Monthly Archives: July 2016

The PRC is Back in the East China Sea

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Over the last month, the PRC has become more aggressive against Japan, especially in the region of Japan’s Senkaku Island group.  More provocatively, the PRC may be beginning to coordinate its aggression with Russia in the region.

In mid-June, PRC fighters threatened Japanese fighters in the airspace around the Senkakus, and a PRC deep sea combat ship sailed directly at the islands while a Russian destroyer approached from a different direction as though the one was going to stage a landing while the other provided cover for the maneuver.

This sort of behavior has been going on for the last couple of years in the South China Sea, now it’s resuming in the East China Sea, and it comes at the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s (D) so-called pivot to Asia, which is proving more and more to be all hat and no cattle.

The PRC is not any friend of Japan.  Nor is it any friend of ours.  These behaviors are purely acquisitive.  We need to get quite a bit firmer, in actual deed, not just chit-chat, or our friends and allies be forced to make their own accommodations with their, and our, enemy.

A Liberal Justice Talked out of Turn

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now is in the business of publicly bashing politicians who don’t think like she does.

I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president.  For the country, it could be four years.  For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.

We can also turn her remarks around.

I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Hillary Clinton as our president.  For the country, it could be four years—or a dozen, with her insistence on extending Obama even further, and even farther left.  For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.

And Ginsburg had these gems:

I don’t expect that we’re going to see another affirmative action case [regarding Fisher v University of Texas, wherein Justice Anthony Kennedy gutted his own prior ruling in the case].  I think [Justice Kennedy] comes out as the great hero of this term.

And

It would be an impossible dream.  But I’d love to see Citizens United overruled[.]

The problem here isn’t that she’s engaging in political speech, though.  It’s that her political speech, because of her position and role in our Federal government—a Supreme Court Justice—means that whatever she says in the political arena can only prejudice all of her subsequent rulings.  With such political bashing, she’s predetermining her position on any case that comes before the Court, and not only those that might be brought under or by a Trump administration.

On the other hand, it’s good to know her prejudices—as well as those pre-written opinions on cases yet to come—beforehand, rather than discovering them in her opinions after the rulings have been announced.  Which emphasizes the importance of a question asked by a tweeter and quoted in The Washington Post piece at the first link above:

If there’s a redo of Bush v Gore, how does Ginsburg not recuse herself, given her Trump comments?

How, indeed?  Worse, how could we expect her to?

Climate and Lawless Democrats

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Recall that Democratic Party State Attorneys General and the Virgin Islands territorial Attorney General have subpoenaed private enterprises for all correspondence related to objections to political agendas touting climate warming and the need to redistribute wealth to “green” energy crony companies.  These subpoenas are intended to gain access to correspondence with anyone at all, and the companies have been threatened by these AGs with RICO proceedings if the victim target companies don’t comply.

In response to that, several of those target companies have countersued, demanding the AGs’ documents related to the AG cases, among other things under FOIA.  The AGs have refused to supply the requested documents, citing…secrecy.

Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute.

According to Chris Horner of E&E,

These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into.  …they are hiding behavior that seems to be precisely the sort of abuse lawmakers sought to expose to sunlight when deciding to cover their States’ chief law enforcement officers under FOIA laws….

In fact, these AGs appear to have preemptively colluded in their secrecy.  The AGs involved

circulated a common interest agreement in March that detailed their cooperation in the Exxon matter.  It explicitly prohibited signatories from sharing information about the legal campaign.

The agreement stipulated that if any relevant information “is demanded under a public records law, the party receiving the request shall … refuse to disclose any shared information unless otherwise required by law.”

Oddly, that agreement was discovered in the course of a prior E&E FOIA request; hence the apparent effort to ignore current FOIAs.

Because facts upset their predetermined narrative and undermine their political standing.

That’s Our Client State

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Leave them alone.  That’s the People’s Republic of China’s reaction to the US/Republic of Korea agreement to station an anti-missile defense system in the RoK, a setup explicitly designed for defense and deployed in response to northern Korea’s missile and nuclear warhead buildup.

PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang:

We demand the US and South Korea change their attitude.  By agreeing with the US side to deploy this system, South Korea has gotten itself involved in a situation that damages the current balance on the peninsula.

Yeah—the balance the PRC and their client were trying to develop, from which the better to intimidate the RoK and other regional nations.  Because defensive systems are threats, but PRC/northern Korea offensive systems cannot be.

Lu also refused to rule out economic retaliatory measures against the impertinent RoK.  Roughly 25% of the RoK’s exports go to the PRC.  This comes, also, with the PRC’s history of economic retaliation, as it did against Japan when the Japanese successfully disputed the PRC’s attempt to seize Japan’s Senkaku Island group.

Another IRS Assault

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This time on private enterprise and a private economy company that’s nominally outside the scope of the government economy.

US tax officials sued Facebook Inc to force the company to hand over documents related a transfer of assets to Ireland in 2010, part of a yearslong investigation into whether some of those assets were undervalued “by billions of dollars.”

Because, of course, John Koskinen and his IRS minions know better how to value a private enterprise than does the private enterprise.

Alternatively, Koskinen has reason to believe the company has falsified its valuations, which raises the question: what’s your probable cause, Mr Koskinen?