A Level Playing Field Would Be Nice

On September 24th, The Hill reported:

The Senate on Tuesday approved a bill to boost former President Trump’s level of Secret Service protection, putting it one step away from becoming law less than two weeks after he was the subject of a second assassination attempt. 

The bill, which was proposed by Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) in the House days after the first assassination attempt, would require the Secret Service to “apply the same standards” to figure out how many agents should be used to protect the president, vice president, and those running for offices granted such protection. 

On Friday, The Federalist reported:

Former President Donald Trump was recently forced to cancel a campaign rally in Wisconsin because the federal task force in charge of safety denied him adequate protection resources.

On Tuesday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., sent a letter to the acting director of the Secret Service detailing the allegations of a whistleblower who said the event was canceled because the nation’s premier security agency lacked “sufficient assets” to keep the Republican presidential nominee safe.

“Other whistleblowers with knowledge of Secret Service planning protocols allege that failure to provide protection for a major public event is highly unusual and that a sitting president would never be denied resources in this way,” Hawley wrote.

This is disgusting. The entrenched bureaucracy is doing everything it can to elect Kamala Harris. They don’t care about her abilities or qualifications–they just want to make sure President Trump doesn’t get elected and actually drain the swamp.

The Senate Actually Passed A Bill

One America News is reporting today that the Senate has passed a bill sanctioning Chinese officials over the country’s actions against Hong Kong. The bipartisan Hong Kong Autonomy Act passed with unanimous consent Thursday.

This is good news. China needs to pay a price for what it has done to Hong Kong. Otherwise Taiwan is next. Taiwan is probably next anyway, but at least we can try to slow things down a little.

The article reports:

The bill would place sanctions on businesses, individuals and police that interfere with Hong Kong’s freedoms. This came after China announced a national security law that is expected pass on June 30, which is threatening Hong Kong’s autonomy.

A resolution introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley (r-Mo.) was also approved, formally condemning China’s’ actions.

“The Senate needs to act now, Mr. President, to send a clear signal now that we will stand up to this aggression,” he stated. “…to rally free peoples now in defense of the rights and liberties of Hong Kong.”

Hitting China in the pocketbook is probably the only was to deal with them successfully.

A Proposed Resolution By Senator Josh Hawley

The Gateway Pundit reported yesterday that Senator Josh Hawley has introduced a Resolution in the Senate regarding the delay of the House of Representative’s delay in forwarding the articles of impeachment to the Senate.

The Resolution states:

Title: Amending the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials.

Resolved, That rule I of the Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials is amended to read as follows:

“I. Whensoever the Senate shall receive notice from the House of Representatives that managers are appointed on their part to conduct an impeachment against any person and are directed to carry articles of impeachment to the Senate, the Secretary of the Senate shall immediately inform the House of Representatives that the Senate is ready to receive the managers for the purpose of exhibiting such articles of impeachment, agreeably to such notice.

If, following adoption of such articles, the House of Representatives does not so notify the Senate or otherwise provide for such articles to be exhibited to the Senate within 25 calendar days from the date of adoption of such articles, as recorded in the Journal of the House of Representatives, such articles shall be deemed exhibited before the Senate and it shall be in order for any Senator to offer a motion to dismiss such articles with prejudice for failure by the House of Representatives to prosecute such articles. Such motion shall be adopted by an affirmative vote of a majority of the Senators, duly chosen and sworn, without debate by the yeas and nays, which shall be entered on the record.”.

The article provides background for the Resolution:

The Senate has adopted a set of 26 rules that govern all impeachment proceedings, known as the “Rules of Procedure and Practice in the Senate When Sitting on Impeachment Trials.” Those Rules presume prompt delivery of the articles of impeachment to the Senate following their adoption by the House. Historically, the House delivered articles of impeachment to the Senate for action almost simultaneously with the vote to impeach. During the Clinton impeachment, for example, the articles were transmitted to the Senate the same day they were approved. Consequently, the current Senate rules have no mechanism to address Speaker Pelosi’s unprecedented attempt to prevent a Senate trial by withholding the articles after the President has been impeached.

Speaker Pelosi’s gambit raises grave constitutional concerns. Article 1, Section 3 gives the Senate the “sole” power to try impeachment cases. But if the Speaker refuses to transmit the articles after the President has been impeached, she could prevent the Senate from exercising its constitutional prerogative, perhaps indefinitely.

Senator Hawley’s resolution would amend the Senate’s impeachment rules to prevent this abuse of the Constitution and protect the Senate’s sole power to try impeachment. The resolution would allow the Senate to dismiss for lack of prosecution any articles of impeachment that the House of Representatives has delayed transmitting for 25 calendar days or more. Under this new rule, any Senator would be entitled to move to dismiss once the allotted time period had elapsed. Any motion to dismiss would be voted upon by the full Senate.

This should provide the impetus for Speaker Pelosi to forward the articles of impeachment and stop this endless delay.

A Really Good Idea

On October 24, The Federal Times posted an article about relocating some of the Washington bureaucracy. What a great idea. We need to move some of the people in charge of government agencies closer to the people they are supposed to serve. We also need to break up the concentration of power that is the Washington swamp.

It is not a coincidence that many of the wealthiest counties in America are suburbs of Washington, D.C.

According to Wikipedia (a questionable source, but I suspect this is correct):

Presented below are the 25 highest-income counties (with populations of 65,000 or greater) in the United States by median household income according to the 2016 American Community Survey[4] prepared by the US Census Bureau. Five of the counties are located in the state of Maryland, five are in Virginia, four in California, three in New Jersey, two in New York, and one each in: Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. (Disclaimer: This only includes counties that participated in this single survey)

The Federal Times reports:

The Trump administration’s decision to move three agency components outside the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has spurred a sizeable amount of controversy, but Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., want to keep going with that trend.

The two senators introduced a bill Oct. 23 that would move about 90 percent of the workforce at the headquarters for 10 federal agencies to other states around the country and pop the “bubble” of D.C. federal employment.

“Every year Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars fund federal agencies that are mainly located in the D.C. bubble. That’s a big part of the problem with Washington: they’re too removed from the rest of America,” said Hawley in a news release.

“The HIRE Act will move policymakers directly into the communities they serve, creating thousands of jobs for local communities and saving taxpayers billions of dollars along the way.”

Under the proposal, the Department of Agriculture would move to Missouri, Commerce to Pennsylvania, Education to Tennessee, Energy to Kentucky, Health and Human Services to Indiana, Housing and Urban Development to Ohio, Interior to New Mexico, Labor to West Virginia, Transportation to Michigan and Veterans Affairs to South Carolina.

Obviously there are objections to this idea. The swamp is not enthusiastic about being split up!

The article concludes:

About 20 percent of D.C. residents are employed directly by the federal government, according to OPM and population data, while each of the 10 states slated for agency relocation under the bill have about .3 to one percent of their populations working for the federal government.

But Washington has an incredibly small population when compared with these states, and even if the entire D.C. federal workforce were to be relocated equally across the 10 states, the state with the lowest percent of federal workforce, Michigan, would only move from .3 percent to .4 percent.

The bill is bound to get strong pushback not only from the Democratically controlled House, which has been opposed to many of the Trump administration’s smaller moves, but also from the Virginia and Maryland members of Congress, whose states and districts would be likely to lose a number of jobs due to a relocation.

Relocation might also clear up the incredible traffic jam that is Washington, D.C. I suspect that it also would be cheaper to run government agencies in places where renting or owning office space would be considerably lower.

This will probably never happen, but it is a great idea.