Monthly Archives: June 2018

Cynical Union

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Recall President Donald Trump’s Executive Order limiting the amount of time public union employees can spend doing union business during their work day.

The American Federation of Government Employees has demurred and gone into court to seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the EO.  AFGE General Counsel David Borer insisted

We will not allow this or any other administration to trample on the Constitutional rights of federal workers[.]

This cynical claim is based on Borer’s insistence that his members’ freedom of association right is violated by the EO.

This, of course, is nonsense.

There is no constitutional violation here. No association right is violated by requiring union member employees of a government institution to do the work of the institution when they’re on institution time and the taxpayer payroll.  Union members remain free to associate with a union or with each other in a union.  They remain free to conduct union business.  There is no constitutional obligation, though, for taxpayers to pay anyone for associating or for doing non-work related tasks.

This is a case that should result in a declaratory judgment that the law—the supreme Law in this case—is on the side of the government.  Alternatively, it should be tossed on its face and Borer and such of his staff as are participating in bringing this case, as well as the AFGE, strongly sanctioned for wasting the court’s time with such a blatantly frivolous case.

Heads Up

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As the People’s Republic of China responds to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, motivated in part by the PRC’s cyber-theft of American technology and proprietary information and the PRC’s extortion of the same and its demand for backdoors into foreign business’ (including especially American) core software as a condition of doing business in the PRC, buckle up, indeed, as the article at the link above suggests.

The PRC will do far more than this, though, as it attempts to coerce the US in the pursuit of its Warring States strategy.

Beijing retaliated against planned US tariffs on Chinese goods by targeting high-value American exports—including farm products, cars, and crude oil—bringing the world’s two biggest economies closer to an all-out trade war.

That’s just the beginning.  If we don’t abjectly surrender, the PRC will expand their conflict with open cyber-warfare against us, with rapidly expanding attacks on our government and our infrastructure with denial of service attacks against our financial structure, our distribution grids, DoD, State, OMB (again), etc.  These attacks also will include planting false data wherever they can and with simple vandalism on our key databases.

The PRC also will open the economic spigots with northern Korea and actively facilitate its final acquisition of a capability to deliver its stockpile of nuclear weapons.

The PRC will object and seek to prevent the Republic of China’s businesses from altering their supply chains, which currently involve PRC companies, and they will in the end openly attack—politically, economically, even militarily—the RoC.

Tariffs may or may not be the best way to fight the PRC’s war, but this is a struggle that we must win.  Lose, and we will find ourselves badly curtailed.  Recall that trillions of non-PRC-related trade sails to us through the South China Sea, which the PRC has claimed for itself and has been steadily militarizing.

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is….

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The ranking Progressive-Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warren (D, VA) has a thought on the DoJ IG report on the FBI’s investigation of the Clinton email scandal.

He says the authors of the IG report found no evidence of bias in the FBI’s handling of that investigation.  Then he says that that handling “benefited the Trump campaign more than one time’.”

That other benefitting, though, wasn’t bias at all.

Hmm….

YGTBSM

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Two examples of felony stupidity.

The Putnam County, Florida, Sheriff’s Office was asked by a man to test the meth sample he brought in.  It seems he’d had a bad reaction to a batch he’d bought, and he wanted to press charges against the person who’d sold him the “wrong narcotic.”

They did, it was, and they busted him.  And no, he didn’t get to press charges; although presumably he IDed the seller to the deputies so they could “press charges” in the county’s name.

And this, also from Florida.

This guy, pulled over for driving on a suspended drivers license, drove off in mid-stop, was caught again, and proceeded to finish his beer while the cops had him at the second stop.  This with three prior DUI convictions.

Some people’s children—you just can’t take them to raise.

Non-NATO Defense Spending

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President Donald Trump often decries Europe’s NATO nations for their lack of seriousness about their defense, and he zealously insists that they honor their commitment to spend 2% of their national GDP on defense.  It’s arguable that Trump could ease off (a little bit) and acknowledge the progress he’s made in getting Europe’s NATO members to boost their spending.

But only a little bit because those nations don’t appear to be stepping up in any serious way, as these numbers from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrate.

Overall inflation-adjusted military spending by every NATO member excluding America grew 1.8% in 2015, 3.1% in 2016, and 4.8% last year.

These are tokens, not real increases. A nation committing 1% of its GDP to defense that then increases its defense spending by these per centages will end up committing 1.11% of its GDP. There’s nothing serious about that.

Germany’s defense spending increase? The WSJ says that nation currently is spending 1.2% of its GDP on its defense, and it has plans for a 6% increase in next year’s budget.  Increasing that 1.2% by 6% would take it all the way up to 1.27%.

Be still, my heart.