Tag Archives: responsibilities

Still a Bankrupt Message

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Rahm Emanuel, late of the Obama White House and the Chicago Mayor’s Mansion, wrote of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s golden opportunity in the Tuesday Wall Street Journal‘s editorial pages.

Many of his points are valid, and Republicans and Conservatives ignore them at their and our nation’s peril. But then he closed his piece with this:

The next 10 months will be about branding Republicans in Congress as Mr Trump’s enablers. Beyond that, we need to focus on speaking to the interests and sensibilities of those who considered or took the Faustian bargain Mr Trump offered them last year and are uncomfortable today with all the chaos they got in return for little economic benefit.

Here is the Republicans’ and Conservatives’ golden opportunity, if they will find some backbone and make use of it. Enablers. Faustian bargain. Branding. This is Party’s sole and constantly delivered message: everything anti-Trump, and those not for Party are just ignorant or foolish or both. Party is against a man and against millions of average Americans.

Party has not a word, not a syllable, about the policies its members would work for and how those policies would strengthen our nation and its security and increase the prosperity of us citizens. [S]peaking to the interests and sensibilities of those who are so ignorant or foolish as to be suckered by the man on which Party focuses its enmity? And say what, exactly? Even as Emanual warns his Party against its common error of smug “I told you so,” here he is recommending Party do exactly that. Addressing the interests and sensibilities of those he says are disgruntled or uncomfortable says nothing about what Party would intend to do to satisfy those disgruntlements.

Republicans’ and Conservatives’ golden opportunity consists of this, and it’s simple and straightforward. Don’t get sucked into a contest of personal opprobrium. Point out Party’s focus on the empty ad hominem of personal opprobrium, briefly; point out the lack of policies and policy goals on which Party campaigns, briefly. Then spend the large bulk of their messaging on their own policies and policy goals; how those enhance our nation and especially the lives of us citizens, individually and as groups; and be specific, fleshing out the glittering generalities with the specifics of carrying them out and the specific, measurable benefits to Americans that would ensue, including anticipated time frames for their coming to fruition and any pain points that might come from the transitions to those goals.

Being specific, of course, invites criticism and attack; staying with glittering generalities ducks them. This is where the backbones of Republicans and Conservatives come in, backbones that too many claiming to be Republican or Conservative have for too long lacked. Specifics are necessary to make the claims concrete and so to attract voters. This is where these wonders must, finally, step up.

Hardly Defiance

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reduced its vaccines for children recommendation from a schedule of 18 diseases to a recommendation of 11. The American Academy of Pediatrics still recommends children be vaccinated against 18 diseases. The Wall Street Journal calls the AAP defiant.

No.

HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr, and HHS’ CDC have all along recommended patients and parents of child patients consult with their physicians on ailments, treatments, and vaccines. Kennedy has emphasized that recommendation while he has had CDC scale back the recommendations.

Parents are heeding that CDC recommendation and are consulting. Pediatricians and their medical association are acting like physicians and treating their child patients rather than parroting those ancillary CDC recommendations.

Time to Pause

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The Wall Street Journal‘s editors think it’s time for ICE to pause in Minneapolis.

This is a badly mistaken position, and it’s based on a badly wrong underlying premise. Here are the key components in the editors’ error, in their own words.

Fifteen months later in Minneapolis, there isn’t much heart in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The Saturday shooting of Alex Pretti, as he lay on the ground surrounded by ICE agents, is the worst incident to date in what is becoming a moral and political debacle for the Trump Presidency.
Videos of an event aren’t always definitive, but this is how it looks to us. Pretti attempted, foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents. Multiple agents then tackled Pretti, and he had a phone in one hand as he lay on the ground. An agent discovered a concealed gun on Pretti, and disarmed him. An agent then shot Pretti, and multiple shots followed.

Stripped from the context of the shooting of Alex Pretti, as he lay on the ground is the simple fact that he was actively resisting arrest subsequent to his actively interfering with the arrest of the woman. The agents’ efforts to disarm him as he resisted arrest and now fought to retain his firearm—that addendum to his resistance is what led to his being shot.

And: Videos of an event aren’t always definitive, especially when they’re carefully edited for favored excerpts, or wholly withheld, as the WSJ has done in its “news” article misleadingly titled Videos Contradict US Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents, from which the videos were deliberately not published, nor were any links to any videos provided. All that piece contained were carefully selected stills carefully stripped of all context surrounding them—other than the news writers’ personal opinion-based representations of the stills’ meaning.

Nor was Pretti attempt[ing], foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents. The agents were attempting to arrest the woman, who had been obstructing the agents—not protesting their actions—resisting arrest, and in the course of the struggle resulting from her resisting, she was pushed to the ground. Pretti’s “assistance” consisted of interposing himself between the woman and the agents and actively resisting—physically opposing—her arrest. In the course of his obstruction, he was pushed to the ground and his subsequent continued physical resistance is what led to his being shot.

Contra the editors’ position, it’s time for Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic governor, Tim Walz, to pause—actually to cease altogether—his constant egging on those present in Minneapolis to actively resist ICE operations, which only result in rioting where ICE is active (its agents acting entirely within their DOC and immigration law). It’s time for Minneapolis’ Progressive-Democratic mayor, Jacob Frey, to pause—to halt altogether—his especially inflammatory rhetoric regarding ICE operations and ICE agents.

WSJ editors holding Walz and Frey, and Minneapolis’ rioters, blameless is part of a general press policy of false reporting, even as they add this:

Either many ICE agents aren’t properly trained, or they are so on edge as they face opposition in the streets that they are on a hair trigger. Either way, this calls for rethinking how ICE conducts itself, especially in Minneapolis as tensions build.

No, it calls for rethinking the way Walz and Frey incite violence and the way Minneapolis’ rioters respond to that incitement. The agents aren’t facing “opposition;” they’re facing too often violent opposition.

The editors then closed their piece with this argument:

Governor Tim Walz could have urged his citizens to avoid confrontations with ICE. Instead he made a video urging them to go into the streets with phones and film ICE agents, whether or not they are performing lawful searches under federal immigration law. His rhetoric is incendiary and describes ICE as a lawless terrorist operation. Another tragedy was inevitable, and there will be more if this continues.
Whether he likes it or not, most of the burden now lies with Mr Trump as the President who controls ICE.

No, whether the editors like it or not, most of the burden lies with Walz and Frey as the inflaming pushers of resistance.

It’s long past time for the press to stop distorting the facts of these matters, to stop misleading us citizens with their false reporting, to stop doing their bit to inflame the public, even if Walz and Frey will not stop their inflammatory words.

An Overstated Case

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A couple of Wall Street Journal news writers have laid out the concerns in the Supreme Court’s consideration of whether President Donald Trump (R) can fire Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Bank governor.

It will test whether the court’s conservative majority, which has spent years eroding the independence of regulatory agencies, is willing to make an exception for the institution that controls interest rates, inflation, and the stability of the global financial system.

One out of three isn’t all that terribly bad, but the first and third items are of critical importance.

[E]roding the independence of regulatory agencies…. What independence? They were created as instruments of the Executive Branch. As such, under our Constitution, they cannot be independent, for all that Congress averred it so. That would be a violation of our Constitution’s carefully constructed separation of powers. Those agencies are entirely under the authority of the President as the Chief Executive of the Executive Branch. Far from years of eroding the independence, the Court has been glacially slow in recognizing the agencies’ lack of independence.

The stability of the global financial system? Really?

It’s certainly true that the US, with our enormous economy and the size of our market for the global economy, even in today’s tariff regime, exerts outsize influence on the global economy.

However, it exerts influence only, not control.

The impact of our central bank on the global economy is as much—at least—the outcome of other nations’ government decisions as it is that of our own decisions. They don’t get to hide behind us or our central bank in their decision-making, nor do they get to blame us or our central bank for the poor outcomes of their decision-making. The stability of the global financial system is an affair of collective responsibility, not one of unilaterality.

Ellison Returned some Money

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Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), who seems deeply connected with his State’s multi-billion dollar welfare fraud via his lack of action on when advised years prior to the current public exposure, returned some $2,500 in illegally donated money. When called on all the donations from welfare fraudsters, Ellison answered the call.

Ellison had already returned a $2,500 campaign contribution to a donor who was indicted in September 2022 for the food aid fraud. The donor, Liban Alishire, later pleaded guilty to wire fraud and money laundering and awaits sentencing, court records show.

Never mind that that’s not all the money that folks who had defrauded the State or are charged with defrauding the State but whose trials have not yet begun that Ellison has not yet given up. The larger question here concerns these $2,500, which were returned to the fraudster. Those dollars could easily have supported the fraudster’s benefit, his defense bills or his potential restitution bill, for instance.

There are alternatives for what could have been done with Ellison’s illegally funded donations; he still can use those alternatives for the rest of his…donations.

State Senator John Hoffman [D], who received eight questionable donations that totaled about $3,300, sent all of the money to the US Marshals Service because the donated money might have been obtained through fraud.
“It was the right thing to do,” he told The Center Square.

But not Ellison. He still put it to his own and his donor’s good use.