Monthly Archives: January 2013

On Being More Like Europe

Posted on by
Reply

Or at least more like British Europe.  Here is one area in which we could learn and from which we would profit by copying.

The Telegraph had this last weekend.  From their brief article about Great Britain’s Immigration Exam, their citizenship test, it’s clear that the Brits are going back to expecting prospective citizens to know what it is that is British culture and going away from politically correct froo-froo.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has torn up the 2007 edition’s section on New Labour, swept away guides to immigrants’ rights and put a new focus on what it means to be British.

The Life in the UK handbook, described by the Home Office as “essential reading” for migrants sitting the new test from March, will focus on British values, culture and history, as well as the success of Olympic heroes at London 2012.

Out go politically correct sections on how to complain about being arrested and “mundane information about water meters”, and in come “the events and people who have helped make Britain a great place to live”, ministers said.

Our schools would do well to make this adjustment, also.  (Take the sample test, too.  It’s fun.)

Ethics and the Left

Posted on by
Reply

Let’s talk about this in the context of Presidential elections and the Electoral College.

Two states, Nebraska and Maine, award Electoral College votes on the basis of which candidate won the state’s Congressional districts in the popular vote.  The winner of a district gets one Electoral vote, and (in general) the winner of the state’s overall popular vote gets two Electoral College votes.  Four other states, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are actively moving in that direction, with a number of other states in the talking stage.  Virginia is the farthest along, having passed out of committee a by-district proposal in the state Senate (awarding the two votes to the candidate winning the most districts rather than the overall popular vote) and sent it to the full Senate.

What’s interesting here is not so much the rationale for making the move, but the arguments against and who is making those arguments.

Virginia State Senator Donald McEachin (D) calls the bill a “sore-loser bill” and added

The bill is absolutely a partisan bill aimed at defying the will of the voters, giving Republican presidential candidates most of Virginia’s electoral votes, regardless of who carries the state[.]

Virginia State Delegate Vivian Watts (D) sponsored or co-sponsored several bills over the years that would have apportioned Virginia’s electoral votes by Congressional district; she had this to say about that:

I’m age 72 so I spent a lot of years in the wilderness and the last time the state had gone Democratic [before 2008] was following the assassination of John F Kennedy.  I thought back in those days about how we were just totally ignored.

But she opposes the present bill coming before the House of Delegates.  The argument that Democrats weren’t getting their voices heard yesterday is valid, but the argument that Republicans aren’t getting their voices heard today is invalid.  Hmm….

Nationally, Democrats also oppose today what they wanted yesterday.  Mike Tate, Democratic Party Chairman, had this to say:

They can’t appeal to a majority of voters, whether it’s here in Wisconsin or Michigan or in the rest of the Midwest, so they are undermining a majority of voters.  The Republicans realize that where they are today, they can’t win a presidential election. It’s an audacious attempt to rig the system.

And, as The Washington Post summarizes,

Democrats nationwide attacked the proposed plans, which could tip the balance away from population-heavy urban centers to more rural districts that tend to favor Republicans.

Because bitter, gun-clinging, bible-toting rural Americans aren’t as important as more progressive, citified Americans.

Democratic political analyst Larry Sabato had this to say:

[I]t is a corrupt and cynical maneuver to frustrate popular will and put a heavy thumb—the whole hand, in fact—on the scale for future Republican candidates.  We do not play presidential politics with a golf handicap awarded to the weaker side.

Republicans face a choice that can best be characterized by personalizing it.  A healthy, optimistic party is Reaganesque, convinced that it can win the future by embracing it, and by making a positive case for its philosophy and candidates to all Americans.  A party in decline is Nixonian and fears the future; it sees enemies everywhere, feels overwhelmed by electoral trends, and thinks it can win only by cheating, by subverting the system and stacking the deck in its favor.

No, we insist the handicap favor the Democrats.  We insist that Democratic Chicago alone carry Illinois in its entirety, against the will of the rest of the state.  We don’t accept that letting the grass roots—individual Americans themselves—determine the apportioning of Electoral College votes is in any way democratic.

It is the Democrats themselves, presently in the ascendant, who fear the future and want to seal their superiority by blocking—today—a more democratic apportionment.

Thus, as the Post points out at the end of the article at the first link above, this isn’t the first move (in Virginia, to take that state as our example):

[S]everal [Electoral College apportionment bills] have been introduced over the past decade, all with the same rationale of giving more say to voters on the losing side.  The only difference is that those bills were submitted by Democrats, back when they weren’t having as much luck in the state in presidential elections.

And Democrats nationally were in favor of changing the Electoral College system to better favor them in the aftermath of their narrow losses in 2000 and 2004.  And before that in response to the Nixon victories in the 1970s.

Ethics are what we say they are, say Democrats, when we need them to say that.

A Whole Eight Years

Posted on by
Reply

Social Security’s disability trust fund will be bankrupt in three years, and all those folks currently on disability will see their payments slashed.  Those coming onto disability will see far smaller payments than they were expecting.  Whether or not there should be a disability program, if so at what level of payment, or who should fund it are separate issues.  Let’s talk about what we have, and how we got here.

With the Panic of 2008, unemployment spiked, reaching above 10%.  President Barack Obama’s economic policies have slowed our recovery to the point of not recovering at all.  Even the current unemployment rate of 7.8% both is as high as it was when he took office and misleading in itself since it’s based on a far smaller work force than when he took office.

On top of this unemployment rate, whose primary effects here are to reduce the tax monies going into the disability fund and to increase the number of people going onto disability—anything to get enough money for an unemployed person, or someone who’s given up trying to find work, to put food on his family’s table or to pay the rent/mortgage—we have the following.

Obama is actively making it easier to apply for disability with no parallel move to make funds available to make the payments.  Indeed, Obama has steadfastly refused to allow any of our entitlement programs to be fixed, or revamped, or changed in any way so as to enable them to survive (again, whether they should as Federal programs is a separate discussion).

His Lieutenant in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D, NY), insists that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are off the table in any debt, deficit, or budget discussion.  Obama said in his inaugural address last week that

the commitments we make to each other—through Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security—these things do not sap our initiative; they strengthen us.

Leaving aside the vapid ignorance of this remark, the statement demonstrates his refusal to touch them in any way.

And we have this nonsense from a tired old man, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV), about entitlements generally, using Medicare as his example:

…savings from cutting wasteful spending and fraud will extend the solvency of the Medicare trust fund by an additional eight years….

Let’s ignore the fact that Reid cannot name a single instance of actual wasteful spending or of fraud—or explain why those have not already been rooted out, if he knew of them—Medicare’s (for instance) lifetime could be extended for a whole eight years, he says, like he’s proud of that fact.

Then what?

Out of Control Regulations

Posted on by
Reply

This time at the state level.  The Daily Caller has the story of Louisiana overregulation.

Fresh Markets was selling gallons of milk for $2.99 as part of a weekly promotional deal.  Louisiana requires that retailer price markups be at least six percent above the invoice and shipping costs of the product.

You read that right.  It turns out that $2.99 was less than 6% above the state-allowed minimum price for milk.  Louisiana regulators actually put a floor under the price at which milk is allowed to be sold.  No matter what the private business’ imperative might be for setting a lower price.  No matter how much forcing inflated prices hurts the poor.

State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said this with a straight face:

They can sell it six percent over cost all day long.  It’s when they sell it below cost that it becomes a problem[.]

Because selling at cost is actually selling below cost.  Because selling below cost—below actual cost—is a decision poor, dumb businessmen shouldn’t be allowed to make—even as a loss leader.

When even the Courts

Posted on by
Reply

…ridicule Progressives.

From Bloomberg comes this item.  Our illustrious regulatory engine, the Environmental Protection Agency, has (rather, had) a rule that required refiners to mix 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol into their gasoline output last year.  In light of the fact that last year’s actual US production was 20,000 (!) gallons, all of which was exported to Brazil, the American Petroleum Institute went to court to get the mandate overturned.

Last week, the DC Circuit agreed.  In the court’s ruling is this gem:

Apart from their role as captive consumers, the refiners are in no position to ensure, or even contribute to, growth in the cellulosic biofuel industry.  “Do a good job, cellulosic fuel producers.  If you fail, we’ll fine your customers.”

Of course, the court also was serious in its ruling.  Citing Railway Labor Executives’ Ass’n v. Nat’l

Mediation Bd in the bowlegs, the court noted

(“Were courts to presume a delegation of power absent an express withholding of such power, agencies would enjoy virtually limitless hegemony….”).  Yet that is precisely what EPA appears to have done in projecting cellulosic biofuel production for 2012.

The case is American Petroleum Institute v U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the ruling can be seen here.

Naturally, in response to the ruling, Progressive whining has begun.  Bloomberg reports this, as well.

As a result of the ruling and uncertainty, investments in the nascent industry may fall, said Michael Frohlich, a spokesman for Growth Energy, which represents ethanol producers.

“It dampens any future investment, and creates a further level of vulnerability[.]”

Never mind that if the “nascent industry” can’t stand without government favoritism, it’s not ready for market in the first place.  But the collective views of individual Americans—free market imperatives—don’t count.  Only the collective views of Big Government do.