Tag Archives: responsibilities

Personal Responsibility and Black Americans

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Surgeon General Jerome Adams, among too few others, has pointed out that part of the reason the Wuhan Virus is hitting minorities so much harder than others—with blacks getting the bulk of the ink on this—is because of their inaction on factors under their control.  Leave aside factors like the pre-existence of health conditions like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, medical conditions that are generally beyond their control. Leave aside, further, that individual life-style choices can nevertheless significantly affect, if not eliminate, those conditions.

In addition to suggesting that blacks should put more of their personal attention toward those medical conditions, Adams was so rude as to suggest that blacks should exercise an additional measure of personal responsibility and do better about complying with CDC guidelines regarding preemptive measures: frequent hand washing, shelter in place except for essential tasks, and use face coverings/keep safe distances from others when in public (especially the former when the latter isn’t possible).

Of course, the Left, with its race-baiters at the fore, objected, vehemently and in their own racist way.

To assert that blacks have the power to affect their own destiny was deemed racist, heartless, and outrageous.

Well, of course it was. No less a light than that icon of the Progressive movement, Woodrow Wilson, insisted to blacks that they should be grateful for the protections of segregation.

Blacks, in the eyes of the Left, simply aren’t capable of personal responsibility.

Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton’s Emails

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Progressive-Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez can see no daylight between Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s documents and ex-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

This is like the Hillary emails because there was nothing there.

Perez is right that the two are alike. Clinton, with the help of her allies in and out of government, covered up her government-business emails that she had on her personal, unsecured server. Biden, with the help of his allies in and out of government, at Party headquarters, and at the University of Delaware, is covering up a significant fraction of his documents during the present Tara Reade case.

[W]hen you ask the University of Delaware to take a look at something, you’re asking them to look for something that doesn’t exist.

That’s easy enough to show. Allow those UD documents to be searched for materials related to Reade. Let those documents then be perused carefully for information related to her charge and Biden’s claim to the contrary.

This could be settled in a couple of days.  If there’s nothing there, there’ll be nothing found.

We know what frightens Clinton so much. Of what are Biden, Perez, and Party so afraid?

Another Clue

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…into the machinations of the “liberal” wing of the Supreme Court.

The Court is going to hear oral arguments on 10 cases that the Wuhan Virus situation had previously forced the Court to postpone. The arguments will be done by teleconference. The structure of the oral arguments will be…structured…during the teleconferances.

The court is also jettisoning its unstructured process for questioning the lawyers before them. Instead of jumping in at will, the justices will speak in order by seniority, beginning with Chief Justice John Roberts, moving on to Justice Clarence Thomas—a moment that may hold some suspense, as he can go years without speaking at oral argument—and so on to the newest justice, Brett Kavanaugh.

Here’s the kicker from that more formalized structure:

The format could pose challenges for Justice Elena Kagan and other junior members who sometimes seek to shape the debate by posing questions early.

Shape the debate.  Because Kagan and her fellows aren’t interested in dispassionately hearing argument on the case before them and then, with equal dispassion, ruling on the matter before them. No, they’re at war with one or the other side and must shape the battlefield in order to achieve their…victory.

What a shameful thing for a Justice, who’s supposed to be objective and unbiased—sworn, in fact, to faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent—to do.

An Inconvenient Political-Economic Truth

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Politico-Europe had a piece last week that talked about Germany’s putative responsibility to help the southern European EU nations during the current Wuhan Virus situation.  Buried in the piece was this bit of eurozone political-economic history:

The euro was sold to Southern Europe, which had been less successful than the north for decades, as a path to lasting prosperity. By eliminating exchange rate risk and lowering interest rates, Southern Europe would become more competitive.
But after the initial economic boost that followed the euro’s introduction, the picture for the region darkened. Though countries that had historically high inflation benefited from lower interest rates, the cheaper financing had the unintended consequence of removing the pressure on governments to enact economic reforms.

The bottom line, though, the inconvenient bottom line is that the politicians manning those governments chose not to enact the needed economic reforms. The reduced pressure to do so is not relevant to the simple fact that the reforms were and are needed, and those politicians, of their own volition, chose otherwise.

Yet this is, somehow, Germany’s fault.

Do Germany—and France, and the other wealthier nations of the EU—have any obligation toward these profligates? From a humanitarian perspective, of course, can any aid be delivered directly to the people and their businesses, bypassing their governments entirely.  But even here, with strings attached: it is these same people, after all, who keep electing those fiscally irresponsible politicians.

From a political perspective, no, the wealthier nations have no responsibility.

Rates

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The Wall Street Journal had a piece Sunday that talked about the plans of nations around Earth are forming “to reopen parts of daily life.” I’m more interested in the…slant…made plain in the WSJ‘s subheadline:

Nearly 54,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the US, as calls for more federal aid to states continue to grow

The focus is made even more obvious in the body of the article; these are a couple of examples:

Nearly 2,000 people died from Covid-19 in the US on Saturday, bringing the death toll to almost 54,000….

And

In Israel, where nearly 200 people have died from Covid-19, many stores and beauty salons were authorized to reopen….

How many people have recovered from the Wuhan Virus in the US? How many people have recovered from the Wuhan Virus in Israel? Such clarifying data are carefully omitted. Maybe that’s because those data might contradict the narrative.

Even the graphic near the end of the article focuses on deaths while carefully ignoring the recovereds.

Nor is there mention of the quite low mortality rates and how those rates are declining further as more is learned about components of the numerators of those rates, components like the numbers who were infected but asymptomatic or who were infected but sufficiently mildly so that they didn’t see a doctor or saw one, but were sent home with only mild, ordinary treatments.