Tag Archives: politics

Against Their Own Interest

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Fast food workers began protesting yesterday, demanding higher wages and the right to join a union.  Ashley Cathey, a 29-year-old Memphis fast food person, had this:

Fast-food cooks and cashiers like me are fighting for higher pay and union rights, the same things striking sanitation workers fought for 50 years ago.  We’re not striking and marching just to commemorate what they did—we’re carrying their fight forward. And we won’t stop until everyone in this country can be paid $15 an hour and has the right to join a union.

The work they do isn’t worth $15 per hour.  They’re just looking to price themselves out of their jobs, to be replaced by automated kiosks, as so many fast food restaurants already are doing.  Worse, if their unions, through strikes, force those higher wages, that will end with two outcomes: higher food prices for consumers, and from that, lessened demand for those restaurants’ fast food.  That, in turn, will result in fast food restaurants accelerating the move to kiosks or going out of business.  That last will cost not only the demanders their jobs, it’ll cost everyone in those restaurants their jobs.

And the right to join a union?  They already have that.  These folks should know that; they’re being misled by union leadership and the SJWs in the mix.

A Sandbag Attempt

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House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam Schiff (D, CA), in response to the Committee’s Republican members’ four-page memo—the Nunes Memo—regarding the FBI’s abuse of FISA court-approved surveillance of Americans, produced a ten-page Progressive-Democrat member response, which the committee voted unanimously to release to the House with an eye to getting the memo released to the public via the White House’s security vetting.  The House approved the release and sent it to President Donald Trump, who had five days to disapprove the document, or it would be released.

Concerns that the Progressive-Democrat members had larded their memo with information that, if released, would jeopardize intelligence and FBI methods and sources in order to make political hay over their redactions have been justified.

The White House on Friday told Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee to redraft their rebuttal to a controversial GOP memo alleging government surveillance abuse during the 2016 campaign, saying sensitive details need to be stripped out before the document can be made public.

It isn’t simply a refusal to release the memo with its cynically included classified information, though, nor is the White House playing guessing games with the Progressive-Democrats about what would be releasable.  In a letter advising the committee that the Progressive-Democrat memo could not be released in its current form, White House Counsel Don McGahn wrote,

However, given the public interest in transparency in these unprecedented circumstances, the President has directed that Justice Department personnel be available to give technical assistance to the Committee, should the Committee wish to revise the February 5th Memorandum [the Schiff Memo] to mitigate the risks identified by the Department.  The President encourages the Committee to undertake these efforts.

Notice that.  It’s not a refusal to release at all, as the committee’s Progressive-Democrat members had voted to do with the Nunes memo.  It’s a refusal to release with the deliberately included classified material and a willingness to release with those data removed by the Progressive-Democrats in coordination with DoJ.

And the Progressive-Democrats are busy growing their political hay.

Progressive-Democrats and Free Speech

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The DoJ and several States are moving to protect free speech on college campuses, with three States moving to pass legislation explicitly for the purpose, and ten others with legislation already pending.

Liberals and their Progressive-Democrats object.

Many Democrats say the Constitution already protects free speech, and that states have no need to micromanage how colleges handle student demonstrations and speakers.

This is just cynical, though.  Or, 8th-grade Civics wasn’t a safe space for them, and they were triggered into not listening.  These Progressive-Democrats are ignoring the fact that the mere existence of our Constitution is no protection at all; it must be actively enforced.

And:

Many also object to the penalties some measures are calling for, such as fining or firing—in the case of professors and other college employees—those who are deemed to have deprived the free speech rights of a person or group.

No, we can’t hold Liberal professors or others favored by Progressive-Democrats accountable—those folks are special.

The Secretary of State for Defense Is Correct

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Two Daesh terrorists who grew up in Great Britain have been captured.

Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson told the Sun newspaper on Saturday: “I don’t think they should ever set foot in this country again.”

Williamson is absolutely correct.  Barbarians like this, who think terrorism is the way to go, should be allowed freely to leave to join their barbaric gangs.

And then they should be barred from returning.  Forever.

The Budget Deal

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…was just passed in the small hours of Friday morning.  The high points of what it does is provide funding for the Federal government into late March, provide a budget good for two years, raise the debt ceiling a smidge, and increase spending authorization for defense by $165 billion over the next two years and for domestic items by $131 billion over those two years.  It does not include anything regarding immigration, particularly DACA, despite House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) 8-hour speech Thursday, nor does it include anything regarding welfare reform.

The lack of immigration matters in the budget deal is appropriate; Pelosi’s long harangue notwithstanding.  Immigration has nothing to do with the budget, and it will be handled separately, as both House Speaker Paul Ryan (R, WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) have said repeatedly.  The lack of welfare reform does matter, but it needn’t have been a deal breaker in the present instant.  There needs to be a stronger consensus both in Congress and in the nation before that can be done properly—recall the fiasco that is Obamacare.

A number of Republicans in both houses objected to the deal, though, and voted against it and held it up in the Senate.  Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) wanted a vote on his amendment to restore the prior spending caps, which would have eliminated those $196 billion in spending increases.  The Conservative Caucus of House Republicans also objected to the vasty spending increases.  In all cases, those increases will add to the Federal budget deficit and through that to the national debt by up to $1 trillion, depending on how much our growing economy adds to Federal revenues.

Except.

One thing the budget deal does not do, and this is a Critical Item, is require all that money to be spent.  The bill is an authorization bill; it sets an outer bound on how much can be spent.  That’s all it does.  Actual spending will come from the several appropriation bills that must now be passed.  This is where those Republicans’ concerns can be addressed, and they should be; the concerns are entirely valid.

In the coming appropriations bills, Republicans must hold the line on the defense spending increases—there’s nothing domestic of any import if we can’t support our friends and allies or even defend ourselves—and reduce spending in other, domestic, areas (including welfare reform, even if only a series of tweaks this year) to pay for the defense increases.  And that includes on holding the line on those domestic appropriations bills already passed by the House, which were passed under the lower caps.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress will howl over this; they view authorization to spend as an absolute requirement to spend.  Let them howl.  Let the Progressive-Democrats continue to be the heavy spending, deficits and debt be damned, party.  Let the Progressive-Democrats run on a platform of profligate spending.  They’ll drag out every tear-jerking trope they can dream up—it’s for the children, our grandmas are getting pushed off the cliff, think of the poor people in Illinois and Connecticut, and on and on.

Americans aren’t as stupid as the Progressive-Democrats make us out to be.  Our kids, our parents, our poor regardless of where they live will be better off for that spending discipline.  Let the Progressive-Democrats try to sell their snake oil budgeting that Government spending and Government income have nothing to do with each other.

One more thing.  The budget deal, good for two years like it is, means Republicans won’t be able to pass anything, including those appropriations bills, without nine Senate Progressive-Democrats on board.  Appropriations bills aren’t subject to reconciliation votes.  Without actual spending authorization, the Federal government will shut down in late March.  Without nine Democrats to support ending a Senate filibuster, spending won’t be authorized.  Let Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) shut down the government again because he can’t get wastrel spending done.  Let the Progressive-Democrats throw another temper tantrum.  That won’t play any better than the just ended Schumer Shutdown did.