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The Hugh Hewitt Show
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Sorry FEMA, This Ain’t Going Away
Nov 20, 2024Tap to summarizeWe’ve been following the story of FEMA’s use of political considerations in dispensing aid in Florida after Milton. Yesterday, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell gave congressional testimony on the issue. Coverage from FOX and Washington Times. She insists this was an isolated incident but agreed to an IG investigation. Meanwhile, the fired FEMA employee did some media and insists it is widespread. There is commentary from one of the better bloggers and the Washington Times. The bottom line here is that corruption, and make no mistake this is corruption, is generally not intentional, is generally not a result of deciding to be corrupt. Rather it rides in, disguised as a good thing, and fools you into adopting it. The fired employee insists that she was just following the general directive to keep her people out of confrontational and/or dangerous situations. The directive is undeniably policy. The issue centers on the presumption, clearly made by the fired employee, and more than likely made other places, that Trump voters were under suspicion of being confrontational and/or dangerous, based simply on their support of Trump, and therefore should be avoided. The drumbeat on this issue began even before Milton came on shore. Remember, Helene hit just weeks prior and devastated Southern Appalachia, where I reside. Tales of FEMA uselessness came out of the mountains routinely in the weeks between Helene and Milton. When I could get my hands on actual data, not anecdotes, I reported it. There were local stories of confrontations between FEMA and locals, but the reports never added up entirely, not to mention the unprecedented nature of the situation made it easy to presume things weren’t going to work well for a while. What is undeniably true is that in this region, western North Carolina, East Tennessee and environs, responders have given up dealing with FEMA. Fantastic things are happening, but they are all private efforts and involve going around government agencies – especially FEMA. If there is not corruption in FEMA, there is unquestionably incompetence. It is fair to say that trying to find a Harris voter in the Helene ravaged region makes finding a needle in a haystack look easy. Not to mention, given the region’s history of moonshine making, suspicion of government runs quite high generally – suspicion that could readily turn to resentment if the government failed in a pinch, which clearly has happened. Now, let’s add into this mix the government’s general emphasis on DEI, where they prioritize “underserved” communities – a practice that is unquestionably prejudicial, just not, perhaps, on the basis of skin color. So, the agency is used to making judgments on the basis of things other than need. Criswell’s cries of “no cultural issue” ring hollow when you consider these facts. There may not be a direct culture wherein denial of service based on candidate support is true, but there is a culture wherein prejudicial judgements based on factors other than need in response to an emergency are common and a culture that places the needs of the agency’s employees ahead of the community it is intended to serve. (Avoid confrontation….) That is a culture that could easily, given the circumstances of these two hurricanes, result in precisely the corruption seen specifically in Florida and quite likely elsewhere. FEMA is the tip of the spear. As the new administration and Congress proceed, we are going to find similar things throughout the government. There is no “culture of corruption,” there is simply a culture that promotes and breeds corruption – making corruption inevitable. This will not be easy to take out of the government, there are no simple fixes. Even now, questions of “burrowing” are coming to the fore. When it comes to removing corruption that runs this deep there are always two images that come to mind. One is the undragoning of Eustace in C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece “The voyage of the Dawn Treader.” The other is from the book “Hind’s Feet in High Places” wherein the protagonist must tear out her corrupt human heart to be replaced by the heart God intends. (starting page 118.) Both images illustrate that removing corruption is deep and painful, almost beyond the ability to stand the pain. Criswell is clearly trying to avoid the very necessary pain. Seeming sacred cows are going to have to be sacrificed in the effort to truly uproot this corruption. They may not be corrupt of themselves, but they clearly breed corruption. ADDENDUM (an hour or so later): New evidence of widespread corruption in FEMA: During a House Oversight Committee hearing on an incident of anti-Trump discrimination at FEMA, a new whistleblower revealed to Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) another alleged incident of political bias involving a FEMA employee. “During the recess for votes, my staff made contact with a new whistleblower who provided a credible account that a FEMA contractor visited the home of an elderly disabled veteran’s family around October 10 following Hurricane Helene,” Comer said at the hearing. “While there, the FEMA contractor recommended that the family remove Trump campaign materials and signs from both their house and yard. He warned the family that his FEMA supervisors do not take kindly to Trump supporters and that they seem like domestic terrorists,” he continued. The post Sorry FEMA, This Ain’t Going Away appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →The Cycle of Illegality
Nov 19, 2024Tap to summarizeThe Left seems to think this is war and therefore they are justified in doing anything…anything. The Bucks County PA Board of Elections is bound and determined to count illegal votes. So much so the State Supreme Court has had to call them out reminding them they are ordered not to do so. Apparently, the University of Oklahoma is going to require DEI courses, despite the governor have ordered they not do so. Two examples, but I am sure not an exhaustive list, of the Left feeling entirely free to ignore the law. I think there are two reasons why they are so willing to do so. The first is just tit-for-tat. They look at Jan 6 as if it were representative of all on the right, which it is not, and assume “if they can, we can.” (They seem to ignore the fact that the Jan 6 malefactors were arrested, tried, jailed and/or fined.) The logic of that is simply insane. “Well, the guy that came through before me did not pay, so why should I?” But then the Left thinks in cycles, so long as the cycle begins with the other guy. How often have we heard about the “cycle of violence” in the Middle East – as if there is no blame or responsibility or right-and-wrong – there is just the cycle. The whole idea of this cyclical thinking is to avoid accountability. Which is why the other reason they feel they can do this sort of thing is even more insane. They think they are so righteous in their cause that illegality is justified. Discussions of civil disobedience are as old as the nation, older actually. To unpack it would take a huge series of posts. But that said, until very recent years it was reserved for matters of great import – whether to ignore the draft to avoid “murdering” or to obey segregation laws in the deep South. Nowadays civil disobedience is invoked because someone does not like the outcome of an election. The idea is stretched out of shape to the point of simple chaos. The true irony; however, is the element of civil disobedience that involves bearing the consequences of the illegality. The true impact of the lawbreaking is in the willingness to suffer for the cause; in being prosecuted the injustice of the situation (persecuted) is evident. But here we have a group that wants to disobey the law and then claim they are not responsible because of “the cycle.” Sorry folks, it does not work that way. What’s amazing is the insanity seems to be bottomless. In Germany, police had to break up environmental protesters at a Tesla plant. – Tesla! You know, the company that is busy saving the planet with electric vehicles. I don’t know what is more insane, protesting environmental issues with an EV company or doing so by camping in the woods which creates all sorts of litter and hygiene issues. And then there is this: Denmark has agreed on how to implement the world’s first tax on agricultural emissions, including flatulence by livestock. A cow fart tax. I can’t make a wisecrack; the absurdity speaks for itself. Closing Question Is Kamala Harris still Vice President? From the moment Joe Biden stepped aside in the election, we were lead to believe she was president-in-fact, if not in office. But now her profile is lower than it was when she was just Vice President. We’re back to watching Joe Biden get lost coming off stage. The post The Cycle of Illegality appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →Pie-In-The-Sky Science
Nov 18, 2024Tap to summarizeAccording to Sky News in Britain, the price of electricity is so high that many with lower incomes cannot afford to do their laundry. It takes a blogger to figure out that the reason energy prices are skyrocketing in Britain is trying to make electricity without carbon emissions. Oops. Science works best when it lives within the boundaries of economic reality. Somehow, in the entire climate change debate we have decided to jettison economic realities. The price tag does not seem to matter, and yet if it doesn’t, look what happens – kids go to school in filthy clothing. After decades of government trying to alleviate poverty, they seem to be creating it. For the geeky, there was a headline last week that was interesting, “Electro-biodiesel: Scientists make fuel from CO2 that’s 45x more efficient.” OK, quick tutorial – biodiesel is diesel fuel made from things like discarded cooking oil, or similar oils derived from crops, that does not involve taking crude oil from the ground and that burns a bit more efficiently in a diesel engine, producing less carbon emissions. “Electro-biodiesel” is just a way of processing the material using electricity to make it burn even more efficiently. Here’s the abstract for the original paper. Now, that’s fairly cool science, but does it matter? Two key questions to know that. 1) How much electricity does it take to make the stuff? If it takes more than you get in the diesel engine, the energy economy is all wrong. 2) Where does the electricity used to make it come from? If the electrical generation creates more carbon emissions than are saved by using the fuel in a diesel engine vehicle then the carbon economy is all wrong. Then there is the actual cost. If a gallon of electro-biodiesel costs double what a gallon of normal diesel costs, then the economy of the entire trucking industry is in ruins. As best as I can tell, none of these questions have actual answers at the moment. Papers like this come out all the time. It is how science is done. Other scientists and engineers will do the work to answer all the questions I just posed. That’s normal. What’s abnormal here is that some climate change obsessed journalist was scanning recent abstracts, saw this, and decided to put it out on the wire services as if it mattered, when clearly no one yet knows if this will lead to anything practical or not. And so, climate “activists” will latch on and start lobbying the government to throw our tax dollars at this “promising” new tech until eventually some agency throws a few million at the research just to shut the pests up and our taxes go up. The best decision maker on what is, and is not, “promising” research is the marketplace. It is time we let it work again. The post Pie-In-The-Sky Science appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →Called Upward
Nov 17, 2024Tap to summarizeI wrote on Friday of being forward looking – to building good, not just finding and correcting fault. It seems I am not alone in this assessment. Later on Friday, Imprimus landed in my inbox. This most recent issue features an address from Kevin D. Robert, President of The Heritage Foundation entitled “Populist Conservatism and Constitutional Order.” Here are some highlights in which I have added some emphasis: The top-down, elitist brand of politics that has dominated the United States since the end of the Cold War—under Republican and Democratic administrations alike—has failed. Yes, we are materially richer than we were in 1991, and our largest corporations are more profitable. But we are militarily and strategically weaker, fiscally endangered, and spiritually enervated. As a result, public trust in the vaunted institutions that our elites control—political, scientific, journalistic, educational, religious—has evaporated…. Thus the only hope for a sustainable, democratically legitimate populist reform movement today is on the Right. The question is whether the leaders of the movement can harness the highly negative energy from which the populism emerges and channel it toward a coherent, positive politics of national renewal and reform. My, but that sounds familiar. As he begins his summation and prescription for the future, Roberts says: And the institutions we need to revive—marriage and family, church and community, private enterprise and public spirit—already exist. Like flowers in a garden choked by weeds, they just need room, light, and water to grow again. Which has me thinking about the temptation that faces churches. The reform, revival and reinvigoration of church in America is most needed and a necessary part of “making America great again.” But we are tempted to focus on the negative of the past instead of building, or rebuilding, the future. Too many want to focus of “deconstructing the system” to find its faults rather than look forward to a better future. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says: Brothers and sisters, I do not regard myself as having taken hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul acknowledges that he is not perfect, but he does not dwell there, rather he endeavors to be good and to do good – to reach upward. As we head to church this Sunday morning, let us not dwell on the bad, let us, with God’s help. build the good. The post Called Upward appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →Quoth Dylan – The Times They Are A’Changin
Nov 16, 2024Tap to summarizeMy feeds are full of reporting that after this election everything is changing, like the whole world has shifted on its axis. Leading the charge is this Politco piece. Was it a temporary blip? No doubt. Presidents always drive news, and Drudge always finds it. But the site knows the audience well, meaning its post-election programming choices are also a good indication of where the emotional energy of anti-Trump America is headed: Instead of tuning in, the audiences that fueled the post-2016 resistance are checking out. A slew of other early media data points suggest the same thing. There’s more and I think it deeper than Politico suggests. Whoopi Goldberg may be in deep trouble for crying “wolf” (well, discrimination) one too many times. I declared Scientific American dead in 2020. But the zombie has continued to walk around and plague newsstands. After an epic and profane rant on election night by the magazine’s grossly politicized editor, she has resigned that post. While never said out loud, I would have to think said resignation comes as a result of enormous pressure. This is all happening too fast. It has been less than two weeks, and it seems like progressivism itself is falling apart, almost without resistance. For it to fall apart this fast there must not have been much there to begin with. Well-built buildings are almost impossible to demolish, poorly built ones fall quite rapidly. We are not seeing a movement fall apart, we are seeing a facade crumble – revealing that there is/was very little behind it. It seems that only Nancy Pelosi has missed the message that the emperor has no clothes. What historians have to figure out is how this facade came to dominate the landscape. I’ll posit a first hypothesis. They played on our compassions – they claimed victimhood and we, being decent people, wanted to help. They manipulated us and told us we were mean if we dared to confront or confound them – so we let them run amok because we did not want to be told we were mean. There are two things to consider going forward. One, progressivism is not dead it is; however, apparently going into hiding. It’ll be back. We must maintain our guard. Two, we let it go so long that we will have to be actually mean sometimes to restore order. Sometimes the child has to be spanked. Sorting Through The Pile Stories related – The fall of Scientific American cited above. Mandatory DEI statements are most common in Chemistry departments. (The head of this man holding graduate degrees in chemistry hangs low.) Students are demanding universities doing something about their climate anxiety. (Maybe they could just get over it?) But then some are suicidal after the election. (Suicide is not funny, for any reason, but the temptation to wise crack here is very strong.) Speaking of not actually funny, but you have to laugh – This. Ruh-Roh. Florida Attorney General Sues FEMA Director For Allegedly Discriminating Against Trump Supporters. More coverage here. Settle quickly and disband the agency. This stain is not coming out. In the wake of such gross discrimination in the US, an ancient and very ugly one continues to raise its head in Europe. Europe led the charge into this progressive nightmare that we are rapidly trying to shed. Note where it leads, and keep shedding. The post Quoth Dylan – The Times They Are A’Changin appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →Fighting Against Is A Loser, Fighting For Is How To Win
Nov 15, 2024Tap to summarizeThis: Three people were indicted on federal charges that accuse them of staging a cross-burning to generate support for a Black mayoral candidate in Colorado Springs in what prosecutors described as a hate-crime hoax. We “fight hate” a lot in this country, but the fight has not produced anything positive. If anything, it has increased resentment, and here we see it has engendered fraud. Here’s the problem with fighting, destroying, hate – it leaves a vacuum. Something is going to rush in to fill it. Fighting hate is not a bad thing, assuming there is actual hate involved, but you have to put something positive in its place. Too often fighting hate turns into hating hate, which means hate has won the day. You cannot beat hatred with hatred. I travelled yesterday and while at my local airport in East Tennessee ran into a gentleman sporting a lot of LA Dodgers swag, which began a conversation. He was in the area establishing a relationship with a realtor because he wanted out of Southern California. He had a lot negative to say about California, as do all of us who have made the exodus do. But he knew little about East Tennessee – he just wanted out. I recalled moves I have made in the past that were necessary, but not sought; where the destination was necessary, but not a matter of desire. I did not enjoy them. One needs to go somewhere, not just leave where they are. We spend too much time in this nation combatting the bad, but not near enough creating the good. Our politics, on both sides of the aisle, has become consumed with battling what each side views as the wrong or evil. But in the fight, we have lost sight of what we are fighting for; we seem only to know what we are fighting against. Trump’s election is reactionary. The loudest message from it is a rejection of the Biden/Harris administration and the pandemic that set it up. Trump’s first electoral victory was likewise reactionary, primarily against Hillary Clinton. His ascension within the party is based in no small part on his willingness to name and decry what is wrong in The Democratic Party. Trump’s early appointments, with one notable exception, are good to excellent. But they are, for the most part, aimed at purging the gross abuses from the government. This is a necessary task, but it is only the beginning. The challenge for this administration is the question of what comes after the purge? What will they build to replace that which is purged, to ensure that the abuses do not return in the next administration? Trump is a developer; he is used to demolition before construction. That requires a vision. He has successfully capitalized on the fight to regain the White House. Now that he is there, the time has come to articulate his vision for what comes after. I look forward to hearing about it. The post Fighting Against Is A Loser, Fighting For Is How To Win appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →The Corruption is Very Deep
Nov 14, 2024Tap to summarizeTwo stories of government amok continue to resonate, continue to demonstrate just how massive is the task before us – Peanut the Squirrel and the FEMA discriminatory practices. New details have emerged. Little publicized – Peanut did NOT have rabies. Please recall, rabies was the reason cited for the animal’s destruction, so I did a deep dive into the necessity of such. This is purely a procedural thing. The only 100% reliable way to test for rabies is to destroy the animal and test its brain tissue. However, blood tests combined with behavioral observation is generally considered reliable in household pets. (With wild animals there is no control information against which to compare behavioral observations.) Regulations vary significantly by jurisdiction. In the end Peanut’s mandated immediate destruction lies in his designation as a wild animal – a designation made in spite of the fact that there is ample video evidence that the squirrel was effectively a pet – the “wild animal” designation made out of habit, not reality. (Not to mention the distinct possibility of retribution since Peanut did bite one of the officials.) The Peanut case is a case of a bureaucracy being too bureaucratic. The wheels crank without thought or judgement – as if the animal, and the lives of the animal’s keepers, were destroyed by a machine. It is a story of the absence of humanity where it should have been present. This is a tale as old as man has organized. But the FEMA story is quite different. The fired FEMA employee has gone public, and she is claiming, as I suspected from the outset, that she is being scapegoated for much wider behavior in the agency: According to the recently disgraced Washington, “FEMA preaches avoidance” of potentially contentious situations. And, supposedly, Trump supporters are disproportionately responsible for fomenting such situations. Washington said her team had encountered “political hostility” from those in homes with “Trump campaign signage,” but nevertheless insisted that agency guidance is — and her own determination was — about safety, not political targeting. Another former FEMA employee also told The Post that the processes that led to Washington’s discriminatory action are systemic — and that the bias against Trump supporters dated back years, sometimes justified as part of an effort to serve “marginalized” communities first. Let’s conduct a thought experiment. The inevitable “Big One” hits Southern California, leaving South Central LA in ruins. The predominantly African American area is covered in gang-related graffiti and quite prone to street violence. Firearms are plentiful. Therefore, FEMA decides to avoid it out of “an abundance of caution.” How loud would be the protests? How massive would be the outcry? But that blatant discrimination is an issue for the media that is clearly going along with the FEMA efforts at cover-up. But to hide behind “safety” as an excuse for political targeting is just pure bull manure, as is the whole “marginalized community” thing. To the extent that this is discussed at all, I fear the discussion will bog down in the excuses, missing the thread. I fear all this will cloud what is a clear-cut issue – political targeting was practiced, regardless of the reasons, er excuses. That is banana republic stuff and there is no excuse. At a minimum, the federal agencies have lost the thread of what they are supposed to be about. Even in the highly unlikely event that this was an isolated incident (just the only one where the abuse is in writing) the agency is complicit by enacting policies that enabled it and in failing to train their people that political targeting for any reason was forbidden. The agencies responsible for the seizure and destruction of Peanut should compensate, in significant amounts, the squirrel’s keepers for their loss of income and affection. They should issue a public apology and undergo a very public process of reform – restoring the humanity to the bureaucratic machine. FEMA is a very different story. Investigations should be convened in both the Senate and the House as soon as the new Congress is seated and the appropriate committees identified. In all likelihood, those investigations should recommend the agency be disbanded and its mission returned to DHS for management by new means. The FEMA administrator is a Senate confirmed, political appointment. That needs to be rethought. Any agency that might replace it needs to be completely scrubbed of political considerations. Something is rotten in the heart of government. It needs to be removed. FEMA may be the starting point, but it is not the end game. The post The Corruption is Very Deep appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →There is No Such Thing as a Political Rerun
Nov 13, 2024Tap to summarizeWe watch movies over and over and over again. On free streaming TV there are channels that do nothing but play all the episodes of a given old TV show on a continuous loop. Some shows (e.g. Law and Order — The Andy Griffith Show) seem always available on broadcast TV. When it is done well, we love a rerun. But there is no such thing as a political rerun. This Trump campaign looked very different than the last, which was very different than the one before it. This Trump transition is already, just days into it, radically different than the last one. Yet so many in media and the commentariat seem to think this is a rerun. I have, in the last few days, seen way too many Trump hit pieces that are remarkably similar to what we saw four-to-eight short years ago. The host thinks legacy media dead. Rerunning the old tired anti-Trump nonsense is a way certain to guarantee it. First of all, Trump is a “learning machine.” That is a term the host coined long ago regarding Trump’s antithesis – Mitt Romney. But they both share this trait in common. They both rarely repeat a mistake. Trump is not going to give his opposition the same ammunition they had last time. Secondly, Trump has the wind at his back. In 2016 he won the electoral college, but lost the popular vote. Republicans lost seats in both the House and Senate, while maintaining a majority. In this election Trump won the popular vote overwhelmingly, flipped the Senate from D to R and looks poised to gain seats in the House. Trump has a mandate this time – last time his position was very weak. Finally, media has blown their credibility. They have grossly misrepresented reality, if not outright lied. Media reruns are not going anywhere during this administration. People are not listening. The walls of that particular silo are now very, very thick. The only people paying any attention are those in the silo with them. There is a thesis that Chernobyl killed the Soviet Union because it was an event of such scale and consequence that the Soviet government could not control the information flow and maintain the illusion of functionality. I think that in the not-too-distant future, historians will say something similar about covid. It was a grand illusion. Trump’s return is a message to media (and the Administrative State), “We may have fallen for it in 2020, but we are wise to your game now. We are not playing anymore.” Trump’s job is, in large part, to restore American confidence in its government. The roll out is going exceptionally well, which is a great first step to restoring that confidence. Confidence in legacy media is even lower than it is in government. They can reclaim it or die. The post There is No Such Thing as a Political Rerun appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
Transcribe →Florida Senator Rick Scott On His Big Re-election Win And Run For Majority Leader
Nov 12, 2024Tap to summarizeSenator Rick Scott of Florida joined me this morning. Senator Scott, like Senators Cornyn and Thune, are longtime friends and great conservatives. The GOP will be led well by whomever succeeds Leader McConnell: Audio: 11-12hhs-scott Transcript: HH: Someday, Democrats are going to learn. You can’t beat Ted Cruz in Texas, and you cannot beat Rick Scott in Florida. He joins me now. Rick Scott, congratulations on your reelection, and handy reelection. They poured a lot of money into trying to beat you. What was the final margin, Senator? RS: 1.4 million votes. HH: (laughing) RS: I won Miami-Dade by 10 points, won Osceola, which is the Puerto Rican majority county. We won the county that Tampa’s in. We won the county that St. Pete’s in. We won the county that Jacksonville’s in, and of course, we won Miami big. So 5.9 million votes. You know, we are, Florida is the center of the Republican Party in America, and look, everybody from Florida is getting appointed. HH: You know, Senator, I want to point out that you ran for governor twice. They tried to knock you off. This is your second run for senator. I don’t know how much money’s been spent against you, but do you think they’ll give up now? RS: I think they should give up on Florida. I bet they spent $300 million dollars against me. HH: Yeah, it’s crazy. It’s like you and Cruz. You bankrupted the Democratic Party. So Senator, let’s talk about tomorrow. I’ve had John Thune on. If John Cornyn calls, all three of you guys are great friends of mine and to the program. RS: Yeah. HH: Why are you running for leader? RS: Well, I’m running because I think we have to have, you know, a dramatic change. We’ve got to get the Trump agenda accomplished. I’m a business guy. I know how to get things done. I talked to my colleagues. They know that we have to have big change. They want to get treated as equals. They want us to have an agenda. They want to be part of a team. They know I’ve got a great working relationship with Donald Trump and with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. And I’m a business guy. Business guy. What do you do? You have a purpose, you build a team, you write a plan, you made your living…and guess what? You have success. So I think that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to have success. We’ve got to get this stuff done. HH: You know, the business plan thing. Can I pause on that, becusae I’ve been trying to explain the budget and reconciliation process to people. Would you explain it to them? We get 100 days, and we get one budget reconciliation this year, and it’s got to be big. What would you imagine for it? RS: Well, first off, you’ve got to revamp, we’ve got to, you know, reduce taxes. I mean, our taxes are too big. And you’ve got to change the size of government. We are spending 40% more than we take in. Our taxes are too high. I cut taxes, by the way, every year as governor. I cut taxes and fees 100 times. Guess what? My revenues went up. The economy got better. So what we’ve got to think about is how do we get people back to work? How do we reduce the cost of living for people? I mean, I just tell you, people are struggling. I mean, I stopped at a restaurant the other day to grab a sandwich, and a young lady said look, Governor, I moved when you were governor, and I could afford it. And she says I can’t afford to live here anymore. Everything’s gotten too expensive. You’ve got to fix this. That’s going to take dramatic change. And so what we’ve got to do is we’ve got to pass a budget, and we’ve got to get, we have to stop and say to ourselves why do we do, like why do we have the Department of Education? Why is the federal government involved in so many agencies? It’s so many things. Why do we, if they want to run everything, why do we have our states? I believe in states’ rights. I believe our governors and their legislatures ought to be responsible for education and so many things that the federal government has gotten involved in. and what they’ve done is all they do, is bog everything down. You can’t get a permit. You’ve got to, they’re telling you how to run your life. This is easy. That’s why we have our states. That’s how this was set up. So it’s the United States of America. It’s not the federal government of America. HH: Senator, I believe that the Spending Clause would support conditioning federal education dollars on every state that receives them, that wants them, implementing a school choice program at least as robust as Florida and Arizona’s, and West Virginia’s and Ohio. I mean, there’s a standard. We can’t mandate the end of public schools, but certainly, do you think reconciliation could support that kind of a requirement on education spending? RS: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. What we’ve got to do is we’ve got to say what can we do, and don’t be shy. I mean, listen, we should do everything we can do. We have, there are so many things we have to do. We have to have a military that scares the crap out of our enemies. We’ve got to balance our budget. We can balance the budget. Guess what? I balanced the budget when I was governor. Florida had not balanced its budget in 20 years before I became governor. I balanced the budget when I was in business. How do you do it? You say this is what my revenues are going to be, I’m not spending more than that. It’s not that hard. But you have to create a process for everything you want to get done. So we know, we know we have to get a budget done. We know we have to do reconciliation. Let’s go to the, when do we have to have these things done? Let’s move backwards. Who’s going to be responsible? What’s our timeline? What’s our measurement? And then do it. We’ve got to get the Trump agenda accomplished. We’ve got to get these judges in. We’ve got to get his nominees done. We’ve got to, this is not for the faint of heart. This is for somebody that wants to bust their butt every day to get this done. HH: Now Senator Cornyn put out, and you retweeted, and I’m sure Senator Thune agrees, around the clock – 24/7, 365 to get Donald Trump his nominees, because we cannot have a replay of 2017. Can you explain that to people? RS: Yeah. Well, here’s our schedule. I was shocked when I came up here. Here’s the schedule since I’ve been up here for six years, okay? And we have a vote at 5:30. We don’t know what we’re voting on, by the way, until generally Monday morning. We don’t know what we’re voting on, but 5:30, we’re going to have a vote at night. And then we leave here at 1:45 on Thursday. Now the Senate is a process. It takes so many days to do each thing we do. So the only way we’re going to get this done is if we commit to be here. That means, I think, for the first whatever time it takes, if it’s the first 100 days, if it’s the first 200 days. We should be here every day. We should be here every day, and get everything done. If the Democrats want to slow everything down, which that’s what they’ve done, that’s what they did with Trump the first time, if they want to slow it down, then they’re going to have to be here every day to do it, because we’re, my belief is let’s stay here until we get his nominees done, until we get reconciliation done. Let’s get all this done now. We know, we know this country has to be saved. Donald Trump, he ran on a campaign to do these things. We’ve got to have, we’ve got to have a leader and a Republican party up here that does it. HH: Now Senator, I want to get deep in the weeds with a potential majority leader. The blue slip process is the blue slip process. It’s never going to change. But I do believe, California hasn’t had a good district court judge nominated during a Republican presidency for as long as I can remember. I do believe in nominating a bunch of people and appointing them for one year, and then they can retire. You can find retired partners. You can find retired judges to put up there, nominate, go into recess, and recess appointment them for a year. Is that legit in your view? RS: Well, what Donald Trump has asked is would people support a recess appointments who are non-judicial. I actually believe that we can get judicial nominees done, because here’s the deal. The blue slip process works as long as people are respective of it. If you just say oh, I’m not even going to talk to you… HH: Well, that’s the California senators. They wouldn’t even talk to the Leader and the Republicans when Donald Trump was… RS: Then what you have to say is the blue slip process doesn’t work. What this is, is the only way it works is if, you know, when there’s a Democrat president, Republicans works to try to find a good judge. When the Democrats there, or a Republican, Democrats have to work. If they don’t, the blue slip process doesn’t work. You can’t have a process that just is used to completely stop the appointment of judges. The president has the right to appoint judges. HH: Well said, or to nominate them, and they get a vote. Let me conclude by this, and Senator Thune spoke to it. No matter who wins, do you think the 53 will come together? RS: I hope so. But we’ve got, when I say come together, though, we’ve got to come together on the Trump agenda. We’ve got to come together on getting nominees done. You know, this idea that we’re going to work two-and-half days a week is crazy. This idea that we’re going to be, you know, we’re not going to bust our butts every day for the Trump agenda, if that’s, it depends. It all comes down to, and I think hopefully, whoever wins, they will understand we have got to have big change. I’m running, and as you know, I ran two years ago, because this has got to change. HH: Now I’ve got to get a quick q...
Transcribe →The Sickness In The Heart of America.
Nov 12, 2024Tap to summarizePresident-Elect Trump is making great appointments at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, the usual suspects are getting set up to oppose every breathe he takes. That’s politics. What’s not politics as usual is the people that are experiencing genuine deep emotional distress as a result of the election, and people who are supposed to help with our mental health, breaking up family support systems. Elections are elections, politics is politics, but there is something much deeper wrong here. The signs of issues on a soul rending level are even deeper. Yesterday we looked at the deep and inhumane corruptions inside FEMA. Something has to be very wrong in the soul of people who withhold assistance from those in deep need for the sake of political advantage. Then there is what happened in Amsterdam last weekend. It is nothing less than the return of the greatest evil to visit the West in the last 150 years. Andrew C. McCarthy’s piece of this last Saturday is a must read on that on a political level – it is a result of the importation of jihad. Something went wrong in the governments of Europe to permit it, but then such has gone wrong there before. But it is coming here, as well. From the “pro-Palestinian” protests of recent times, protests that threatened Jewish students on campuses around the land, to the vandalism of Jewish institutions, we are seeing it. This situation, wherein government is corrupt, and hatred goes public and gets organized, has developed amongst claims of “compassion” and “diversity.” Somehow good has become bad. Evil has wrapped itself in sanctimonious clothing and we have let it in. That’s not about politics. We are lost on levels that politics simply cannot address. The election just past is not the answer to what ails us, rather it is the removal of obstacles to that answer asserting itself. I have no idea of Trump’s faith status. He has alluded to Norman Vincent Peale, but without deep commitment. His personal behavior is, at times, quite the opposite of traditional Christian practice. He does not speak “Christianese.” But he also understands the value of faith at work in the nation. Even if he does not hold it to his heart, he will not oppose it in action – which makes him radically different than the outgoing administration. If we really want to fix what ails us, we cannot sit back and count on the government to fix it because the government cannot address the kind of sickness so deep in the culture. Nor are the “culture wars” of the last few decades the answer – if they were, we would not be here now. The church needs to become very active, but in a whole new way. We don’t need to engage in issues, we need to engage with people. Which takes me back to what I wrote on Sunday. “I pray for the necessary compassion to bring healing where there is hurt.” Let’s start there. The post The Sickness In The Heart of America. appeared first on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
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