Monthly Archives: March 2016

DC John

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In his finest imitation of an erstwhile Baghdad Bob, DC John Kerry, the motorboat skipper who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair, has really shown the level of his—and by extension, his boss President Barack Obama’s (D)—contact with international reality.

The very reason that Daesh is resorting to actions outside of the Middle East is that its fantasy of a caliphate is collapsing before their eyes[.]  Its territory is shrinking every day, its leaders are being decimated, its revenue resources are dwindling, and its fighters are fleeing[.]

Fleeing.  All the way to Paris and Brussels, and other places in Europe, to inflict their barbaric savagery.  Fleeing.  All the way to Libya, to expand Daesh’s oil holdings and to inflict their barbaric savagery on Libyans.  Fleeing.  All the way to San Bernardino to inflict their barbaric savagery on us.

Fleeing.  Sure.

Governor Mike Huckabee has a good read on the quality of DC John’s performance.

It’s really embarrassing that the secretary of state wants to say that the carnage that we saw in Brussels is the result of us doing something wonderfully right….  And I thought Kerry’s remarks were totally embarrassing for the United States.

Another Bill Did Pass

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I wrote earlier about the National Football League’s apparent attempt to extort Georgia into not enacting a bill that didn’t suit the NFL’s pleasure.

North Carolina did enact a bill in the same tenor, and now the National Basketball Association is threatening to pull its next year’s All-Star game from Charlotte in retaliation.

When can we expect the NBA to mandate an inclusive environment to all who attend our games and event[s] and safe spaces of equality and mutual respect in its clubs’ arena rest rooms and to ban Men’s and Women’s rest rooms as unacceptably discriminatory?

Hmm….

More Overregulation

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More fallout from Dodd-Frank: these regulators now are about to promulgate a rule set that requires companies to sequester bonuses paid to their executives for some period of years before those execs can collect their bonuses.

Aside from interfering with decisions that are wholly internal to a business and so none of the government’s business, there are other problems with this set.  This rule set will

govern pay to risk-taking executives who are in a position to do material damage to their companies.

In addition to extending the deferral window, regulators want to broaden the pool of bank employees subject to the new rules by expanding the definition of risk taker to include factors like the amount of money an employee handles.

Never mind that risk is part of business, and there already are Federal, and State, laws extant that deal with both fraud negligence in this area.  Never mind that shareholder suits, or the threat of them, also already exist as a market mechanism for adequately managing risk-taking.

There’s also this:

…how to balance risk with reward in compensation arrangements that will apply to a cross section of banks, investment advisers, broker dealers, credit unions and executives at mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  …

“Trying to come up with a rule that can be uniformly applied to a set of highly diverse players in the financial-services industry was always just going to be very difficult,” said Kyoko Lin, a partner at law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

Well, NSS.  This is yet another reason government has no business meddling in the market place.

Centrally Planned Micromanagement

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Now the People’s Republic of China government is concerning itself with the names the Chinese citizenry give to their streets, businesses, and the very places where they live.  The government has

announced a new move to “stem irregularities in naming the country’s roads, bridges, buildings, and residential compounds,” according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

Li Liguo, China’s Minister of Civil Affairs, said that the move will target “exaggerated, foreign, bizarre and repetitive” names, as well as those that cause inconvenience to citizens….

After all, the citizens—the ones applying these names—can’t be allowed to inconvenience themselves.

Worse, such names

damage sovereignty and national dignity, are against socialist core values, deviate from public order and good morals, and raise strong concerns from the public[.]

Or at least the Government’s criteria for these things.

Because the government hasn’t intruded far enough.  Or else a surprising number of PRC bureaucrats are overpaid and underemployed.

The Veterans Administration Suspends

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But it chooses, again, not to fire a failed executive.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is suspending the head of the Veterans Benefits Administration for allowing two lower-ranking officials to manipulate the agency’s hiring system for their own gain.

Deputy VA Secretary Sloan Gibson says acting VBA chief Danny Pummill will be suspended without pay for 15 days for his role in a relocation scam that has roiled the agency for months.

Pummill failed to exercise proper oversight as Kimberly Graves and Diana Rubens forced lower-ranking managers to accept job transfers and then stepped into the vacant positions themselves, keeping their senior-level pay while reducing their responsibilities, Gibson said Tuesday.

Suspended.  For two whole weeks.  For defrauding the Veterans Administration and the American taxpayers who are paying these salaries and funding this travesty of a Federal department.

Gibson needs to be terminated, too, and for cause.

Better yet, veteranos administratio delende est.