Monthly Archives: December 2015

Say We Had

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The US-led coalition fighting the extremist group Islamic State denied Monday it carried out deadly airstrikes against a Syrian government military base.

The regime of President Bashar al-Assad said coalition warplanes carried out an air raid on Sunday in the eastern province of Deir Ezzour that killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded 13 others, and destroyed several combat vehicles and an arms depot.

Our special envoy to the coalition, Brett McGurk, was fast of the mark to deny the strike. He was desperate to insist that coalition strikes had occurred kilometers away, we couldn’t possibly have struck a Syrian military base.

Why? Hasn’t our President said the Syrian government must go? Haven’t he and our Secretary of State guy said al Assad must go? Given those demands, wouldn’t a strike on the Syrian government’s military bases—all of them, not just one—be an entirely appropriate activity by the coalition?

What, exactly, would have been the downside of such a strike, had it actually occurred?

“Should You Fear the ETF?”

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That’s the headline question of Ari Weinberg’s piece in the Sunday Wall Street Journal.

It may be time to re-examine the entire ETF ecosystem,

said SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar. Fellow Commissioner Kara Stein echoed the scheme:

Now is the time to be asking the hard questions about ETFs[.]

The article is well worth reading in its entirety; there are a number of good points regarding what an investor should look for in considering an ETF investment.

However, these cautions are not unique to ETFs; all investment vehicles need such careful consideration and similar questions answered. Government need not get involved here, beyond enforcing transparency so that investors—us Americans—can make informed decisions. Or foolish ones: that’s our prerogative, and no government can legitimately interfere to protect us from ourselves. Government can do that much only by taking our freedoms from us, and it can do that much only by imposing its definitions of appropriate decisions on us. Which is to say, only the men in government can do that much and only by taking our freedoms from us and by imposing their own, personally beneficial definitions of appropriateness on us.

No.

We’ll make our own decisions, thank you. And, through the aggregation of us, Mr Free Market will deal with the risks and gains of ETFs.

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.

Language

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Does Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speak the same language the rest of us Americans do? Does anyone on the Left?

Asked about the terms “radical Islamist” and “radical form of Islam,” she, like her Left constituents and supporters, says you can’t use those terms. On ABC‘s This Week Sunday, she said,

I don’t want to do that [use those terms] because, No. 1, it doesn’t do justice to the vast numbers of Muslims in our own country and around the world who are peaceful people[.]

In what way does it do anything to “vast numbers of Muslims…who are peaceful?” In the American version of English, those modifiers—by definition—limit the ones being discussed in those terms to a carefully restricted subset of Muslims. Those modifiers explicitly exclude “vast numbers of Muslims” from the characterization.

It seems part of the problem with trying to reach agreements with anyone from the Left is that they don’t even speak the same language. They appear to have napped through their grammar school lessons.

No Fly Lists and Guns

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President Barack Obama said in his Oval Office speech Sunday evening that it’s insane to let people on the DHS No Fly List have access to guns. Obama also said that it’s wrong to operate on the basis of suspicion and hate.

While folks on the No Fly list aren’t necessarily objects of hatred, they are targets of suspicion. But that’s all they are. They’ve done nothing, and they’ve not been convicted for anything—other than of being objects of suspicion. Stephen Hayes was on the No Fly list; he’s a target of suspicion solely because he’s an Evil Conservative and an Evil Journalist. DHS employees are on the No Fly list. They’re targets of suspicion because…? Then-Senator Ted Kennedy (D, MA) was on the No Fly list. Say, what?

What none of these suspicious persons have been through, though, is Due Process. Not being able to fly into the US does not block them from entering the US; it just inconveniences them: they have to travel via other means. Not being able to have access to firearms is more than an inconvenience, regardless of one’s view of gun control. That denial is a blanket denial of one’s access to one’s Constitutional rights, and that requires a due process proceeding first.

What’s insane is denial of due process, of violating the law, whenever that becomes inconvenient. What’s insane is operating on suspicion rather than the law. What’s insane is decrying operating on suspicion while operating on the suspicion of a government List.