Tag Archives: politics

Reckless—But in Whose Eyes?

Posted on by
Reply

The Tennessee legislature, in a Special Session that lasted into the small hours of last Saturday morning, passed a Wuhan Virus Freedom bill (my term) that achieves a number of things:

The final bill said government entities cannot force private businesses to institute a mask mandate or COVID-19 vaccination mandate, and private businesses cannot take action against an employee for not receiving the vaccine and cannot compel an employee or visitor to show proof of vaccination.

There are a couple of fillips: music venues will be able to require proof of vaccination in lieu of a negative virus test, and K-12 school principals will be able to require masks, but only on a school-by-school basis, and the principal must get the State’s permission, provide the masks, mandate a maximum of 14 days, and act only on a 14-day moving average of 1% cases for the school.

And yet….

Senator Jeff Yarbro (D, Nashville), a member of the conference committee that produced the final bill:

This is a reckless way to legislate[.]

Because individual freedom is reckless to Progressive-Democrats, and voting for individual freedom at 0100, as this bill was due to the long days and late hours of Progressive-Democrat obstruction, is equally reckless.

The bill itself can be read here.

Update: Governor Bill Lee (R) signed the bill 12 Nov 21.

The Cost of Aiding and Abetting

Posted on by
Reply

$590 million dollars. That’s the cost of aiding and abetting ransomware criminals in the first half of this year. That’s what so-called victims of ransomware attacks paid to their putative attackers to reward them for their crimes. Moreover,

The average cost of reported ransomware payments per month in the US in 2021 was $102.3 million. If the current trend continues, the number of SARs filed in 2021 “are projected to have a higher ransomware-related transaction value than SARs filed in the previous 10 years combined,” the Treasury projects.

(The average cost and the total cost differ by about 4%, but the point remains valid.)

Andrew Lipow, Lipow Oil Associates LLC CEO, is busy ducking responsibility—and he’s sadly typical:

The anonymity of a digital currency has allowed ransomware attacks to flourish. If you can’t follow the money today, regulators need to either ban the digital currencies or implement regulations that enable the identification of people and accounts involved in these transactions—just like they would do for a real bank.

Sure. Because criminals engaged in ransomware attacks can be counted on to obey currency laws. What a copout.

Aside from that, whether digital currencies need to be regulated is wholly irrelevant. What’s required is for businessmen to stop paying the ransom, stop rewarding criminals for their crimes, stop actively aiding and abetting criminals. They’re only making their companies willing repeat targets.

Beyond that, this is more than just money out of these companies’ coffers. It’s money out of other companies’ coffers, too, those that are downstream in the supply chain from the company that decides it’s fine to reward the criminals. They have to pay the higher prices the “victim” companies charge to cover their payoffs ransom payments.

It’s also money out of the coffers of other, otherwise unrelated, companies as they must bear the added security costs accruing from having also been made targets by those putative victims so amply rewarding the crimes and the criminals engaged in them.

It’s money out of us consumers’ pockets, too, in the form of increased prices we have to pay as those company executives just treat the “ransom” payments as a cost center, a cost of doing business.

Biden-Harris Deliberate Lawlessness

Posted on by
Reply

This time, it’s through zir’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. Under the latest bit of lawlessness, Mayorkas has ordered his department’s enforcement arms to ignore existing law and not go after illegal aliens in these locations:

  • Schools, including pre-schools, primary and secondary schools, vocational or trade schools, and colleges and universities
  • Medical or mental healthcare facilities, like hospitals, doctors’ offices, health clinics, vaccination or testing sites, urgent care centers, sites that serve pregnant individuals, or community health centers
  • Houses of worship or religious studies and places where children gather, like playgrounds, recreation centers, childcare centers, before- or after-school care centers, foster care facilities, group homes for children, or school bus stops
  • Social services establishments, like crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, victims’ services centers, child advocacy centers, supervised visitation centers, family justice centers, community-based organizations, facilities that serve the disabled, homeless shelters, drug or alcohol counseling and treatment facilities, or food banks or other establishments that distribute food or other essentials of life to people in need
  • Places where disaster or emergency response and relief are provided, including along evacuation routes, where shelter or emergency supplies, food, or water are being distributed, or registration for disaster-related assistance or family reunification is underway
  • Places where funerals or other religious or civil ceremonies or observances occur, as well as ongoing parades, demonstrations, or rallies

These areas are the new Progressive-Democrat sanctuaries, within which enforcing immigration law is…illegal.

This is on top of Mayorkas’ prior lawlessness:

The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them[.]

After all, just because someone is breaking the law, that’s no reason to go and arrest them. C’mon, man.

Because Shut Up

Posted on by
Reply

A surgeon in Minnesota—and actual, licensed doctor, one who practices and not a government bureaucrat who happens to have a medical degree—spoke in favor of individual choice and especially of parental choice regarding their children on the matter of Wuhan Virus restrictions.

He did so publicly, too. Worse, he said it to a school board, one of those fonts of Know Better wisdom.

Dr Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota, told the Fergus Falls school board on October 11 that parents should make the decision about whether or not their children wear masks.

And he was fired for being so impudent. After all, the received wisdom from those bureaucrats who got a medical degree some while back held otherwise and that wisdom must be accepted by the unwashed masses, including those ignorant parents.

The Lake Region Healthcare hospital, his ex-employer, insisted he was fired because his views were no longer congruent with the hospital’s.

In other words, because shut up.

The hospital managers expounded on that. From their spokesman:

To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare[.]

Finger-pointing and blame-shifting regarding who did the canceling.

In this fashion, too, because shut up.

The Biden Slowdown

Posted on by
Reply

Last quarter, our economy grew, sort of: GDP rose 2.0%, compared to 6.7% in the second quarter and 6.3% in the first quarter of this year. That first half of this year’s growth was heavily influenced by the growth that was beginning to boom in the latter half of 2020, as our economy and our nation were coming out from under the Wuhan Virus situation that had so heavily impacted our nation the first half of that year.

This year’s third quarter drastic slowdown, though, is the direct result of the Harris-Biden administration’s failures, of which two are critical to the slowdown.

One failure is Biden-Harris’ insistence on vaccine mandates as a condition of employment and of doing business, whether as a customer or as a business, and related Wuhan virus Delta variant restrictions on our economy. All of these have acted as a heavy drag on our businesses’—especially our mom-and-pop and middle-sized businesses’—ability to reopen and function at all after the prior year’s virus-related dislocations.

The other failure is Biden-Harris’ failure to perform, through their Transportation Secretary, regarding our supply chain. Indeed, the Secretary, who even looks somewhat like A E Neuman, acted on his “What, me worry?” philosophy and took off from work for two+ months—proudly so—on a “paternity leave” departure from duty while the supply disruption got into full swing (and still is growing).

Another factor in this administration’s failure to perform will impact the fourth quarter’s GDP and later quarters’: this added failure is the rampant inflation we’re experiencing now, an inflation driven by growth in consumer and business demand for goods and services and the components needed for producing them far outstripping production growth—that supply disruption.

That demand also is fueled by all the free money Biden-Harris and the Federal Reserve are pumping into the economy. That free money is both unneeded and itself artificially increasing demand.

And this: even if the present inflation is temporary, as I claim, the higher prices created by the present inflation—the prices that real consumers pay for gas, food, and energy and that real businesses pay for the supplies needed to produce and distribute gas, food, and energy—will persist, harming the middle and lower-rung classes severely. This bit may be being presaged by September’s consumer spending. We consumers spent only 0.6% more than in August, a decrease from August’s 1.0% increase over July.

If I’m wrong, the present inflation itself will persist, and prices will rise further, adding heavily to the damage already done.