Tag Archives: political economy

Oversight

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Congressman Richard Neal (D, MA), House Ways and Means Committee Chairman, has demanded the IRS turn over some years of President Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns.  He centered his demand thusly:

“Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, has a duty to conduct oversight of departments and officials,” Mr Neal said.

That’s an interesting argument. If it’s coequality that creates the oversight duty, then the coequal Executive Branch has an identical duty to conduct oversight of House (and Senate) Committees and members.

Hmm….

Nice Ideas, But….

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There are some moves afoot in the House Ways and Means Committee to revamp Americans’ retirement savings accounts.  A couple of them include

increasing the flexibility associated with retirement accounts. If approved, individuals would be allowed to stash money into IRA accounts beyond the current age limit of 70½. It would also delay when individuals are required to begin taking required minimum distributions to 72, from 70½.

These are moves in the right direction, but they seem to proceed from a false premise, and some unanswered—unaddressed, even—questions.  One question is why there should be any age limit (or any other limit) on saving money into IRA (or other retirement) accounts.  Another question also is age-related: why there should be any age after which distributions from retirement accounts must be taken.

Those lead to the false premise.  Whose money is it, anyway, both before and after it goes into those retirement accounts? The worthies on the Committee seem to be assuming its Government’s money and not each citizen’s.

As interim steps, these are fine ones to take.  They cannot be any sort of final answer.

Protection

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Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.

Take It or Leave Us

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Here is one of the final steps in Brussels’ studied refusal to deal in good faith with Great Britain’s leaving the EU in all the long “negotiations.”  With the Brits’ departure now set for 12 April, the EU’s Chief Negotiator for the United Kingdom Exiting the European Union, Michel Barnier, has issued the EU’s ultimatum:

  • The possibility of a successful “meaningful vote” on the withdrawal agreement in the next few days. “The only way to avoid a no-deal Brexit is and will be through a positive majority. We should continue to make this point in the public debate,” Barnier said.
  • Leaving without an agreement should the meaningful vote fail: “No deal was never my desired or intended scenario, but the EU 27 is more prepared. It becomes day after day more likely.”
  • Requesting an extension to Article 50, should the deal fail. “Such an extension would carry significant risk for the EU,” said Barnier. “A strong justification would be needed.”

In other words, there can be no extension (which would be a foolish, if not humiliating, surrender by Great Britain, in any event) to the departure.

Barnier added, to obfuscate the nature of these “choices,”

If the UK so wish we’re ready to rework the political declaration so long as the principles of the EU are respected.

In other words, the rework will continue to require Great Britain to accede to Continental requirements rather than exercise its own national sovereignty—the purpose of the Brits’ Leave vote.

This is no choice. It’s designed solely to thoroughly denigrate Great Britain both as punishment for Leaving and as a message for other EU nations contemplating going out from the Union.

There’ll Be Blowback

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But it’ll be badly misplaced.  President Donald Trump is moving to stop further direct aid to the Caravan Triangle of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras over those nations’ failure to control those caravans by putting to actual use that aid—which was intended to support improved economies, the living conditions within those economies, and training to deal with gangs and the drug trade.

[T]he State Department…notified Congress that it would look to suspend 2017 and 2018 payments to the trio of nations, which have been home to some of the migrant caravans that have marched through Mexico to the US. border.

This comes as Honduras has formed and put on the road a caravan of 20,000 people.  In response to this, Trump said

We were giving them $500 million. We were giving them tremendous aid.  We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.

Indeed, the blowback has already begun.  Senator Robert Menendez (D, NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is claiming

Instead of doing our part to help stabilize the situation in the Northern Triangle and stem the flow of children and refugees to our borders, President Trump reportedly wants to make matters worse by blocking resources for programs that get to the root causes of this humanitarian crisis.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL), a member of the same committee, presaged the blowback with his October tweet:

I understand instinct to cut US aid to punish countries for failing to stop illegal migration. But our aid to #Honduras & #Guatemala isn’t cash.  It’s primarily equipment & training to stop drugs headed to US & to deal with the gangs causing people to leave those countries.

The sad fact is, though, that neither Menendez nor Rubio understand the underlying facts, that the aid, cash and equipment and training, are not going to the folks who need it—those people being gathered up into caravans.  It’s going through those governments to the oligarchs and thieves.  The people—and the putative trainers and trainees—are not seeing a cent or a centavo of the aid, nor are they getting a single bit of the equipment or training.

Beyond that, Mexico has already offered “migrants” and “asylum seekers” jobs and job opportunities and asylum.  That these folks ignore or reject Mexico’s offer gives the lie to the claim that they’re coming here to escape terrible conditions at home or to seek the protection of another government.