Tag Archives: freedom

Partition

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Has President Barack Obama acquiesced in the partition of Ukraine?

At the G-7 meeting last Sunday, Obama appears to have written off the concept of restoring occupied Crimea to Ukraine.

[Obama’s Press Secretary Josh] Earnest said whether to keep or impose additional economic sanctions against Russia will depend on whether the country decides to keep its end of the so-called Minsk agreement, updated after Moscow annexed Crimea last year, not whether it returns the peninsula.

With Earnest’s voice, Obama talked also about the need for the G-7 to

show unity in confronting Russia over actions in Ukraine.

Meaning Obama wants everyone to stand together and in unison shake their fingers very firmly at Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Will Obama acquiesce to the further partition of Ukraine and allow Russia to keep the eastern provinces currently occupied by Russian forces and paramilitary forces?

Artificial Markets

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The Car Battery and battery car industries are two, and the situation hasn’t gotten any better in the three years since Mike Ramsey’s piece in The Wall Street Journal.

Since 2009, the Obama administration has awarded more than $1 billion to American companies to make advanced batteries for electric vehicles. Halfway to a six-year goal of producing one million electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, auto makers are barely at 50,000 cars.

Two of those companies, in fact, have since gone bankrupt: Fisker Automotive and A123 Systems now are wholly owned by People’s Republic of China’s Wanxiang Group Corporation. Without repaying us American taxpayers.

The underlying problem isn’t unique to the Obama administration; his has just been the most recent and most egregious. The plain fact is that government stinks at creating industries and at creating markets. Only free markets—only people acting voluntarily and freely in accordance with their own wishes and needs—can do that. Free markets won’t always succeed at that, either, but in that case, the only ones who suffer losses are those who (voluntarily) made the bet. On the other hand, if they succeed, everyone gains to some degree.

When governments fail at this, though, everyone loses to some degree. Worse, while the same universal gain results from a government success, even neglecting greater friction losses from government involvement, there will have been no choice in the matter.

If the thing can’t survive without government intervention, it’s not ready for market. If it’s not ready for market, it’s…inappropriate…for taxpayers to be forced to prop it up with their tax money.

“Discrimination”

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The Supreme Court on Monday said a Muslim woman who applied to work at Abercrombie & Fitch Co can raise discrimination claims without proving the company intentionally avoided hiring her because she wore a head scarf for religious reasons.

So, I can cry discrimination on no better complaint than that I have one? I don’t even have to show that there’s a foundation for one?

Justice Clarence Thomas, in dissent, thought there ought to be a reason.

I agree with the Court that there are two—and only two—causes of action under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as understood by our precedents: a disparate-treatment (or intentional-discrimination) claim and a disparate-impact claim. Our agreement ends there.   Unlike the majority, I adhere to what I had thought before today was an undisputed proposition: Mere application of a neutral policy cannot constitute “intentional discrimination.” Because the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) can prevail here only if Abercrombie engaged in intentional discrimination, and because Abercrombie’s application of its neutral Look Policy does not meet that description, I would affirm the judgment of the Tenth Circuit.

The majority should have listened better to Thomas.

The Supreme Court’s ruling can be seen here.

Russia’s New Gulag

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…is on the verge of becoming the whole nation.

Russia’s media watchdog [Roskomnadzor, a government agency] has written to Google, Twitter and Facebook warning them against violating Russian Internet laws and a spokesman said on Thursday they risk being blocked if they do not comply with the rules.

Carefully crafted rules: the three companies encrypt their transmissions, which means the Russian government can’t tell who’s saying all those nasty things about Putin and his fellows in that government.

To comply with the law, the three firms must hand over data on Russian bloggers with more than 3,000 readers per day, and take down websites that Roskomnadzor sees as containing calls for “unsanctioned protests and unrest[.]”

This is “free” speech and rule by law in action, Russian style.

Another Judge Gets It Right on Guns

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People in the nation’s capital no longer have to show a good reason to get a permit to carry concealed handguns outside their homes and businesses.

The District of Columbia’s police chief said Tuesday that she’s dropping this requirement, a centerpiece of the city’s handgun-control legislation, after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against it.

That’s entirely appropriate since government does not get to dictate the reasons for a man owning a gun.

The city’s law, one of the nation’s toughest, says a person must show a “good reason to fear injury to his or her person or property” or another “proper reason for carrying a pistol” to get a concealed-carry permit.

Balance that against the 2nd Amendment:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Try as I might, I can’t find anything in that Amendment, neither clause nor syllable, that says “agreeable with reasons approved by the government.”