Tag Archives: politics

Chit-Chat

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The Cubans are protesting their government’s misbehaviors and outright abuses.

President Joe Biden (D) says,

We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom and relief from the tragic grip of the pandemic and from the decades of repression and economic suffering to which they have been subjected by Cuba’s authoritarian regime[.]

So, what are you going to do, Mr President, besides stand on the safety of your porch and yap about “standing with the Cuban people?” What concrete actions are you taking or planning on taking (and when) that will materially aid the Cuban people?

Biden is right about one thing, though: this has been going on for decades, across far too many administrations. Now is our chance. Now is Biden’s chance finally to act rather than talk.

Space Tourism

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Richard Branson flew on his Virgin Galactic ride to the edge of space Sunday morning. In its article about the then-impending flight, The Wall Street Journal asked it readers

Are you ready for space tourism?

To which I answer: You bet I am, but not just up-and-backs to the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. I’m ready for rides to Mars, to Venus, to the larger moons of Jupiter. I want to see some sights and to walk on other planets.

Cowards Flee

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Texas’ Progressive-Democrats have done it again. Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) called a special session of the Texas legislature because Texas’ Progressive-Democrats cravenly ran away from the last days of the legislature’s regular session explicitly to deny a quorum and prevent debate and votes to pass or reject a number of critical bills, including a couple of voting bills that would increase ballot security while facilitating voter access to ballots.

These wonders of Progressivism were too cowardly and too arrogant (with all the overlap between the two) to debate and vote—even to allow debate and voting. So much for their pious pretense of favoring voting.

Now, those same Progressive-Democrats have blown up the special session, wasting all the Texas taxpayer money spent on that special session, and run away again.

And they bragged about their cowardice. James Talarico (D, 52nd District), among the Progressive-Democrats who jetted out of the state on a chartered jet:

Just landed in Memphis on our way to DC. Thank y’all for your well wishes.

They showed their privilege again, too: they chartered private jets in which to flee to DC; they couldn’t even be bothered to fly commercial, or to take the train, or (gasp!) drive themselves.

Rich cowards fleeing.

Some did jump on a bus, though.

Others were reportedly pictured on a DC-bound bus with packs of Miller Lite.

Not even a Texas beer, even if it is a Dallas Cowboys sponsor; that just shows the Precious Ones’ virtue signaling. Miller is sold by Chicago, IL, headquartered Molson Coors. These wonders couldn’t even be bothered to bring packs of Shiner Bock or Texas Red.

Party down, guys. In every sense of that phrase.

Oh, and one more thing. The Progressive-Democratic Party’s leadership has already termed the filibuster a relic of Jim Crow. Here is that party–the Party that invented Jim Crow–by running away, reviving this relic. And they’re proud of it.

Washington State and Abortion

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Washington passed a law—SB6219—that mandates all health coverage policies issued in that State provide (and charge for) coverage for abortions, with no exceptions whatsoever, including no exceptions for religious belief regarding life and conception. Under SB6219, no insurer can offer a policy that does not include abortion coverage.

Leave aside the cynical claim by Washington’s lawyers that

its no-exception abortion coverage mandate in health plans does not necessarily require health plans to include abortion coverage.

Leave aside that the Supreme Court has already ruled—repeatedly—that religious exceptions and conscience exceptions must be included in any such law.

The Cedar Park Church, in Bothell near Seattle, is challenging that law in Cedar Park Assembly of Kirkland v Kreidler (Kreidler is Myron Kreidler, Washington’s Insurance Commissioner; Jay Inslee, Washington’s Governor, also is a defendant. Both are defendants in their official capacities); the case currently is before the 9th Circuit.

What really jumps out at me, though, is this assertion by the State [emphasis added]:

The state lawyer emphasized what the church didn’t allege: “no carrier” would offer a plan consistent with its beliefs, it sought such a plan from other carriers, or that the state rejected a submitted plan.

On what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority over a private enterprise’s business decision?

More importantly, on what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority over a private citizen’s medical decision that should only involve that citizen and his doctor and secondarily (with no tertiary) his health coverage provider?

Most importantly, on what basis does the State (or any State, or the United States) claim a preemptive, a priori, authority to allow a baby to be killed before it’s born?

The answer to each of those questions is that there is no legitimate basis for such claims.

Student Debt Problems

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Students who borrowed (lots of) money to get degrees from “elite” schools—or from any school, come to that—now feel financially hobbled for life.

Recent film program graduates of Columbia University who took out federal student loans had a median debt of $181,000.
Yet two years after earning their master’s degrees, half of the borrowers were making less than $30,000 a year.

The universities share a measure of responsibility for these student debt problems. These schools should—and the reluctant should be required to—publish the mean and median salaries for each of the first five years of employment for each of the majors the schools offer. The schools also should be the ones making the loans to their students or underwriting private lenders’ loans to their students.

The Federal government shares a measure of responsibility for these student debt problems, also. The government should stop throwing money at the schools; that just encourages them to increase their tuition price to absorb the Federal dollars—at the immediate and direct expense to the students. Indeed, the Federal government should stop shipping money to the schools at all except for narrowly defined basic research projects, and those exceptions should be rare.

However, color me unsympathetic to the student borrowers’ plight; they bear the greatest responsibility for their situation. No one made them borrow such outlandish amounts. Even when I was in school the wage, etc, data were available; I just had to get off the couch to go get them. Today, it’s not even necessary to get off the couch: the pupils just have to bestir themselves enough to engage in some key clicks on their computerized device.

I’m especially unsympathetic to the students’ blame-shifting.

Matt Black graduated from Columbia in 2015 with an MFA in film and $233,000 in federal loans. …
Mr Black, a 36-year-old writer and producer in Los Angeles, said he grew up in a lower middle-class family in Oklahoma. He earns $60,000 in a good year and less than half that in dry stretches. The faculty at Columbia was stellar, he said, but he blamed the school for his “calamitous financial situation.”

Black needs to get a mirror and consult it. He was no child newly graduated from high school, blindly accepting the putative guidance counselor’s advice when he decided to take those loans. He was a grown adult man looking at graduate schools (he did shop around, looking at more than just Columbia, didn’t he?). No one made him take “the school’s” unvarnished word; no one made him not check for himself whether borrowing so much against a future salary he so easily could have learned was a good idea. No one made him take the loans. Indeed, no one made him decide to go to such an expensive school for his film MFA.