Category Archives: politics

Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy

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Last Thursday, Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden laid out his foreign policy paradigm.  The gist of his policy is this:

[The] overarching purpose of our foreign policy, I believe, must be to defend and advance our security, prosperity, and democratic values that the United States stands for.

And

I would remind the world that we are the United States of America and we do not coddle dictators. The United States of America gives hate no safe harbor.

And he’ll

make it my mission to restore American leadership….

In fine, Biden’s foreign policy is to Make America Great Again.

A Thought on Tariffs

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The tariffs as used by President Donald Trump are viewed by many as having no impact on our overall trade deficit, and much is made of Trump’s disdain for trade deficits.

Thirty months into the Trump Presidency, the US economy continues to import more than it exports. This isn’t a problem, since the trade deficit is of no great consequence as an economic measure.  But in President Trump’s telling this is a clear and present danger….

Suppose something else, though.

Mr Trump has imposed 25% tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods, and he’s threatened a duty on another $300 billion. This has narrowed the US-China bilateral goods trade gap in recent months, but the total US trade deficit reached a record high in 2018. … Producers are leaving China, but not for America.
While Chinese goods exports to the US fell 12.3% year-over-year from January through May, Vietnam saw a 36.4% increase, according to US Census data. Taiwan had a nearly 22.5% year-over-year increase in the same five months, more than triple the increase from 2017-18. South Korean exports to the US increased 12.4% over the period.

Recall one of Trump’s other reasons for disdaining the trade deficit: the People’s Republic of China declines to play by international trade rules, and it steals or extorts other nations’ (ours in particular as one of the, if not the, leader in) technology and intellectual property, along with merely proprietary materials.

If the PRC doesn’t want to play by the same rules as the rest of us, it doesn’t need to trade with the rest of us.

Thus: if the tariffs aren’t realizing their first secondary purpose, moving production back to the US, they are gaining their primary purpose: moving production, and associated export, out of the PRC.

That’s not all bad.

Ducking Problems

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Now the Catholic Church says it’s willing to be held accountable for its history of child abuse—but only if it can control the accountability.  The Church has offered cash payoffs to its victims, but the article’s subheadline says all there is about the Church’s cynical offer:

A potential flood of lawsuits has spurred the Catholic Church to offer mediation, only if accusers agree not to sue

That’s reason enough for mediation to be rejected and the lawsuits pushed forward apace.  And for many, many more lawsuits to be brought.

The Church is still trying to duck its responsibility and culpability and now is trying to control the nature and extent of any sanction.

Be Like Europe, Progressives Say

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Here’s another example of the Europe the Left demands we emulate.

Vincent, the 42-year-old man’s name is, had a terrible accident 11 years ago that left him a brain-damaged quadriplegic.  He’s been in a French hospital, in Reims, ever since, variously rated as “semi-conscious” and “in a vegetative state.”  Yet, he eats, sleeps, and responds to his mother’s conversation.

The French medical system is not the central, government-as-single-payer “medical” system that is the ideal of our own Left, but the French government does decide on euthanasia. That government has made the decision that Vincent is no longer worth the trouble of helping to live.  His feeding tube is to be removed, and he’s to be killed by starvation.

And when his mother told him of the French Court of Cassation’s (the French supreme court for civil cases, which this one is; there is no appeal) decision that he was to die, he cried.

The officials of this European government don’t even have the courage to kill the man outright with their own hands. They’re happy simply to stand on the sidelines, give the order, and let him die the agonizing death of starvation.  He doesn’t even get to eat cake.

Yay, Progressives.

And now he’s dead. I wrote the above last Wednesday when Vincent was alive. The French government ordered his killing, French doctors hospital pulled his feeding and hydration tubes the next day, and Vincent has died.

Isn’t government involvement in health care grand.

Hypocrisy of the British Left

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Yes, ex-Prime Minister John Major claims himself a Conservative, but he’s acting more and more Left.  Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister wannabe and front-runner to replace the resigned Theresa May, has said that if needs be, he’ll prorogue Parliament to block an anti-no-deal Brexit vote, if a no-deal departure is necessary.

Prorogue: a temporary suspension of Parliament following petition of the Queen by her first minister—the Prime Minister—for permission to suspend Parliament and her granting that permission.  This use is unusual; prorogation is normally used for normal terminations of Parliamentary sessions; the term also describes the interval between that termination and the normal opening of the next session.

The former British Prime Minister John Major on Wednesday warned he would personally take legal action to stop any leader using a suspension of parliament to deliver a “no-deal” Brexit.

And yet, he threatens:

In order to close down parliament the prime minister would have to go to her Majesty the Queen and ask for her permission to prorogue. If her first minister asks for that permission, it is almost inconceivable that the queen will do anything other than grant it.
She is then in the midst of a constitutional controversy that no serious politician should put the queen in the middle of[.]

Thus, the hypocrisy: Major says he personally will precipitate that constitutional crisis with his own lawsuit to stop the process.

I for one would be prepared to go and seek judicial review.

Never mind that his case can only lose: as part of the Queen’s (any British monarch’s) Royal Prerogative, the power and the authority to prorogue belongs only to the monarch.  No British court can overrule her.

Hmm….