Tag Archives: responsibilities

Sometimes…

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A letter-writer, a founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology, wrote in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday’s Letters section decrying the proposed funding reductions for the CDC and NIH.

Americans’ distrust of science isn’t merely leading to lower vaccination rates for such preventable diseases as measles; it’s also fueling shortsighted proposals to scale back public-health programs that save lives and taxpayer dollars[.]

It’s not so much that as it is that government bureaucrats who happen to have medical (or other science) degrees can’t be trusted. These worthies—Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins are only the most famous examples—have shown themselves more interested in political ideology than actual science.

The letter-writer added this:

Proposed appropriations aside, $11 billion in cuts in early 2025 to already cash-strapped state and local health departments are leading to layoffs and cancelled data-infrastructure upgrades that hamper their ability to keep their communities safe.

This has nothing to do with funding cuts in “proposed appropriations.” If States are losing personnel and equipment upgrades, that’s entirely due to the spending decisions of those States—their governing politicians clearly consider other matters more important than the medical weal of the citizens they pretend to represent.

The letter-writer closed with a quote from former CDC Director Thomas Frieden, as though the remark is somehow dispositive:

You don’t improve things by destroying them, you improve them by improving them.

That’s often, even usually, true. However, sometimes the only way to improve the product a failed institution is supposed to produce is to remove the failed institution and replace it completely.

No, It Won’t

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This time, it’s an op-ed writer in The Wall Street Journal who is making misleading claims. In his piece regarding the likelihood of wealth flight from a Zohran Mamdani-run New York City, their subheadline reads

The state will lose wealthy taxpayers, and the federal government will have to cough up more aid.

The opinion-writer ties the weal of our nation to the weal of New York, and the article fails utterly on the false premise of a necessary Federal bailout.

No, the Federal government will not have to cough up more aid. New York’s political machinations, including its drumbeat attacks on successful Americans and on businesses domiciled there, would be coming to a head under a socialist Mamdani city administration, and that outcome is solely that New York State’s responsibility.

The good citizens of States running from Maine through New Jersey, Illinois, Texas, Wyoming, Nevada, on to California, Alaska, and Hawaii have absolutely no obligation to bail out a fiscally and regulatorily irresponsible New York City or State. The Federal government has no business forcing the rest of the nation’s citizens to do so.

The other side of the matter: only if New York—city and State—are left to stew in their own fetid spending, taxing, and regulation messes will either have any chance of mending its ways. In that way, the weal of the nation is impacted by the weal of New York State: a healthy State, not dependent of Federal funding, would be an unalloyed good for our nation.

Arrogance of an Activist Justice

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The Supreme Court recently lifted a district court judge’s injunction that blocked President Donald Trump’s (R) Executive Order requiring heads of agencies to work with the Department of Government Efficiency on hiring decisions and developing plans for layoffs. The Court also ruled that it had based its decision on the legality of Trump’s Executive Order, and didn’t rule on whether any reorganization plans broke the law. And

The Government is likely to succeed on its argument that the Executive Order and Memorandum are lawful[.]

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson piped up in her lone dissent.

This was the wrong decision at the wrong moment, especially given what little this Court knows about what is actually happening on the ground[.]

This is her Preciousness, and the arrogance of her activism. The Court knows little of what’s actually happening on the ground? But Jackson does know? Or in her shared Court ignorance, she would leave intact an injunction that’s blocking no known ill effects? Of course, highly talented and educated woman that she is, she knows full well that “don’t know” means…”don’t know.”

What she does know, though, as do all of the Justices on the Court (the other eight of whom voted to lift the injunction), is that no hiring decisions or layoff plans have been developed yet, much less begun execution. There is, then, no reason for the injunction, the EO itself being entirely legal.

This is the sort of activism—ignorant, not just ideological—that we can expect to deprecate the Supreme Court under a Progressive-Democrat President and Progressive-Democratic Party-dominated Senate.

Misplaced Attributions

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A couple of letter-writers in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal Letters section are worried about the the Trump administration supposedly pressuring people out of their offices. These are misplaced attributions that exaggerate the strength of “pressure.”

One opines,

Reports that political pressure from outside forces may have contributed to the resignation of UVA’s president are troubling and strike at the heart of institutional autonomy.

This writer should concern himself more with the UVA President’s lack of courage. He resigned; he was not fired. Resigning is entirely a voluntary decision, no matter the level of perceived pressure to leave. What strike[s] at the heart of institutional autonomy is not “political pressure;” it is institutional managers in leadership positions who run away rather than stay and defend their institutions and their own actions in support of those institutions.

The other letter-writer wrote,

President Trump used his political and executive powers to force an end to [Senator Thom Tillis’ (R, NC)] public service….

Leave aside the fact that Tillis had, some months before, reached his decision to not run for reelection and that Trump’s supposed pressure merely accelerated his announcement of his decision. It’s possible that this letter-writer was unaware of that fact.

What should be obvious to this person is the same thing that is so apparent in the UVA President’s case: Tillis’ decision, and his choice of timing for announcing his decision, were entirely voluntary acts entered into by Tillis himself. No amount of pressure from Trump (which were, at bottom, merely words of opprobrium) should have been sufficient to “force an end.” That’s especially true in Tillis’ case, or that of any other politician: a President has no power to force a Congressman of either house to serve or not to serve. That choice is decided entirely by the incumbent in his decision to stand for reelection or not, and in the former case, falls next to the voters of his constituency and to no one else.

Pressure can be decidedly uncomfortable, but only the faint of heart succumb to it, and we’re all better off with the faint of heart departing.

Public Schools and Parent Options

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The Supreme Court ruled that parents could, indeed, opt their children out of parts of public school curricula that violated those parents’ religious belief. In Mahmoud, et al. v Taylor, et al., the Court held

the public-school system in Montgomery County, Md, had placed “an unconstitutional burden on the parents’ rights to the free exercise of their religion,” according to the majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito.
“A government burdens the religious exercise of parents when it requires them to submit their children to instruction that poses ‘a very real threat of undermining’ the religious beliefs and practices that the parents wish to instill[.]”

The three “liberal” Justices demurred:

Requiring schools to provide advance notice and the chance to opt out of every lesson plan or story time that might implicate a parent’s religious beliefs will impose impossible administrative burdens on schools[.]

The problem isn’t that chaotic, however:

Some parents from several religious backgrounds—Muslim, Catholic and Ukrainian Orthodox—objected to [a collection of books with LGBTQ themes and characters]. The school board said in court filings that it initially tried to accommodate opt-out requests, but doing so became “unworkably disruptive” due to “unsustainably high numbers of absent students.”

In other words, the school board was inconvenienced by not being able to dictate to parents how the school board would treat those parents’ children. Never mind that the objections were so widespread that the school board was unable to impose its will on all but a relative few. That clear cut a separation is hardly chaotic.

The chaos about which those three Justices bleated was caused by the school board and would be caused by other school boards who object to parents not meekly rolling over and kowtowing to the Know Betters of school boards more interested in their Leftist ideologies than they are in teaching the parents’ children.

These three Justices know this. They claim to worry about Court decisions deprecating respect for our court system, but it’s attitudes like those of these three that lead to that deprecation.

An aside: such chaos as might occur from enforcing parental rights, religious and otherwise, would be virtually eliminated were State and Federal governments to get out of the way of school choice, illustrated by voucher and charter schools, parochial schools, and home schooling. Parents could freely exercise their [religious beliefs] vis-à-vis the parameters of their children’s education if they had unfettered access to such a range.

The Court’s ruling can be read here.