Category Archives: regulation

Regulating State Tax Incentives

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There Ought to be a Law was the title of an old Reader’s Digest humor column: every little pet peeve came in for a jokingly recommended law barring it.  Because More Government is always the solution.

Barton Swaim, in his Wall Street Journal op-ed, actually takes that seriously, and he wants to apply it to the idea of States and cities offering businesses tax incentives to get them to build in those jurisdictions.  He wants the Federal government to…regulate…what those State and local jurisdictions can do to entice businesses.

He’s even holding up the European Union as a paragon in this venue.

The European Union imposes significant restrictions on how much member states or regional governments can offer companies to entice them to expand or relocate.

This is the same EU, keep in mind, that is constantly trying to bully low-tax member nations to charge more and higher taxes, rather than encouraging high-tax member nations to lower and lessen theirs.

Never mind that, though.

Why couldn’t Congress impose a simplified version of this principle on state and local governments?

It’s true enough that many of those incentive deals the States and locals turn out to be lousy from the States’ and locals’ perspective.  Why, then, shouldn’t the Federal government dictate to the States and local governments what those bodies should do with their own citizens’ and residents’ money? For their own good, you see.  Besides, isn’t it the Federal government’s money, anyway, and not those citizens’ and residents’?

Be more like Europe, and be more infested with central diktats than we already are. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Because, after all, States (and the local jurisdictions within them), to paraphrase John Jay, have the same relationship to the Federal government that counties have to the States: mere political jurisdictions set up to facilitate enforcement of Federal laws.

Federal republic be damned.

Sure.

Backwards

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A 9th Circuit District Judge has said that illegal aliens claiming to seek asylum in the US cannot be sent back to Mexico to wait for their day in court.  The judge’s ruling held, in essence, that

…the administration lacked a legal basis under current law for adopting the policy. He also found the policy ran afoul of the US’ legal obligations not to remove people to a country where their lives or freedom are threatened.

This is wrong on both counts. The whole point of Executive Actions of any sort is to fill a gap in “current law” and so to accomplish something that a President determines needs doing.  The laws authorizing such things explicitly authorize a President to fill such gaps.  Certainly, a President cannot create new law; his Orders, Proclamations, and so on, must fit within the existing legal system—and, not being law, they can be undone by subsequent Presidents via the same mechanisms.

What’s required is a law that prevents this or that policy from being adopted by Executive Action, and that law does not exist.  This Federal judge is legislating from the bench, and that’s a violation of his oath of office.

The other wrong is the judge’s claim that moving purported asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for their case to be heard is moving them to a nation where their lives or freedom are threatened.  This is simply nonsense. Mexico has offered these folks asylum in Mexico, and that nation has gone further: it’s offered them job opportunities so they can earn their way while they wait—or in the event they choose to stay.  Mexico is a far safer nation than any of the three Caravan Triangle nations whence most of these purported asylum seekers began their trek.  Indeed, the judge’s ruling on this aspect misreads the law.  Claimants must make their claims on the basis of the country they’re leaving, not the country from which they originated.  That’s Mexico, not Honduras, or El Salvador, or Guatemala.

There’s one other factor here, too.  These folks should have no case when their claims do come up in court.  They can’t possibly be seeking asylum when they’ve already been offered precisely that from the nation they’re trying to leave to enter the US, and rejected it.

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.

Yet Another Veterans Administration Failure

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Here is another failure of the VA to take care of our veterans as they are charged to do, and as the VA’s motto promises they’ll do.  Here is another casual dishonor of that promise [emphasis added].

More than 1,000 Department of Veterans Affairs patients in Kansas didn’t get proper follow-up care after initial colonoscopies last year, a problem that was addressed only after a whistleblower repeatedly reported it, according to a government watchdog.
The watchdog found patients didn’t get follow-up screenings on time and when they did, often didn’t get the results in a timely manner because of [a string of excuses].

Here’s that motto which the VA has so routinely dishonored:

To care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan

After all this time, and with VA failure rate continuing unabated, it’s time to get off the dime and get rid of the VA altogether.  As I’ve said many times, commit this Failure Administration’s current and putative future budgets to vouchers for our veterans so they can get the care they need and want from the doctors they choose, the clinics they choose, the hospitals they choose.  It’s time to unshackle our veterans from the VA’s determined resistance to perform.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.