Category Archives: politics

“Our Question is: Why?”

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Misaimed Suit

Posted on by
Reply

Recall, in the late runup to the Presidential election last month, the Des Moines Register published a poll by the once-respected pollster Ann Selzer that had Progressive-Democrat Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by three percentage points, which represented a significant swing from a month prior poll that had Trump leading by a significant margin. Selzer’s early November poll was a definite outlier; all of the other polls of the time had Trump leading by a little.

Now President-elect Donald Trump (R) is thinking about suing the Register and Selzer for election interference in publishing that poll. This time, I side with the news outlet. The Register only published the poll. If there was election interference being attempted, it would have been by Selzer through her poll. Selzer is the only one who should be the target of any sort of election interference beef here.