politics

Of Which the Press Demonstrates the Need

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The need, that is, for a Web site that identifies misleading, distorting, outright lies that the press has such a penchant for. Examples were provided by the “news” pages of The Wall Street Journal, and a second example was provided by the WSJ‘s editors in the very same edition.

From the “news” page, this article ostensibly describing the Web site, which the Trump administration made live earlier this week:

For years, Trump has used social media—particularly his platform, Truth Social—to reprimand the press for negative coverage. The new government site reflects a more coordinated, formalized approach to criticizing members of the press.

No, for years, Trump and others in his administration have called out the naked bias of the press and social media as both moved to suppress coverage of Conservatives; the naked bias of outlets that insist there are not two sides to every story and that announce that their “news” pages will take sides in reporting, no longer even trying to do balanced reporting; and outright spiking of stories unfavorable to the Left or to Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.

And this “news” page:

President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for renewable energy.

It’s hardly disdain for renewable energy when the Trump administration is actively pushing an all-of-the-above energy production industry, which includes pushes for renewables—just in parallel with traditional sources and nuclear power sources rather than exclusive of them. Cutting subsidies for wind and solar and for battery-powered vehicles is hardly disdain; it’s simply putting all sources of energy on a more level competition field.

Then there’s this from those editors:

Lawmakers are doing a public service by trying to get to the truth on whether the Trump Administration killed defenseless survivors of a drug-boat strike.

There’s a world of difference between killing survivors in a second strike and targeting them with that second strike. It’s telling that the editors not only chose not to acknowledge both interpretations, they chose to not explain why they ignored the one and accepted only the other. Of course, the Washington Post story they cite, while noting the story had only anonymous sources, also only mentioned killing, without its own distinction between the two interpretations.

A second strike, as the editors know full well, would have been entirely justified if the goal was to destroy the boat and its cargo—cocaine floats, as the editors also know full well—and the first strike didn’t succeed in the destruction. The deaths of any first-hit survivors from the second blow would have been tragic, but would have been collateral damage, and so entirely within US and international law.

No Government Bailout

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Not even by city governments, and not even for this.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editors noted that

The New York Housing Conference, a nonprofit that promotes so-called affordable housing, warns in a new report that landlords will need $1 billion in government aid to avoid default. “A significant number of affordable housing buildings in New York City are experiencing operating deficits, where rents are not covering expenses,” the report says.

The buildings are publicly financed, and their costs are skyrocketing—costs ranging from insurance to maintenance to unpaid rents.

This is the problem with government paying for stuff, no matter how glitteringly wonderful the intent might seem.

The city government, the State government, the Federal government—none of them—should be forking over any more of the taxpayers’ money for this sort of thing. The best way to solve this kind of shortfall does not include throwing ever more money into the ever expanding maw of city resident dependency.

Instead, cut the buildings’ costs: get out of the way of rent collections, greatly reduce insurance regulations, property taxes (even public housing must pay these), zoning requirements. Lower sales taxes that drive up the cost of maintenance supplies. Let the market determine wage rates, not bureaucrats snug in their government job sinecures.

Retarded or Crooked?

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President Donald Trump (R) has called Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz retarded. Having watched this Party politician stumble and mumble his way through a failed campaign for Vice President, and especially during the only Vice President debate in which he was willing to participate, I’m forced to conclude that the characterization (which is rude, but Karens notwithstanding, it’s no slur) isn’t entirely inaccurate.

But wait….

Minnesota’s Department of Human Service Employees has more.

[T]he Minnesota DHS, wrote on X that Walz is “100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota.”
“We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. In addition to retaliating against whistleblower[s], Tim Walz disempowered the Office of the Legislative Auditor, allowing agencies to disregard their audit findings and guidance.”

This comes in relation to the massive Wuhan Virus fraud in which Minnesota was an enthusiastic participant and which Walz had been permitting that participation despite those warnings.

[T]he Feeding Our Future fraud scheme, which prosecutors say involved more than $250 million in stolen funds from a federally-funded child nutrition program and has already resulted in over 50 convictions. Many of the individuals charged come from Minnesota’s Somali community.

It’s hard to see how such large fraud could continue for so long unless the governor, at best, cavalierly turned a blind eye to it.

Thus: retarded or crooked? Maybe both.

Clemency

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President Donald Trump (R) has said he’ll cancel all of the Executive Orders and anything else that was not directly signed by Crooked Joe Biden that Biden instead signed with an autopen. Potentially, Trump could go farther.

Trump could potentially revoke Biden’s legislation or the dozens of pardons he issued, including to family members. Biden also gave thousands of commutations at the end of his presidency. Still, legal scholars say there is no mechanism to undo clemency after it is granted.

The prior question, regarding clemency, though, is whether it was granted in the first place. That would hinge on, among other things, whether the autopen was used illegally by others—viz., he didn’t authorize its use—to grant those clemencies. That will be hard to prove.

There’s also the question of the legislation signed into law by autopen. Even were it shown that the legislation signed by autopen was illegally signed, canceling that legislation would be a dicey matter legally—the laws have been in effect for some years—and practically: canceling that legislation would reopen, even more explosively than at the time, the arguments and conflicts that accompanied those legislations during their development and passage. Especially since all of the legislation would have to be canceled if one of them is. Trump won’t be able to pick and choose which to cancel.

Back to clemency: Trump would be able, functionally, to pick and choose which clemency act to cancel or to retain; he can simply reissue clemency for specific cases.

He cannot simply reissue specific legislative acts.

Any of that autopen-related withdrawal, though, will come at very considerable political capital expenditure. As a lame duck President, Trump doesn’t have much of that. But with three-plus years left in his term, is this clemency question the place to spend that capital?

Maybe not. Almost certainly not on the matter of legislation.

Arrogance of a Progressive-Democratic Party Politician

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Congressman Adam Smith (D, WA) is the only Party politician, so far, to claim to know of and to identify illegal orders issued by President Donald Trump (R).

Yeah, I think the order to blow up those boats in the Caribbean without any, you know, actual probable cause, national security justification, or any declaration of war or armed conflict by the US Congress, I think it is illegal. That’s a legitimate opinion to hold, and it’s a legitimate opinion to express.

With that, he gives the game away.

It is a legitimate opinion to hold, and it is an opinion legitimately expressed by most American citizens. Military members must get over a much higher bar in order to express their opinions of an order’s legality with a view to disobeying it or encouraging their fellows to disobey it.

The order must be adjudicated illegal, and the military member must be prepared to suffer the consequences of disobedience or of fomenting disobedience should a court determine the order legal. On the other hand, all of us citizens, all of our politicians, can yap away at will without consequence.

Smith’s opinion that an order is illegal does not make it so. That he does not recognize that in the context of the Six’ video those politicians are potentially seeking to foment disorder explicitly in the military ranks—which would be seditious—not in the political ranks, is demonstrative of Smith’s self-important arrogance.