Category Archives: politics

Dangerous Misunderstanding

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JCS Chairman General Mark Milley has a very serious and dangerous misunderstanding. He said, as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal,

China’s investment in its navy, hypersonic missiles, cyber, and other technologies are designed to ensure that it, along with Russia and the US, are world-leading nations.

This is a man who isn’t paying attention to what’s going on around him. The People’s Republic of China’s investments, along with its foreign policy initiatives, are not at all concerned with enabling the PRC to operate on an equal footing with us and with Russia.

The PRC’s moves are centered solely on that nation being the sole world power, with Russia as its sidekick and our nation subordinated to its bidding.

See, for instance, the PRC-Russia agreement allowing the PRC to exploit Siberian mineral, timber, and other resources. In executing this agreement, the PRC is allowed to colonize move hundreds of thousands of PRC workers into south central and eastern Siberia to carry out the exploitation, and then it will share some of the produce with Russia.

The PRC’s navy, hypersonic missiles, cyber, and other investments, many of which are coming to fruition, are intended to give the PRC a first-strike military capability so overwhelming that no second-strike response would even be possible.

Two Mistakes

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The Chevron Deference “rule,” which the Supreme Court coalesced out of the æther in its 37-year-old Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council ruling, comes up again in this year’s American Hospital Association v Becerra case, which centers on Medicare’s drug reimbursement schedule for hospitals.

The Supremes invented a two-step evaluation of Executive Branch agency rules in that Chevron case:

First, courts are to give effect to the “unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Second, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous…then it is bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation.

The second step contains the two mistakes, a remarkable achievement even for the activist Court that dreamed up the process.

First, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous, then the court has no other option, under each of our Constitution and the judge’s/Justices’ oaths of office, to strike the statute as unconstitutionally ambiguous. It has no need, it cannot, then reach that second bit.

Second, a court is not at all bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation. Far from it. In evaluating an agency rule or regulation—having found the statute constitutionally clear—any court must, by the Supreme Court’s rule, treat the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress as their limit. From that, a court must evaluate, de novo, the rule or regulation for whether it fits within the clear confines of the statute.

There can be no deference to another branch of government, much less to a subordinate agency of another branch, if judges of the judicial branch are to be faithful to our Constitution’s construction of three coequal branches of government, rather than to, say, the British construction of the judiciary being subordinate to another branch (Parliament in the British construction).

If the Supreme Court is to satisfy its function in AHA, it must rescind, reverse, root out to every jot and tittle Chevron Deference (and all other deferences, vis., Skidmore, City of Arlington v FCC‘s Arlington, etc) and evaluate the Becerra rule on the basis of whether the governing statute truly is unambiguous and if so, then on the fit of Becerra’s rule within that statute.

A Rain Tax

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It’s back.

Recall the Maryland rain tax that Progressive-Democrats in that State’s legislature actually got passed into law. That…foolishness…contributed to the State’s Progressive-Democrat Governor getting tossed at the next election and replaced by a Republican. The State’s legislature then repealed the tax within the next couple years.

Now we see that the Progressive-Democrat City Manager for Fairfax (that Fairfax), Robert Stalzer, proposed

taxing local residents and businesses for the amount of rainwater that falls on their roofs, driveways, parking lots, and other “impervious surfaces” on their property.

Just the News opened its article on this with this bit from The Beatles:

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Not to be outdone, or not too badly, anyway, I offer this adaptation from The Lovin’ Spoonful:

You and me and rain on the roof,
Caught up in a taxing shower,
Going broke while it soaks our wallets.
Maybe we’ll be broke in hours,
Waiting out the Guv….

To quote Joe Biden, who railed in a different venue, this is a bonehead idea.

A Comment on Two Crises

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Tax revenues, in the main, rose slightly as a fraction of GDP in wealthier nations despite the existence of the Wuhan Virus situation.

That surprise outcome underlines the novel nature of the economic contraction that accompanied the first surge of Covid-19 infections, and contrasts with the global financial crisis, when revenues fell as a share of economic output, an outcome more typical of recessions.

Novel indeed. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,

revenues across its 38 members rose to 33.5% of gross domestic product in 2020 from 33.4% in 2019. In the wake of the global financial crisis, revenues in 2009 fell to 31.8% of GDP from 32.6% of GDP in 2008.

And

In both instances, tax revenues and total economic output fell, but in 2020 the former declined less sharply than the latter.

These…economists…lay off the outcome of the 2020 situation to impacts on jobs.

Employment reductions in 2020 were concentrated at the lower end of the income distribution, as were falls in working hours.  This limited the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on revenues relative to the GFC [global financial crisis], in which job losses and reductions in working hours were more evenly spread.

But this is an outcome, and the economists of the OECD have mischaracterized the cause.

Look at the two examples the OECD cited for its comparison. The “global financial crisis” of 2009 was an economic event that was driven by purely economic factors—in that case, a credit crunch. The economic conditions of 2020 were driven, not by the prevalence of the Wuhan Virus, but by governments’ (over)reaction to the virus, not from the virus.

That political reaction—lockdowns, restrictions on movements, vaccine requirements levied on businesses by governments—differentially impacted economies in the manner indicated. Of course wealthier nations fared better than less wealthy ones. The less wealthy are far more dependent on those low-paying jobs.

Chit-Chat

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Secretary of State Antony Blinken has some.

The secretary declined to detail potential US responses [to a Russian invasion of Ukraine] but said Mr Biden cited the potential for “high-impact economic measures.”

And

If Beijing were to decide to try to change the status quo [vis-à-vis the Republic of China] unilaterally by force, it would be a very serious mistake[.]

Sure. What exactly might those high-impact economic measures be, and on what basis does Blinken—or Biden-Harris, for that matter—think Putin cares about those, given that he’ll have Ukraine under his control? What evidence do Blinken or Biden-Harris offer to suggest Putin has cared overmuch about past “economic measures?”

Blinken and Biden-Harris are carefully silent on all of that.

Further, what do Blinken or Biden-Harris suggest would be their corrective action for Beijing’s “mistake?” What makes either of them think Xi Jinping would care about any correction, since he’d already be occupying the RoC?

More careful silence.