Monthly Archives: February 2018

A Bit of Federal Funding

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The Trump administration said it would prioritize grant applications to the Title X family-planning program that come from organizations with a religious background and counsel abstinence or “natural” methods, a move abortion providers said will make it harder for them to get federal funding.

Health officials outlined the new rules Friday in announcing a fresh round of funding for Title X, which pays for services like contraception and infertility treatment.

What’s the downside of that?  The only one I can see, and it is a serious one, is the deemphasis on contraceptives and birth control counseling.  But making it harder for abortion providers to get our taxpayer money?  Nothing wrong with that.

Unnecessary

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The Treasury Department wants to keep Dodd-Frank’s “orderly liquidation” power, albeit with “tweaks.”  The authority was designed so the Federal government could take those financial institutions the government itself decided were “systemically important” and shut them down if the same government, in sequence with that SI claim, decided the business was not performing up to government-dictated standards.

That’s a lot of “decides” in government hands.  It also deliberately bypasses existing bankruptcy law that has done a fine job with business failures generally and would do a fine job with financial institutions in particular, were government not putting itself in the way.

To be sure, Treasury claims to want

…changes to the bankruptcy code to make it easier for such a failure to be resolved in bankruptcy court….

To my cynical mind, though, that just sounds like a distraction in order to slide by the continuation of Government control over decisions concerning whether a business is sound enough to operate and if not, Government control over the terms of the business’ demise.

No.

Dodd-Frank needs to be rescinded in toto, including both “systemically important” determinations and control over bankruptcy procedures.

It may be that existing bankruptcy law needs improvement, but that’s a separate question, and it should not be mixed in with Dodd-Frank legitimacy questions.

Shootings and Schools

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One answer to school shootings is to maintain our schools and school grounds as gun free zones and thereby keep our children exposed to the risk of butchery.

Another answer is to have government limit who is allowed to have guns in our nation and determine the purpose for which we’ll be allowed to have them and thereby, in addition to keeping our children exposed to the risk of butchery, exposing our families and ourselves to that risk.

Another answer is to train and arm school personnel.

Butler County [Ohio] Sheriff Richard Jones wrote on Twitter on Sunday that he will offer a concealed and a carry class, along with training on school shootings.

Jones added

We can’t be like ostriches and have our heads in the sand. We’ve got to protect the kids, period.

Jones is right.  We can’t wish our individual responsibilities or our parental responsibilities off onto government.  Our children are not wards of the state, and neither are we.

Consider: how many of those 17 murdered children in Parkland would be alive today had there been someone or someones on scene and able to shoot the shooter?  How many of those many injured would be unharmed today had there been someone or someones on scene and able to shoot the shooter?

The gun control persons of the Left don’t care about that.  They just want the ego-stroke of being able to tell other people what to do and not do.  The Progressive-Democrats in Congress don’t care, either; they’re just virtue signaling.  Dead children don’t mean any more to them than vote harvesting machines.

A Satirical Paean to the CFPB

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Todd Zywicki, a professor at George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, has written one for The Wall Street Journal.

Yet despite its rocky start, the original promise of the CFPB is sound: to protect and empower consumers, promote fair and competitive markets, and stabilize the financial system.

At least, I hope it’s satirical; it’s hard to believe that Zywicki could be this naive.  Some examples:

Working with the private sector and Congress to reverse this growing exclusion of Americans from the financial sector is a moral imperative.

To turn Herb Croly’s words around a bit, the average Federal bureaucrat is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.  The private sector needs no Congressional or bureaucratic organization to function inclusively; it needs only a free market unhindered by bureaucrats’ intrusions.

The bureau can help unleash the power of FinTech by invigorating dormant tools like the no-action letter program and Project Catalyst….

Sure—the bureaucracy should do better by pushing other bureaucracies. Gotta be satirical, right?  Right?

The CFPB should concentrate its efforts on empowering families….

[Sigh]  Not by differently purposing an intruding a bureaucracy, but by getting rid of it.  Sounds like Zywicki was serious rather than satirical.

The CFPB must go.

Trusting Russia on Ukraine

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The US and Russia, along with NATO and Ukrainian officials, talked about setting up a peace-keeping force to get and maintain peace in Ukraine.  Interestingly, that force would be placed along the front that separates the Russian and rebel-held eastern Ukraine from the rest of the nation instead of being on the Ukrainian border with Russia.  The proposal also carefully ignored the status of Russia-occupied Crimea.  A US counterproposal, offered by the US’ chief negotiator, Kurt Volker, suggested that the force should include, also, that border—not instead of the front—while still ignoring Crimea.

During a panel discussion held by a number of former US diplomats that included Mike McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia and Volker, McFaul asked Volker

Tell us why the factors are different in this particular case that would lead to a different scenario than a permanent division that we have in Cyprus[.]

Volker’s answer?

Mr Volker said the peacekeeping plan would only work if both the Ukrainians and Russians want peace.

Who’s definition of “peace?”  Russia doesn’t want peace except on occupation of eastern Ukraine, retention of Crimea, and control over rump Ukraine.

Volker is a rabbit remonstrating with a Russian bear. Volker thinks the Russian ways are wrong. Russia thinks Volker is lunch. He’s embarrassing us.