Tag Archives: freedom

No War is Painless for Either Side

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But the war Russia is waging against Ukraine, and against Western values generally (against little things like the right of the citizens of a sovereign nation to govern themselves, the right of the people of a sovereign nation to run their economy their own way, the right of the citizens of a sovereign nation to hold their own, fair votes) can only hurt Russia in any serious way, if only Western leaders can find the courage to stand with Ukraine in a more meaningful and direct fashion than merely sitting courtside cheering the Ukrainians and clucking their tongues at the Russians.

There’s little to do, militarily, in the near term, but there are a number of devastating economic things that can be done, and these things will have their effect immediately and in the near and middle term (there’s unlikely to be a need for far term effects, but those would remain from the steps that can be taken now).  Such steps include

Treasury and State departments can much more aggressively target Russian banks and trading firms for their alleged involvement in such areas as arming Syrian President Bashar al-Assad or developing Iran’s nuclear program.  [To which I add Treasury and State can much more aggressively target the Russian banking system for its involvement in a nation committing this naked aggression against a sovereign country.  No special reasons are needed.  Full stop.]

Additional steps also can be taken, as I and others have outlined already.

Western leaders are fearful, though, and looking for bloodless solutions to an affair that’s bloody by its nature:

The US and other leading Western powers are focusing on individual, targeted sanctions because broader economic sanctions could directly harm Western businesses and lead Moscow to make good on its threats to retaliate against businesses from the countries pushing sanctions, according to current and former officials.

What these Nervous Nellies are ignoring, though, is that while Russian retaliatory sanctions will, indeed, hurt those Western businesses, Russian sanctions “would inevitably hit [Russia] like a boomerang.”  Russia, quite literally, has no economy beyond its oil and gas exports without those Western businesses and Western investments in Russia.  On top of that, as Western (read: US and Canada) oil and gas production and export increase, with special attention initially to exporting to Europe and Ukraine, and as prices drop from those increases, Russia would lose that remaining vestige of its economy.

And be unable to sustain its forces in Ukraine.  At that point, a suitable treaty would have Russia formally renouncing all claim on any territory outside the borders of the Russian Federation, canceling its lease on the naval base in Sevastopol and withdrawing all of its military units from Crimea, and removing all of its military and quasi-military units away from the Federation’s European borders by a distance of at least 200 miles.

More Governance by Diktat

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Rule by law, not rule of law.  Here‘s the latest Obama installment.

The president plans to make the announcement [ordering Labor to expand overtime pay requirements to include millions more workers] on Thursday at the White House, a senior administration official confirmed to Fox News. Though the administration has claimed previous executive actions had bipartisan support, officials are acknowledging that this particular move [does not.]

These aren’t blue-collar jobs covered by “collective bargaining” agreements—union contracts—either.  Now, managers and executive officers of companies will be…covered: fast-food restaurant managers, loan officers, computer technicians, and more.

There’s not even a pretense of union-management mutually agreed compensation structure in this latest government move—the Federal government is dictating to businesses how they must conduct their businesses, the Federal government is dictating to businesses how they must structure their internal costs.

No market forces allowed.  And if the law doesn’t let the Federal government do what it wants to do to us, the Feds (not us) will change the law, and the Feds will change it with, or without, our permission.

What’s next?  It’s a truism, that if something becomes—or is made—more expensive to have, buyers will buy less of it.  If labor—blue- or white-collar—is made more expensive, businesses will retain/hire less of it.  Look for slowed hiring and outright management staff reductions, either in people retained or in salaries paid to make room for the mandated overtime increases.

Then, look for this administration to change/write its own law to mandate that salaries and wages can never be reduced, and that once hired, an employee can never be terminated.  Businesses, after all, are jobs welfare programs in the Progressive mind.

Sanctions and Boomerangs

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that sanctions applied by us against Russia “would inevitably hit the United States like a boomerang.” But will they, or will they to any serious degree?  Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski doesn’t think so.  Sikorski had some thoughts on the matter in Monday’s Spiegel International Online.

SPIEGEL: The European Union imposed very mild sanctions against Russia on Thursday.  Isn’t it true that Putin, with his gas exports, has far more effective means for countering that pressure?

Sikorski: Only about 30% of the natural gas in the EU originates from Russia.  Norway is a larger supplier.  I do not believe Russia can use it to put us under pressure.  Moscow needs our money.

Indeed.

And

SPIEGEL: Why are the Poles so highly engaged in this conflict?

Sikorski: The Ukrainians are our neighbors. They are fighting for the same things we did back in 1989 – for a country that is more democratic, less corrupt and is European.

On what, then, is President Barack Obama waiting?  What is it of a Russian counterstroke that he fears so?

The People are not Sovereign

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…government is.  Or so says Czar of all the Russias President Vladimir Putin.

Of course people wanted change.  But [people] cannot impose illegal change…you need to use only constitutional means.

Never mind that the will of the people is what gives “constitutional means” legitimacy, since those means are the will of the people given concrete effect.  But not in Putin’s world.  In his world view, “constitutional means” are what government says they are, and government is constituted the way the men populating the organs of government say it is.  No people, no citizens, are involved.

Putin also insisted that [Interim President] Oleksandr Turchynov was

not legitimate.  From the legal perspective it is Mr. Yanukovych who is president.

No.  Plainly no.  From the legal perspective, Yanukovich had lost all legitimacy the moment he lost the consent of the Ukrainian people to be their President.  That he had lost that consent is amply demonstrated by all those months in the streets—and not only in Kiev—by the people protesting, at first his actions, and ultimately his political status.  The firmness of their will is corroborated by the violence against and the murders of the protestors sanctioned by that government, and the people’s continued protests despite those atrocities.

Putin also has announced that he has no obligation to respect the wishes of the Ukrainian people as expressed in the upcoming May governmental elections, if he doesn’t get the results he wants.

Never mind that exactly those elections are what will express the will of the people, if the elections are allowed to go forward freely and fairly.  The only interference there will be “such terror as we see now” in the form of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The only “terror as [Putin] see[s] now” is his own terror of the will of the people—perhaps of the will of the Russian people, as well.

Finally, this:

Putin said Tuesday that Moscow reserved the right to protect ethnic Russians in Ukraine by any means necessary….

This was Hitler’s excuse for Sudetenland.  However, the “ethnic Russians” are Ukrainian citizens, not Russian citizens, and it is the responsibility of the Ukrainian government to protect its citizens.  If Putin is claiming a right (oddly, not a duty) to protect the badly abused citizens of another sovereign nation, than we have to ask: where is his duty in Syria, in northern Korea?  Oh, wait….

It Doesn’t Wash

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The Department of Homeland Security wants a private company to provide a national license-plate tracking system that would give the agency access to vast amounts of information from commercial and law enforcement tag readers, according to a government proposal that does not specify what privacy safeguards would be put in place.

Such a national license-plate recognition database, ostensibly, would “help catch fugitive illegal immigrants.”  But once in existence, to what use would (not might) government put that database later?  Can you say NSA, boys and girls?  The danger is illustrated clearly, if unintentionally, by David Roberts, International Association of Chiefs of Police’s Technology Center Senior Program Manager:

We’d like to be able to keep the data as long as possible, because it does provide a rich and enduring data set for investigations down the line.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation understands (see the first link) the danger of Roberts’ goal:

Ultimately, you’re creating a national database of location information.  When all that data is compiled and aggregated, you can track somebody as they’re going through their life.

Such an open-ended dragnet of no one in particular, but simply of all of us, for vague, undefined future purposes in not consistent with individual liberty—or responsibility.

Even though the courts have ruled on “presumption of privacy,” they’ve gotten it wrong, basing their “assumption” on a measure of mindreading that simply doesn’t exist in our species.  The fact that the loud, vociferous, even zealous, hue and cry over evasions of privacy—real or perceived—even exists demonstrates that there is a very strong presumption of privacy held by each of us, even as we move about in public.

Indeed, the logic is flawed, also.  The fact that what we do is readily apparent to our fellow citizens as we wander the mall, walk the sidewalks, talk on our phones, drive on our streets, etc, is in no way an agreement the government can track our movements, much less create dossiers on each of us as we engage in these activities in the view of, or in concert with, our fellow citizens.

The government is not our fellow citizen; it is our political employee.  Even so, it has far too much power to be trusted with watching the things we let our fellow citizens see us do without a court’s oversight, without, for instance, a specific warrant for which a specific probable cause concerning a specific individual among us must first be demonstrated and sworn to by the government official desiring to investigate one of us.

The relationship between us—or any one of us—and government is not at all symmetrical, and there is very little reciprocity involved.  Arguments supporting such government activities as tracking of our out-of-home movements assume, erroneously, exactly that symmetry.

There’s no doubt that such a…tool…could achieve much good.  However, the good achieved is through convenience to government, not through a fundamental change in capabilities for hunting down specific bad guys.  The dangers such a tool represents to individual liberty and responsibility—to what it means to be an American—far outweigh the benefits of that convenience.

Update: Now HHS Undersecretary Jeh Johnson is saying the idea of having a private company develop a national database of our license plates has been canceled.  So, where are we?  Is the idea done?  Or is it being brought inside HHS, to be pursued sub rosa?

And why is the Undersecretary making this statement?  Where are the HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius and her boss, President Barack Obama?