Mandates and Military Discharges

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The House version of the current National Defense Authorization bill for 2022 contains a provision barring a service member being discharged over his refusal to take the Wuhan Vaccine from being given any other form of discharge than honorable. The Biden-Harris administration strongly opposes the provision.

The Pentagon, according to Fox News, has described the vaccine mandate as a “lawful order” that must be obeyed.

The Biden-Harris administration added

To enable a uniformed force to fight with discipline, commanders must have the ability to give orders and take appropriate disciplinary measures.

Certainly. However, whether the order, or the mandate in general, is lawful has yet to be established.

In any event, anything less than an honorable discharge is vast overkill for something as minor as disobeying an order to get a particular vaccine. Dishonorable discharges are handed down for crimes like sexual assault, murder, desertion, sedition. Refusing an order to get vaccinated hardly fits with those.

Assuming an order to get vaccinated is lawful, there are much more appropriate penalties: nonjudicial punishment and fines come to mind.

Insisting on a DD over such a minor act is nothing but an exercise in power for the sake of exercising power—petty ego by the authority doing the exercise.

This is Backwards

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In a Wall Street Journal article on the difficulty of estimating ridership on roads and highways to be built in the future and so the need for them, and the poor allocations of costs and Federal dollars that result from the inaccuracies, there was this statement.

If lawmakers enact the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill now before the House, state and local officials will have to decide which projects to spend money on.

This is backwards. State and local officials should have to decide first what infrastructure projects they want to complete, their cost, their priority, and have contracts already let contingent on receiving Federal dollars before Congress contemplates an infrastructure bill that would send taxpayer money to any of those States.

Those are critical first steps in getting to shovel-ready jobs to which to commit funds.

What Should the Fed Do?

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Nick Timiraos, in his Wall Street Journal piece expressed some concern about the tightrope the Federal Reserve bankers must walk (his phrasing) regarding its bond purchase taper and what others, especially market players, might say about the Fed’s dot plot—a graph that’s generated from individual board members’ views of raising and lowering interest rates and to what level.

Getting that message [regarding bond purchasing] to stick could be tricky when the central bank’s two-day meeting concludes Wednesday if new interest-rate projections—the so-called dot plot—show officials are considering rate increases at the same time….

The only way to make any message stick is for the Fed to do what it says it will do in its “messaging,” regardless of any outside dumpster-diving interpretations of their tea leaf scraps. Seers are going to claim to see regardless of what the Fed does. If the Fed says it’s going to taper its bond purchase program, that’s what it should do. Full stop.

Rather than tapering, though—my humble opinion—it’s long past time for the Fed to reduce, to below zero, its bond buying, selling off the bonds it already holds to enormous excess. Put an end to half-measure tapering.

Separately, the WSJ asked

What action, if any, should the Fed take on interest rates?

The Fed should set their benchmark interest rates at levels historically consistent with their target inflation rate of 2%, more or less, and then sit down and be quiet. Stop trying to micromanage market rates.

Neither case is complicated, except that Government bureaucrats overcomplicate them with overthinking.

Duplicity

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President Joe Biden (D) eased travel restrictions for foreign nationals, allowing those who can show proof of vaccination against the Wuhan Virus to enter the US.

Except for illegal aliens. They aren’t even being tested, just checked for symptoms—which at the virus’ early stage are largely the same as those for the flu or a cold. If “symptomatic,” illegal aliens are supposed to be quarantined for two weeks, then sent on their way, often, but far from the norm, via deportation.

Biden explained the difference through his Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

As individuals come across the border, they are both assessed for whether they have any symptoms, if they have symptoms, the intention is for them to have to be quarantined.
They are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time. I don’t think it’s the same thing.

Never mind that most foreign nationals coming to the US also are not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time. They’re coming on visitor visas to be tourists or to visit family, and on business visas to conduct some business, and then they’re on their way back home.

Biden knows this.

Ratification Bonuses

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Mondelez International has settled its dispute with its workers as the company and the union representing the workers, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union, signed a new four-year deal.

One importance of this, as far as I’m concerned, is that the supply of Oreo cookies is secured for that period. But what do I know; I’m a sucker for chocolate- and sugar-based junk food.

The deal, however, consists in large part, of

ratification bonuses, hourly wage increases, and a higher company match for 401(k) contributions….

The real importance of the deal is the inclusion of those ratification bonuses. Mondelez isn’t alone in agreeing to these artificial demands, made by unions for no serious reason, but only as an exercise of union strike-based extortion power.

Businesses need to stop being so meek; they need to stop bending over and accepting “ratification bonuses.” The only thing these things do is serve as an incentive for striking again so the unions can collect yet more vig for ending that one. And the next one. And….