Author Archives: eehines

Veteran’s Day

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I first posted this in 2011; I added to it in 2014.

Thank you for all who have, and are, serving.  And because I couldn’t have said it better, I’ll let Mike Royko, late of the Chicago Tribune, via Coastal Courier, say it from his 1993 column.

I just phoned six friends and asked them what they will be doing on Monday.

They all said the same thing: working.

Me, too.

There is something else we share. We are all military veterans.

And there is a third thing we have in common. We are not employees of the federal government, state government, county government, municipal government, the Postal Service, the courts, banks, or S & Ls, and we don’t teach school.

If we did, we would be among the many millions of people who will spend Monday goofing off.

Which is why it is about time Congress revised the ridiculous terms of Veterans Day as a national holiday.

The purpose of Veterans Day is to honor all veterans.

So how does this country honor them?…

…By letting the veterans, the majority of whom work in the private sector, spend the day at their jobs so they can pay taxes that permit millions of non-veterans to get paid for doing nothing.

As my friend Harry put it:

“First I went through basic training. Then infantry school. Then I got on a crowded, stinking troop ship that took 23 days to get from San Francisco to Japan. We went through a storm that had 90 percent of the guys on the ship throwing up for a week.

“Then I rode a beat-up transport plane from Japan to Korea, and it almost went down in the drink. I think the pilot was drunk.

“When I got to Korea, I was lucky. The war ended seven months after I got there, and I didn’t kill anybody and nobody killed me.

“But it was still a miserable experience. Then when my tour was over, I got on another troop ship and it took 21 stinking days to cross the Pacific.

“When I got home on leave, one of the older guys at the neighborhood bar — he was a World War II vet — told me I was a —-head because we didn’t win, we only got a tie.

“So now on Veterans Day I get up in the morning and go down to the office and work.

“You know what my nephew does? He sleeps in. That’s because he works for the state.

“And do you know what he did during the Vietnam War? He ducked the draft by getting a job teaching at an inner-city school.

“Now, is that a raw deal or what?”

Of course that’s a raw deal. So I propose that the members of Congress revise Veterans Day to provide the following:

– All veterans — and only veterans — should have the day off from work. It doesn’t matter if they were combat heroes or stateside clerk-typists.

Anybody who went through basic training and was awakened before dawn by a red-neck drill sergeant who bellowed: “Drop your whatsis and grab your socks and fall out on the road,” is entitled.

– Those veterans who wish to march in parades, make speeches or listen to speeches can do so. But for those who don’t, all local gambling laws should be suspended for the day to permit vets to gather in taverns, pull a couple of tables together and spend the day playing poker, blackjack, craps, drinking and telling lewd lies about lewd experiences with lewd women. All bar prices should be rolled back to enlisted men’s club prices, Officers can pay the going rate, the stiffs.

– All anti-smoking laws will be suspended for Veterans Day. The same hold for all misdemeanor laws pertaining to disorderly conduct, non-felonious brawling, leering, gawking and any other gross and disgusting public behavior that does not harm another individual.

– It will be a treasonable offense for any spouse or live-in girlfriend (or boyfriend, if it applies) to utter the dreaded words: “What time will you be home tonight?”

– Anyone caught posing as a veteran will be required to eat a triple portion of chipped beef on toast, with Spam on the side, and spend the day watching a chaplain present a color-slide presentation on the horrors of VD.

– Regardless of how high his office, no politician who had the opportunity to serve in the military, but didn’t, will be allowed to make a patriotic speech, appear on TV, or poke his nose out of his office for the entire day.

Any politician who defies this ban will be required to spend 12 hours wearing headphones and listening to tapes of President Clinton explaining his deferments.

Now, deal the cards and pass the tequila.

– Mike Royko

Next, because this is a day of remembrance and of honoring our surviving veterans, take another moment to visit here and take in Mark Toomey’s piece.

And follow his advice at the end.

Interesting Idea

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This one from President Donald Trump (R), who has one on occasion.

I am recommending to Senate Republicans that the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars currently being sent to money sucking Insurance Companies in order to save the bad Healthcare provided by ObamaCare, BE SENT DIRECTLY TO THE PEOPLE SO THAT THEY CAN PURCHASE THEIR OWN, MUCH BETTER, HEALTHCARE, and have money left over[.]

The idea wants study to identify any hidden implications, good or bad. It also wants a couple of criteria attached. One is a means test for eligibility for the payments. The Federal Poverty Guidelines do a good job of locating the threshold for poverty. Anyone or any family with income above the poverty guideline is, by definition, not living in poverty, and so should be ineligible.

The other criterion is a sunset clause. The subsidies, even as direct payments to the individuals, should have a hard expiration date beyond which they end, irrevocably (or as nearly so as a Congress can make a statute, which frankly isn’t much). The duration of the payments should be only long enough to allow the individual and family make their own budgetary adjustments, plus what might be called an engineering slop cushion—perhaps six months.

All in all, though, this is a good initial consideration.

Even Big Tents have Capacity Limits

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Kevin Roberts, the President of the Heritage Foundation, has messed up badly. As Joseph Sternberg described it in his Wall Street Journal op-ed,

The groypers purport to be a movement of disaffected far-right nationalists, predominantly young men, under the sway of charismatic podcasting personality Nick Fuentes. Mr Roberts plunged into hot water last week when he announced that he wouldn’t cut Heritage’s ties with Tucker Carlson after Mr Carlson gave Mr Fuentes a platform to air a sampling of his antisemitic, racist, and misogynistic views uncontested. Mr Roberts argued that to disavow Mr Carlson would be to give in to a form of cancel culture, and insisted the conservative movement should remain a big tent.

Even big tents have capacity limits, though, and there is no room in the Conservative movement for antisemitism, racism, or misogyny. These bigotries aren’t even conservative holdings; they’re beyond even the extremist pale of either end of the spectrum. Severing ties with Carlson has nothing to do with any sort of cancel culture.

It’s time for Kevin Roberts to be dismissed from the Heritage Foundation. Even were Roberts to apologize for his gross error and follow through on cutting ties with Carlson, at this late date it would be impossible to take an apology as truly sincere and not just a collection of words uttered in response to opprobrium, and it would be impossible to believe that he won’t make a similar “misjudgment” regarding bigotries in the future.

If the Heritage Foundation won’t make that move, it could only be because they condone Roberts’ support for the antisemitic and racist bigotry and the misogyny of Carlson and Fuentes. In which case, it’ll be time for the rest of us to dismiss the Heritage Foundation, a once proud and valuable member of the Conservative movement.

Well, Yeah

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David Malpais, Treasury Undersecretary during Trump I’s first two years, has misunderstood what the Federal Reserve Bank must do. He undergirded his misunderstanding with this:

…the Fed’s demand-side model treats economic and job growth as inflation risks and prescribes higher interest rates.

Well, yeah. Economic growth in demand, without a parallel growth in economic supply is inflationary, and job growth increases business’ costs and so applies upward pressure on prices businesses must charge.

The correct answer for the Fed, given its dual mandate of price stability and full employment, is not just to stop reducing its benchmark interest rates—they’re too low already—but to raise them a quarter point to the level (4.75%-5%) historically consistent with its price stability goal of 2% inflation. Then the Fed should sit down and let the market fluctuate interest rates and let the inflation rate bounce around those 2%. A free market, in an environment of reduced regulatory constraints (over-regulation being one of President Donald Trump’s (R) bugaboos) will easily correct on its own, both those market interest rates and that inflation rate. That will allow the market to flourish, and that, in turn, will produce full employment.

Artificially suppressing interest rates is far more inflationary than are stable rates in the 4.75%-5% range. Lowering the cost of money artificially, rather than letting market forces deal with that, only stimulates demand without stimulating production (which by the nature of the two, strongly lags changes in demand), and that’s directly inflationary; it’s the textbook basic cause of inflation.

Mamdani’s Nod in the General Direction of Stability

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The newly elected Mayor of New York City, the Socialist Zohran Mamdani, has indicated he’s taking the City’s crime problem seriously with his claim that he would like to retain Jessica Tisch, the city’s Police Commissioner.

I have questions, though.

With what authority would Tisch have actually to deal with crime and to pursue the criminals that commit them? Would she have free rein, or would he try to keep her hemmed in? He is, after all, on record calling to defund the nation’s largest police force and accusing it of racism. He was speaking from his heart then; is he now speaking merely politically, or has he evolved his views?

Assume he’s serious, even if merely arguendo. A couple follow-on questions arise. What will he do regarding both city prosecutors who decline to prosecute the criminals and that subset of them who also attempt to prosecute the victims for their heinous efforts to defend themselves?

In those few cases where the suspect actually faces trial, what will he do about city judges who insist on turning those suspects loose on no bail, and what will he do about the ordnances and State laws (over the latter which he has little influence) that mandate many of those no-bail releases?