Tag Archives: responsibilities

Hold Who Accountable, Again?

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Over the last month, or so, there has been a spate of cyber attacks against our nation’s infrastructure, culminating in a series of attacks a variety of water distribution networks causing shutdowns of several cities’ water supply, primarily in Minnesota, but spread also across seven States.

It’s not like these attacks came out of the blue, though. Ever since Colonial Pipeline, the executive management teams of utilities—of all private enterprises, come to that—have been on clear notice that well that cyber attacks were a thing; they would occur; and by the success of that attack, they were encouraged by Colonial’s—at then-President Joe Biden’s (D) pressure in his own abject meekness in front of Russia—weak-kneed payment of the demanded ransomware, matched by Biden’s surrender to Russia regarding Nord Stream 2.

And yet, these latest attacks occurred and successfully shut down those physical networks.

The failure of these management teams is reprehensible, given their apparent cavalier attitude—criminally negligent attitude, in my opinion—toward cyber security and securing their networks against cyber intrusion, cyber vandalism, cyber-instigated shutdown. This lack of effort by those managers should result in stern sanction, including jail, against them.

Their decision to not bother with any serious security measures is a failure of their fiduciary duty toward their shareholders. More than that, their failure, especially in the water distribution cases, puts their customers who depend on them for water at serious risk. Above even that, their negligence represents a threat to our nation’s security. The one is criminal, if proven, and the others are unpatriotic and especially unacceptable.

And yet, to date, no one is being looked at for sanction or even civil liability.

Wrong Solution

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New York City’s Socialist (officially Progressive-Democrat) Mayor Zohran Mamdani published an extensive list of residences which he claimed were secondary residences—pieds-à-terre—owned by the Evil Rich, together with his intention of taxing them heavily for their existence. It turns out his minions didn’t trouble themselves to proofread the list, and it contains massive errors.

In his magnanimity, Zohran’s administration granted a reprieve, of sorts.

Homeowners across New York City now have an extra month to prove their primary residency and avoid Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new pied-à-terre tax, an extension triggered by mass confusion over a publicly posted tax roll.

This is Leftist government being Leftist. It shouldn’t matter how much time a city resident has in which to prove the home in which he lives is his primary residence and not the part-time secondary abode that the city claims it to be. This is a reversal of our national tradition—and legal requirement—that it’s the government’s task to prove its charge is correct and not the accused’s task to prove it incorrect.

Mamdani’s administration should be required to prove—in court and city expense—that the home in question is, indeed, the pied-à-terre that the city clams it to be. There is no excuse for shifting that most basic requirement of government off onto the citizen. That’s the attitude of Ruler regarding his Subjects.

Victory vs Diplomacy

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The headline laid out the…dilemma.

Trump Pivots Back to Diplomacy as Iran Victory Eludes Him

This is a false dichotomy, and it’s leading to exceedingly higher costs in weapons expenditures, dollars, destruction, and casualties.

Per Clausewitz, war is merely the continuation of policy by other means. What gets left unsaid is that policy—diplomacy—is merely the continuation of war by other means. What gets missed as a result of missing the unsaid is that war and diplomacy can occur simultaneously. That’s especially true when politicians, particularly President Donald Trump (R), recognizes that war and diplomacy are the same thing operating through different tool sets.

That’s where Trump is going wrong in the conflict with Iran, and it’s where politicians of both parties have been wrong all along. Victory is not eluding the US or Trump, but it’s being delayed by Trump’s either/or procedure in this conflict with Iran. He needs to do both, simultaneously, and with our own maximum effort all across the kinetic and cyber spectrum. Likely, too, he’ll need to do both until Iran is completely disarmed with no remaining physical ability to act kinetically at all. That’s what will produce the maximum pressure on the terrorists reigning over Iran.

This is a Mistake

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The Trump administration, in the person of NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, has decided to ban American gain-of-function research on the rationale that the risks to public safety or national security are too great for the gains.

This is a mistake, especially on national security grounds and public safety.

Our enemies are enthusiastically conducting gain-of-function research, as demonstrated by the PRC’s work on the Wuhan Virus. We need to be doing our own gain-of-function research in order to understand our enemies’ products and how to counter them in the event they loose their bioweapons deliberately.

We also need to be doing our own gain-of-function research in order to understand the mechanisms by which viruses, and bacteria, that are currently unique to animals or plants might cross species lines and infect humans, and were they to cross over, what effects they would have on us. That’s how we’ll be able to deal rapidly with a pandemic from such a virus or bacterium. We did nothing about the influenza pandemic of a century ago and got away with it. We don’t know if we were lucky, and we don’t know whether we might have mitigated its effects had we known more. It’ll be the same with any future global—or national—epidemic if we’re deliberately responding in the blind.

I’ve Said These Before

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However, they bear repeating.

The WSJ editors rightly warn against killing the Senate filibuster. Progressive-Democratic Party Senators already have committed to eliminating it as soon as they seize the majority. Ill-informed Republican Senators, along with unthinking Republican Senators and President Donald Trump (R), are pushing to eliminate the filibuster first on the idiocy that the Progressive-Democrats are going to do it, anyway, so why not, and on the excuse that it’s necessary in order to pass the SAVE Act, which would require proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

The SAVE Act is, indeed, a critical piece of legislation, and one that the House already has passed, twice. However, it’s not worth the elimination of the filibuster, which would lead to far more and far wider damage to our Republic.

The loss of the filibuster would reduce the Senate to a simple majority rule popular contest, which along with the House’s simple majority rule would reduce our nation to a popular democracy and the elimination of our republican democracy.

With the filibuster intact, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R, SD) should hold the vote, regardless of his view of the potential vote count. Average Americans need to know, ahead of this fall’s elections, which Senators of either party favor secure elections in which only American citizens vote, and which ones favor, openly or tacitly, elections in which non-citizens, including illegal aliens, are allowed to vote.