Category Archives: politics

Big Government and Responsibility

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The Progressive-Democratic Party-run States and the Republican-run States are demonstrating what they think of the intelligence and capability of ordinary American citizens.

The roughly half of states controlled by Republicans are therefore moving aggressively to roll back the law widely known as Obamacare, while the smaller number of Democratic states are working to bolster it.

One party does not believe that Americans in a free market, here for health care and for health care coverage plans, are capable of making sound decisions.  They need Big Government to think and act for them.  The other party believes the opposite: the ordinary man is fully capable of thinking for himself and doesn’t need Big Government to tell him what to do.

Oh, and that other party also believes in free markets and the associated competition that brings down overall prices and increases the range of options available.  That other party also believes that the greater range of options facilitates the decision-making of the ordinary man.  The one party believes the range of options only confuses the ordinary man and so—single payer for limited choices.

Agency Fees

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These are fees unions in a raft of jurisdictions are allowed to charge non-union members as a condition of those workers’ right to work at all.  Ostensibly, the fees are for the unions’ labor efforts in negotiating wages, benefits, and working conditions for everyone in the workplace.  The Supreme Court is considering a case, Janus v AFSCME, concerning whether such fees are constitutional.

It’s already the case that

Agency fees already are forbidden from paying for advocacy and other political activity.

Money is fungible, though, and even though agency fees might be barred from the purpose, the existence of the fees allows unions to reallocate equivalent money from other sources to the purpose—making it impossible actually to say that agency fees aren’t being used for the illegal purpose.  After all, if a union has $100, it can’t afford to engage in political activity.  If the union also collects a $10 agency fee from a non-union member, it now has $110, and it can afford to spend $10 on political activity, even if it’s forbidden by dollar bill serial tracking from using the non-union member’s $10 for the purpose.  Those ten bucks went illegally, however indirectly, to the political activity.

Moreover,

…plaintiffs in the Supreme Court case argue that negotiating with public agencies requires taking positions on government’s size and scope, which is a political question, so forcing employees to pay for the negotiations violates the First Amendment.

There’s the crux of the matter.  Agency fees are eminently unconstitutional, but I’m not sanguine that the Court will see it that way.  Both CJ Roberts and J Kennedy have shown themselves unreliable defenders of the Constitution, and the four Liberal Justices are a rock-solid bloc.

“Dialog” with Northern Korea

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Republic of Korea President Moon Jae-in wants the US to “lower the threshold for dialogue” so that “dialog” with northern Korea can begin.  Adding offensiveness to the foolishness, Moon didn’t even suggest this to us; he said it to People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping via a meeting with an envoy of Xi’s.

No.  The onus is on northern Korea to “lower the threshold.”  Until Baby Kim agrees to discuss—seriously discuss, not just engage in idle chit-chat—the dissolution of his nuclear weapons program and of his nuclear weapons, there is no basis for dialog.

Full stop.

Census and Ethnicity

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The Census Bureau is revising its role in government-mandated identity politics, and not necessarily for the better.  For decades, it has been directed to sort Americans into ethnic groups so Federal funds could be allocated to those Americans held to be minorities (never mind that with all Americans being equal under law, there are no minorities—and that the lack of practical truth in that is a failure of enforcement not an indication of any fundamental falseness in that).  The government-required bigotry even went so far as, when Americans were allowed to check off more than one ethnicity, the Census Bureau, rather than leaving it at that, would re-identify such a misguided person as a member of the smaller “minority,” and if an American checked “Caucasian” and a “minority,” that unfortunate was re-identified as the “minority” member.

Now the Census Bureau is looking at revising how it collects its identity politics data for the 2020 census, and a social scientist, David Hollinger has a suggestion.

Mr Hollinger has proposed to do away with the pan-ethnic groups altogether and “count instead those inhabitants who identify with descent communities from specific countries.”

As long as we’re revising the census, here’s my suggestion: just add a box for “American,” with no “Government will re-identify you” capability.

Where is self-identifying when it’s useful?

Statutes, Judges, and DoJ

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The Supreme Court last Tuesday heard a case between Microsoft and DoJ concerning whether the emails of an alleged drug dealer must be turned over to the government pursuant to a search warrant to that effect.  The catch is that the emails are stored exclusively on servers in Ireland—nominally beyond the reach of the US’ long arm of the law.

The statute in question is the Stored Communications Act, enacted 30 years ago before email and similar electronic communications were available.

Microsoft handed over some account data that was stored in the US but said it shouldn’t have to hand over the emails, which were stored on a server in Ireland.
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The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Microsoft, ruling the 1986 law didn’t apply beyond US territory.

DoJ and the participating States’ Attorneys General argued that the appellate decision, if left intact, would hamper the government’s crime-fighting ability.  That’s likely accurate, but there are two things about that.  One is that the convenience of government is not an excuse for limiting individual liberties either directly or through the companies we own. Some of you have heard that from me before.

The other thing, though, is that extending the statute to reach beyond our borders is a political decision, not a legal one.  Only the political arms of our government—Congress and the President acting together (or with Congress overruling a veto)—can make that decision; only the political arms of our government can extend the Act or write a new one to fill the apparent gap.

There’s this bit of disingenuousity, too, from Solicitor General Noel Francisco:

Microsoft’s employees could prepare that disclosure without leaving their desks in the United States[.]

They could prepare such disclosures without leaving their desks in the US in 1986 when the Act was passed, too.  All they had to do was write letters to the managers of the overseas storage facilities.  Nothing has changed here except that email has replaced gofers and the mail room.  Nor has the status of the material stored overseas changed.

On the other hand, Microsoft and other massive tech companies also are raising red herrings.

Microsoft, Google, and other technology companies say…the case could threaten American dominance in the $250 billion cloud-computing industry, because foreign clients won’t use US firms if their data isn’t protected.

That also may be true, and it’s also not relevant.  That’s a question that’s strictly a business matter and not a legal one.  To the extent government help is useful in filling this business gap, it’s also a political question, and these businesses need to seek their recourse through those political arms of our government.

Finally, there already is an alternate route to getting the emails, as admitted by DoJ in their filings:

There is a diplomatic process, governed by legal assistance treaties, that allows the US to request that foreign law-enforcement counterparts share sought-after data, but it can be slow and ineffective, the department said.

There’s that convenience thing, again.

What does the text of the Act say? That’s what the Justices must apply, not a phantom Act that doesn’t exist but that does represent what Justices or DoJ officials might wish the Act to say.  Article I, Section 1, is quite clear about who gets to write the statutes in our system of government, and extending the reach of an existing statute is law-making that is beyond the reach of any member of the judiciary or of the DoJ.