Tag Archives: political economy

Federal Workers Working Remote

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I agree with the concept, sort of.

The Federal Government Initiative, an NGO government watchdog, has noticed that current federal telework practices, implemented during the Wuhan Virus situation, are associated with a dramatic reduction in paid leave used by the federal workforce. The FGI has expressed misgivings.

Before the federal government engages in expanded telework in perpetuity, its impact should be investigated more fully by agency Inspectors General, Congress, and other oversight entities[.]

I agree that many—most, in fact—nearly all—Federal workers should be allowed to work remotely, and in perpetuity. Remotely, mind you, not via telework.

The Federal offices, especially the large ones, like Education, Interior(!), Commerce, Federal Reserve, Treasury, and agencies like CFTC, SEC, CFPB (these are not at all exhaustive lists) should be removed from DC and scattered around the middle-sized and small towns of middle America, of flyover country. Those offices should be among the people they serve, us average Americans, and away from the overweening influence of the bubble-residing coastal elites.

Here’s the deal, though: all of the employees should be required to come back to the office. No more teleworking. The remoteness of their work will consist of working in the small towns of the Midwest, the north, the Southeast, and the Southwest. They’ll get used to it, though, and they’ll learn that middle America isn’t all that remote, after all.

Think about Leaving

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Portland business owners are more than fed up with the level of crime destroying their businesses. Their idea of who has the solution is misguided, though.

Frustrated business owners are calling on city and county leaders to do more to combat rising property crime in Portland….

This situation is not solely on the heads of Portland’s city councilmen or the county commissioners. The business’ fellow residents of Portland keep electing those councilmen and commissioners, politicians who’ve demonstrated their lack of commitment to order and rule of law.

Why would any business owner want as his customers folks who so consciously approve of and vote for such politicians? Those are the voters, after all, who then vandalize, rob, and otherwise trash their businesses. There are plenty of jurisdictions that do regard rule of law to be a Good Thing, and those jurisdictions have sound economies with plenty of room for businesses currently domiciled in lawless Portland.

Some Biden Admin Officials are Correct

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I’ve written about the dangers of TikTok to American children’s safety and to US security before. For two years, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US has been dickering with TikTok about ways to wall the app off from the government of the People’s Republic of China as a criterion for TikTok’s continued operation in the US.

Of course, a wall-off has no hope of success: its owner, ByteDance, would remain a PRC company and so wholly responsible to the PRC government’s intelligence community to commit espionage on demand. With TikTok still owned by ByteDance, any firewall must necessarily fail in the face of any PRC intel demand.

As a result of that, some members of CFIUS, in particular, DoD and DoJ folks, are becoming more interested in requiring TikTok be spun off by ByteDance into a separate entity. It’s an interesting idea; although I wonder about remaining sub rosa connections in the form of ByteDance-affiliated persons remaining in TikTok’s management structure, along with the risk of allegedly ex-ByteDance persons still in TikTok’s management.

Treasury has its own concerns regarding a forced sale.

[T]he Treasury Department, which chairs the panel [CFIUS], is worried that such an order might be overturned in court, and is looking for other possible solutions, according to a person familiar with that department’s thinking.

Treasury’s concern is easily enough preempted, along with my concern about ByteDance-related persons in TikTok employ: ban TikTok altogether from the US.

Preventing Future Omnibus Bills

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Chris Jacobs, Juniper Research Group founder and CEO, in his 23 December Wall Street Journal op-ed, offered a solution, but he made this error that’s fatal to his proposal.

But because the Senate parliamentarian allowed Democrats to create new slush funds for domestic spending with a simple majority via budget reconciliation in 2021, a future Republican Congress can do the same….

No. Two wrongs, as the saying goes, do not make a right. Republicans doing this because the other party does it is what Progressive-Democratic Party members do.

Aside from that, it’s simply a wrong thing to do, whether tit-for-tat or simply reconciliation. The better answer is to pass budgets and appropriations bills through truly regular order: get rid of reconciliation altogether and pass the money bills—or not—in the same way as other bills get passed or stopped.

There’s one other step required. One (ideally both) of the houses of Congress needs to enact a rule barring omnibus bills: only the single budget and the dozen separate appropriations bills can be considered.

If government shuts down as a result of money impass, there’s a big so what. The Obama Shutdown, the Schumer Shutdown, all the other shutdowns show how little government is missed.

This—Jacobs’ solution or mine—will remain pie in the sky, though, since we’re dealing with politicians and not persons representing their constituencies. That requires us, We the People, to get off our…couches…and fire those who don’t represent us once they get to DC and hire those who do. That will take two or three election cycles to drive the point home. Three to complete a cleansing of the Senate.

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Overreach

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The New York banking regulator, the New York State Department of Financial Services, has announced “rules” that would require banks of all sizes to consider climate change in their risk assessment considerations. NYSDF’s rules are made the worse because it has outsized influence due to the plethora of Wall Street institutions in the State.

Banks would be called upon to look at climate-related risks when bringing on new clients and when extending credit.

This is naked government overreach, even at the State level, and it’s one more reason financial institutions should leave New York. I can suggest Miami, Austin, Dallas, Sioux Falls, and Fargo as alternative locations.

It’s more than that, though. It’s an…inaccurate…goal. The only climate-related risk any American business, banking or other, faces is Government behavior vis-à-vis government bureaucrat-perceived climate situations.