Tag: oppression

Republicans moving to restore earmarks

10:20 am

Idiots: Senate Republicans are pushing for a secret vote tomorrow that will propose restoring earmarks.

Senate Republicans are poised to restore earmarks unless opponents muster the votes to stop them in a secret ballot Tuesday. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, is under severe pressure from his members and has agreed to study the issue. “Very tone-deaf,” Mr. Coburn told The Washington Times. “I’d love to know who the smart guys are in the Republican conference who want to do this.”

Earmarks increase spending. Right now we have a spending problem in the federal government, which is also the hammer that government uses to wield its out-of-control power over the citizenry. Doing anything that increases that spending thus increases that power and is entirely counter to the overall sense of the electorate that voted in November.

Coburn is right. This is very tone-deaf, and incredibly stupid.

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FAA okays SpaceX launch on Monday

6:13 pm

As I expected, after several days of hemming and hawing, the FAA has granted SpaceX a launch license for its planned Monday launch.

The FAA license approved Friday covers all seven Falcon 9 launches planned for the Iridium Next constellation, along with landings of the Falcon 9 first stage on a barge positioned downrange in the Pacific Ocean. The $3 billion Iridium Next program aims to replace all of the company’s existing satellites, which were launched in the late 1990s and early 2000s and are now operating well beyond their design lives.

What SpaceX clearly did here was to move ahead, daring the FAA to challenge their desire to launch quickly. Government bureaucrats don’t like that, but to call SpaceX’s bluff and block the launch would have caused these bureaucrats even more problems. SpaceX knew this, and gambled that the FAA would back down. It did, and thus the launch license was issued.

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A feudal and isolated California

11:01 am

Link here. It is very clear that politically California is increasingly isolating itself from the rest of the country. From the article:

Today California is returning to its outlier roots, defying many of the political trends that define most of the country. Rather than adjust to changing conditions, the state seems determined to go it alone as a bastion of progressivism. Some Californians, going farther out on a limb, have proposed separating from the rest of the country entirely; a ballot measure on that proposition has been proposed for 2018.

This shift to outpost of modern-day progressivism has been developing for years but was markedly evident in November. As the rest of America trended to the right, electing Republicans at the congressional and local levels in impressive numbers, California has moved farther left, accounting for virtually all of the net popular vote margin for Hillary Clinton. Today the GOP is all but non-existent in the most populated parts of the state, and the legislature has a supermajority of Democrats in both houses. In many cases, including last year’s Senate race, no Republicans even got on the November ballot.

The article goes on to note the number of ways California also differs from the rest of the country in matters of policy. Sadly for California, those policy differences are not to its long term advantage. As I read I was reminded of New York and how, during the 1960s and 1970s when the politics there were completely controlled by leftwing Democrats, the state’s dominate position in the nation’s economy collapsed and New York became looked at as a poor neighbor, unable to pay its bills even as industry and private sector fled the state. I expect the same to happen in California in the coming years.

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Obamacare: The Republican strategy of partial repeal vs full repeal

10:23 am

This National Review editorial today describes very succinctly the strategy being used by the Republican leadership in its effort to repeal Obamacare.

Senate Republicans want to pass a bill that repeals the taxes and spending in Obamacare, but not its regulations. That’s because they think that they can use a legislative process to avoid Democratic filibusters only if they leave the regulations alone. They think that this partial repeal of Obamacare will set the stage for later legislation that repeals the rest of the law and creates a replacement.

The heart of the problem for a full Obamacare repeal is that in the Senate you can pass budgetary items with only 51 votes while regulatory changes require 60. The Democrats plan to filibuster any regulatory changes, thus preventing their repeal.

The editorial opposes this strategy and instead calls for removing the federal government completely from health insurance regulation, the situation that existed prior to the passage of Obamacare. While I totally agree with this stance, I also recognize that the intransigence of the Democrats in the Senate makes it difficult. The only way it could work is if the Republicans could convince 8 Democratic senators to break away from their party and support full repeal. While a large number of Democratic senators are faced with difficult elections in 2018, I don’t think the Republicans could get 8 to agree.

We are thus faced with the unfortunate and bad situation that the Republicans will repeal only part of the law, which will further damage the health care industry. While they hope this damage will strengthen their effort to get the law entirely repealed, I fear that it will instead be used by the Democrats to attack the Republicans and the idea of the repeal itself.

It seems to me that it would be better to offer a full repeal, forcing a Democratic filibuster, and then use that filibuster as a campaign weapon to defeat more Democrats in 2018.

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Trump does a clean sweep of all politically appointed ambassadors

10:42 pm

A very good sign: The Trump transition team has issued a blanket order requiring all politically appointed ambassadors “without exception” to resign their posts by inauguration day.

This order, which breaks with past precedent which allowed ambassadors to stick around until a new person was named, is actually a very good sign. It indicates that Trump really does intend to clean house. His track record in the private sector is to fire people if they are not producing. It appears he is going to bring that experience to the executive branch, an approach that the federal government has lacked for decades.

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Corzine fined $5 million for stealing $1 billion

12:54 pm

Slap on the wrist: Jon Corzine, former Democratic governor and Senator for New Jersey, has been fined $5 million for his part in misusing and losing $1 billion of privately owned customer funds and eventually causing the bankruptcy of MF Global.

What Corzine did was the equivalent of a banker illegally taking your savings from the bank to invest in risky stocks, without telling you, and then losing that money when the investments went sour. The banker would go to jail for doing that. Corzine however was a major player in the Democratic Party. Not only was he a governor and senator, he raised funds for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Thus, he must be blameless and pure, and must not be punished for things that were clearly forced upon him by the evil Reagan-Bush administrations. This fine is only occurring because of civil action, not because he was prosecuted for his crimes, something that the Obama administration refused to do.

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Republicans prepare legislation to defund UN

10:06 am

While both houses of Congress are moving forward on meaningless condemnations of the UN’s vote declaring the Oslo Accords null and Israel’s presence in parts of Jerusalem illegal, Republicans in both houses are also preparing legislation that will actually cut funding to the UN.

The right-wing House Freedom Caucus will meet next Monday to decide between two proposals to bring to the House. One would be to reduce American funding to the UN. The other, more aggressive proposal is to make funding voluntary, thus leaving it to Congress every two years to decide whether to continue contributing to the organization. “One is an incremental step, the other is really a herculean leap,” said Freedom Caucus chairman Mark Meadows.

These ideas also have strong support by a number of Senators. I am hopeful that Congress will go beyond a mere condemnation and pass something that will actually cause the UN some pain.

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House passes bill to cancel all regulations created during Obama’s lame duck rule

3:30 pm

I like this: The House today passed a bill that would allow Congress to repeal all regulations created during the last sixty days of the Obama administration.

Legislation to allow Congress to repeal in a single vote any rule finalized in the last 60 legislative days of the Obama administration sailed through the House Wednesday, the second time in less than two months. The GOP-backed Midnight Rule Relief Act, which passed the previous Congress in November, was approved largely along party lines by a vote of 238-184 on the second day of the new Congress, despite Democratic opposition. If passed by the Senate and signed by President-elect Donald Trump, the legislation would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow lawmakers to bundle together multiple rules and overturn them en masse with a joint resolution of disapproval.

What is disturbing is how few regulations Congress has cancelled over the decades. This is supposed to be an republic, whereby the rules are set by our elected officials. Instead, they have passed that responsibility off to bureaucrats, and when they hint, as they do here, that they might take back some of that power, the howls of outrage are deafening.

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Republicans introduce first measure for repealing Obamacare

10:37 pm

A measure introduced in both houses of Congress today begins the process of repealing Obamacare.

Senate Republicans Tuesday took the first step toward repealing Obamacare, with Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi introducing a measure that would lay the groundwork for specific legislation to be proposed later that would repeal President Barack Obama’s signature domestic program. Enzi’s bill seeks to pave the way for the later bill to pass Congress without fear of a filibuster by Senate Democrats.

The measure, called a budget resolution, directs top congressional committees to cast votes to assemble the repeal legislation by Jan. 27. House Republicans also introduced Enzi’s resolution in the lower chamber.

At this moment we still do not know exactly what the Republicans plan to repeal, and what they intend to keep. What we do know is that in order to pass this repeal in a manner that prevents a filibuster they will not be able to repeal the law entirely. We also do not yet know how quickly they intend the repeal to take effect. There has been much talk of a delay, but that is not yet confirmed.

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New Republican bill to move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem

3:38 pm

Three Republican Senators today introduced legislation that would move the American embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

To a certain extent this law is mere show, as there already is a law that calls for the U.S. to do this, though that law also allowed presidents to waive the move if they thought it would harm international relations. That concern is essentially gone now, and it appears this new law eliminates the waiver clause.

This is likely only the beginning. At least, I hope it is.

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94% of all new jobs under Obama part time

2:04 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Since the imposition of Obamacare a new study now shows that 94% of all new jobs have been part time work.

In their study [Harvard and Princeton economists Lawrence Katz and Alan Krueger] show that from 2005 to 2015, the proportion of Americans workers engaged in what they refer to as “alternative work” soared during the Obama era, from 10.7% in 2005 to 15.8% in 2015. Alternative, or “gig” work is defined as “temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract company workers, independent contractors or freelancers”, and is generally unsteady, without a fixed paycheck and with virtually no benefits. The two economists also found that each of the common types of alternative work increased from 2005 to 2015—with the largest changes in the number of independent contractors and workers provided by contract firms, such as janitors that work full-time at a particular office, but are paid by a janitorial services firm.

Krueger, who until 2013 was also the top White House economist serving as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Obama, was “surprised” by the finding. Quoted by quartz, he said “We find that 94% of net job growth in the past decade was in the alternative work category,” said Krueger. “And over 60% was due to the [the rise] of independent contractors, freelancers and contract company workers.” In other words, nearly all of the 10 million jobs created between 2005 and 2015 were not traditional nine-to-five employment.

While the finding is good news for some, such as graphic designers and lawyers who hate going to an office, for whom new technology and Obamacare has made it more appealing to become an independent contractor. But for those seeking a steady administrative assistant office job, the market is grim. It also explains why despite an apparent recovery in the labor market, wage growth has been non-existent, due to the lack of career advancement and salary increase options for this vast cohort which was hired over the past decade. [emphasis in original]

The lack of long term steady full time work with full benefits has especially hit the young badly. They are increasingly being forced to work multiple jobs to pay the bills, all of which lack any kind of benefits.

Obviously, they must keep voting for those Democrats who brought this paradise to them. Obviously!

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It’s Still a Mad, Mad California

10:48 am

Link here. Victor Davis Hanson’s description of present day California reminds me so much of the New York City that I left back in the mid-1990s: dysfunctional, corrupt, oppressive, violent, and collapsing. He also correctly notes how the coastal liberals who control the state, as they do in New York, are very careful to avoid any of the problems they create.

The American progressive elite relies on its influence, education, money, and cultural privilege to exempt itself from the bad schools, unassimilated immigrant communities, dangerous neighborhoods, crime waves, and general impoverishment that are so often the logical consequences of its own policies — consequences for others, that is. Abstract idealism on behalf of the distant is a powerful psychological narcotic that allows caring progressives to dull the guilt they feel about their own privilege and riches.

Nowhere is this paradox truer than in California, a dysfunctional natural paradise in which a group of coastal and governing magnificoes virtue-signal from the world’s most exclusive and beautiful enclaves. The state is currently experiencing another perfect storm of increased crime, decreased incarceration, still ongoing illegal immigration, and record poverty. All that is energized by a strapped middle class that is still fleeing the overregulated and overtaxed state, while the arriving poor take their places in hopes of generous entitlements, jobs servicing the elite, and government employment.

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