Monthly Archives: December 2025

A Brief Thought on Politics and Government

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It’s necessary to keep in mind a fundamental fact of government: government does absolutely nothing; it’s purely a hypothetical construct.

That hypothetical aspect, though, is made concretely extant by the men and women who populate a government and occupy the various positions within it. In our American case, our government is given a framework and the positions within it by our Constitution and the statutes within our Constitution that create specific Departments and Agencies and their structure. Our government—this construction—still does absolutely nothing. It’s the men and women who occupy those positions within our government who do the things vernacularly attributed to “government.”

Politics is what those men and women do. It’s politics that those men and women employ to do things, to enact statutes, execute or rescind regulations, generate legal cases for our government’s courts, and issue court decisions (yes, politics is involved in judges’ and Justices’ development of their decisions, especially at the appellate levels where groups of judges and Justices must agree at least more or less on a ruling).

Those politics center on trading off support or obstruction of this or that position in return for support or obstruction of that or this position. Every politician or court official has something to gain or lose or trade in these tradeoffs. At bottom—because we humans at bottom are venal creatures—these political tradeoffs are as much for personal gain—generally in political power, sometimes for explicit financial—as they are for the nation’s good.

And that’s the danger of politics in government: the men and women who are the real actors, in the name of government, tend to act for their own weal first and the weal of our nation, the weal of us citizens, second.

Against that framework, it’s important to consider the philosophies underlying our two major political parties. In broad strokes, one of the parties holds the position that government can solve most, if not all, of the problems us citizens face, whether as groups of us or individually. This leads to this party moving to constantly expand the role of government in us citizens’ lives.

The other party holds the position that government is necessary because some problems are best worked, or can only be worked, by government, and so statutes should be kept simple and regulations to a minimum. This leads to moves to limit government power and intrusion into our lives.

Thus, one party moves to expand its politicians’ own political power and financial gain, while the other party moves to limit those gains or at least expand them at a much slower rate.

While the two parties tend to converge, they’re not there yet, and elections still have consequences.

I Have a Question

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President Donald Trump (R) wants to set up financial accounts for children, initially funded with $1,000 of government money—taxpayer money redistributed. Wall Street wants in on the action. This bit is what raises my question:

Participating financial firms likely would earn lower management fees than their typical rates, but the program would be a potential gateway to acquire millions of new customers the companies hope will stay with them into adulthood and grow their accounts over time.

And this:

One priority for the government is to offer low-fee investment options.

Who will pay those fees? Would they be one-time set up fees, or would they be ongoing account maintenance fees? If the latter, and if they’re paid by the account holder, which is the usual case, even low fees would sap the accounts over time just as thoroughly as even low management fees on mutual funds do.

On the other hand, there’s this:

The Treasury Department is considering choosing an exchange-traded fund or working with firms to potentially create a market-tracking fund with no fees, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

That’s the firms betting on the account holders becoming future broader account holders/investors with those firms, and that would be a good bet.

No-fee (as most brokerages do for DIY investors) or (very) low fee, these accounts would seem like a good idea—give children a leg up on investing and thereby give them a long-term level of game skin for their betterment and their better judgment and interest in our economy.

Except.

How strong would that skin be if handed to the children (even if managed with the assistance of, or by, their parents)? Possibly, the benefits would outweigh that risks, given the size of the proposed seed money.

The far greater danger, though, is the Progressive-Democratic Party, with its penchant for Know Better Government intrusions, returning to power. At that point, the accounts will become permanently and annually government funded in ever increasing amounts—so long as the accounts invest in Party-approved vehicles. See, for instance, Party’s demand for continued (and increasing) subsidies for their unaffordable Affordable Care Act policies.

The Judge Erred Badly

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A Minnesota jury convicted a man and his wife of stealing $7.2 million from the state’s Medicaid program. After the jury rendered its verdict, Minnesota State District Judge (4th District) Sarah West overturned it in its entirety.

In her decision, West wrote that prosecutors “relied heavily on circumstantial evidence,” adding that the state didn’t rule out other potential “reasonable inferences.”

If West really thought that, why did she let the case go to the jury and then let the jury reach its verdict and then read out that verdict?

If West really thought that, why didn’t she, when both sides had rested their cases—or even just when the prosecutor had rested—simply issue a directed verdict of not guilty instead of wasting so much time? Those jurors were private citizens with day jobs, after all. Her claim of other “reasonable inferences” that could have been drawn seem to me would approach reasonable doubt.

Sarah West seems to be a State district judge who does not understand her role as judge or her oath of office.

Of Which the Press Demonstrates the Need

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The need, that is, for a Web site that identifies misleading, distorting, outright lies that the press has such a penchant for. Examples were provided by the “news” pages of The Wall Street Journal, and a second example was provided by the WSJ‘s editors in the very same edition.

From the “news” page, this article ostensibly describing the Web site, which the Trump administration made live earlier this week:

For years, Trump has used social media—particularly his platform, Truth Social—to reprimand the press for negative coverage. The new government site reflects a more coordinated, formalized approach to criticizing members of the press.

No, for years, Trump and others in his administration have called out the naked bias of the press and social media as both moved to suppress coverage of Conservatives; the naked bias of outlets that insist there are not two sides to every story and that announce that their “news” pages will take sides in reporting, no longer even trying to do balanced reporting; and outright spiking of stories unfavorable to the Left or to Progressive-Democratic Party politicians.

And this “news” page:

President Trump has made no secret of his disdain for renewable energy.

It’s hardly disdain for renewable energy when the Trump administration is actively pushing an all-of-the-above energy production industry, which includes pushes for renewables—just in parallel with traditional sources and nuclear power sources rather than exclusive of them. Cutting subsidies for wind and solar and for battery-powered vehicles is hardly disdain; it’s simply putting all sources of energy on a more level competition field.

Then there’s this from those editors:

Lawmakers are doing a public service by trying to get to the truth on whether the Trump Administration killed defenseless survivors of a drug-boat strike.

There’s a world of difference between killing survivors in a second strike and targeting them with that second strike. It’s telling that the editors not only chose not to acknowledge both interpretations, they chose to not explain why they ignored the one and accepted only the other. Of course, the Washington Post story they cite, while noting the story had only anonymous sources, also only mentioned killing, without its own distinction between the two interpretations.

A second strike, as the editors know full well, would have been entirely justified if the goal was to destroy the boat and its cargo—cocaine floats, as the editors also know full well—and the first strike didn’t succeed in the destruction. The deaths of any first-hit survivors from the second blow would have been tragic, but would have been collateral damage, and so entirely within US and international law.

Japan is Learning the Reasons

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Reasons for ceasing doing business with and within the People’s Republic of China, that is. In response to Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remarks that a PRC attack on the Republic of China (Takaichi referred to “Taiwan”) would trigger a Japanese defensive response,

China has unearthed its old playbook of informal coercive moves. Unlike clear-cut export controls, these disguised measures are harder to manage and pose escalatory risks. Governments and companies must grapple with how to respond.
Since Nov. 14, China has issued a series of escalating restrictions: cautioning tourists and students against travel to Japan; postponing the release of at least two Japanese films; and reinstating a blanket ban on Japanese seafood imports.

The WSJ‘s op-ed authors, Victor Ferguson and Audrye Wong, Hitotsubashi University Assistant Professor of International Relations and USC Assistant Professor of Political Science, respectively, claimed

It is hard for governments and companies to respond to such disguised measures effectively and cohesively.

It’s only hard politically. It’s completely straightforward as a practical and economic matter. It’s time for the Japanese to suck up and grunt through the unavoidably disruptive period of disruption and discontinue doing business with PRC-domiciled companies, with the PRC government, and business of any sort inside the PRC.