Monthly Archives: April 2019

Mores and the Patent and Trademark Office

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The Supreme Court has taken up the case of Iancu v Brunetti and heard oral arguments Monday.  Erik Brunetti wanted a copyright on the label for a clothing line of his that he’d named FUCT, an acronym for Friends U Can’t Trust.  Iancu is Andrei Iancu, who is duel-hatted as Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.  Wearing that second hat, Iancu and his fellow USPTO bureaucrats said they were scandalized and morally offended, and they denied Brunetti’s copyright application.  The Wall Street Journal, at the link, said

On [last] Monday the Justices will consider whether to broaden First Amendment protection to trademarks that offend moral sensibilities.

More correctly, though, whether the Justices recognize this or not, they’ll be considering whether to protect trademarks that offend the particular sensibilities of a few Government bureaucrats.

What constitutes scandalous is inherently subjective and depends on cultural mores….

This, on the other hand, is overbroad. Again, what constitutes scandalous behavior (what is scandalism?) in Government permitting doesn’t depend on cultural mores so much as it depends on the mores of a few Government bureaucrats and on how those bureaucrats choose to interpret what they personally view as the nation’s cultural mores.

It’ll be instructive if Brunetti doesn’t get a unanimous favorable ruling.

The Federal Reserve Bank and Presidential Pressure

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“A string of central bankers,” the entire Precious lot of them, at last weekend’s IMF conference expressed their concerns over the independence of our Federal Reserve Bank System and the members of its Board of Governors.  They think the BoG is being unduly pressured by President Donald Trump because he demurs—enthusiastically—from the interest rate regime they’re setting.

I have to ask, though: what pressure? Trump has certainly spoken zealously and forcefully about what he thinks the Fed ought to do, but he’s made no threats.  He’s just argued.

For others to say Fed personnel feel pressured and the Fed’s independence is threatened is to insult the Fed personnel involved and further, to Congressmen—who in their aggregate are the only ones who can impact the Fed’s independence.

All a President can do is force the resignation of this or that Fed governor (following which, the Senate would have to approve any replacement).  If a Fed man feels pressured by rhetoric or by the thought of not being a Governor anymore, he either puts too much ego in having that particular job, or he’s too timid. Either of those makes him unfit for the job in the first place.

Vaccination and Quarantine

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Various jurisdictions in a number of States have begun barring unvaccinated students from schools following an outbreak of a contagious disease, particularly measles and chicken pox (so far).

Some school districts in the US are booting unvaccinated students from campuses where infectious-disease cases have been confirmed, as the spread of measles accelerates in some states.

“Quarantining” on the basis of vaccination status (not the classic quarantine, which blocks departure from a specific location, but one that prevents entry into specific locations) is hitting the courts, too.

In Kentucky, 32 cases of chickenpox at Our Lady of the Assumption Church and Academy in Walton resulted in unvaccinated students being removed from school in March for three weeks, the time it would take for symptoms to appear. An 18-year-old unvaccinated student lost a lawsuit challenging the ban on religious beliefs.

The court ruled entirely correctly on that suit.  A family is entirely within its rights to decline vaccination on religious grounds.  However, that right does not extend to exposing others to the outcome of that non-vaccination; that family may not expose others’ children to the disease targeted by the vaccination.

Nor do such families have any right to expose other families’ pocketbooks to the costs of outcomes from non-vaccination.  Families exercising their right to not vaccinate cannot, legitimately, inflict the costs of treatment on other families, whether those other children have been vaccinated or not.

Budget Surpluses and the IMF

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…and the US, at the just concluded International Monetary Fund meetings in DC.

The IMF, backed by the US, has pressed Germany and others with budget surpluses to cut taxes or raise spending to prop up growth. Countries with budget surpluses “should certainly make use of it and have the space to invest and to participate in the economic development and growth,” IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said, “but not enough has been done on that front.”

The IMF has begun pressing Switzerland to spend more, too.

A little bit of this is accurate.

Several US States have set up rainy day funds into which they put budget surpluses in order to build up the resources for State emergencies or to tide them over during a recession without having to borrow excessively.  There’s no reason nations can’t do the same with their surpluses; indeed, such a savings pile should come first.

Once the savings have been built to a satisfactory level, though, surpluses should be used to cut taxes and to pay down debt (which is future taxes), never to increase spending.  Leave the citizens’ money in their hands; they know more about how to use it than Government.

Above all, don’t use surpluses in any effort to counteract the forces of a free, capitalist market.  For the vast majority of cases, market problems are self-correcting and only made worse by activist government intervention.

The Tyranny of Progressive-Democrats

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In the ongoing saga of the Progressive-Democrats, and others, to get their hands on President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Congressman Richard Neal (D, MA) requested demanded the IRS surrender several years of those documents to him by 10 Apr.  The deadline came and went as IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said they needed more time to study the Neal-cited law to be sure they could turn over the returns.  After all, other laws demand that tax records be kept private, as the personal information they are, for all Americans, and the cited law only permits tax records to be given to the House Ways and Means Chairman (and/or to two other Congressional positions) and only under tightly circumscribed conditions.

Since neither Rettig nor Mnuchin said, “Yes, Sir” and meekly and unquestioningly submitted, Neal now has sent a letter to Rettig giving a 23 April deadline or he, Neal, would yank Rettig into Federal court over the latter’s disobedience.  That letter says, in part,

It is not the proper function of the IRS, Treasury, or Justice to question or second guess the motivations of the Committee or its reasonable determinations regarding its need for the requested tax returns and return information[.]

Because the Executive Branch is not a coequal branch of our Federal government with the Legislature and the Judiciary.  It, together with its subordinate Departments and Agencies, are the obedient servants of Progressive-Democrat committees of the House of Representatives.  The Executive is not permitted to make its own determination of the legality of complying with Neal’s demand.  They’re supposed merely to shut up and deliver.

Law be damned.  Constitution, especially, be damned.  These are just more-or-less guidelines to be ignored whenever they show themselves inconvenient to the Left and their Party.