Monthly Archives: April 2016

Who is a Man or a Woman?

Posted on by
Reply

Curt Schilling had a thought on the matter, and the Left via ESPN, its stand-in on this case, took action consistent with its policy toward those impertinent enough to disagree with its holy writ: ESPN sacked Schilling.

It’s true enough that Schilling was less than genteel in his expression of his thoughtSchilling

but still, he was right on the facts:

…DNA and those pesky X and Y chromosomes.  In short, in this fight between science and authority, Mr Schilling is in the amusing position of being the Galileo, with ESPN filling in for the Holy Office.

But wait—it’s what people think of themselves, how they identify, in’t it?  Not so much.

Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist in chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, puts it this way: “Curt Schilling is of course correct with the science in saying that claiming to be a woman when you have the chromosomal and anatomical structures of a man does not make you such.  You’re still a man no matter what you think or how you dress.”

Special snowflakes are just riding the wind in the trees.

A New Form of Government Subsidy

Posted on by
Reply

And so a new form of market distortion by government.

Consumer-goods giant Unilever NV was set to raise money in bond markets Monday that will cost them almost nothing, in the latest sign of how the European Central Bank’s stimulus measures are slashing funding costs across the continent.

On the other hand, there’s this example of an impediment to private enterprise borrowing:

In one tranche of a €1.5 billion ($1.68 billion) deal, the Anglo-Dutch company was set to sell €300 million of debt maturing in 2020 with a coupon of 0%, potentially offering investors a yield of just 0.06%, according to deal guidance released Monday by underwriting banks.

Investors have other places in which to invest besides bonds, though.  Stock markets come to mind as one such.  Except there’s that fee the EU charges for every stock buy and every stock sell transaction (a fee, by the way, that investors moving through the facilities of financial institutions domiciled in London would be able to avoid were Great Britain to succeed in severing its ties to the EU).  The two moves, free money for lending/borrowing courtesy of the ECB and making stock trading artificially more expensive with those transaction fees, weren’t set up deliberately to dovetail, certainly, but they do line up nicely in their realization.

Withal, such borrowing subsidies, aside from their economically unsound market distortions also come perilously close to WTO violations in the form of government support for domestic companies at the expense of foreign ones.  Just not quite a violation, since foreign enterprises can, nominally, borrow via the same bond-letting in the EU.

Chimera

Posted on by
1

The Justice Department said Friday it has withdrawn a request that sought a court order forcing Apple to assist in opening a locked iPhone 5s linked to a drug case in New York.

According to a court filing, the Justice Department no longer needs Apple’s assistance in unlocking the device because an individual provided investigators with the correct passcode Thursday.

This is yet another demonstration that DoJ didn’t need to dragoon a private enterprise into blowing up its own product—here hacking its encryption algorithm, to the detriment of its product and of its private citizen customers—for government convenience.  Government had the capability to get into the iPhone with its own resources.

This cracking, in fact, demonstrates two things: the first is that DoJ was cynically using the suits here and in the San Bernardino terrorism case solely for getting a court ruling that Government can force private enterprise to participate in Government searches, to destroy its own product, whenever Government takes a notion to demand it.

The other is that Government’s need for Apple’s help, which was Government’s claimed motive for its lawsuits against Apple, was a mirage.  On the contrary, these suits were nothing more than an execution of Government’s demand for control over private citizens’ personal data.

In each of the above cases, Government hacked the Apple phones’ encryption systems, encryption applied by the phone owners, not by Apple (Apple just made the capability available).  These hacks exposed weaknesses in Apple’s encryption algorithm.  In each of the above cases, Government has refused to tell Apple the nature of the weaknesses: the weaknesses are the backdoors into privately developed encryption algorithms that DoJ’s FBI Director James Comey has been demanding.

Minimum Wage Revisited

Posted on by
Reply

Kevin Williamson, at National Review, had a thought that’s only now percolating to the surface of thinking Americans and that still is avoided by the American Left.

Properly understood, raising the minimum wage—and having a minimum wage at all—is camouflage, something to talk about and fight about while we’re not talking about and fighting about the more important underlying issue.  Declaring that all American workers shall be paid at least $15 an hour is not the same as ensuring that all American workers produce $15 an hour worth of value, and, eventually, the disconnect between those two considerations must make itself felt.

That part is well understood, and that’s a part that is deliberately ignored by the Left.  But there’s this, too.

Krugman, Clinton, Sanders, et al., have a backward and primitive view of government.  For them and for their fellow Hobbesians, the Middle Ages never really ended, and the role of the sovereign is to distribute benefices and issue decrees.  Unhappy with your wages?  Petition the prince to decree that they shall be otherwise, and dare any gimlet-eyed economist to point out that the imperial tailor is skimping on the ermine.

Yeah.  Minimum wage mandates are just an excuse for governing by fiat, for substituting rule by law for rule of law.

Williamson took a more gentle position on that; he suggested that it’s a lack of understanding by minimum wage proponents of the facts of economics and of human complexity.

I don’t think the leadership of the Left is that ignorant, or that naïve.  They know full well the facts of economics and of human complexity.  That’s why they carefully elide those things enroute to their rule by (Left’s) law: minimum wage mandates are a tool, not a goal.

OPM

Posted on by
1

The FBI paid a non-governmental third party over $1 million for technology that allowed the agency to unlock an iPhone 5C that belonged to San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to a remark made by FBI director James Comey at a moderated discussion in London on Thursday.

And

The bureau’s top official added that the purchase of third party tools for the purpose of unlocking encrypted devices is not the preferred road the FBI would like to travel in investigating crimes and terrorism cases.

Of course not.  The FBI would prefer to use OPM to pay for such invasions, in this case Apple’s money to pay for forcing Apple to destroy its own customer-desired and -centered encryption.  Then Comey added in wide-eyed innocence,

I’m hoping that we can somehow get to a place where we have a sensible solution, or set of solutions, that doesn’t involve hacking and doesn’t involve spending tons of money in a way that’s unscalable[.]

That sensible solution includes no back-door, government-mandated accesses to encryption, which Comey has demanded earlier as part of his “sensible” solution.  He’s declined to explain how such backdoors don’t expose American citizens to government snooping and abuse, other than to say, “Trust us.”  He’s declined to explain, in any fashion, how such backdoors don’t expose American citizens to hacking by criminals and other nefarious types.

No, this push to use OPM for gaining entry is just another bit of government disingenuosity.