Category Archives: regulation

A Grievous Error

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board had one in its piece last Wednesday. In that opinion, the Editors touted the gun control “compromise” then-soon to be passed by the Senate (and actually passed the next evening). One of the things of which the Board is so enamored is this mandate:

The state laws must contain due-process protections—including the right to an in-person hearing, to know the evidence used to justify a red-flag order, and to have counsel present.

Noting Orwellian here.

It isn’t possible for red flag laws to have due-process protections. The accused’s weapons are confiscated solely on the accusation of another, and the accused must then prove his own fitness in order to get them back—a process that takes weeks, at best. On his success, it then takes additional weeks to months actually to get his weapons returned. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the charge.

That’s the destruction of the accused’s due-process, not the protection of them.

Red flag laws also are destructive of due-process protections for related persons. If another, unaccused, is in the same household and legally owns weapons, those are seized too, all in the name of denying the accused any access at all. That ancillary person then must then go into court and defend her possession, taking weeks to do so, and taking additional weeks to months actually to get them back. So much for the government’s requirement to prove the unrelated person’s unfitness to have her weapons.

That’s the destruction of the related person’s due-process.

The Fed and Equity

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And, no, I’m not writing about house ownership type equity. This concerns the Fed’s potentially increasing role in “social equity.”

The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board expressed concern about Progressive-Democrats trying to legislate into the Federal Reserve’s mandates the matter of “racial equity.” They’re correct as far as they went, but they based their concern on the Fed’s existing workload and on the question of how to assess “racial equity” in the Fed’s pronouncements and enforce the concept in its controls.

The Editors, though, missed the most important distinction and problem.

Whether or not “racial equity” is a matter to be taken seriously, it’s a political matter only, and so belongs only to the political branches of our Federal government—Congress and the White House.

The matter has no place in any Central Bank, including ours. The Federal Reserve’s function, in particular, is to protect our currency by protecting our economy—by working, under its existing statutory instructions, to maintain stable pricing, maximum employment, and moderate long-term interest rates (which means working to maintain stable pricing, since employment and interest rates fall out of that).

The Fed has no business or place in the political environment.

Another Example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Racism

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This time, it’s in the housing market, via the Federal government-run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The plans released last week [by FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie] might have been written by California Representative Maxine Waters (D). Central to Fannie’s plan are “Special Purpose Credit Programs” that increase access to credit and encourage “sustainable homeownership for Black consumers.”
One program would assist black borrowers with down payments. Most home-buyers are required to put down at least 20% of the cost of a new home to reduce the risks of default. Fannie’s plan would effectively require taxpayers to subsidize down payments for black borrowers.

It goes downhill from there.

Once again, Party explicitly favors one group of Americans while explicitly disfavoring another group of Americans—solely on the basis of race.

An Incoherent Biden Diktat

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It’s in the offing. This time, President Joe Biden is threatening to inflict his “emergency powers” on American oil producing companies if they don’t produce more oil.

President Biden may resort to using emergency powers if American oil companies don’t increase output at their refineries, the president told oil CEOs in a series of letters Wednesday.
Biden’s statement blames oil companies for running “historically high profit margins” even as Americans experience surging gas prices.

Never mind that they cannot just turn on the faucet and more oil comes out of the tap. It takes lots of money and quite a bit of time to reopen capped wells, and it takes even more money and lots of time to drill a new, producing well.

But Biden’s administration stands in the way of all of that, even as he threatens his diktat. His administration has already canceled large leases in Alaska. His administration has closed most Federal lands to further exploration, much less drilling. His administration is slow-walking new lease applications. His administration is slow-walking the permits needed actually to explore, and then the permits needed actually to drill, once a lease is approved.

His administration has closed major pipelines and is slow-walking construction of other pipelines so that even were a new well drilled or an existing one uncapped, the producers would have no way to deliver output to a refiner.

Given all of that, and with existing refiners already operating at near capacity, there’s no reason to open/build new refineries—they’d have no additional oil to refine.

Beyond that, there’s the matter of trust. Beyond the time and money it takes to (re)open a well, it takes more time—years—for those costs to be recouped and profit begun to be received from the proceeds of that well. Biden’s administration, though, cannot be trusted not to pull the rug out from under those oil companies and demand wells’ or pipelines’ closure once the current—Biden-created—gas price abates.

And this: oil companies’ “historically high profit margins” exist in part (not entirely) because they’re limited in where they can commit their revenues. They can’t spend them on exploration, drilling, producing, transporting, after all because of those Biden administration policies above.

Biden isn’t alone in this incoherence, though—this is typical of his Progressive-Democrat Cabinet and of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who dominate both houses of Congress. Nor is the incoherence limited to oil: there’s the environment and Party’s separate global warming mantra. See, too, our southern border, Party’s immigration “policy,” Biden’s foreign policy, defense attitude, and on and on.

This Isn’t Espionage?

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Three US companies—Quicksilver Manufacturing Inc, Rapid Cut LLC, and U.S. Prototype Inc—have been caught shipping technical drawings and blueprints for satellite, rocket, and defense prototypes to the People’s Republic of China, ostensibly for their cheaper 3-D printing capabilities. As a result,

Commerce Department on Wednesday suspended the export privileges of [the] three…for 180 days….

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Enforcement Matthew Axelrod:

Outsourcing 3-D printing of space and defense prototypes to China harms US national security.
By sending their customers’ technical drawings and blueprints to [the People’s Republic of China], these companies may have saved a few bucks, but they did so at the collective expense of protecting US military technology.

Well, NSS.

Nevertheless,

A [Quicksilver] company employee signed a non-disclosure agreement, which included that the work be conducted in compliance with US export control regulations, the [production order from an unnamed US aerospace and global defense technology company] said. Those regulations required licenses that likely would have been denied.
But Quicksilver fulfilled the order that August without seeking a license, and included an invoice that indicated the products had been shipped from China[.]

The companies’ export “privileges” have been suspended for a whole six months.

How is Quicksilver’s behavior in particular not espionage? Why is Quicksilver in particular still in business?