Monthly Archives: April 2020

A Supreme Court Error

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No, I’m not talking about the Court’s cowardice on gun rights. This one concerns the Court’s nearly unanimous decision regarding any Congress’ ability to undo what a prior Congress has done and the Executive Branch’s obligation to spend money that hasn’t been appropriated.

The Court upheld health coverage providers’ demand, under Maine Community Health Options v US for

payments to health insurers for so-called risk corridors in ObamaCare’s first three years[.]

Never mind that the 112th Congress, in 2010, undid what the prior 111th Congress had done and both refused to appropriate funds for those “risk corridors” and explicitly forbade the Executive Branch from making any risk corridor payments from other funds.

Never mind that money must actually be appropriated before it can be spent. Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution makes that clear.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law….

At least it used to be clear.

Now none of that matters. In addition to the “implied rights” that the Supremes are wont to manufacture, now it has manufactured out of whole cloth an implied obligation.  The health coverage providers are owed the money because a prior, overridden, Congress wanted the money paid out.

And We the People are the ones who’ll be left paying for this egregious error of the Court. Pay up, suckas.

A Taxing Error

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The European Union is making one. Again.

Of the EU-27, France, Poland, and Denmark have so far proposed barring companies that are based, or have subsidiaries, in tax havens from receiving coronavirus-linked bailouts. Italy may soon join them after Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio added his voice to calls to tackle tax havens.
Meanwhile, the European Commission confirmed on April 24 that its existing rules allow individual EU countries to block coronavirus aid from going to companies based in tax havens.

Whether such companies should be eligible for Wuhan Virus-related bailouts is a separate question. Whether there should be Wuhan Virus-related bailouts at all is yet another separate question.

What’s of particular interest to me is this claim by so-called “tax experts:”

[S]uch national measures could help boost transparency and moves toward a level playing field in global corporate taxation.

It’s inconceivable to these folks that another way to achieve a level playing field in global corporate taxation is for high-tax nations to lower their tax rates rather than trying to compel low-tax nations—those putative tax havens—to raise their own tax rates.

After all, these personages, seem to insist, competition is all well and good, except when it’s inconvenient to Government. The convenience, the outright benefits, to the citizenry of competitive outcomes—lower prices, better quality products, a broader array of them—is immaterial to these personages. As is leaving more money in the hands of those unwashed citizens by inflicting lower tax rates on them.

An Appellate Court Error

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The 6th Circuit has this one.  Gary B v Whitmer concerns children in a really poorly performing Detroit public schools: miserable classroom conditions and abysmal test scores.

The appellate court decided, though, that this matter had nothing to do with the quality of the schools, over which the court has no jurisdiction, and everything to due process as delineated in our Constitution’s 14th Amendment, within which the court does have some jurisdiction.

Acting within that capacity, the court manufactured out of whole cloth, a brand, spanking new right: a state-funded education. Whereby this appellate court has also asserted the Federal government’s right and authority to dictate to a State on matters which the court acknowledges to belong to the State and not to the Federal government.

The Wall Street Journal noticed one of the foolishnesses of this ruling [emphasis added]:

The decision…notes there is a history of public education in the US and “a substantial relationship between access to education and access to economic and political power.” Surely the same could be said of home ownership. Does the Constitution command subsidized housing? “Property,” unlike education, is at least mentioned in the Constitution.

Indeed. And [emphasis added here, too]:

When judges invent new rights they can also damage the democratic process. The Supreme Court has warned against the Due Process Clause being “subtly transformed into the policy preferences of the Members of this Court.” Yet that’s what will happen if federal judges are put in charge of state and local education policy. The majority says poor education undermines democracy, and that’s right—but judicial imperialism threatens it even more.

That brings to mind, also, CJ Taft’s remarks in an earlier case:

The good sought in unconstitutional legislation is an insidious feature because it leads citizens and legislators of good purpose to promote it without thought of the serious breach it will make in the ark of our covenant or the harm which will come from breaking down recognized standards.

So it is, too, with extra-Constitutional judicial rulings.

The 6th Circuit’s ruling can be read here.

Another Reason

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…to move our supply chains out of the People’s Republic of China, a reason the rest of the world ought to take seriously, also. The PRC government has been lying about its African swine fever epidemic, after the disease has killed 120 million of the PRC’s hogs. That’s a bit over 1/6 of the PRC’s hogs.

As China has largely brought the coronavirus pandemic under control within its borders, another highly contagious disease—one affecting livestock [African swine fever]—is reappearing and raising questions about the accuracy of the country’s reporting.
…
Since mid-March, China’s Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs has reported a spate of new cases across the country, supporting what some independent veterinary and farming consultants have been saying since late 2019: the disease is still rife.

Maybe the PRC has its Wuhan Virus epidemic under control.  More and more evidence is coming up that indicates the situation there is far worse than that government has been reporting.

Regarding the African swine fever, here’s the USDA on the PRC’s livestock in general, per its April report:

Underreporting is rampant as government agencies at all levels face serious challenges in collecting and reporting outbreak information from swine farms. Some farms are reluctant to report outbreaks for fear of economic losses, while others report being actively discouraged [from disclosing cases of African swine fever].

There are a couple of problems with this. One is that while the African swine fever isn’t a threat to humans, it’s 100% fatal to pigs. What happens if some number—even small—of PRC hogs get shipped to other nations and spread the effects? The world’s hog farms and pork food supply would be put at risk.

The other problem is, given the PRC’s lies about these two viruses, what else are the nation’s government and its Communist Party of China lying about that puts the world at risk, but that we haven’t discovered yet?

It’s…difficult…to do business with a nation whose government lies and coverups are such evident and serious threats to the security of other nations.

It’s impossible to be dependent, through supply chain dependency, on such a nation and maintain one’s own national security at the same time.

An Inconvenient Political-Economic Truth

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Politico-Europe had a piece last week that talked about Germany’s putative responsibility to help the southern European EU nations during the current Wuhan Virus situation.  Buried in the piece was this bit of eurozone political-economic history:

The euro was sold to Southern Europe, which had been less successful than the north for decades, as a path to lasting prosperity. By eliminating exchange rate risk and lowering interest rates, Southern Europe would become more competitive.
But after the initial economic boost that followed the euro’s introduction, the picture for the region darkened. Though countries that had historically high inflation benefited from lower interest rates, the cheaper financing had the unintended consequence of removing the pressure on governments to enact economic reforms.

The bottom line, though, the inconvenient bottom line is that the politicians manning those governments chose not to enact the needed economic reforms. The reduced pressure to do so is not relevant to the simple fact that the reforms were and are needed, and those politicians, of their own volition, chose otherwise.

Yet this is, somehow, Germany’s fault.

Do Germany—and France, and the other wealthier nations of the EU—have any obligation toward these profligates? From a humanitarian perspective, of course, can any aid be delivered directly to the people and their businesses, bypassing their governments entirely.  But even here, with strings attached: it is these same people, after all, who keep electing those fiscally irresponsible politicians.

From a political perspective, no, the wealthier nations have no responsibility.