More Government Overreach

And by the SEC, yet, which already has its extra-judicial structure of accuser, judge, punisher administrative law judge system in the Federal courts over the legitimacy of such an arrangement.

Now it’s the SEC-proposed rule that would require private enterprises—which by definition are outside the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission—to open their books to public scrutiny and SEC approval.

Worse, a broad range of elites are supporting this naked overreach:

University endowments, insurance funds, and retirement funds serving teachers and firefighters are urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to move forward with a proposed rule that would ensure private-fund investors receive annual audits and quarterly statements.

Such a move would destroy the private nature and purpose of private enterprises—i.e., enterprises that are wholly owned by a small group of entity operators and which do not sell ownership shares on the open market or permit the owners’ own equity portions to be traded about on open markets.

But the rule-supporting elites give their game away:

Many pension plans are having a hard time meeting their payout obligations to members, the result of decades of underfunding, benefit overpromises, and unrealistic demands from unions.

So they want to get into private entities, even though those entities do not want the elites’ involvement—it’s part of why they’re, you know, private. But in order to do so, those private companies must open their books to the SEC—and the public.

It’s a bad rule, and it should be withdrawn by a serious SEC or blocked outright by Congress. This is a free market matter: if an investor doesn’t like the information he gets—doesn’t get—when he looks into a company with a view to investing, he’s free to not invest.

Full stop.

That’s Their Goal

The Progressive-Democratic Party is pushing bills in the House and Senate—the Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act is the House version—that would attach price controls to gasoline sales. The Taxpayers Protection Alliance says, correctly, that such a move could lead to a return to the gas lines of the 1970s. That’s the period of then-President Richard Nixon’s (R) price control regime which he implemented in response to OPEC’s oil embargo against us.

But gasoline lines and limited supply of oil- and gas-based (and coal-based) energy are Party’s and President Joe Biden’s (D) purpose. Those are intended to drive us off hydrocarbon-based energy altogether in favor of the Left’s phantasmal “green energy” utopia.

Recall that Biden’s mentor and BFF, then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama (D) campaigned on a promise to apply regulations that would price coal plants completely out of business.

Recall that then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden (D) campaigned on a promise to end oil and gas production and force us onto solar- and wind-powered energy.

Recall that newly sworn President Joe Biden (D) canceled Keystone XL, a pipeline that would have brought 800,000 barrels of Canadian oil into the US for refining and supply. He then implemented Executive Orders and instructed his various Cabinet Departments to implement regulations that would severely inhibit domestic oil and gas production.

Recall that Biden still is having his Cabinets slow-walk leasing for oil and gas production on Federal lands, and is even slower-walking permits actually to do anything with those leases that are eventually granted.

What we have now is President Joe Biden (D) implementing his own oil embargo against us and his Party syndicate in Congress looking to tighten the embargo.

Don’t Let the Door…

The Communist Party of China is instructing PRC senior government officials to not own foreign assets.

China’s Communist Party will block promotions for senior cadres whose spouses or children hold significant assets abroad, people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing seeks to insulate its top officials from the types of sanctions now being directed at Russia.

Senior officials and members of their immediate families would also be barred from setting up accounts with overseas financial institutions unless they have legitimate reasons for doing so—such as study or work—the people said.

Now the CPC just needs to extend the directive to PRC business enterprises.

…hit you in the fanny on the way out.

Kind of the Purpose

The European Union’s antitrust bureaucrats demur from Apple’s seeming dominance in the no-contact payment market, and they may or may not have a case. They don’t, though, have one based on this sham argument from EU Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, who also serves at the EU’s Executive Vice President of the European Commission for A Europe Fit for the Digital Age (because if the title is long enough the incumbent can be made to feel important enough):

Apple has built a closed ecosystem around its devices and its operating system. Apple controls the gates to this ecosystem, setting the rules of the game for anyone who wants to reach consumers using Apple devices.

That’s kind of the purpose of copyrights and patents—allowing the inventor or developer of the product to control its use. In addition to which, no one is required to use Apple products to do contactless paying—or even to make telephone calls.

Neither does Apple control the ecosystem of contactless paying—it only controls its own devices, which have a, not the, contactless paying capability.

What Did They Expect?

Russia has cut off natural gas deliveries to Poland and Bulgaria as Putin prosecutes his invasion of Ukraine.

European officials denounced the move, which threatens the continent’s energy supply, as blackmail by Russia.

This is war. What did these “European officials” expect when they made the conscious decision to create themselves dependents on the energy good offices of an enemy nation? And how could they not recognize Putin’s Russia as an enemy nation, given his years of rhetoric laying out his plans for and goal of restoring the Russian empire that was the Soviet Union—an empire that includes Eastern European nations, many of which are part of NATO, and one of which has been absorbed into a NATO member nation?

Other large European gas consumers like Germany and Italy haven’t been affected so far.

Of course not. Germany and Italy are much more compliant dependents. Germany in particular has been busily slow-walking, if not outright obstructing, weapons support for Ukraine. Never mind German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ talk about freeing up arms shipments to Ukraine. All he’s done, despite two such rounds of word-based commitments, is talk. No concrete movement, beyond an insultingly puny shipment of helmets, has followed his chit-chat.

Latvia’s Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš is much more clear-eyed on the matter.

This is part of the war; this is how the war affects us. The Ukrainians are paying with their lives, we are paying with higher energy prices.

But, then, Latvia, along with the rest of Eastern Europe, well remember what it’s like to live under Russian jackboots. Central and Western Europe, safe and secure and rich and fat and soft three and four generations after WWII and with all those Eastern Europe nations as buffers for their comfort, have chosen to not remember.