Tag Archives: responsibilities

A Rejection

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The “caravan” wants no part of sanctuary in Mexico.

Several thousand migrants—traveling in a large group from Central American countries to the United States—have turned down an offer by Mexico to help them find shelter and work in the country, The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto addressed the mass of people directly:

We know very well that what you’re seeking is an opportunity, you want to build a new home and a better future for your family and loved ones. Today, Mexico lends you a hand[.]

The lended hand was via an aid program called, aptly enough, You are at home.

That mass of people rejected the offer and restated their intent of “heading north.”

Now why would they do that?  By their own statement, it’s clearly not sanctuary or refugee status they want.  What’s the real motive here?

A Health Care Coverage Step

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Alexander Acosta, Steven Mnuchin, and Alex Azar, respectively Secretaries of Labor, Treasury, and Health and Human Services, are in the process of offering one.  They’re putting together a rule that would expand HRAs, Health Reimbursement Arrangements.  These are plans that allow employers to reimburse employees for certain qualified health expenses.  Their expansion consists of two parts:

  • permit[ting] employers to offer HRAs to reimburse employees for health insurance purchased in the individual market—allowing employers to provide a contribution as significant as they would have made for the premiums of a traditional employer-sponsored plan.
  • allow[ing] employers that offer a traditional group plan to offer an HRA of up to $1,800 a year to reimburse an employee for certain qualified medical expenses such as stand-alone dental benefits.

Both of these parts would be done on an income tax-free basis for the employee.

Of course, this would compete against Obamacare, and that’s anathema for the Progressive-Democrats in the House and Senate.

Their ire notwithstanding, the rule would be that step toward competition, and competition is one of the ways of making health care and health care coverage less economically onerous to a family.

A Thought on Reason

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Peggy Noonan had some thoughts on reason, centered on the just concluded confirmation process for Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Senator Susan Collins’ (R, ME) analysis of her reasons for voting for his confirmation.

I have a couple of thoughts on a couple of Noonan’s thoughts.

Susan Collins put on a clinic in thoroughness and justice. Democrats need to stand up to the screamers.

Noonan needs to understand: the Progressive-Democrats are the screamers.

A word on the destructive theatrics we now see gripping parts of the Democratic Party. … Do you know how that sounded to normal people, Republican and Democratic and unaffiliated?

It sounded perfectly normal to those of the Progressive-Democratic Party. First, hear the deafening silence of the remainder of Noonan’s parts of the Democratic Party: not a word in demurral of that behavior. Second, hear Hillary Clinton’s rejection of civility and Eric Holder’s threats of violence. Third, recall Spartacus Booker’s “come up in Congressmen’s face;” Clinton’s statement that millions of Americans are irredeemably deplorable racists, homophobes, and misogynists; Barack Obama’s dismissal of millions of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clinging, gun-toting denizens of flyover country; Maxine Waters’ incitement to harass Republicans wherever they are; the NLMSM’s dismissal of Kanye West as just a token negro and a negro who doesn’t read.

That’s the danger we face this fall.

Future Nominations for Judgeships

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A denizen of flyover country—Jan Graham of Nebraska, in fact—had a thought in her Letter to the Editor of Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Every one of those Harvard and Yale law students protesting Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment should have their names written down and kept in case they want to be a judge someday. At that point their college-age record can be used to show that they don’t believe in due process and shouldn’t ever be considered for the bench.

Nor can they be considered, legitimately, for any prosecutorial office, Federal, State, or count/parish.

Full stop.

The ABA and Judicial Ratings

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Judge, now Justice, Brett Kavanaugh is on the Supreme Court and hearing cases.  The American Bar association is still looking for relevance here.  The ABA, after first giving Kavanaugh glowing marks as a judge wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee that it was “reopening” its evaluation—timing its letter for 5 Oct, just before the Senate’s floor vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation.

The ABA was ignored when Kavanaugh, et al., were being evaluated for a Supreme Court nomination and again when Kavanaugh was nominated. That prior ABA endorsement was simply the association’s jumping on the band wagon.

Now its irrelevance is manifest, and the ABA is squalling and trying to get back in the game.  That’s all this is.  That’s all that lately letter was all about.

Now the chairman of the ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, Paul Moxley, is claiming he’s being bullied by Association President Robert Carlson, and that lately letter was an example.

[I]f he’s [Paul Moxley] being bullied by Mr Carlson or Democrats on his committee, he ought to resign and say so publicly.

That’s what the worthies on the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal claim.

No. Bullies only have the power their putative victims choose to give them. If Moxley thinks “Carlson or Democrats” are trying to bully him, he should have the integrity to stay put and call them out publicly.

In the meantime, the ABA needs to figure out what it means when it says something, and stick to it.  That’s the road back to relevance.