Tag Archives: political parties

Balanced Journalism

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Fox News‘ Howard Kurtz objected to MSNBC‘s use of Mr Kellyanne Conway, George, as a commentator on the President Donald Trump impeachment hearings.  He’s quite right in this but he missed a larger point wit this remark:

Kurtz said it was shocking to him that television networks would cover impeachment hearings only with partisan commentators and political pundits, rather than leaving it chiefly in the hands of bonafide journalists.

Maybe that’s because there aren’t any bonafide journalists; there are only partisan commentators and political…pundits in the journalism guild.

Kurtz and his fellow so-called journalists continue to decline to explain what standard of journalistic integrity he and they use in place of the erstwhile journalism standard of integrity that required two on-record sources to corroborate anonymous sources’ claims.

Financial Transaction Tax

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The Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates (with, for now, the lonely exception of Joe Biden) all want one.  Fred Hatfield, once a (Democrat) commissioner on the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, correctly identified one downside of such a thing.

The tax would be bad for farmers, whose support is critical in the Feb 3 Iowa caucuses.  Farmers manage risk by entering into futures contracts, a type of derivative. Under Mr [Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie (I, VT)] Sanders’s proposal, trades of corn and soybeans futures would be taxed at a rate of 0.5 basis point [0.5%].

Even if farmers could somehow be exempted from a financial transaction tax, their cost of hedging would rise because the general cost of trading—of any sort—in commodities would rise, both from the tax and from the reduced liquidity of the derivatives as other traders eschew those markets. Such a tax could only negatively distort the market—as any tax in any market will do.

Moreover, those distortions would extend to other markets: grocery prices would rise from the increased prices faced by farmers and passed on to farm product buyers, beef and chicken prices would rise from the increased cost of feed, alternative farm produce would rise as other crops would substitute in (with their own increased demand-driven prices), and on and on.

And that’s just in agriculture.  The same cascading consequences would occur in all equity and debt markets, in all other commodity futures and forward markets—like metals: iron, aluminum, copper, in addition to “currency” metals—and on and on.

Investment in general, including for plant improvement and innovation, would be depressed by such a tax.

Sanders’, et al., financial transaction tax would have all the broadly negative impact on our economy as does any other social engineering-motivated tax.

In Which Biden Has the Right of It

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden is taking heat for his position on legalizing marijuana at the Federal level.  No less a light than Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) objects to Biden’s hesitation:

Marijuana should be legalized, and drug consumption should be decriminalized. These are matters of public health.

And Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT):

Too many lives were ruined due to the disastrous criminalization of marijuana[.]

Biden, though, doesn’t see the need for the rush:

I want a lot more [data] before I legalize it nationally. I want to make sure we know a lot more about the science behind it.

On this one, Biden is right, even if his version of the science is centered on whether marijuana is a gateway drug. There’s better science that argues for reluctance to legalize, and if we do so, to legalize only under very narrow circumstances.

There is considerable evidence that THC, the chemical putatively of interest, in uncontrolled use damages brains. There is, also, considerable evidence that various chemicals, including THC, and chemical combinations in marijuana can have beneficial medicinal effect.

Research needs to be done to identify with clarity those chemicals and chemical combinations. If the research bears out, then growing marijuana for the production of medically beneficial chemicals and chemical combinations can be licensed—just as is done with heroin into morphine and related chemicals.

Then, as with morphine, controlled doses of those chemicals/chemical combinations, with their known side effects and trade-offs, can be prescribed pursuant to useful treatment regimes.

A Thought on a Tweet

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President Donald Trump, during Friday’s “impeachment” hearing with erstwhile US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, tweeted in his inimitable style a critique of her job performance over the years.

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump · Nov 15
Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.

Some are suggesting that Yovanovitch wouldn’t have known about the tweet had not House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D, CA) read it out to her during her testimony, and so there couldn’t possibly be any intimidation.  Others argue the so what aspect of that; Trump’s tweet would serve to intimidate future witnesses and to intimidate Yovanovitch were she to return for additional testimony.

Especially damning, Yovanovitch testified—under oath—in answer to Schiff’s question about the tweet, that she found it intimidating.

But damning to whom?

Yovanovitch, at the time of her ambassadorship in Ukraine (and elsewhere), was a high-level US Government representative, and she still is by extension from her “plum job” at Georgetown. Her confessing to being intimidated by petty (in several senses) criticism of her job performance tells other governments, including those of our enemies, that our government can easily be pushed around.

That emboldens our enemies to act overtly against our interests, even against us.  It tells our friends and allies that we’ll fold in a crunch, including theirs.

That’s a threat to our national security.

California’s Progressive-Democrats

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They have a homeless problem, and they seem oblivious to it.

Oakland has seen a 47% jump in homelessness—one of the largest surges of any California city, according to a one-night street count released in July. The count, which used federal guidelines, showed Oakland had 4,071 homeless people in 2019, up from 2,761 in 2017. The increase puts the city’s per capita homeless rate higher than neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley and comes at a time when several West Coast cities are struggling with a homeless crisis that’s being driven by rising rents, drug addiction, mental illness and pushback from progressives.

San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, Los Angeles—the list goes on—have a severe homeless crisis.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians from California just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.

It’s not just California’s Progressive-Democrat-run cities, either.  San Antonio has one so bad that the State has had to move in and try to clean the streets and under-bridge areas for them.  Seattle is just as bad.  Chicago and New York City have the same thing, although they’re less publicized, and their respective State governments—Progressive-Democrat-run—don’t provide, or even offer, any help.  Baltimore is infamous for its terrible neighborhoods.

This is what those Progressive-Democrats in Congress should be working on instead of their smear sham impeachment election year campaign.  These folks are their constituents, not the lobbyists, pressmen, and reflectors in their DC echo chamber.

One could almost get the impression that Congress’ Progressive-Democratic Party politicians everywhere just don’t care about the plight of their constituents.