Category Archives: political economy

Nonsensical

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Prime Minister Theresa May has written to the EU begging for an extension until the end of June before Great Britain leaves the EU.  France is continuing to claim it opposes any further extension beyond the current 12 April date if Great Britain cannot form a coherent, reasoned plan for departure to offer the EU that would earn a longer extension for departure.

It’s nonsensical that this even should be an item of discussion.  Over two years ago, the citizens of Great Britain voted to leave the EU.  That’s the bottom line.  Everything after that is just arguing over the terms of the departure. The British government has shown itself incapable of forming a coherent, reasoned set of terms, and Brussels has refused to negotiate in good faith any set of terms, coherent and reasoned or not, and those failures have unnecessarily complexified things.

But that artificial complexity is irrelevant, as are any terms of departure.

The vote was to leave. The people have spoken.  Great Britain must leave, and the EU must stop its obstruction and hold the door open.  To that end, it’s necessary that Prime Minister Theresa May’s request for another extension be rejected.

It’s time to end this shabby charade.

Oversight

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Congressman Richard Neal (D, MA), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, has demanded the IRS turn over some years of President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns.  He centered his demand thusly:

“Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, has a duty to conduct oversight of departments and officials,” Mr Neal said.

That’s an interesting argument. If it’s coequality that creates the oversight duty, then the coequal Executive Branch has an identical duty to conduct oversight of House (and Senate) Committees and members.

Hmm….

Nice Ideas, But….

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There are some moves afoot in the House Ways and Means Committee to revamp Americans’ retirement savings accounts.  A couple of them include

increasing the flexibility associated with retirement accounts. If approved, individuals would be allowed to stash money into IRA accounts beyond the current age limit of 70½. It would also delay when individuals are required to begin taking required minimum distributions to 72, from 70½.

These are moves in the right direction, but they seem to proceed from a false premise, and some unanswered—unaddressed, even—questions.  One question is why there should be any age limit (or any other limit) on saving money into IRA (or other retirement) accounts.  Another question also is age-related: why there should be any age after which distributions from retirement accounts must be taken.

Those lead to the false premise.  Whose money is it, anyway, both before and after it goes into those retirement accounts? The worthies on the Committee seem to be assuming its Government’s money and not each citizen’s.

As interim steps, these are fine ones to take.  They cannot be any sort of final answer.

Protection

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Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.

Take It or Leave Us

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Here is one of the final steps in Brussels’ studied refusal to deal in good faith with Great Britain’s leaving the EU in all the long “negotiations.”  With the Brits’ departure now set for 12 April, the EU’s Chief Negotiator for the United Kingdom Exiting the European Union, Michel Barnier, has issued the EU’s ultimatum:

  • The possibility of a successful “meaningful vote” on the withdrawal agreement in the next few days. “The only way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is and will be through a positive majority. We should continue to make this point in the public debate,” Barnier said.
  • Leaving without an agreement should the meaningful vote fail: “No deal was never my desired or intended scenario, but the EU 27 is more prepared. It becomes day after day more likely.”
  • Requesting an extension to Article 50, should the deal fail. “Such an extension would carry significant risk for the EU,” said Barnier. “A strong justification would be needed.”

In other words, there can be no extension (which would be a foolish, if not humiliating, surrender by Great Britain, in any event) to the departure.

Barnier added, to obfuscate the nature of these “choices,”

If the UK so wish we’re ready to rework the political declaration so long as the principles of the EU are respected.

In other words, the rework will continue to require Great Britain to accede to Continental requirements rather than exercise its own national sovereignty—the purpose of the Brits’ Leave vote.

This is no choice. It’s designed solely to thoroughly denigrate Great Britain both as punishment for Leaving and as a message for other EU nations contemplating going out from the Union.