Fulminations

            President Trump’s heart is in the right place, but his mouth keeps getting him in trouble.  He has done many good things in his avowed commitment to “Make America Great Again,” but his intemperate tweets have his most loyal staff members running for cover.  The President’s threat to discontinue daily press briefings may be the only way to save Sean Spicer’s dignity if not his sanity.

            Trump haters in Congress and the media are giddy with the daily fodder he provides them for their daily cannonades.  The sad consequence is that unrelenting, one-sided criticism is ultimately destructive of our democratic institutions.

            The obstructionism of Chuck Schumer and congressional Democrats—their opposition to anything Trump—is devoid of any consideration of truth and civility.  A perfect example was their monumental hypocrisy in the wake of the President’s firing of FBI Director Comey, the man whose decapitation they had called for incessantly in retribution for Hillary’s defeat.

            Some argue that Democrats are feeding the frenzy in the mass media, especially the hysterical fulminations of cable TV stations like MSNBC.  Others argue that the media are legitimizing the hyper-partisanship in Congress.  Either way, this symbiotic relationship of the Left is proving very harmful to what should be a constructive national dialog.  Worse, it is infecting other aspects of society, particularly among the young.

            We have had many examples of institutions of higher learning like UC Berkeley denying First Amendment rights to Conservative speakers.  Now we have the graduating class of black Bethune-Cookman University hissing, booing, and turning their backs on commencement speaker Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for no apparent reason other than her association with Donald Trump.  This rudeness was an undeserved and misguided insult to a woman who is dedicated to improving the education of inner-city black youths through her advocacy of school choice. 

            Will the madness ever end?

           

Shameful Jones

            In the White House Rose Garden on May 4th, Republicans and President Trump celebrated the House passage of the American Healthcare Act, the legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare. In my view, it was not the best possible bill, but at least a step in the right direction that had earned the support of warring Republican factions that recognized the need to move on.

            As expected, not a single Democrat voted for the bill after refusing for months to work with Republicans to come up with a better plan. Instead they clung stubbornly to ObamaCare, a failed—and unrepairable—disaster resting on a fuming pile of lies: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan…” 

            Even more disconcerting to me were the twenty No votes from Republicans who would not support the bill, unconcerned with the serious and possibly permanent damage their opposition might inflict on their party’s future ability to govern. One of these obdurate naysayers was our very own Congressman, Walter Jones.

            In a statement, Jones called the rushed process used by GOP leaders without a revised CBO score “shameful.” He argued, "As a result, no one has any idea how much those deals will cost the American taxpayers, or how they might affect the cost, quality and availability of health insurance coverage for American families."

            Jones’s argument is fatuous, a lame excuse for not having done his homework on the merits of the bill, while being oblivious to the history of the CBO’s notoriously inaccurate estimates. Or perhaps Jones is more interested in maintaining his reputation as a maverick, to hell with the consequences.

            Well, here’s what I think is “shameful”: Walter Jones. As I’ve argued before, it is way past time for Walter Jones to retire and save us, his constituents, from further embarrassment.

Stopping Riots

            Belgium is a small country divided almost exactly in half along ethnic, cultural, and linguistic lines. To the north are the Dutch-speaking Flemish, and to the south the French-speaking Walloons. The University of Louvain is located just above the dividing line on the Flemish side, but when I went to school there in the early 60s, the university had two mirrored halves, with every course taught in both Dutch and French.

            That didn’t stop the students from rioting against each other. Every fall the two sides traditionally held mock battles, often by pulling cobble stones out of the main avenue and erecting barricades behind which they tossed rotten tomatoes and insults at each other. The city got tired of this one day and paved over the avenue. But that didn’t stop the rioting. So, the university solved the problem once and for all by moving the French-speaking half to a new campus south of the dividing line. End of riots.

            If only such a resolution could be applied to UC Berkeley and other bastions of leftist thought. Aren’t we all getting tired of videos showing hooded rioters setting fires and breaking windows, spurred on by students denying the freedom of speech to conservative invitees who are bound to violate the students’ right not to be offended?

            To end this nonsense, one might cynically propose that Berkeley be paved over. Of course, it would be far more desirable to offset the school’s liberal indoctrination of malleable students by adding conservative teachers to balance a faculty that overwhelmingly identifies with the left. But this balance is highly unlikely with administrators whose preferred solution to conflict is to offer their snowflakes safe spaces stocked with chocolate bars and coloring books to salve their offended sensibilities.

            Maybe Berkeley could hitch a ride with the Oakland Raiders and move to Las Vegas, beyond the influence of the People’s Republic of California.

           

           

An Unhealthy Debate

            One of the biggest differences between our political parties these days is in their unity or lack of it. For example, Republicans promised to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but they can’t agree on how to do it because the many factions within the party seem to place their narrow interests before the good of the country. Democrats, on the other hand, are almost monolithic; they have fashioned a tight bond based on a single factor, i.e., opposing President Trump on every issue. That is not good for the country either.

            The healthcare debacle is symptomatic of what ails this democracy. But it wasn’t always so. Back in the 80s, ideological opposites Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan managed to compromise on a tax reform bill that raised us out of Jimmy Carter’s malaise into the most vibrant period of economic growth in my lifetime. Such cooperation appears to be impossible with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi browbeating their colleagues in the Senate and the House into a unified resistance to the President’s every move.

            Democrats, of course, are supported by a mainstream media that can find little to cheer in the President’s first 100 days in office. When the country and the world applauded Trump’s bombing of Syria and dropping the MOAB on ISIS tunnels, even then the media’s reluctant praise read like constipated rhetoric.

            Symptomatic of what ails a Democratic party that has not gotten over losing the elections is the unending stream of consistently negative comments from Nancy Theodore in my local paper. I have looked in vain through her lengthy diatribes against President Trump for anything positive, anything constructive. Why can she not acknowledge that there has been good news on jobs, on immigration, on energy, on reversing job-killing regulations, on foreign relations? If she does not agree, where are her ideas for improving our economy, for improving healthcare, for shrinking the size of the federal government, for controlling illegal immigration? In view of its repeated disasters at the polls, what exactly does she think the Democratic party has to do to regain the confidence of the American people in its ability to govern?

            Debate is healthy. But not when one side denies that the other can ever have a valid point.

In the Face of Evil

            It’s refreshing to see how many of President Trump’s detractors approve his punishment of Syria for the gassing of it citizens. Countries around the world that had become inured to Obama’s reliance on toothless negotiations to combat evil are now applauding our re-emergence as a world leader.

            Russia, of course, has sent a destroyer to the Mediterranean to punctuate its verbal condemnation of the U.S. missile attack. But they can’t protest too loudly, in view of their collaboration with President Assad in his continued campaign of genocide against his own people. There is even evidence that Russia abetted Assad not only in the drone supervision of the chemical attack, but also in the bombing of the hospital treating the victims, ostensibly to destroy the evidence of the execrable act.

            At home, even Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, the President’s implacable enemies in Congress, have cheered Mr. Trump’s decisive action. Some, like the isolationist Rand Paul, would have preferred a declaration of war from Congress. But this myopic midget’s reading of the Constitution ignores a long history of presidential action in similar circumstances, not to mention that prior approval would have defeated the effectiveness of our military response. To quote Stephen Carter, “Clinging to the long-dead notion that Congress must first declare war might be comforting, but it has nothing to do with reality.”

            Perhaps these developments will give relentless critics of President Trump a reason to recognize, at least in this instance, that he is acting in the best interests of our national security. And in the best interests of humanity in the face of evil.

Maverick Jones

 

            Walter Jones, our Perquimans County NC representative in the U.S. Congress, rarely makes headlines— except when he is out to prove that he is a maverick with unconventional ideas. Some of them have been strange, if not downright nutty, like the time he pushed for a memorial to dogs on the National Mall. Or the time he proposed that the French fries in the congressional cafeteria be renamed Freedom fries in protest of France’s support of the Iraq War.

            As a member of the libertarian Liberty Caucus, Jones has consistently earned some of the lowest ratings from the American Conservative Union. In fact, he is one of the very few Congressmen to be stripped of a major committee assignment for defying party leadership.

            Here are three recent examples: he bucked Republican Party policy on minimum wage; he demanded that President Trump release his tax returns; and he refused to support the House health care bill. Now he’s at it again by becoming the first Republican lawmaker to call for the removal of Kevin Nunes from the House Intelligence Committee. Enough! Nunes is a patriot and the key to getting to the bottom of the Trump-Russia connection and the Obama administration’s surveillance of Trump’s transition team. Nunes needs to be allowed to do his job—without backbiting from Democrats, the Trump-hating media, and disloyal Republicans.   

            Walter Jones does not reflect the views of his Republican constituents. A former Democrat, he has repeatedly been invited by Democrats to re-cross the aisle. Judging by his positions on key issues, I wouldn’t be surprised if he did. If he remains a Republican, I hope a good candidate will come forward to oppose him in the 2018 primaries. It is time for this maverick to vacate his seat and enjoy retirement playing with his dogs and eating Freedom fries.

Crossroads

            President Trump’s budget is going nowhere; it will not survive the slings and arrows of Congress. It is instructive, however, in spelling out the President’s view of the role of the executive branch of the federal government. First and foremost is the protection of the citizens of this country. Hence, his proposed increases for defense, homeland security, and veterans’ affairs.

            Conversely, he sees a diminished role for federal agencies in areas best managed at the state and local levels. The budget's prime target is the EPA, which has issued thousands of regulations in the last eight years governing everything from smokestacks to puddles. 

             In short, President Trump’s budget is a rejection of the socialist ideology that prefers all decision-making to be in the hands of the government rather than with the citizens directly affected by those decisions. It reflects the conservative principle that, except for national defense, the government should not be doing for people what they could be doing for themselves.

            There is not much point in discussing individual line items in the budget, because Republican legislators will gut proposals that defund their pet projects, while the Democrats will instinctively reject outright any ideas put forth by a president they despise. What will remain at the end of this fruitless exercise is the question American voters will have to answer: Is the President taking us in the right direction?

            A parallel proposal is about to be placed before Congress: Repeal and Replace ObamaCare.  After all the haggling between moderate and conservative Republicans, a bill will be voted on by the full House. Most Republicans will vote for it, if only to deliver on their campaign promise. But if enough mavericks in the Senate vote No, it will die, and Americans will blame everybody for subjecting them to another year of the ObamaCare monstrosity.

            If Repeal and Replace fails, tax reform most likely will fail also. Maybe the only survivor will be a trillion-dollar infrastructure spending bill, because legislators love to spend money. To hell with the debt. And if you think this will put President Trump and Congress in a mood to begin a necessary reform of entitlements, guess again.

            We are at a crossroad. What happens in the next few months will decide the fundamental direction of this country. Nothing less.