Editor’s note: The powers that be at WND.com have told Michael Ackley he may submit the occasional column. As Golden State madness has accelerated in the endless election season, Mr. Ackley has succumbed to the urge to get back in the game. Hence, the items below. Remember that his columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell the difference.
If President Biden’s student-debt forgiveness plan had stood, America really would have been in its end times.
We would have forgotten the admonition of Benjamin Franklin: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Sell not liberty to purchase power.”
During the controversy, I did not read or hear the words most clearly characterizing the Biden “debt relief” plan: “GIFT OF PUBLIC FUNDS.”
Where in the U.S. Constitution is there authorization for the president to give away so much as a dollar from the public purse, let alone billions of dollars?
The Biden plan was as naked and cynical a plan to purchase power at the cost of liberty as we are likely to see.
Buried in the verbiage of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion of June 30 is this sentence: “The question here is not whether something should be done; it is who has the authority to do it.”
In the court’s minority dissent, Justice Elena Kagan writes that “the majority’s justifications turn standing law from a pillar of a restrained judiciary into nothing more than ‘a lawyer’s game.'”
Well, it’s all a “lawyer’s game,” and both sides play it very well. What they cannot escape is the fact that the president’s planned “debt relief” would have been a gift of public funds unauthorized by the Constitution or by legislation.
As for the individuals who took on those college loans, it would be well to recall the words of President Calvin Coolidge, when European nations complained of their World War I debt: “They hired the money, didn’t they?”
And it would be well to recall again Benjamin Franklin’s wisdom about the moral strength of a populace that thinks it can vote itself money.
Governor wannabe: Speculation about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s presidential ambitions obscures the worrisome specter of the state’s attorney general.
Rob Bonta, who is even more “progressive” than Newsom, has been waging a relentless public relations campaign to publicize his statist wishes.
Bonta likes to threaten lawsuits before he has a cause of action, menacing people and institutions who “might” – in his view – do wrong.
For example, he threatened to sue municipalities adopting “safe neighborhood” ordinances. Such anti-crime measures better not threaten the “justice involved,” he said. This could be read, “crime involved.” The AG, apparently comfortable with an implicit insult, blithely links such people with “minorities.”
Now Bonta has weighed in on the Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action in college admissions. He writes, “I am deeply disappointed about the potential impact on ongoing efforts to create inclusive learning environments.”
From this we may deduce that Bonta, of Philippine extraction, wishes to maintain “learning environments” that don’t include too many Asian Americans.
Bonta also has signed onto the transgender madness, joining in an amicus brief backing a Massachusetts school district that wants to keep parents in the dark about the trans grooming of their children.
He says that the district’s policy “balances parents’ involvement in their child’s education with the recognition that not all families are supportive, and not all students are open about their gender identity at home.”
At the same time, he says “transgender students are exposed to high levels of harassment and mistreatment at school.” Thus, one may conclude that Bonta thinks it is OK to have trans kids harassed at school, but not counseled at home.
Meanwhile, Bonta continues to flap about the shipment of illegal aliens from Florida to California.
He declares, “We won’t stand by as people are used for cheap political stunts.”
But it seems that, as a good Democrat, the AG must approve the importation of illegal aliens to further cynical, political goals. And there’s nothing cheap about that.
Crime and punishment: Leslie Van Houtan, the Manson Family murderer who was serving seven-years-to-life in prison, is no longer behind bars.
Her attorney, Nancy Tetreault, said, “I understand why … the family members of the victims feel emotional about this and want retribution, but that’s not the law. The law says she has the right to achieve parole if she meets the standard, and the standard is that she no longer poses a danger to society.”
Well, there’s a lawyer’s game for you. Van Houtan’s punishment wasn’t about retribution; it was about justice. There is no justice in her release.
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