Errant Satrap

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That’s how the European Union views Great Britain as the EU continues to demand that Great Britain accede to demands they wish to impose on a sovereign nation—solely to bring that subordinate polity to heel. Examples of the EU’s demands:

  • post-Brexit sovereignty to make Britain more competitive via deregulation, environmental rules or tax reform—these must not occur
  • UK’s ability to subsidize industries in line with EU state-aid regulations—this must be curtailed

The first must not be allowed explicitly because of that competition. The second may be bad business overall, but it’s a domestic matter.

And this, regarding tariffs:

new tariff schedule London published last month eliminated levies on some 2,000 goods, or 17% of goods in the schedule, and simplified tariffs on another 40%. Measured by value, 70% of Britain’s imports from other World Trade Organization members will now be tariff-free, compared to 52% under the EU-wide tariff schedule.

Here is the EU’s attempt to prevent British competition.

And the EU’s demands regarding fishing:

bind the UK permanently in EU fisheries rules governing where British and other fishermen can cast their nets. The UK instead wants the same level of sovereignty other coastal countries enjoy to negotiate fishing rights annually.

And that’s the rub: the EU continues to demand to reach into—deep into—British national sovereignty to impose EU governance imperatives on British domestic matters. The EU does not accept Great Britain’s sovereignty.

Every one of those demands individually are deal breakers, and their aggregate demonstrate the EU’s (continued) bad faith in its “negotiations.”

The Brits should walk away from Brussels today and stop wasting their time and effort on the EU’s sham. They have better and more pressing things to do with their resources than negotiating with those who will not.

Bigotry of the Left

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Within hours of each other, these happened.

A Philadelphia family court supervisor was fired after a video posted to Facebook shows him tearing down signs in support of Black Lives Matter.

Because it’s entirely appropriate to support a racist organization that prioritizes some black lives above all other lives, including other black lives. BLM doesn’t even give a rat’s patootie about all the black babies whose lives are aborted in the womb. But it’s forbidden to presume to criticize such a mob of thugs.

This, from a Progressive-Democrat Congressman:

Representative Sean Patrick Maloney (D, NY) accused conservatives of using the “bogus” term “religious liberty” in order to hide their desire to discriminate.

Because protecting—I’ll say it—religious liberty of individual Americans is dishonest, but trashing the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses of the First Amendment of our Constitution is just fine.

This is what we can expect, in spades, with a Progressive-Democratic Party administration ruling over us.

Borderline….

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According to Johns Hopkins’ CSSE data, the US has suffered 116,000 deaths from the Wuhan Virus as of 16 June. That’s not the whole story, though, and the raw number overstates the case along one critical dimension.

The US death toll from [Wuhan Virus] in nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities has topped 50,000….

That’s 43% of all our virus fatalities occurring in those old folks homes.

Those same CSSE data indicate that the US has some 2,100,000 cases—of which 250,000 have occurred in those facilities. That’s 12% of all our virus infections concentrated in those old folks homes, and a 20% fatality rate for our old folks, given infection in our old folks homes. Which compares with a 3% fatality rate outside those facilities.

Unfortunately (or conveniently, depending on perspective), many States don’t disaggregate cases effectively, so that old folks home death rate actually maybe be understated to some degree.

New York, for example, doesn’t include cases in which nursing-home residents died in a hospital….

Some States—New York and New Jersey come to mind—badly exacerbated this death toll concentration and infection disportionality by actually requiring nursing homes and the like to accept into their midst Wuhan Virus-infected patients simply because those facilities had empty beds.

Borderline? It’s right next door to criminal.

Troops in Germany

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President Donald Trump has said he intends to reduce the number of American soldiers in Germany.

Germany, he said, is not meeting its commitment to spend 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defense as required by the NATO alliance. Member nations had pledged to reach the 2% threshold by 2024. Germany has said it hopes to reach the target by 2031.

Which is a cynical commitment by Germany, since there will be several generations of German governments over the intervening 11 years.

But here’s the kicker, from Emily Haber, Germany’s Ambassador to the US:

US troops…are not there to defend Germany. They are there to defend the trans-Atlantic security. They are also there to project American power in Africa, in Asia[.]

If that’s true—or if it’s the case that Germany is dictating to us our purpose in keeping troops stationed there (not so outlandish; Germany is, after all a sovereign nation, not a post-war occupied one)—there’s even less reason to keep troops stationed there.

We can defend trans-Atlantic security much more efficiently from any of a number of other European, and Atlantic, nations. We can project power “in Africa” much more efficiently from any of a number of other European, African, Western Asian nations. We can project power “in Asia” much more efficiently from any of a number of Pacific nations.

And we would be doing those power projections much more securely than by putting all of our security eggs in a single German basket.

We also can fulfill our own NATO commitments much more effectively and overtly with those German-stationed troops redeployed to northern and eastern European nations, nations who still care about their own and their mutual defense, nations who still remember an existence under Soviet Russian occupation.

In the end, as I wrote earlier, Germany’s angst has nothing to do with defense—about which the nation seems to have little interest—and has much to do with the potential loss of all of those millions of American dollars spent on the German economy by tens of thousands of American military family members and by the soldiers themselves.

Were Germany interested in anything else, it would meet its voluntarily entered into commitment of 2% of its GDP for defense without any of its…delays.

Are They Serious?

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The (individual) bad cop events in Minneapolis and Atlanta, and the ensuing hoo-raw has prompted badly needed discussion of how we handle bad cops and their events, even overshadowed as the discussion is by the overarching hysteria of demands for cop-free zones and the Left’s larger demand to do away with all police forces everywhere forever.

This has prompted the editors of The Wall Street Journal to wonder:

…suddenly Democrats say public-union labor agreements are frustrating police reform. We’re delighted to hear it—if they’re serious.

Of course, they are not remotely serious. This is an election year, and I’m shocked, shocked to find that vote pandering in this season.

Police unions have many shortcomings, no small per centage of them very serious, but this is just another example of Progressive-Democrats vote pandering, throwing a temporarily inconvenient constituent under the bus, and blaming everyone but themselves for the problem.

Private employers often use arbitration to resolve complaints by and against employees, but cities such as Chicago, Detroit, and Minneapolis allow police unions essentially to select the arbitrator.

It’s those city governments’ carefully deliberated decision to surrender their responsibilities to the counterparty of any negotiation or disciplinary action.

Progressive-Democrat-run city governments. But it’s not their fault; it’s those nefarious cop unions. Watch for the Progressive-Democrat anti-police union opprobrium disappear from 4 November on.