Sanctions and Wariness

Posted on 28 July 2017 by eehines

Congress has passed and sent to President Donald Trump a bill that increases sanctions against Russia, particularly its energy sector, and against Iran and northern Korea. It also adds limits Trump’s ability (and State’s) to ratchet those sanctions up or down in real time in response to Russian—or Iranian or northern Korean—behavior, a fillip that adds a question to whether he’ll sign it (his veto likely would only delay the thing; the bill was passed with veto-proof majorities in both houses).

Germany is “wary” of those sanctions.

This is a preview of Sanctions and Wariness. Read the full post (370 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

The Betrayal of Lisa Murkowski

Posted on 28 July 2017 by eehines

Lisa Murkowki is a Republican Senator from Alaska who voted against even opening debate on repeal and replace of Obamacare.

Murkowski has betrayed her constituents. She betrayed them this week by trying to block debate on repeal and replace. Or, she betrayed her constituents when she lied to them in 2015 with her vote in favor of repeal in the full knowledge that her vote didn’t matter because then-President Barack Obama (D) would veto the matter.

This is a preview of The Betrayal of Lisa Murkowski. Read the full post (110 words, estimated 26 secs reading time)

Republicans and Obamacare

Posted on 27 July 2017 by eehines

In a Wall Street Journal editorial about Republican Senators’ timorous attitude toward actual repeal and replace of Obamacare now that what they do matters, the editors had this remark toward the end of their piece:

One vote to watch would repeal ObamaCare with a two-year window to replace it, which is similar to a bill that 51 Senate Republicans voted for in 2015. We’ll see how many have changed their minds.

We’ll see how many have changed their minds. The rest of that sentence is this: …now that their vote has actual consequences, and they can’t hide behind their virtue signaling.

This is a preview of Republicans and Obamacare. Read the full post (135 words, estimated 32 secs reading time)

200 Years of History, Summarized

Posted on 26 July 2017 by eehines

This set of graphs, via Mark Perry at AEIdeas, tells the tale. The full article is Max Roser‘s at Our World in Data.

The graphs are easier to read in Roser’s article. Following are Perry’s “captions” for each of the graphs.

In 1820, 90% of the world population lived in extreme poverty vs only 10% today.
In 1820, 83% of the world population had not attained any education vs 14% today.
In 1820, 88% of the world population was illiterate vs only 15% today.
In 1820, 99% of the world population was not living in a democracy vs 44% today.

This is a preview of 200 Years of History, Summarized. Read the full post (172 words, 1 image, estimated 41 secs reading time)

Labor Under the Radar

Posted on 25 July 2017 by eehines

Rather, a labor reform bill making its way (too slowly, IMHO) in the House. The bill has some interesting items in it:

require unions to obtain permission from workers to spend their dues on purposes other than collective bargaining
mandate a recertification election upon the expiration of a collective-bargaining agreement if a workforce has turned over by more than 50%
take card-check off the menu of options for holding a union election
allow employees to withhold their personal contact information from unions

What’s not to like?

What’s holding up the bill?

This is a preview of Labor Under the Radar. Read the full post (125 words, estimated 30 secs reading time)

Space-Based Defense

Posted on 24 July 2017 by eehines

LtGen James Abrahamson, USAF (Ret) and Ambassador Henry Cooper, who were directors on President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, had some thoughts on this in their recent Wall Street Journal Letter to the Editor.

Brilliant Pebbles, the space-based interceptor we advocated, promised a high probability of kill (over 90%) of all of a “limited” strike of up to 200 attacking re-entry vehicles—the number then controlled by a Russian submarine commander. It’s better than anything we have today. It became the SDI era’s first formally approved ballistic-missile defense system, with a validated cost estimate of $10 billion in 1988 dollars (now $20 billion) for concept definition and validation, development, deployment and 20 years operation of that constellation of 1,000 Brilliant Pebbles. This isn’t expensive….

This is a preview of Space-Based Defense. Read the full post (243 words, estimated 58 secs reading time)

Brexit Works

Posted on 23 July 2017 by eehines

It’s already paying dividends for the EU in the form of potentially extensive free market reforms as the continent begins to compete with a freed Great Britain for commerce. Here are some doings in the competition for the financial industry currently centered in Great Britain.

France has promised changes to cut labor costs and Italy is changing its tax regime to make it less burdensome for bankers and other professionals. Spain’s markets regulator is trying to make Madrid more international by hiring native English speakers to revise and edit all communication the agency sends out in English.

This is a preview of Brexit Works. Read the full post (153 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Minimum Wage and Automation

Posted on 21 July 2017 by eehines

Is technology—automation—really going to kill jobs? No. As many, including me, have written before, automation is only going to shift the nature of jobs. Minimum wage laws are killing jobs, and will continue to and at increasing rates, by making robots cost effective despite their high up-front costs.

Wal-Mart, for instance, used to employ humans to track individual stores’ cash and manage their books. Now at roughly 4,700 Wal-Marts, roughly 4,700 of those employees have been replaced by a machine that can track the books and while counting bills and coins at rates of 480 and 3,000 per minute, respectively. Because it’s Wal-Mart, those folks, where they’ve wanted to, have taken jobs elsewhere in their store at the same pay, but those jobs are at risk, too. Cashiers are being replaced by automated check-out stands, for instance.

This is a preview of Minimum Wage and Automation. Read the full post (464 words, 1 image, estimated 1:51 mins reading time)

It’s Time

Posted on 19 July 2017 by eehines

…to sweep the ones we can’t trust from the Republican Party of Castrati and from Congress.

When Republicans voted on the repeal-only bill in 2015, they knew Mr Obama would veto it, making their vote largely symbolic. Of the GOP senators currently in the chamber, 49 voted for it at the time. …

Moreover, many GOP lawmakers have already acknowledged that they would vote differently now that the stakes are far higher….

Now that these persons have to take action more concrete than virtue signaling, they’re exposing themselves as porch dogs. They’re betraying their country, and more specifically, they’re betraying their constituents, to whom they promised for the last seven years, they’d repeal Obamacare and replace it.

This is a preview of It’s Time. Read the full post (440 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

A Union

Posted on 19 July 2017 by eehines

…doesn’t like Amazon buying Whole Foods.

[United Food and Commercial Workers International Union President, Marc] Perrone plans to file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that letting Amazon buy Whole Foods would trigger a wave of store closures and eventually quash customer choice.

With a straight face, he argued in his complaint (which somehow fell into The Washington Post‘s hands before the filing) that

Regardless of whether Amazon has an actual Whole Foods grocery store near a competitor, their online model and size allows them to unfairly compete with every single grocery store in the nation.

This is a preview of A Union. Read the full post (294 words, estimated 1:11 mins reading time)

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