Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Misstatement of the Case

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Gerald Seib opened his Monday Wall Street Journal piece with this bit:

…Americans have learned they can’t really count on Washington to deal with this crisis for them. Local leaders, businesses, churches, sports leagues—all have taken up the task, and done so more effectively than the political leadership in Washington.

That’s as it should be. Responsibility is individual, personal; we cannot wish any of that off onto others, much less government. All government can do—and it should do this much—is help us satisfy our own obligations.

That help, also, needs to come from the bottom up, with the Federal government’s help coming last. That top tier of our American government hierarchy has national responsibilities, and even with the present COVID-19 situation, conditions on the ground vary widely from locale to locale, State to State. Responses need to be similarly local or unique to each State.

The Federal government can spur development of medical treatments—the public-private partnerships with medical enterprises, for instance—and short-term (I’ll repeat that: short-term, with sunset clauses built in to guarantee shortness) economic measures to mitigate the stresses on our businesses, small and large. It can deploy military mobile hospitals and shelters to particular hot spots, and it can take other such temporary nation-wide steps to mitigate the situation.

Necessary mitigation, even control, of the situation, though, must begin with us as individuals. That mitigation begins with stopping our panic-buying and hoarding of necessary supplies. They continue with looking out for our most vulnerable neighbors: the elderly, the less or non-mobile, the poor among us.  They go further: avoiding large gatherings for the duration (which is not the same as not going out at all, not giving our custom to the mom and pop businesses in our neighborhoods and city regions), seeing to the welfare of neighbors with early grade school-aged children whose schools have been closed for the duration, checking on the older kids.

We need, also, to consider a mantra from a war we fought four generations ago: Is this trip really necessary? (And yes, it is, within the context of continuing to do at least occasional business with those mom and pops.)

In the end, we must revive and live by the words a man spoke some 60 years ago (which I’ll rephrase here): Ask not what your government can do for you. Ask what you can do for yourself and your neighbor.

An Illustration

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A businessman in the People’s Republic of China, Ren Zhiqiang—who also is a member of the Communist Party of China—has been for some time an outspoken critic of PRC President Xi Jinping’s handling of the nation’s COVID-19 epidemic, a mishandling that allowed an early infection to blow out of control within the PRC and to become a global pandemic.

Outspoken critic: among other things, Ren wrote a widely disseminated essay that took issue with a 23 Feb speech by Xi. He wrote of a

“crisis of governance” within China’s Communist Party and blamed restrictions on freedom of speech and the press for slowing down the response to combat the novel coronavirus, thereby worsening the outbreak.

And

…after analyzing the President’s [Xi’s] speech he “saw not an emperor standing there exhibiting his ‘new clothes,’ but a clown stripped naked who insisted on continuing being emperor[.]”

Then Ren posted on Weibo

When does the people’s government turn into the party’s government? … Don’t waste taxpayers’ money on things that do not provide them with services.

Then his post was deleted, his Weibo account blocked. Ren also has been put on “probation” from the CPC.

And now he’s gone missing, making his point beautifully.

Van Jones Has a Thought

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Van Jones, ex-Special Advisor to President Barack Obama (D) and now a television commentator, has concerns for Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) supporters now that his chief competitor, Joe Biden, appears to be pulling away.

“You have now an insurgency that’s about to be defeated. What do you do with the people that you defeat?” he asked.
Jones told a panel…that young and progressive Democratic voters had a “champion” in the increasingly defiant and intrepid Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (I).
“You’ve got young people who are graduating with a quarter-million dollars in debt, you’ve got young people with a lot of pain, and they had a champion. And, they thought they were going to be able to surround the divided establishment with their movement, crush that divided establishment, and move forward[.]

He went on:

Now, what do you do? Last time Bernie Sanders got beaten, there was an assumption that all his people were going to fall in line and vote against Trump and there was not enough care for the concern and the pain of his base[.]

What do you do with the people that you defeat?  The cynic in me recalls earlier days with the victors would run around the battlefield killing all the defeated wounded who’d been unable to escape.

That’s not going to happen here.  Still, the question is a valid one.  Biden and his team have spent the campaign, when they weren’t smearing President Donald Trump and his supporters, trashing Sanders and his socialist ideology and revolutionary policies—and by extension, Sanders’ supporters, who agreed with him.

Having done that for so long, how, indeed, can Biden, et al., go back to those supporters and say, “King’s X, we didn’t mean it. C’mon guys?”  If he tries to draw them in, what compromise can he offer them that they can believe?

If Biden moves in Sanders’ supporters’ direction, how could his current supporters believe that Biden still holds to the policies he espoused when he was trashing those Sanders ideas?

It’s a broader concern, though, than merely an intraparty tiffle.  If Biden moves far enough toward Sanders’ supporters to draw them to him, how, in the general election, could any voter believe Biden holds to any position with any sincerity, that he’s not just mouthing the policy that’s currently politically expedient—to be tossed aside when the expedience changes?

A Thought on Joe Biden

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Check out these two videos of a recent interaction between Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden and a constituent in Michigan a couple days ago.

The behaviors in those examples and longer, more contextual versions of it, sadly, aren’t entirely Biden’s fault.

For one thing, much is being made (not necessarily in those two threads) of Biden sticking his finger in the questioner’s face. I disagree: he was pointing, as many of us do, for emphasis and pointing in the direction of the man’s chest without pointing anywhere, or at anything, in particular. It wasn’t until the end that, in his zeal, Biden’s finger came up toward the man’s face.

More importantly, though, as is also being pointed out, that behavior and others like it in the last few weeks, strike me as consistent with, although not by themselves diagnostic of, early stage dementia.

This may be why Biden is being limited (I don’t see him limiting himself) to seven minute speeches (we’ve already seen him tire and visibly fade during 90+ minute debates), few interviews, few interactions of this type, few public appearances at all.

The foolishness and humiliation, though, are the fault of his handlers for continually exposing him and on the part of the Progressive-Democratic Party for letting this charade go on; although at this stage, Party really is limited on what they can do about it.

The best thing that could happen to him now—and best for Party—would be to encourage Sanders to destroy him at the next debate.  Party can’t stop the fight on a TKO, but Sanders can go ahead and knock him out. Of course, a lot of that will be up to the debate moderators and how much they try to protect him.  Biden is wholly incapable of defending himself at this point.

On the other hand, I’m not sure Sanders has it in him to deliver a coup de grâce.

The Threat to our Court System

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…was made plain last week with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) naked threat against two of our Supreme Court Justices if they don’t start ruling the way Progressive-Democrats dictate.

Schumer’s threat follows threats by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) and his cronies in the Senate to stack the Supreme Court if that body didn’t start ruling the way Progressive-Democrats dictate.

These follow long-standing “liberal” judges’ and Justices’ utter disregard for our Constitution. Such disregard includes district judges presuming to issue nation-wide injunctions—arrogantly reaching into the jurisdictions of other judges’ districts, other appellate court districts.

It includes Justices like Thurgood Marshall whose mantra was an even more arrogant attitude of ruling wholly independently of the law and then demanding the law catch up

It includes the attitude of current liberal Justices like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who considers our Constitution to be a document that lives through and is alterable by rulings from her judicial bench. She contemptuously ignores the fact that our Constitution actually lives through its Article V and is alterable solely by our Constitution’s owners, We the People.

Keep the power balance of the Senate—which must confirm or reject all judges and Justices—and the party residing in the White House—which originates all judicial nominations—in mind this fall.