Category Archives: regulation

Long Overdue

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The People’s Republic of China has been able to raise billions of dollars for its various business outlets by listing them on American stock exchanges—all while being exempt from the same public visibility and auditing requirements that other nations’ companies and our domestic ones must satisfy on our exchanges.

Maybe that’s changing.

Legislation passed by the Senate—and now introduced in the House—would kick Chinese companies off US stock exchanges unless their audits are inspected by US regulators.

And

The Senate legislation requires the Chinese companies with shares traded here to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission whether they are owned or controlled by state authorities.

This, though, would mean that all of them would have to admit disclose that they are controlled by state authorities. A 2017 intelligence law enacted by the PRC government requires all PRC companies to “cooperate” with intelligence requests of agencies of that government.

Now we have:

China says sharing audit work papers would violate its sovereignty and risk leaking state secrets.

There’s an effect of that 2017 law.

Michaels and Otani, at the first link, think that

economic tension between the two global superpowers, amplified by political outrage in the US over China’s role in the spread of the new coronavirus

are pushing this new emphasis. Emphasis maybe, but neither the economic war (now relabeled Cold War by the PRC) that the PRC has been inflicting on us for years nor the current Wuhan Virus situation and the PRC’s perfidy in the virus’ spread have anything to do with the substance of this. The secretiveness of the PRC’s outlets listed on our exchanges has been extant since they first were listed, and that’s what needs correction.

It’s enough that we gave the PRC Most Favored Nation status (mistakenly, in 20-20 hindsight). There’s nothing that warrants PRC companies on our exchanges being treated any differently than any other company—domestic or foreign—on our exchanges.

PRC companies need, badly, to be audited, and tossed from our exchanges at the slightest hesitation to be audited and for the same violations, should they be audited and any violations found, as any other company whose violations warrant expulsion.

This is especially important given that the PRC isn’t just any foreign nation; it’s an enemy of the United States. American dollars shouldn’t be involved in funding PRC companies.

A First Amendment Case

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Oral argument on a 1st Amendment case was heard by the Supreme Court last Wednesday. The case centers on

whether or not a 1991 law that protects people from receiving unwarranted telemarketer calls is a violation of the First Amendment when applied to political organizations.

This strikes me as a no-brainer that never should have gotten out of any District court. The 1st Amendment bars the abridgment of political speech in the public square. It does not take away the right of private citizens to decide for themselves what speech they will hear from within their own, private property.

That private property is entered by telephone as surely as it is by the speaker’s physical presence, and those resident on the property have no more obligation to allow the speaker’s telephonic entry than they do the speaker’s physical entry.

Nor does the 1st Amendment create a right of a political speaker—or any other speaker, or any person in any guise—to use another person’s private property to speak, nor does it create an obligation of the property owner to allow that use.  This applies to land lines terminating in a home or private business, and it applies to a wireless telephone, or a cell phone, or any other communications device wherever its owner might happen to be at the time of the political speech effort.

The Supreme Court should so rule, and it shouldn’t take long or very many pages at all to convey the ruling.

Micromanagement

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California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has published a list of activities he deems permissible for Californians to engage in while they’re outdoors.

Specific activities, carefully enumerated. Not principles of (social distancing) behaviors, particular behaviors.

Activities Newsom will allow [scroll down to Outdoor recreation] include

  • badminton—singles, mind you, doubles are too many
  • BMX biking—but not just pedaling around neighborhood
  • gardening—again, singles. Your kids or spouse aren’t allowed to help
  • car-washing—here, too, no spousal or kid help. And if it’s a kid chore, he’s on his own
  • tree climbing—unspecified as to whether a boost up is allowed
  • picnics (with your stay-home household members only)—but these persons aren’t allowed to participate with you in any of the above. Go figure
  • throwing a football, kicking a soccer ball (not in groups)—apparently you have to go get your own football or soccer ball after you’ve thrown/kicked it. Or maybe you’re allowed to get your dog to fetch

The list goes on. Throwing a baseball or a frisbee isn’t enumerated, so those likely are barred. Newsom claims his list is non-exhaustive, but it’s entirely too detailed and picayune to believe that it’s not nearly so.

This is the sort of micromanagement that demonstrates both the incredible insecurity of the micromanager and his tyrannical tendencies.

This is not the freedom and personal responsibility that Californians used to have.

Drug Approvals

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Dr Henry Miller, ex of the FDA where he founded the agency’s Office of Biotechnology, had some thoughts on how to speed up vaccine approval procedures in his Wednesday op-ed. They’re good ideas; although many of them only niggle around the edges of a long-ish procedure.

I have an additional idea.

Allow doctors to broadly prescribe the vaccine—or any drug—once it’s been shown to be safe. Such drugs should be clearly marked, and the patient clearly advised, that while the vaccine has been shown to be safe, it hasn’t been shown to be effective.

This would vastly broaden the subject base for assessing effectiveness, and so greatly accelerate the assessments, and it would put what turns out to be effective drugs into the hands of doctors and patients much sooner.

Patients that get what turns out to be ineffective—but safe—vaccines will be no worse off than they would have been had no drug been permitted yet.

The market place should determine what should be available as effectiveness or ineffectiveness of particular vaccines becomes widely known rather than leaving the decision solely to government bureaucrats, no matter how well-intended they might be.

“This is about a public health crisis”

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That’s what Progressive-Democrat Governor Laura Kelly, ruling in Kansas, said about her Executive Order barring churches and church-goers from gathering in groups greater than 10 folks after a Federal judge enjoined her (temporarily) from enforcing her diktat.

More completely, she said,

We are in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic. This is not about religion. This is about a public health crisis.

Because religion and public health have nothing to do with each other, or maybe because they stand in opposition to each other.

I’ll set aside the Constitutional argument for the injunction and for eliminating the EO altogether. This is about a Progressive-Democrat’s refusal to recognize the well-documented research that comfort and support are major factors in fighting any disease, whether from boosting an immune system or from fighting a disease in progress. Strengthening the mind, helping build and maintain the emotional strength necessary to keep resisting, to keep fighting, a disease is a critical component in that resistance, that fight.

Religion plays a central role in that support. Isolation, which includes limiting group sizes, is antithetical to that. Denying free access to emotional support, to the succor available in churches, synagogues, mosques, is antithetical to that.

Any doctor knows this. Any man of the cloth, whether minister, priest, rabbi, imam knows this. Any parishioner knows this.

Only a Progressive-Democrat governor ignores this.