…from my wife, especially appropriate in these times of threats to our nation from without and from within.
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Tag Archives: freedom
A State Court and the Citizens of the State
In last month’s elections, one of the ballot items was a South Dakota measure (apologies: the Argus Leader has a really intrusive set of popup ads) to limit
how much PACs, political parties, and individuals can give to candidates.
The measure passed by a slim 51%-49% margin, but nevertheless, the passage is by the voice of the citizens of that State. The article at the link gives a summary of those limits.
Now a South Dakota judge has issued an injunction against implementing or enforcing that law. Circuit Judge Mark Barnett, in issuing the injunction, acknowledged that the matter likely will end up before the South Dakota Supreme Court, and he said
This is just a stop on the bus route. This is going to a much higher power and a much higher pay grade than me.
Never mind that it’s already been to the much higher pay grade—the good citizens of the State of South Dakota, whose employee the State’s government, including the court system, is.
Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard and his Chief of Staff, Tony Venhuizen, have the beginnings of a hazy understanding of the larger issue at hand. Daugaard said that he’d
support rolling back the measure if it isn’t struck down in court[]
and Venhuizen said that
[t]he governor views the order as a good step that will give the courts and the Legislature time to sort out the “mess [in the current campaign funding system.]”
But only the beginnings of a hazy understanding. Whether the law passed by the citizens is a good idea or not is a legitimately debatable question. However, the matter is a political question and only a political question. The courts have no role to play whatsoever in this or any political discussion.
Here is a case where a court has said the people have no voice; the court speaks in their stead.
One China and One China
Here’s the People’s Republic of China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, still on about the Republic of China’s President, Tsai Ing-wen’s congratulatory telecon with President-Elect Donald Trump:
We urge the new US leader and government to fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue, and to continue to stick to the one-China policy[.]
He went on to say that US-PRC relations would be “badly affected” were such behaviors to continue.
Indeed we do fully understand the seriousness of the Taiwan issue and the seriousness of the status of the RoC, which sits on that island. It’s about time our administration gained that understanding, too, and began moving away from the…foolishness…of the last 45 years.
And Geng had this:
The Taiwan question has a bearing on China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and is one of China’s core interests.
Indeed. The “Taiwan” question has a very large bearing on the island nation’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity and is at the center of the RoC’s core interests.
If our relationship with the mainland Chinese government is “badly affected,” that would be to the PRC’s detriment, not ours. Furthermore, our relationship with the mainland already is—or would be with a less timid administration—badly affected by the PRC’s naked aggression in the East and South China Seas and by its use of northern Korea’s behaviors as levers against the Republic of Korea, Japan, and us.
The PRC isn’t helping matters either, when it trots out its token, and crony, capitalist Wang Jianlin to make naked threats against American citizens:
I’ve invested $10 billion in the U.S. I have 20,000 employees there. If things aren’t handled well, those 20,000 people won’t have food to eat[.]
(The PRC and Wang are projecting their own failings, too: Americans don’t starve from our government’s retaliation against those who disobey it.)
The beginning of Trump’s recognition:
Trump said on “Fox News Sunday” that he doesn’t feel “bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”
It’s remotely possible for reasonable men to debate the degree of linkage involved in the fate of a sovereign nation, but it’s entirely appropriate for Trump—or anyone—to not feel bound by a “one-China” policy. Throughout these last 45 years, the US has never recognized a one-China policy; we’ve only acknowledged that the PRC and an early, weak RoC had such a policy, even though too many American administrations have meekly behaved as though we accepted it.
On the other hand, one China: The Republic of China. One China: The People’s Republic of China.
One China, and one China.
Freedom’s Just Another Word
…as far as the PRC is concerned.
The good citizens of Hong Kong had elections for their representatives in the city-state’s Legislative Council, and two folks who participated in protests two years ago against PRC intrusion into Hong Kong government affairs were elected.
Never mind the voice of the people. They have none wherever the PRC can reach.
The Standing Committee of China’s National People’s Congress said people elected to the city’s legislature cannot retake their oaths of office if their first attempt was invalidated for being insincere, not solemn, or deliberately misread.
Naturally, the ones who decide whether an attempt was insincere, not solemn, or deliberately misread are those of the PRC’s government and their puppets allies in the Legislative Council. And so, Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung are being barred—by the PRC—from taking their oaths of office, after their first attempt was blocked by the Council’s leadership because the two were too lippy to suit them, and before a Hong Kong court could adjudicate the matter.
So much for freedom in PRC satraps. So much for the PRC’s commitment vis-à-vis Hong Kong, made as part of Great Britain’s handover of Hong Kong.
Mao-ist China Returns?
People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping has been consolidating his power and centralizing control of the PRC in his hands for a while.
Now he’s seizing more direct control of the nation’s economy. Xi has removed Lou Jiwei, the PRC Minister of Finance from office. Lou was “reform-minded” (read: more open and freely operating domestic markets with a more rational tax régime), but that conflicted with Xi’s demand for more government control over those same domestic markets. Xi has reassigned Lou to run the nation’s pension fund. The fund is in a disastrous condition; this is simply a move to set Lou up for failure and removal from government altogether.
Look for Li Keqiang, the PRC’s Premier of the State Council (so far) and nominal number two in the government, to go next.
All that’s remaining is to see whether these folks go into peaceful “retirement” or they’re given reeducation coursework to complete in a quiet rural environment.
Nor does this bode well for the PRC’s international behavior generally, nor does it indicate any interest in Xi’s improving relationships with American government officials. This consolidation simply makes it easier for him to pursue his economic warfare against us through his government’s cyber attacks and cyber spying against our businesses, our nation’s economic infrastructure, and our nation’s government.