The Possible Cost Of Not Respecting The Chain Of Command

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article titled, “State Department Employee in Japan Ignored President Trump’s Orders and Allowed Americans with Coronavirus to Fly Back to the US.” The State Department employee who ignored the President’s orders is Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs. He needs to be fired immediately.

The article reports:

‘It’s important to remember this was an emerging and unusual circumstance,’ said Ian Brownlee, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Consular Affairs.

‘We had 328 people on buses, a plan to execute and we received lab results on people who were otherwise asymptomatic, un-ill people on a bus on the way to the airport.

‘The people on the ground did exactly the right thing…in bringing them home.’

People who had tested positive were put into isolation units on board the two cargo planes, which then flew to Joint Base San Antonio – Lackland in Texas and Travis Air Base in California.

Although officials reassured the press that the sick passengers were thoroughly contained and every precaution had been taken to ensure the safety of the healthy people onboard, reports later emerged that people on the flights had no idea they were sharing yet another even more confined space with infected individuals.

When the planes landed at their respective destinations late Sunday night, six ‘high risk’ passengers from Lackland and seven from Travis were ushered onto an additional flight to Omaha Eppley Airfield in Nebraska.

Mr. Brownlee did not have the authority to override the President’s orders. Hopefully everything will work out in the end, but Mr. Brownlee has created a risk for American citizens that did not need to be there. He should be immediately terminated for insubordination.

What Did He Actually Do?

On Thursday, The Washington Examiner posted a list of accomplishments of President Trump. The list is divided into categories. Please follow the link to the article to read the entire list, but I will list a few highlights.

Under the category of jobs and the economy:

  • Passage of the tax reform bill providing $5.5 billion in cuts and repealing the Obamacare mandate.
  • Increase of the GDP above 3 percent.
  • Creation of 1.7 million new jobs, cutting unemployment to 4.1 percent.
  • Saw the Dow Jones reach record highs.
  • A rebound in economic confidence to a 17-year high.
  • A new executive order to boost apprenticeships.
  • A move to boost computer sciences in Education Department programs.
  • Prioritizing women-owned businesses for some $500 million in SBA loans.

Under Killing job-stifling regulations:

  • Made good on his campaign promise to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
  • Opened up the North American Free Trade Agreement for talks to better the deal for the U.S.
  • Worked to bring companies back to the U.S., and companies like Toyota, Mazda, Broadcom Limited, and Foxconn announced plans to open U.S. plants.
  • Worked to promote the sale of U.S products abroad.
  • Made enforcement of U.S. trade laws, especially those that involve national security, a priority.
  • Ended Obama’s deal with Cuba.

Under Boosting U.S. energy dominance:

  • The Department of Interior, which has led the way in cutting regulations, opened plans to lease 77 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling.
  • Trump traveled the world to promote the sale and use of U.S. energy.
  • Expanded energy infrastructure projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline snubbed by Obama.
  • Ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to kill Obama’s Clean Power Plan.
  • EPA is reconsidering Obama rules on methane emissions.

Much of this has gone unreported. Please follow the link to the article to see the entire list.

Encouraging Voter Fraud

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about welcome baskets given to refugees coming to Nebraska. Below is the YouTube video included in the article:

Actually, I think it is very nice that the Democratic Party is giving these refugees welcome baskets with a welcoming letter. I suppose it is sweet to also give them voter registration forms before they are actually citizens who can vote. Nothing like encouraging voter fraud.

The Pipeline That Won’t Die

The Keystone Pipeline is reviving itself again. Yesterday’s Washington Times reported that TransCanada, the company seeking to build the massive Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline reapplied for a permit on Friday. Here we go again.

The good news here is that TransCanada would rather sell its oil to America and send it through the Keystone Pipeline than sell its oil to China and build a pipeline to Canada’s west coast. The bad news is that if the Obama Administration delays the approval until after the 2012 election. the Keystone Pipeline may be moot–the pipeline across Canada may have already been started.

The article reports:

“Today there is just one person standing in the way of tens of thousands of new American jobs: President Obama,” said House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican. “After nearly four years of review, delay and politics, he is out of excuses for blocking this job-creating energy project any longer. Every state along the proposed route supports the pipeline, and its builder has jumped through every bureaucratic hoop.”

Nebraska officials were split on the earlier pipeline route, but have reportedly come to an understanding over a new route to the east of the sensitive Ogalallah Aquifer.

The State Department, which has a role in the approval process because the pipeline would cross the U.S.-Canada border, said in a statement that it had received the application and would put it through “a rigorous, transparent and thorough review.”

The delay in the pipeline represents a division within the Democrat party–the environmentalists oppose the pipeline and the unions support it. If the President wants to collect money from both groups, he has to put off a decision until after the election. However, there is another theory. After the President has collected all the money he can from Hollywood (representing the environmentalists), he can go ahead and approve the pipeline in order to gain campaign donations from the unions. I am not sure I believe that because there is no danger of the unions supporting Republicans and the unions do tend to be financially involved in elections.

Approving the Keystone Pipeline would create jobs. If the people of Nebraska support the pipeline, it should be built.

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Part Of Being An Adult Is Taking Responsibility For Your Actions

All of us remember the days of our youth when we could blame our siblings for things we did. There was also ‘the dog ate my homework.’ But as we grew, we learned to tell the truth and face the consequences of our actions. Well, not all of us learned that lesson.

The National Journal reported today that President Obama has rejected the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. He has also blamed the Republicans for that rejection–it was their fault because ‘ the 60-day deadline imposed by Republicans did not allow adequate time to review an alternate route through an ecologically sensitive area in Nebraska.’ Does anyone actually believe that he would have approved the pipeline if he had been given more time?

A spokesman for Speaker of the House John Boehner made the following statement:

“President Obama is about to destroy tens of thousands of American jobs and sell American energy security to the Chinese,” said Brendan Buck. “The president won’t stand up to his political base even to create American jobs. This is not the end of this fight.”

I hope that is true. Congress needs to override this decision. The future security of America and American energy depends on it.

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Ben Nelson Is Retiring

Yesterday Investors.com posted an article about Senator Ben Nelson announcing his retirement. Senator Nelson is a casualty of his vote on ObamaCare. He is retiring because it has become very obvious that he will not be re-elected because of his vote for ObamaCare (which was touted as the deciding vote on the unpopular bill). The article at Investors.com sees his retirement as the ticket for the Republicans to take over the Senate. The article points out that if President Obama is re-elected, Republican control of the Senate would give him more opportunity to blame Congress for everything that is not going right. If President Obama is not re-elected, a Republican President and a Republican Congress might be able to restore some fiscal sanity to the government.

Power Line posted a wonderful comment on the subject:

One of the sources of Nelson’s unpopularity in Nebraska was his vote for Obamacare. So this is an opportune moment to recall the Cornhusker Kickback, one of a number of acts of outright corruption on which Obamacare was based. The Kickback provided that the federal government would pick up Nebraska’s tab–but only Nebraska’s–for the new Medicaid recipients that would be created by the statute, apparently in perpetuity. That was the bribe that Obama needed to get Nelson’s vote, and Nelson evidently thought his sweetheart deal would insulate him against criticism for voting for the unpopular bill. One wonders: how can such a special arrangement for a single state possibly be constitutional? But constitutionality was never a big concern where Obamacare was concerned.

To Nelson’s surprise, perhaps, the kickback didn’t entirely placate his Cornhusker constituents. What is wrong with those people? Don’t they know a good payoff when they see one? Maybe Thomas Frank needs to write a new book called What’s the Matter With Nebraska?

I think many Americans are concerned about the rate of spending going on in Washington. The question is, “Can that spending be dealt with?” I think it can if it is dealt with in the next two to four years. Otherwise, when we reach the point where the majority of Americans do not pay income taxes (the number now is about 49 percent), there will be no incentive to cut spending. At that point we will become a third-world country.

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Putting Elections Ahead Of Creating Jobs

Truck Hauling 36-Inch Pipe To Build Keystone X...

Image via Wikipedia

The Keystone Pipeline is a $7 billion pipeline, which would run from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.  It would increase energy security in America and directly create more than 20,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs and construction jobs in 2011-2012 across the U.S.

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the U. S. Government is planning to delay any decision as to whether to allow the pipeline to be constructed until after the 2012 election. They didn’t exactly word it that way, but that is the outcome.

The article states:

State Department officials are expected to say as early as Thursday the U.S. will seek to re-route the pipeline away from an environmentally sensitive portion of Nebraska. Such a move will require an assessment of the new route’s environmental impact, a lengthy process that isn’t expected to be complete until at least the first quarter of 2013.

The problem this pipeline presents for the Obama administration is simple–the environmentalists oppose the pipeline and the unions support it (more jobs). The pipeline would increase the energy independence of America and make us less dependent on oil from countries that hate us.

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