Author Archives: eehines

Just Like….

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Be snitches, sez the Governor.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown during an interview on Friday supported the idea that citizens should alert authorities when neighbors fail to comply with coronavirus restrictions.
“Look, this is no different than what happens if there’s a party down the street and it’s keeping everyone awake,” the Democrat Brown said. “What do neighbors do? They call law enforcement because it’s too noisy. This is just like that. It’s like a violation of a noise ordinance.”

It’s not at all like neighbors calling the authorities over a too-loud party. That’s neighbors acting on their own initiative.

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A Thought on Brann’s Decision

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Recall that Federal District Judge Matthew Brann dismissed the Trump campaign lawsuit that sought to reject hundreds of thousands of votes in Progressive-Democratic-run Pennsylvania counties because, the suit alleged, changes to State voting rules violated our Constitution’s equal protection requirement.

Brann ruled in part that he

has no authority to take away the right to vote of even a single person, let alone millions of citizens.

What Brann chose not to consider is that he also has no authority to see the vote of even a single person, let alone millions of citizens (more accurately, hundreds of thousands; “millions” is his cynical exaggeration), be diluted to the point of meaninglessness by illegally cast or illegally counted ballots.

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The Business of Business and the Wuhan Virus

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Another precinct is passing in its results.

After scrambling to hoard cash in the spring, some large US companies that halted their dividend payments are reversing their decision, a sign that their leaders believe the worst of the crisis is behind them.

Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody’s Analytics:

The resumption of corporate dividend payments is an encouraging sign that executives believe that the pandemic will soon be behind us.

And

[Kohl’s r]evenue fell 14%, compared with a 23% drop in the previous quarter. Kohl’s said it would resume its dividend in the first half of 2021.

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Some Thoughts on Europe’s Defense

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French President Emmanuel Macron has one and so does German Chancellor Angela Merkel (through her Defense Minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer). And so do I.

Macron strongly favors a Europe that is strategically autonomous in its defense. After all, he notes (OANN‘s paraphrasing),

the United States would only respect a Europe that was more self-reliant in defence.

AKK, on the other hand, says that (again, OANN‘s paraphrasing)

Europe [will] remain dependent on Washington for its defence for a long time to come.

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An Adjacent Issue

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A group wants to paint the message “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a street outside a Planned Parenthood site near Capitol Hill in DC. The city’s government has refused to issue the necessary permit, and police arrested two folks who tried just to chalk the message rather than paint it. The group now has sued in Federal court over the refusal and subsequent prevention of painting; the suit reads, in pertinent part,

Your original decision to paint “Black Lives Matter” on the street is government speech. However, your decision to allow protestors to paint “Defund the Police” opened the streets up as a public forum. You are not permitted to discriminate on the basis of viewpoint in making determinations relating to public assemblies in public fora[.]

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Tyranny and the First Amendment

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On the matter of Target’s initial attempt to ban a book (Irreversible Damage: the Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters for those following along) because some folks objected to it, followed by Target’s reversal and decision to sell the book after all, a letter-writer published in The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday Letters had this remark:

Lobbying the government to make a book illegal is pro-book banning. Lobbying Target to take a book off the shelves is pro-capitalism.

This is not even close to correct. Lobbying Target to take a book off the shelves is suppression of speech, even when done by private citizens.

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Rule By Law

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Rather than Rule of Law, which is how we do things here.

The men and women of the government of the People’s Republic of China change the nation’s laws whenever convenient to their personal aims and whenever convenient to their personal power. This is how those men and women have acted, have preserved their power, since the beginning of the days of Chinese emperors.

Two current examples: their enactment in 2017 of an intelligence cooperation law that requires all PRC companies, whether state-owned or “private,” to cooperate with any intelligence community request for information, including about any company affiliate or customer wherever in the world that affiliate or customer might be.

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Pocket Vetoing

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Consider this scenario: in 2022, Republicans sweep to veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate. (I agree, but work with me here.)

Let’s say that one of the bills that Republican Congress passes—late in the year after much debate—is either a tax reduction bill that permanently reduces even further both corporate and personal income taxes or (especially after much debate) a spending cut bill that cuts actual spending (not just slows increases) and that includes material reform of Social Security and Medicare.

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Tax Breaks

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In particular, child tax credits and their proposed expansion, but the principle below applies across the board.

…pair the expansion of the child tax credit with extensions of expiring business-tax provisions, some of which have Democratic support.

Pairing in order to get the credit passed, one being a bell for the other’s whistle.  Refundable credits, too, so those who don’t pay much, if any, income tax can get their own taste. Here’s Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s offer on the credit:

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Clinton-2 vs Obama-3

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That’s the hope expressed by Phil Gramm and Mike Solon in their Tuesday op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

By electing a divided government, Americans may get what they appear to want: a Biden first term that’s more like Bill Clinton’s second term than a third term for Barack Obama.

That is in no way a done deal. The current situation is not at all comparable to the Clinton situation. Biden’s handlers have no inclination whatsoever to move off their far-left ideology, much less the far-left policies they intend for enacting that ideology.

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