Tag Archives: freedom

Sources

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President Barack Obama is well known for not knowing what’s going on in the world unless he reads about it in the NLMSM.

According to The New York Times (as reported by the New York Post because the NYT censored itself between the time it put its piece on line and the time it reprinted the piece in hard copy), this extends to television.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in San Bernardino Obama explained his failure to respond in any serious manner by telling the NYT that

he did not see enough cable television to fully appreciate the anxiety after the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino….

At least the Progressive/Democrat is consistent….

Encryption and Backdoors

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Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) wants (this is old news) a means for Government to read our private communications, most especially those we’ve chosen to encrypt. She wants Government to be able to penetrate that encryption, via, perhaps, a backdoor.

I think that Silicon Valley has to take a look at their products. [I]f you create a product that allows evil monsters to communicate in this way,…that is a big problem.

They have apps to communicate on, which cannot be pierced even with a court order[.]

On the one hand, perhaps hammers and screwdrivers should be Government controlled—they get used by evil monsters to commit mayhem.

Perhaps guns should be Government controlled—oh, wait….

Then, there’s this:

A major breach at computer network company Juniper Networks has US officials worried that hackers working for a foreign government were able to spy on the encrypted communications of the US government and private companies for the past three years.

The FBI is investigating the breach, which involved hackers installing a back door on computer equipment, US officials told CNN.

Yet, Government, folks like Feinstein who should know better and others who are simply pandering, wants a deliberate backdoor inserted into our private communications.

I’ll say it again. There is no safety without intact individual liberty.

What’s He Afraid Of?

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Chinese President Xi Jinping called for individual countries to have broad authority to regulate the Internet at home, outlining a digital future in which governments could set online standards and challenge the free flow of information and content across borders.

Why is the leadership of the PRC so terrified of the free flow of information, of free speech?

Oh, wait.

An Iron Curtain

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The USSR set up an Iron Curtain around its nation and its “sphere of influence” in Europe that was designed to keep its citizens from leaving for greener pastures. The Curtain became a real, physical barrier in the form of the Berlin Wall. To a large extent, it worked: even though citizens did manage to escape, the outflow was reduced markedly, and far too many citizens died on the Berlin Wall (or under it) attempting to escape.

Now the proud Progressive and Democratic Party Presidential candidate wants to erect an Iron Curtain around the United States designed to keep American businesses from leaving.

Hillary Clinton’s plan to deter companies from leaving the US will include an “exit tax,” her campaign said Monday, making it even more restrictive than President Barack Obama’s proposals.

Never mind that American business owners and managers have a fiduciary duty—embedded in our laws as well as our morality—to maximize profits for the company and its owners—partners, shareholders, Mom and Pop. Never mind that this mandate to maximize profits necessarily includes minimizing costs. Never mind that the US taxes its businesses at the highest rate in the world, and that these tax bills are significant costs.

Never mind that minimizing the tax bill is a necessary part of that fiduciary duty, and it must, then, include consideration of foreign tax environments—and tax inversions, the process of buying, or being bought by, companies in jurisdictions that have lower tax rates and then moving the company into that lower tax jurisdiction.

Mrs Clinton would…require[e] companies to pay US taxes on deferred foreign earnings if they attempt to “game” her new threshold….

The current “threshold” is current law that allows inversions so long as the American company’s shareholders will own less than 80% of the new, merged company. Clinton’s lower threshold is, carefully, not yet specified.

This is the sort of barrier to our economic freedom, the sort of increase in Big Government taxation, the sort of destruction of our individual liberties to which we can look forward if we get this Progressive Democrat for President.

This is only a precursor to additional barriers to free movement we can expect from this Progressive Democrat.

Government Interference

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General Electric Co has pulled the plug on the agreed $3.3 billion sale of its appliance business to Sweden’s Electrolux AB, bowing to pressure from the US Justice Department which wanted to block the transaction on antitrust grounds.

DoJ’s sham beef was that the deal would likely—notice that: not definitely would—lead to

less competition, higher prices and fewer options for millions of Americans who buy major cooking appliances each year.

Let’s leave aside the fact that GE’s appliance business, like appliance businesses generally, is a low margin, slow growing enterprise and that these characteristics don’t lend themselves overmuch to monopolies or to declining competition. Indeed, competition must heat up even more for such enterprises to survive.

No, the important thing is that monopoly power, in and of itself, is not against the law, it does not violate antitrust law. Only the abuse of that power is illegal.

Might the sale have led to abuse? Sure. But that’s speculative. Under American law, speculation isn’t grounds for interference, only the actual commission of a law-breaking act can be sanctioned.

DoJ’s interference in this deal, this private enterprises’ voluntarily entered into exchange, to the point that it successfully blew up the pending agreement, is Big Government overreach. It’s prior restraint, and it stinks.