Author Archives: eehines

Removing the DA from the Case

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That’s what a Georgia State appellate court has done with Fani Willis. She’s off the case she had brought against former President and present President-elect Donald Trump (R) over his alleged interference with the results of the 2020 Presidential election. (She’s appealing the matter to the State Supreme Court.)

The court ruled, in part, that she needed to be removed because the

remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring.

The appellate court also did not toss the case itself. Inconvenient as this will be for Trump, it actually has the potential to work strongly for his benefit. It’ll be better for the case to be tossed on its (lack of) merits than on the technicality of tossing it as punishment of the prosecutors. The latter outcome would leave the question of Trump’s alleged interference hanging. Winning the case outright, or getting it tossed because no other Georgia prosecutor wants to touch it, would put the question to rest in all of our minds save those of pressmen and Never-Trump hysterics.

“Our Question is: Why?”

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That’s The Wall Street Journal editors’ question, and it’s mine, too, regarding further interest rate cuts. The editors posit a number of reasons for not cutting further, but mine is simpler. It’s a refrain I’ve done before.

Inflation, which is the Fed’s Directed Operational Requirement, already is within noise distance of its longtime 2% target, and now is bouncing around noisily. The Fed’s target benchmark interest rate setting already is at a level historically consistent with its 2% target. It’s time for the Fed to sit down and be quiet and let the market bounce around, as it does and as it self-corrects. The bouncing, within very broad limits, is just the noise of a free market operating normally and prosperously.

Trump and the Paris Climate Accord

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President-elect Donald Trump (R) intends to take us out of this Accord soon after he’s sworn in, and it’ll be the second time he’s done so, after the Progressive-Democrat Biden administration saddled us with it for the last four years.

Steven Koonin, of the Hoover Institution, has a number of suggestions for how Trump can sell the move to Europe as well as domestically, and they’re all good ideas. There’s one more step that’s necessary, though.

Trump should put the Accord to the Senate for an up or down ratification vote as a treaty agreement. It’s virtually certain the matter would fall short of the two-thirds vote required for ratification, and that failure would end any further effort to ensnare us in it through the continued back-and-forth of “we’re in by Executive Action/we’re out by Executive Action” uncertainties.

Time to Walk Away from the NCAA

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The NCAA president, Charlie Baker, has issued his ultimatum. When Senator Josh Hawley (R, MO), in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing over legalized sports gambling, asked Baker about the NCAA’s policy that transgender student athletes should be able to use the locker room, shower, and toilet facilities in accordance with their gender identity, Baker’s response was blunt and appalling [emphasis added]:

Everybody else should have an opportunity to use other facilities if they wish to do so[.]

No. Men do not belong in women’s facilities, nor should they be competing against women in women’s sports. Title IX provides for substantially equal facilities for male and female sports; it does not provide for substantially equal facilities for male and coed sports.

So much for the organization’s obligation to protect women.

It’s time for women athletes, and male athletes with any sense of morals, to answer Baker’s disgusting ultimatum and use other facilities. Those other facilities would be competition facilities that don’t have men horning in.

Walk away from the NCAA en masse and form their own amateur athletic association, use those other facilities for their competitions. It would be good if the NCAA member semi-pro athletic education institutions did the same, even led the way, but I’m not holding my breath on that.

Sulk on the Sidelines

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Congresswoman Victoria Spartz (R, IN) has decided to take her marbles and go home in a snit. Not literally, she’ll remain, formally, a Republican, but

she won’t sit on committees or caucus with the House Republican Conference for the time being and will instead focus on working with the new “Delivering Outstanding Government Efficiency” caucus on cutting spending.

She says, in so many words,

I will stay as a registered Republican but will not sit on committees or participate in the caucus until I see that Republican leadership in Congress is governing[.]
I do not need to be involved in circuses.

She’s not far wrong about the circus aspect, especially with the ego-driven Chaos Caucus continuing its knee-jerk obstructionism. Quitting the game, though, instead of staying in it, doing her best to reduce, if not eliminate, the circus aspect, is the move of a coward.

Pushing the DOGE spending cuts—whatever they are; so far, all we have is news outlet claims—all by her august self is a move borne of self-important arrogance. Demanding things be done her way or she’ll go sulk in her room is not the definition of leadership governing; it’s just more personal aggrandizement.

She doesn’t want to be just one voice in the cacophony. However, with her ducking out, she’s left the serious caucus with one less voice for functional governance.

Spartz is betraying her constituents.

She’s also contributing to Progressive-Democratic Party continued control of the House, given the Republican Party’s miniscule majority, and the Chaos Caucus’ preference for that over compromise with their fellow Republicans. That’s another betrayals of her constituents.