Tag Archives: responsibilities

Another Question

Posted on by
Reply

…for President Joe Biden. The President has been decidedly slow to comment on the People’s Republic of China government’s treatment of the country’s Uighur population.

Biden, who vowed to be tough on China while on the campaign trail, has been careful not to classify the human rights abuses against the Uighurs since entering office. The Trump administration declared the actions by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as genocide one day before vacating the White House.
The president didn’t mention China’s human rights abuses during a virtual meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tuesday. He said that the US and Canada are coordinating “approaches to better compete with China and to counter threats to our interests and values.”

So, Joe—can I call ya Joe?—is the PRC government committing genocide against the Uighurs? Is the PRC government at all mistreating the Uighurs?

We’ll wait for your answer, Joe.

But the Uighurs can’t.

Some Questions

Posted on by
Reply

…I have.

As the coronavirus raged across Boston over the holiday season, the medical director for the city’s [Boston’s] Public Health Commission was working 5,000 miles away in Hawaii.
Dr Jennifer Lo acknowledged this past week that city officials gave her permission to re-locate her family to Hawaii last November so she could care for her elderly parents. She plans to return to Boston this summer.

Lo is a contractor, not a city employee, and so not subject to the city’s you-gotta-live-here requirement, but that doesn’t mean her Medical Director duties didn’t need to be met in situ. Those are city needs, not phone ’em in tasks.

Thus, I have questions.

Why couldn’t her husband, alone or accompanied by the rest of her family, relocate to Hawaii to care for both sets of elderly parents?

If her parents were in such dire need, how is it that she can return to Boston so soon—and by coincidence, in Boston’s summer weather?

If Lo were serious about her concerns for her ability to honor her city Public Health Commission duties from Hawaii, why didn’t she go ahead and resign instead of merely offering to do so and seeing what the Commission would say? Related, had she precoordinated her offer so she knew what the commission would say?

There may well be serious, legitimizing answers, but they aren’t being articulated.

“Working Off” Student Debt

Posted on by
Reply

A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section posited an alternative to student debt: trade it for community service.

I would readily support loan forgiveness if the beneficiary were required to do community service for the forgiven debt.

Only so long as the community service work is low-skill, low-education work, with the student debt scofflaw—because that’s what he still would be—working directly under the controlling supervision of a low-skill, low-education person who’s had that job for a while.

Let the scofflaw see who he’s displacing with his preciousness and his debt-ducking.

Let him see the college student, during the school year, trying to earn some night shift money with which to pay for some college without “borrowing” money.

Let him see the high schooler trying to earn some summer job money and to obtain some initial, entry-level work experience for his future use in working his way up the employment and economic ladders.

On that last, especially, I employed a high school sophomore last summer to mow my lawn, edge it, and clean the sidewalk of the mowing and edging detritus. I ordinarily do my own yard work, but this enterprising young man, by his enterprise, earned the job. A student debt scofflaw would get this sort of work from me only if he worked under the hiring and firing authority of my high school sophomore contractor. Which would give the sophomore some valuable supervisory experience, too.

Which supervisory experience also would benefit those other low-skill, low-education workers for whom the community service debtors would be working.

Failure to Perform

Posted on by
Reply

As the California Republican delegation to the US House of Representatives have shown, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is failing—in particular in getting Federally supplied Wuhan Virus vaccines actually injected into California’s citizens.

California’s distribution of supplied vaccines to locations where citizens can get injected is execrable. As a result, California’s injection rate is execrable. As a result of that cascade failure, California’s citizens are at severe—and unnecessary—risk.

The 11-member delegation are demanding answers from Newsom:

The state of California should explain to Californians why the vaccine distribution has had such failures, despite having months to prepare prior to the development of the vaccine[.]
…
We write to express our serious concerns regarding the State of California’s slow, opaque decision-making process, and ever-changing approach to distributing COVID vaccines, which has been met with confusion and frustration by our constituents, local public health officials, and front-line health care providers[.]

Concretely, out of 7.8 million vaccine doses delivered to California by the Federal government, the State has injected only a bit over 5 million. That leaves more than a third of the doses undelivered, potentially going to waste, since the current iterations of the vaccines have a relatively short shelf life.

Newsom’s excuse?

The issue at the end of the day is supply. We need to manufacture more Moderna vaccine, more Pfizer vaccine. We need to get the federal approval of the J&J vaccine. We need to provide ample supply so we can plan

That is, to use the technical term, a crock. It’s also insulting to our intelligence.

California, despite being told for months that one or more vaccines would be ready by the end of the year (originally by November, but medical developments don’t follow government schedules), declined to bother to plan for their delivery to the State, and so California failed to plan the logistics chain of getting delivered supplies injected into citizens.

Nor does California have a supply problem, not with that third of the supply they already have delivered undistributed and uninjected.

California—Newsom’s administration—has a performance problem. It’s still not bothering with the supplies on hand.

There’s another dark aspect to this failure to perform. That is that Newsom’s attitude is typical of Progressive-Democrats’ demand for and acceptance of control from the center. It’s also typical of the dual that is their avoidance of their personal and political responsibility as State governing personnel in our federal republic—a structure which makes States first and primarily responsible for their own domestic practices.

“My Word as a Biden”

Posted on by
Reply

That was then-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s go-to phrase whenever he wanted to emphasize his seriousness in making a claim.

Here’s one of those serious statements:

If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise I will fire you on the spot. On the spot, no ifs, ands, or buts[.]

When White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo was abusive to a Politico reporter, he was suspended for a week without pay and barred from interacting with Politico reporters.

That’s an example of the worthlessness of the now-President’s word as a Biden.

Unless he’s going to stand on the technicality that he didn’t personally hear Ducklo’s abuse, or that Ducklo wasn’t directly working with him at the time of Ducklo’s abuse.

In which case that quibble would be a separate demonstration of the worthlessness of the now-President’s word as a Biden.

In the end, Ducklo was allowed to resign and slink away. Biden, choosing not to fire him, has pretty conclusively shown the worthlessness of his word as a Biden.