Monthly Archives: April 2018

Progressive-Democratic Party Intransigence

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Leaving aside Senator Rand Paul’s (R, KY) obstructiveness, the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators are opposing, as a bloc, Mike Pompeo’s confirmation as Secretary of State.  As The Wall Street Journal put it Wednesday,

Their new standard seems to be that any nominee who agrees with the elected President is disqualified.

And

What a message that would send to America’s enemies as President Trump prepares for his North Korea summit, decides on the fate of the Iran nuclear deal, and confronts a hostile Russia. Democrats say they don’t trust Mr Trump, but in denying him senior advisers they make it more likely he will govern by himself. Mark it down as one more example that hatred for Mr Trump has caused many of his opponents to abandon rational judgment.

However, in this sort of case, I think the WSJ‘s angst is overwrought and the Progressive-Democrats’ intransigence not so effective.  There are serious requirements for having an actual, sitting Secretary of State. However, Trump can get his advice from whomever he chooses; he doesn’t need formally sitting Cabinet members. He also can get folks who represent him to other nations from anywhere he wants. Advice and such representatives are what kitchen cabinets—a Progressive-Democratic Party invention—are for.

It Still Is

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The Supreme Court is hearing a case, South Dakota v Wayfair Inc, wherein South Dakota is looking to overturn a generation-old ruling that exempts out of state retailers from State sales taxes unless the retailers also have a physical presence in the State.  I wrote about one aspect of the matter here among other places.

Here’s another, more critical aspect of the matter [emphasis added].

In a 1992 mail-order catalog case [Quill Corp v North Dakota], the court held that, absent congressional approval, states could impose tax-collection duties only on retailers with a “physical presence” within their borders. Congress, with its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, was the place to balance state revenue needs with burdens on business, the court said at the time.

Congress still is the place for such a decision.  This is a political matter, not a judicial one, and the Supremes, by overturning their “precedent”—which was nothing more than a recognition of who has law-making authority and who has only law-applying authority—would be usurping law-making authority to themselves.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there.  South Dakota’s Attorney General, Marty Jackley, argued with a straight face that

the states—45 impose sales taxes, and nearly all support South Dakota’s case—wouldn’t make draconian demands of remote sellers….

Never mind that it’s already draconian to demand that retailers pay taxes they don’t owe.

And this from our favorite Living Constitution Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg:

If time and changing conditions have rendered it obsolete, why should the court, which created the doctrine say, “Well, we’ll let Congress fix up what turns out to be our obsolete precedent?”

Except for the small matter that the Court didn’t create this “doctrine,” our Constitution did.  That document says, in so many words, that all law-making authority resides in the Congress and nowhere else, and it says further that regulation of interstate commerce is one of the enumerated tasks of that same Congress and not any business of the judiciary.

Nonsense

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Germany wants to be excused from American sanctions against Russia, sanctions that were imposed over Russia’s misbehaviors.  The misbehaviors include meddling in our elections, and Russia’s continued efforts to meddle in our upcoming elections.

Germany does a lot of business with Russia. Trade between the two countries rose to €54.5 billion ($67.4 billion) last year from €45 billion in 2016, despite increasingly stringent sanctions, and German companies have invested more than €20 billion in Russia in recent years.

This is nonsense.  And Germany plainly has been sidestepping existing sanctions right along.  The desire to be excused stems more from Germany’s choosing to be hostage to Russian oil and natural gas supplies than anything else.  Germany’s voluntary hostage status is accelerating through its support for a natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea that would run directly from Russia to Germany.

No, the sanctions are intended to hold Russia to account for its misbehaviors, to punish Russia for them.  No punishment occurs if exceptions are given out over this or that excuse or for any reason at all.  Sanctions may well be inconvenient for some entities other than the target, and that’s unfortunate.  Nevertheless, Germany needs to shape up and stop masquerading itself as victim.

“Support the Troops”

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Maj ML Cavanaugh, Nonresident Fellow at West Point’s Modern War Institute, had an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal demurring from Alphabet’s Google’s (a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet) employee’s objection to Alphabet’s working with DoD on a major artificial intelligence project: such work would “irreparably damage Google’s brand” they argue because military.  Cavanaugh suggested that, on the contrary, such mutual work was to the net good, falling behind our enemies on AI could well be fatal to us, DoD should work to expand Defense/tech company interaction, and so on.

Then he closed his piece with this hopeful claim.

Silicon Valley and the US military share compelling interests, and in the end they’re on the same side.

Are they on the same side? With Alphabet’s and Facebook’s repeated anti-democratic copying of personal information, coupled with their deliberately convoluted and incomplete instructions on how individuals can manage parts of their personal information, and now Alphabet’s apparent disdain for the US being able to defend itself, I’m not at all sure that’s accurate.  Especially with Alphabet having already signed a contract with the People’s Republic of China to work on…artificial intelligence.

A Judicial Miss

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Recall the Marquette University case wherein a graduate-student instructor, Cheryl Abbate, shut down debate on the subject of gay marriage, arguing that views that didn’t accept such things were “homophobic and unwelcome in her classroom.”  Tenured Political Science Professor John McAdams objected, in blunt terms, to the evident bigotry demonstrated by Abbate in a personal post on his personal blog.  Marquette disciplined him for disagreeing—that’s a violation of Marquette “speech” policy.  McAdams demurred and took Marquette to court.

Milwaukee County Circuit judge sided with the university. The judge, David Hansher, wrote that academic freedom “does not mean that a faculty member can harass, threaten, intimidate, ridicule, or impose his or her views on students.”

And yet, that’s exactly what the graduate-student instructor was doing. Hansher needed to pay actual attention to the facts of the matter.