Posts published in “Guest”

In a few months, if it hasn’t already, President Trump’s legacy at the border is going to look much better even to skeptical observers.

As the Biden administration unwinds Trump policies, and a new migrant crisis builds, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Trump team arrived at an approach that, after fits and starts, worked.

Counter to the image of the administration taking a blunderbuss approach to everything related to immigration, the push at the border was a thoughtful, creative, and well-coordinated effort across government agencies and between sovereign countries.

It is worth revisiting because understanding how it came about and the reasons that it made such a difference underlines the mistakes that Biden is making now, no matter how much his officials and allies want to deny it and shift blame.

● Read in National Review

COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths have fallen. None of that would have been possible without vaccines. The lightning speed at which they were created was on Trump's watch.

● Read in USA Today

● Read and comment here on The Red Line

Nearly 75 percent of Connecticut’s public-sector workforce is part of a union, according to new Census Bureau numbers released by Unionstats.com, making Connecticut’s government workforce the most unionized in the country.

Connecticut nosed out runner-up New York by four percentage points.

● Read at Yankee Institute

● Read and comment here on The Red Line

The Planning and Development Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly held a hearing Monday concerning seven different bills to mandate certain zoning rules for all communities in our state. Similar state-mandate-of-local-zoning bills are also showing up in committees such as Housing, Transportation and even Public Health.

The bills would nearly eliminate public hearings for local zoning applications, thus silencing the public. One bill provides that any party alleging that zoning regulations are noncompliant with its provisions could bypass the local zoning appeals board and go directly to court. If enacted, these legislative proposals would result in a feeble, shrinking local voice on zoning in our communities, a dramatic reversal of Connecticut’s timeless Home Rule tradition.

● Read in CT Hearst Media newspapers

● Read and comment here on The Red Line

Former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was fired by an Oympics committee after making sexist remarks. Yet, the IOC ignores China's systematic abuse of women, including mass forced sterilization, forced abortion and forced birth control of Uighur women in its Xinjiang province.

● Read in Wall Street Journal

● Read and comment hereon The Red Line

President Biden is on the verge of signing a third “stimulus” bill, costing taxpayers $1.9 trillion. The “American Rescue Plan” comes on the heels of a second “stimulus” passed in December, which cost about $1 trillion, and the first one in March that amounted to $2.2 trillion. But this latest enormous bill is about helping politicians, not about helping the country.
The bill’s first offense is that it will not stimulate the economy in a meaningful way.

● Read in New York Post

● Read and comment here on The Red Line

Last month, Disney fired actress Gina Carano after she compared Nazi persecution of Jews to the persecution of conservatives in America today on social media. The company called her post "abhorrent and unacceptable," declining to explain why her co-star Pedro Pascal remains employed despite his own posts comparing Trump supporters to Nazis. Distinguished science reporter Donald McNeil was recently ousted from The New York Times for vocalizing the n-word when answering a high school student's question about whether a classmate deserved to be suspended for saying it. Emmanuel Cafferty, a Latino truck driver for San Diego Gas & Electric Company, was fired for accidentally—yes, accidentally—making the "OK" hand gesture used by some white supremacists.

Other examples abound, and they are all cases of religious discrimination—but not in the way you might think.

● Read in Newsweek

● Read <and comment here on The Red Line

Pres. Biden has issued an “Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities.” Before the election, VP Harris posted a tweet and video: “There’s a big difference between equality and equity.”

Equality means equal treatment, fair competition and impartially judged outcomes. Equity means equal outcomes, achieved if necessary by unequal treatment, biased competition and preferential judging.

Only a powerful central government could impose the intensive—and expensive—programs of social intervention, ideological re-education and economic redistribution necessary to achieve equal outcomes.

That is why radical claims for unequal treatment must be carefully buried in word salads praising equity and social justice.

These evasions raise a hard question: isn’t equity just a new name for the oldest program for achieving equal outcomes -- socialism?

● Read in Wall Street Journal

American governments, federal and state, have made many mistakes in the Covid-19 pandemic. But the great success—the saving grace—was making a financial bet in collaboration with private American industry on the development of vaccines. The Trump Administration's Operation Warp Speed is now letting the country see the possibility of a return to relatively normal life as early as the spring.

● Read in The Wall Street Journal