Monthly Archives: December 2013

Merry Christmas

Posted on by
Reply

First posted in 2011, I repeat it here.

Christmas renews our youth by stirring our wonder. The capacity for wonder has been called our most pregnant human faculty, for in it are born our art, our science, our religion.
-Ralph W. Sockman

A good conscience is a continual Christmas.
-Benjamin Franklin

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
-Hamilton Wright Mabie

Christmas is not a time or a season but a state of mind. To cherish peace and good will, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.  If we think on these things, there will be born in us a Savior and over us will shine a star sending its gleam of hope to the world.
-Calvin Coolidge

Some celebrate Christmas as the birthday of a great and good philosopher and teacher. Others of us believe in the divinity of the child born in Bethlehem, that he was and is the promised Prince of Peace.
-Ronald Reagan

 

Update:

Why do bells ring at Christmas?

Because someone pulls the rope.

Massive Overhauls

Posted on by
Reply

Obamacare (and its microcosm, Cover Oregon) are textbook examples—case studies, even—of the utter failure of any attempt to execute a massive change of anything in one fell swoop.  The attempt is born of good intentions heavily informed with arrogance, with a good measure of impatience added: we don’t need to see how things are going, our plan is sound because our hearts are pure.

No.  Every change needs interim evaluation steps with which to determine whether the golden plan is, in fact, still on track and if not what changes are necessary—even to the point of changing course or canceling the program rather than mindlessly tweaking the present stage due to glitches.  The ubiquitousness of unintended consequences alone dictates that.

And the program doesn’t have to be done right now.  It just has to be done (always assuming we’re agreed on the program, an agreement notably absent with Obamacare, but that lack is for another time).

Now President Barack Obamacare wants to do another massive, all in one step, change of another enormous system: our collection of immigration laws.

President Obama and his top Democrats on Capitol Hill appear to have reset their sights on the Republican-controlled House passing comprehensive immigration reform, instead of a step-by-step process.

The president on Friday appeared to urge the House to back the comprehensive, bipartisan immigration bill the Senate passed this summer….

What was that bit about repeating a thing and expecting different results?

Another Judge Gets It Right

Posted on by
Reply

Federal Judge Timothy DeGiusti has issued a preliminary injunction against Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate, thereby preventing the Feds, for the time being, from requiring organizations in the Western District of Oklahoma to make available insurance policies that cover the morning-after pill and similar contraceptives, and contraceptives in general.

GuideStone Financial Resources, an entity of the Southern Baptist Convention that handles health benefits for the Convention, brought the suit on behalf of nearly 200 ministries that use GFR to provide benefits for their employees.

It’s important to note that this is a preliminary injunction, and it can be overruled at any time.  However, it is intended to last throughout the suit itself: GFR, et al., have the right, says the Judge, to pursue their case, and it’s necessary to protect them from the harm caused by enforcement until the matter is settled.  After all, GFR, et al., have an excellent chance of winning the suit.

And they should win.  No government has any business dictating the religious tenets of our citizenry, nor does any government have any legitimate authority with which to overrule those tenets—especially for the petty convenience of that government.

DeGiusti’s ruling can be read here.

Broken Immigration

Posted on by
Reply

This is how twisted things can get with a Byzantine legal system, here concerning our immigration laws, combined with an Obama administration that enforces or disregards the laws at political convenience.

Chris Crane, National ICE Council President, says

That’s what we do now, we babysit kids.

The very people patting themselves on the back as humanitarians are putting these children at more risk than they’ve ever been before.

What Crane is talking about is a ruling and public statement issued by Federal Judge Andrew Hanen in US v Nava-Martinez, a case concerning the defendant’s attempt to smuggle a 10-year-old child to her illegal alien parents.

Hanen says that immigration officials arrest human traffickers smuggling children and then

deliver the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.

And

The DHS has simply chosen not to enforce the United States’ border security laws[.]

And

Time and again this court has been told by representatives of the government and the defense that [drug] cartels control the entire smuggling process. … the government is not only allowing [illegal immigrants in the US] to fund the illegal and evil activities of these cartels, but is also inspiring them to do so.

And

To put this in another context, the DHS policy is as logical as taking illegal drugs or weapons that it has seized from smugglers and delivering them to the criminals who initially solicited their illegal importation/exportation.  Legally, this situation is no different.

And morally, too.  Except that the guns aren’t at risk of being harmed en route, like the children are.

So: DHS breaks the law to unite children with their parents, while those parents are here illegally.  It’s a truly broken immigration system that allows illegal aliens to be here with impunity, that puts children at risk in smuggling operations ostensibly aimed at reuniting those children with their parents, all while funding drug dealers.  The system needs to be fixed.

Hanen’s ruling can be seen here.

The Fed Tapers

Posted on by
Reply

…and the stock market shoots up.  QE was supposed to be propping up the market, driving it even; heretofore, whenever the Fed mumbled that it was maybe thinking about beginning to taper sometime in the vague future, the market tanked.  What’s up with the hard increase?  John Malkin at AEI suggested three reasons for that.

These reasons center on the fact that the Fed is continuing its monetary easing through other channels (the Fed Funds rate and a lowered unemployment rate threshold); the now fact of tapering reduces uncertainty about the Fed’s actions; and the fact that the Fed actually has been buying $94 billion in bonds monthly this year (not the advertised $85 billion), and no one noticed the drop—the $19 billion reduction was perceived as the advertised $10 billion, so the taper size seems to be no big deal.

To those, I’d like to add a fourth reason, and a warning.  The reason is this: the fact that the Fed actually has begun easing is taken as its advertised criteria for doing so having been met and will continue to be met in the nearby future.  This perceived confidence in the economy’s recovery by the Fed is viewed favorably by the market.

The warning is this.  Malkin opened his article by tacitly pooh-poohing a QE-induced market bubble.  Comparing market performance with actual economic performance, it seems clear to me that a bubble was generated.  Comparing the current market to the current underlying economy, it seems equally clear that the bubble is merely extending in that perception-based optimism.

In the end, the economy will catch up with the market.  Or the market will fall back to the economy.  Heads up.