Tag Archives: politics

Progressive-Democratic Party Welfare Cliff

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I’ve written about this on a few occasions. The New York Post has current data, and they’re even worse. Here’s a table illustrating the matter (as usual, right click|Open in New Tab to get a bigger image).

And some specific data:

  • In 24 states, unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies for a family of four with no one working are the annualized equivalent of at least the national median household.
  •  In a dozen states, the value of unemployment benefits and Obama­Care subsidies exceeds the salary and benefits of the average teacher, construction worker, electrician, firefighter, truck driver, machinist or retail associate.
  •  In New Jersey, a family of four can receive benefits equal to an annualized earned income of $108,000 with no one working.
  •  In Connecticut and New Jersey, a family earning $300,000 a year can receive ObamaCare subsidies
  •  New Jersey is a state where a family can earn the equivalent of $100,000 a year if both parents are collecting unemployment benefits and ObamaCare subsidies for health care. In Connecticut the benefits can reach $80,000.

Party is bent on keeping average Americans trapped in Party’s welfare cage and dependent on Party largesse in return for votes.

More Biden-Inspired Censorship

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It seems that Senators Josh Hawley (R, MO) and Chuck Grassley (R, IA) requested a collection of documents and answers to 10 questions from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Mayorkas sent back non-responses to the questions and heavily redacted documents in not responding to the docs request (“two documents already in the public domain” and “500 pages of material, approximately half of which are mostly or entirely redacted”).

DHS cited Freedom of Information Act disclosure privileges in making the redaction[.]

This is yet another example of the Biden administration’s intrinsic dishonesty and its penchant for censorship.

The Senators shouldn’t have had to respond with the obvious:

We remind you that the oversight letters we send to the Executive Branch are signed in our capacity as sitting members of Congress, a separate and co-equal branch of government.

And

Noting that DHS cited Freedom of Information Act disclosure privileges in making the redaction, Hawley and Grassley pointed out that FOIA provisions “do not apply to the oversight requests we submit in our capacity as constitutional officers and should not be applied to the materials that DHS produces in response to congressional requests.”
“Simply put, Congress controls when to make documents within its possession public, not DHS….”

2024 can’t come soon enough, and the Republicans better not blow that one.

Biden and His Iran Nuclear Weapons Deal

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He’s still after one, one that would give the Mullahs hundreds of billions of dollars in return for their delaying, briefly, development and production of nuclear weapons. This despite the Mullahs’ avowed goal of destroying Israel, its empirical history of spending billions of dollars funding its terrorist clients and their terrorism, and the Mullahs’ current terrorism against their own subjects for those subjects’ heinous crime of protesting the Iranian government’s murder of a young woman Iranian “police” had arrested and had in police “custody” at the time of her murder.

Biden refuses to change his goal vis-à-vis that deal. Refuses to, not cannot, change. Gabriel Noronha, ex-special adviser on Iran for the State Department offered this:

Biden officials feel that to announce an end to negotiations would be admitting failure, and that snapback also signals the end to the JCPOA[.]

This is just a silly rationalization, though. It would be easy enough—and highly effective—to say words to the effect of “Worth a shot, didn’t work due to Iranian government intransigence, we’re ending negotiations.”

Acknowledging that something hasn’t worked out as planned and changing to something else is the stuff of successful business, and it’s the stuff of successful politics.

But Biden, the great Senator deal maker, is desperate for his deal. And that’s to the detriment of our national security and to that of Israel and to that of our other allies and friends.

Some Thoughts

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Donald Trump Jr has posted some ideas for maintaining/protecting the freedom of speech of us American citizens that his father, former President Donald Trump (R) has for 2024. He’s on the right track….

I have some thoughts on some of them.

Regarding Section 230: Social media—Twitter, Facebook, Alphabet—have made themselves into the public square, and with their collusion with the Federal government to censor speech, they’ve made themselves arms of that same Federal government. That’s two ways, each of which alone is determinative, in which social media have demonstrated their lack of need and forfeited their “right” to protection under Section 230.

Regarding Federal dollars going to academic institutions or programs that don’t live and breathe free speech—especially unpopular speech: Not a single copper penny should be going to those things. If they’re going to censor Americans, they need to do it on their own coin.

Regarding the 7-year cooling off period for intel-related folks: Go broader. Lift the security clearances for all government officials as soon as they leave office, with this exception: the President, Vice President, Cabinet Secretaries, and Agency heads should be allowed to keep their clearances for 90 days, with no possibility of an extension, in order to arrange their library/library-like affairs.

Regarding a Digital Bill of Rights: No. Not at all. Our rights do not come from government; they come from our Creator, as our Declaration of Independence acknowledged and still acknowledges. In addition to that, we already have a Bill of Rights; it’s written into our Constitution. That Bill of Rights also is technology agnostic; digital matters are subsumed into it. Declaring an additional set specifically for digital matters, apart from my just above objection, would only dilute that extant and much more powerful set of Rights.

Fiddling While….

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg seems to be a modern day fiddler. During the…negotiations…with rail unions just concluded, Buttigieg chose to go haring off to Portugal on vacation. He also appears to have told no one of the public he was heading out: previously undisclosed trip, according to the Washington Free Beacon as cited by Fox News.

“The secretary took a long-planned personal trip from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5,” a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation told Fox News. “As usual, while traveling on personal time he remained available and engaged on urgent issues, which in this case meant multiple calls with staff and stakeholders to work on the topic of rail labor negotiations.”

“Long-planned.” Nothing so trivial as a looming transportation strike with national economic implications was to disturb his precious vacation. Phone calls, though. Because there’s no need to meet in person with the players. Vacation.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio (R) noted the irony hypocrisy:

Rail workers just wanted a few days of paid sick leave. President Biden told them to pound sand and his Transportation Secretary vacationed in wine country[.]

And, of course, us taxpayers continued to pay Buttigieg’s his salary—he gets paid vacation, along with his paid sick leave.