Tag Archives: law

That’s the Point

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Recall that one of New York City’s Progressive-Democrat Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s goal was a plethora of city government-run grocery stores to sell groceries at “affordable prices”—which, for Mamdani, meant “cheaper than what existing grocery stores were selling.” He could mean only that, else he’d be conceding that those prices already were affordable.

The outcome of such a move is laid out in the subheadline:

His socialist supermarkets could put New York’s little grocers out of business.

That’s the point.

Like any good socialist, Mamdani wants government to control the producers. Especially if it’s the particular socialist’s government. Getting rid of the little businesses demonstrates to the larger stores and the chains—whose individual stores generally are franchises run by moms and pops or collections of them run by small- or mid-sized businesses—that they’d better kowtow to the socialist government or leave. In either case, that would increase government’s control over the remains.

“Extreme Emotional Disturbance”

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The lawyers defending Luigi Mangione for his (alleged) murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson are planning to say that Mangione admits to his murder, and then the lawyers will argue that he can’t be held liable for his murder because he had an angst.

Guilty but insane is a viable defense in some jurisdictions, and New York, where Mangione is supposed to have committed his crime, has something of the sort. Typically, the plea results in confinement in a psychiatric facility for treatment, and on successful treatment (if that occurs), the guilty person is then transferred to a prison wherein he serves the remainder of the sentence he would have received had he been simply convicted of the crime.

That works for me.

In the event, the defense decided not to run that defense by the judge or the jury. Too bad, from my perspective. That would have gotten Mangione locked up sooner, saving the court time and the people tax money.

The Gestating Parent Governor

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New York’s Progressive-Democratic governor, Nancy Hochul, styles herself as her State’s “mom governor.” Maybe not anymore.

Under the bill that passed in Albany last week, the word mother would be replaced by “gestating parent” and father would become “non-gestating parent.”
The bill says that proceedings to establish “parentage” (the new word for paternity) can be started by “the gestating parent or alleged non-gestating parent.” The argument made for this rewrite is that current law doesn’t reflect the diversity of family life in the 21st century, which includes same-sex couples and surrogacy arrangements.

This is the Progressive-Democratic Party—the party of misogyny, now extending to ignoring what it is that makes a woman a woman—her biology. Now it’s up to Hochul: if she signs the legislation, she’ll be insulting millions of New York’s citizens while pandering to Party’s central and left wings. If she vetoes it, she’ll likely be harassed by Party for the rest of her term. If she neither signs nor vetoes, but merely allows it to become law without her signature, she’ll be showing herself a coward, afraid to take a stand.

Trade-Through Elimination

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The SEC’s trade rule, in effect for a bit over 20 years, requires trading platforms operating in the US to execute investors’ trades at the best price available across the market, even if that means one platform must go to another platform to execute the trade. The SEC wants to rescind that rule as no longer necessary. The SEC says,

Currently, the US equity markets are highly automated and interconnected and the Commission’s concerns expressed at the time of [the rule’s] adoption in 2005 regarding the lack of mechanisms to connect markets is no longer an issue[.]

The SEC now argues that (as paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal)

stockbrokers already have a strict legal duty to execute trades with the most favorable terms for their clients, making the trade-through rule superfluous.

The exchanges’ “legal duty” is all well and good, but then there are the enforcement costs for violations of that rule. These costs are incurred by the government (i.e., us taxpayers) from enforcing compliance with a case’s outcome, incurred by individual (and institutional) investors from raising a ruckus in the first place, and incurred as opportunity costs during the time between detection of a violation and final adjudication.

Then there’s the difficulty of detecting a violation in the first place, especially for retail investors.

The SEC also argues that rule rescission would save the platforms the cost of buy[ing] expensive market data feeds linked to a bevy of exchanges.

Yet, in order to satisfy that legal duty, the platforms still would need access to some version of those data feeds, or at least to the data in them, in order, in real time (which is microseconds in today’s interconnectivity), to identify that best price available.

This is a rule that should remain in effect. The cost to the platforms is trivial: $54.2 million to $77 million annually, compared with nearly $30 billion in aggregated US platform income. Violations of the trade-through rule, importantly, are far more easily detected, including by retail investors.

A Solution to “Rigging” Elections

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California’s election process provides the canonical example of the problem. “Rigging” is in euphemism quotes (not the press’ over- and mis-used scare quotes) because the perception of rigging an election is as important as any actual rigging. The problem with California’s election procedure is this:

California sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters who have until Election Day to send them back. Many ballots don’t arrive at county election offices until days later. … The result is a large number of provisional ballots are cast that require more scrutiny. All of this prolongs vote-counting.
The state also lets third parties including unions, campaigns and political parties collect and return an unlimited number of ballots on voters’ behalf—a practice known as ballot harvesting.

And

An ID isn’t strictly required to register to vote. Those who don’t furnish one to register are supposed to present one when they vote for the first time in a federal election, though this requirement isn’t strictly enforced. The state lists a gym card, drug prescription and even a sample ballot as acceptable forms of ID. …
County election officials aren’t required to check whether a voter is a citizen or, well, even a person.

And

State regulations also allow late-arriving ballots to be counted even if they lack a post-mark as long as they include a handwritten date on the envelope.

None of that is fraudulent per se, but it sure makes fraud possible—there are no checks that assess the legitimacy of any ballot.

The solution is straightforward, even if politically difficult with timid Republicans and self-interested Progressive-Democrats rife in each house of Congress. Nevertheless, Article I, Section 4, of our Constitution

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations….

allows this solution. Congress can easily specify a nation-wide election rule that mandates these criteria:

  • only American citizens can vote in a Federal election
  • proof of citizenship must be provided at registration
  • mail-in ballots are available only when a voter requests one
  • the only voters eligible to request one are military personnel stationed outside their voting precinct or business persons on business travel outside their precinct on Election Day
  • mail-in ballots must be received by the end of Election Day in order to be counted. Ballots received after then cannot be counted
  • early voting cannot start before the second weekend before Election Day and can run through the Monday immediately preceding Election Day
  • there can be no third-party collection of ballots; each must be cast in person during early voting or on Election Day; mail-in ballots must be put into a mail receptacle for delivery. Unpostmarked ballots cannot be counted

Keeping the voting process universal across American citizens and simple not only is eminently possible, it would vastly reduce both election fraud and the perception of election fraud.