George Rebane
[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary aired on 18 February 2015.]
It’s again hard to know where to start. At the federal level the administration is tying itself in knots as report after report comes in of Islamic terrorists operating on multiple continents while becoming more united and coordinated. Our leadership has no idea from what it is supposed to protect America and its allies. Three European capitals suffer attacks from indigenous Muslims, and now ISIS operates freely on the shores of Tripoli, and demonstrates its reach with a video of its mass execution of 21 Egyptians for the capital crime of being Christians.
Everyone from the Danish prime minister to the pope regales against the jihadi organizations that are united in the global goal of Islamic supremacy. Yes, even liberal commentators have started to identify the similarity between Nazi Germany’s goal of imposing racial supremacy to the Islamists’ goal of religious supremacy. And in the White House we are going through contortions wordsmithing daily pronouncements that describe events without ever mentioning their Muslim perpetrators and Christian or Jewish victims. According to our leaders we are at war with a tactic called terror that is being randomly practiced by unidentified criminal elements. All the while the world laughs at us and then sadly shakes its head. January 2017 cannot come quickly enough.
Before we leave Washington, let’s revisit the latest charge that it is the Republicans who will again shut down government, or is it only the Department of Homeland Security, thereby “leaving us defenseless” against those random acts of terror. Actually it is neither, and the media’s automatic blaming of Republicans is more than just another dollop of yellow journalism. The DHS funding issue involves only the president’s unlawful executive order giving amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in our midst. It does nothing to impede the security services of that agency.
But we hear only Republicans questioned about whether and why they are the ones who will “shut down government”. The funding bill is stuck in the Senate because the Democrats are filibustering it, yet no one asks Minority Leader Harry Reid why he and his caucus are prepared to shut down government. Why are the Democrats not willing to let the bill come to a floor vote, and then be passed to the president for his signature or veto? How come that little light never comes on for any of our crack journalists?
BTW, the informed listener knows that not even DHS will be shut down since the overwhelming fraction of its employees will perform “essential services” that are not affected by such budgetary bickerings.
And coming back to California, we are experiencing what the whole country – at least those who pay attention – know as a government induced or amplified drought. The drought itself is real, but its economic impact is made surreal by the State Water Resources Control Board, an arm of California’s Environmental Protection Agency, the rabid little brother of the federal EPA. That board has mandated the daily, yes daily, flushing of 4,000 acre feet of water into the Pacific Ocean. That daily loss is enough to irrigate 1,000 acres and provide water for 4,000 families for an entire year (more here).
There is even bipartisan opposition to this insane policy that purports to put the hypothetical discomfort of fish ahead of the actual welfare of California’s workers and citizens. The national press reports that “Senator Dianne Feinstein , Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and five House Republicans this week importuned the five-member State Water Resources Control Board to overrule their executive director” Tom Howard. But “Citing a “potential additional risk of entrainment” of fish, Mr. Howard rejected the request to pump more water south” instead of into the ocean.
And these are just recent examples that come to mind. Meanwhile government continues to grow and spend. And no one seems to recall that the bigger the government, the more inequity there is in the wages and wealth of its people. So when does ignorance become evil? The eternal answer to that has always been ‘ignorance become evil, when the ignorant become powerful’.
My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on georgerebane.com where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively. However my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR. Thank you for listening.
[Addendum] Does everyone understand why Obama’s ‘Immigration Order’ was blocked? The Left’s loud claims that it was “a political stunt by a George W Bush-appointed judge and would be quickly reversed” is not exactly on the mark. The president claimed “prosecutorial discretion” as the basis for his ‘executive action’. Prosecutorial discretion has been the accepted authority for executive officials to set priorities in the enforcement of existing law, and to specifically to refrain from such enforcement in cases where the public interest is least urgent.
However, Obama’s overreach is that his action expands the law, which is and has been for sixty years the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Under his new amnesty program named Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), illegal aliens would be granted work authorization, become eligible for Social Security, and numerous other federal and state benefits. Moreover, almost all non-felon illegals here since 2010 would qualify under DAPA. In short, DAPA would greatly expand the existing Immigration and Naturalization Act and write new law, a function constitutionally reserved to the US Congress.
So anyone with minimum reading skills should understand that this act by President Obama is illegal and has nothing to do with prosecutorial discretion. And the injunction handed down by US District Court Judge Andrew Hanen was to stop granting illegal aliens benefits not allowed under current law (more here).
rebanesruminations.com 
Leave a comment