Monthly Archives: July 2018

A Thought on Auto Tariffs

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board is worried about auto tariffs.  They do make a fair case concerning the national security aspect of our automobile industry (while eliding the fact that industry includes many more car companies than just GM, Ford, and Chrysler—and that none of them manufacture cars in the US, while all of them assemble cars in the US from imported parts).

They weaken, fatally IMNSHO, their argument, though, when they present only one aspect of the case for/against auto tariffs or the threat of significant increases in already extant auto tariffs.  In particular, the Editorial Board has carefully elided the fact that the Trump administration and German auto manufacturers have agreed in principle to a no-auto-tariff-at-all regime.

Now it’s on the German government and Brussels to agree.  It’s likely, although not certain, that plans to impose a 20% tariff on auto imports from the EU had an impact in moving the German companies toward eliminating tariffs altogether.

A no-auto-tariff regime also would render the security beef moot, but some folks on the Left don’t want that.

Facebook Strikes Again

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Facebook, for a while, decided that our Declaration of Independence was filled with hate speech.  In particular, Facebook decided that

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions[]

which closed the list of Facts our nascent nation submitted to a candid world

goes against our [Facebook’s] standards on hate speech.

Facebook then threatened The Washington Times, which had been posting to its Facebook account successive parts of our Declaration leading up to our Independence Day celebration—which was to have included that hateful passage—with the loss of its Facebook account.

Facebook’s algorithm did it.  That’s the company’s story, and apparently they’re sticking to it.

It’s true enough that Facebook later reposted the censored passage and…apologized…for the “error.”

That, though, does not alter the simple fact that Zuckerberg’s minions, hiding behind that algorithm—which Zuckerberg’s IT experts had carefully programmed—had committed this act of censorship of our Declaration of Independence.

Nor does it alter the simple fact that Zuckerberg and his minions waited to restore the censored passage until after they’d been publicly called on their misbehavior.  They did not proactively, on their own initiative, undo their misbehavior.

This is free speech, Left style.  Not even our founding documents can be posted without a struggle today.  Just like when they first were published.

The Case Against Brett Kavanaugh

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The writer JD Vance, this time in The Wall Street Journal, has made a strong case for Brett Kavanaugh, a judge on the DC Circuit, being nominated for the Supreme Court.

He is a committed textualist and originalist, one whose time on the bench has revealed a unique ability to apply these principles to legal facts. He deeply believes in the constitutional separation of powers as a means for ensuring governmental accountability and protecting individual liberty.

And

…Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions have been adopted by the Justices 11 times—a record of influence and persuasion that suggests he would be effective on the still-divided high court.

I disagree, though.  Ex-President Barack Obama (D) stacked the DC Circuit with a number of “liberal,” activist judges.  Kavanaugh is more valuable, say I, staying on the DC Circuit, where he can apply those qualities in counterbalancing that liberally stacked court.  He still will have, from there, the influence on the Supreme Court and on our jurisprudence generally that he already has.

There are a number of other judges with the same talents, skills, and understanding of and appreciation for our Constitution, its text, and the text of our laws.  Any of those would make excellent choices for the Supreme Court.

It’s true enough that any of those also would make excellent choices for backfilling Kavanaugh should he depart for the Supremes.  However, that would require a second confirmation hearing and Progressive-Democratic Party time-wasting fight.

The Sanctity of Precedent

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The Progressive-Democrats have their panties in large, tight twists over the possibility of President Donald Trump getting another pick for the Supreme Court.  So much so that now they’re making stuff up in their hysteria.

“Abortion will be illegal in twenty states in 18 months,” tweeted Jeffrey Toobin, the legal pundit, in a classic of cool, even-handed CNN analysis soon after the resignation news.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY):

Whomever the president picks, it is all too likely they’re going to overturn health-care protections and Roe v Wade[.]

And so on.

What these guys are carefully ignoring, though, are some basic fundamentals (excuse the redundancy).

Conservatives are very reluctant to overturn precedent, as the Editorial Board points out. However, the Progressive-Democrats’ insistence on the absolute sanctity precedent—and of Republican Senator Collins’ identical insistence—means that now these worthies have to defend the sanctity of the Dred Scott precedent, and they have to defend Plessy‘s separate-but-equal and explain the inequity of Brown fixing that.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for their explanations. Don’t hold your breath, either, waiting for the NLMSM—CNN, for instance—to ask them for those explanations.

Non-Merit Discrimination in College Admissions

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The non-merit discriminants that colleges and universities use—Harvard comes to mind—center on race, ethnicity, and gender.  The Trump administration has moved to reduce that reliance on bigotry for admissions (ironic word, that), and the Left is crying race.

Anurima Bargava, ex-President Barack Obama’s DoJ head of “civil rights enforcement” (an ironic title), insists that the rollback of regulations authorizing racism and sexism in determining who will be admitted—and who will be barred from admission—is

a purely political attack that benefits nobody.

The rollback benefits those being discriminated against without harming anyone else. But the Obama administration’s politics of divisiveness and…identity…considered those people to be nobodies; that’s why the policy discriminated.

The bigotry lives loudly within the Left, to paraphrase a Progressive-Democrat Senator from California.