Tag Archives: morality

Greed and Bankruptcy

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Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy last week when

…Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr’s attempt to reach out-of-court settlements could not overcome opposition from unions, retirees and a long list of lenders….”

Orr’s spokesman Bill Nowling had much of it right:

Pension boards, insurers, it’s clear that if you’re suing us, your response is “no.”  We still have other creditors we continue to have meetings with, other stakeholders….

But that’s only part of it.  The pensions and unions are owed the largest amount out of Detroit’s total $18 billion debt, but they’re not the only ones who were intransigent.  Bank of America and UBS AG agreed to a restructuring of the debt Detroit owed them (chump change alterations on less than $500 million of that debt), but they were nearly the only ones actually willing to deal.  Nearly all the remaining creditors each insisted, regardless of the city’s ability to pay, on holding out for their full cut, or as much of it as they could squeeze, and to hell with the rest of the creditors.

What Was He Thinking?

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Attorney General Eric Holder said this at the annual NAACP convention on Tuesday:

There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if—and the “if” is important—no safe retreat is available.   But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat.

Say what!?  What age-old requirement?  Whence this?  Has he never read John Locke?  Does he think Locke wrong?  If so, based on what?

Has he never read US law?  Does he think US law is wrong?  Oh, wait….

What logic of his underlies this outlandish claim?

If we retreat when we have the means to resist, all we do is reward the criminal for his crime.  Our right to our lives and our property create in us no obligation at all to retreat, or to cede them to another solely on the basis that another wants them more than do we.

On the other hand, if “we” have a duty to retreat when threatened, surely “we” includes that threatener: he has a duty to retreat if we threaten him.

Progressive One-Party Rule

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The Democrats have had it with two-party governance, and they’re moving in the Senate to eliminate the Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV)…appears ready to set off an earthquake in the Senate Tuesday by trying to change the body’s rules for confirming presidential nominees, offers a simple explanation of his move: “The status quo does not work right now.”

Of course it doesn’t.  The minority party won’t roll over and give him what he wants fast enough to suit him, so he’s going to seize power’

Reid[] plan[s] to accomplish this Senate change…with a simple majority vote, and not require the super-majority some think should be used to affect a significant Senate rules change.

Not just “some:” Senate rules V and XXII combine to require a 2/3 majority vote to change the rules.  Reid expects to accomplish the rule change on a simple majority of 51 votes by having Joe Biden, wearing his President of the Senate hat, respond to the inevitable challenge to the rule change by ruling—as the VP as President of the Senate has the authority to do—the simple majority vote on the rule change to be in order. Of course Biden’s—the chair’s—ruling can be challenged, but it takes only a majority vote to uphold or deny the chair’s ruling, thus the Progressive power grab will be successful.

Of course, this is only the first move: every other place for filibusters will be overridden in the same manner, as soon as it suits Reid’s, or any other Progressive’s, fancy.

…Reid…on Monday said unless Republicans allow votes on seven of President Obama’s pending nominees, he will trigger the “nuclear option” this week.

In other words, Republicans must voluntarily surrender their power to debate, or Reid will take it from them.

Update (as I write this on Tuesday afternoon): The Republicans have abjectly surrendered.

Republican senators said Tuesday they would drop their blockade of Richard Cordray to be the new head of a consumer protection bureau….

Soon after, the Senate voted 71-29 to head off a filibuster of Mr. Cordray, with 17 Republicans joining Democrats to advance the nomination.”

The RINO John McCain (R, AZ) spearheaded the surrender.

Racist Persecution Persists

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Now the racist persecution begins because of a politically incorrect verdict in a Florida trial.

Former Obama adviser Van Jones declared that “racism won” in the trial of George Zimmerman.

And

Democratic National Committee spokesman Brad Woodhouse fired off an incendiary stream of tweets late Saturday night suggesting that racism and politics prompted the jury to acquit George Zimmerman of all charges.

And

[From an NAACP petition] Attorney General Eric Holder [t]he Department of Justice has closely monitored the State of Florida’s prosecution of the case against George Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin murder since it began.  Today, with the acquittal of George Zimmerman, it is time for the Department of Justice to act.

Government Favoritism

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…city government style.

The Washington, DC, Council of the District of Columbia has voted to impose a minimum wage of $12.50 on all retailers in the District that do $1 billion or more in annual corporate sales.  That’s corporate sales, not just the sales that occur within the District.

Oh, and unionized corporations are excused from the minimum wage hike; they still get to pay the original minimum wage of $8.25.

The law was sold as filling a need to pay a livable wage to the good citizens of DC.  But union shops are specifically excused from having to pay a livable wage?

How does any of that work, exactly?

Wal-Mart Stores, Inc, the target of this law, has three Walmart stores under construction in DC, with plans for building three more.  They’ve said the new wage requirement throws into a cocked hat their economic analysis of their expansion, and they’ve canceled the three new stores and are exploring how to stop construction on the other three.  In the face of such a blatantly uneven law, they’ve had no choice.

And DC won’t get the 1,800 jobs those six stores were going to bring to six blighted neighborhoods.