Given all of the drama surrounding it, the hush money prosecution of Donald Trump has quickly become a metaphor for the seeming penchant of progressive officeholders to indulge their ideologies even at the expense of principle and precedent.
If Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s Trump caper was really only about vindicating New York’s public interest in having business expenses honestly reported, he would have satisfied himself with enforcing the relevant New York law as written, which assigned to false business reporting the gravity of a misdemeanor. He would not, as he reportedly did, scrounge around for a novel way to artificially enhance Trump’s exposure. He would not have taken to claiming the alleged false reporting, though technically a misdemeanor, was really part of a larger plot to feloniously violate a federal election law, which although a stretch, is a possible loophole in the New York law.
Problem is, though, that Bragg, as the Manhattan DA, ordinarily has no responsibility for the enforcement of federal election law, and the federal officials who did have such responsibility had failed to charge Trump with any violations.
Did the Manhattan DA here succumb to the progressive mantra as he did in his emasculating of workaday law enforcement in Manhattan? If he did, he would not be the first to do so. Here are some illustrative examples.
Federal officials have long been notorious in inducing banks and lending institutions to make loans out of the normal course to minority borrowers with questionable ability to repay. A classic example was the effort by Pres. Clinton’s HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros’s efforts to loosen mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans. The economic woes that followed were epic.
More recently, the failures of the Silicon Valley Bank and others are increasingly being blamed on their government-pressured focus on its ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) agenda. It was an agenda that promoted workplace diversity and environmentally and socially conscious investments and targets that often were inconsistent with the traditional and logical goal of making as much money as possible for stockholder and depositors.
Is noteworthy that attorneys general from 21 states across the country are suing the Biden administration to stop it from risking workers’ retirement funds by promoting woke ESG goals. It seems that a new U.S. Department of Labor rule prioritizes woke ESG investing over protecting the retirement savings of approximately two-thirds of the U.S. population. (The rule authorizes nominal fiduciaries to consider non-financial factors when administering trust assets.)
Seemingly without much regard for the sensitivities of the nations with which we interact around the world, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby has recently taken to declaring that “LGBT rights are…a core part of our foreign policy.” (Including allowing transgenderism as a condition of foreign aid?)
And then there was last week’s testimony by the Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland before the House Appropriations Committee in which she admitted that the U.S. climate agenda – which includes restrictions on domestic fuel production – is strengthening China. Of course, we who have followed the career of the Biden administration’s climate envoy have been able to figure it out for ourselves.
We had better start appreciating that paying attention to some will of the ills of the past cannot be allowed to crowd out dealing with the pressing dynamics of the present – except at our peril.
