Tag Archives: political economy

Constitutionally Mandated Federal Funding

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House Progressive-Democrats have unveiled their “police reform” bill, a proposal crafted explicitly without Republican input. That last is neither here nor there for this post’s purpose. What matters is this claim in Eliza Collins’ Wall Street Journal article describing that bill and its alleged purpose:

The bill doesn’t provide any new federal funds for police departments, except where constitutionally mandated for data collection, according to Democratic aides.

This is an amazing claim. Maybe those Progressive-Democratic aides—or even Reporter Collins—would like to point to that clause in our Constitution that mandates Federal funds to police departments for any purpose, let alone “data collection.”

Censoring the Media

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The censors have expanded their operation from the Facebooks, Alphabets, Twitters of our nation to our newsroom simulacra. Daniel Henninger noted the latest examples of the invasion:

In the past week, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, the editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the editors of Bon Appétit magazine and the young women’s website Refinery 29 have been forced out by the staff and owners of their publications for offenses regarded as at odds with the beliefs of the current protests.

It’s more than mere censorship, though. It’s George Orwell and Franz Kafka in the press room collaborating on the press’ editorials.

The…news…outlets and the society gossip magazines cited by Henninger are canonical examples.

Henninger, though, is mistaken in one respect. These editors may have been forced out by the institutions’ owners, but staff played virtually no role—it was those editors’ abject cowardice in the face of opprobrium from their subordinates that assumed that character’s place in the tragedy.

It’s Time

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The People’s Republic of China has begun welching on its trade agreement with the US. Government-controlled companies buying American farm products have begun canceling their orders to American farmers, orders made under that agreement. So far, the canceled orders amount to chump change.

However.

“A handful of shipments of livestock feed, corn, pork, cotton and some meat imports are pushed back,” said a senior Chinese shipping executive involved in China farm imports who asked not to be identified and who has been briefed on Beijing’s move.
“Private Chinese exporters are not part of this, but it could escalate, depending on how the relationship between the US and China goes forward,” this executive said.

The threat is clear.

It’s time to find, and redirect our farm products to, other markets and stop selling them to the PRC. The PRC is simply too unreliable a trading partner—which should be expected, given that the nation has placed itself as an enemy of us rather than as a competitor.

Works for Me

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The baby sister and de facto chief of staff to northern Korea’s MFWIC, Baby Kim, Kim Yo Jong doesn’t like that citizens of the Republic of Korea keep sending anti-northern Korea missives into the DMZ and on across into the gangland.

[Kim Yo Jong] warned that it would end a 2018 inter-Korean military agreement if the South fails to stop defectors and activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two countries.
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Kim Yo Jong also said the North could permanently shut a liaison office with the South and an inter-Korean industrial park in the border town of Kaesong….

She also says that the agreement was hardly of any value.

She’s right on that last. It is a useless, virtue-signaling setup that the RoK, in retrospect mistakenly, agreed.

The dissolution of the agreement would create no loss at all for the people of the RoK; Baby Kim’s Baby Sister ought not let the door hit her in the fannie on the way out.

America’s Problem

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…according to Walter Russell Mead, in his Monday Wall Street Journal op-ed. He suggested that the world will only wait out the Trump administration, and that the next administration, Trump’s or Biden’s, will face a world grown unresponsive to American leadership, not believing that American society is capable of the role any further.

He closed his piece with this:

Whatever happens in the election, the US administration next year will face a problem even more daunting than the intellectual challenge of crafting a national strategy for an increasingly dangerous time. It will have to convince the world that this time, America really means what its president says.

This overstates the case, and it perpetuates a myth that has suffused too many administrations for far too long.

We don’t have to convince the world of anything, nor should we be defining ourselves in terms of other nations’ approval/disapproval of us. We have only to do what’s best for the United States—which will include ad hoc purpose-designed coalitions, but very few hard treaties.

Putting our nation first—which is not putting our nation alone, as a mendacious press and today’s crop of Progressive-Democrats claim—simplifies Mr Mead’s problem.