Tag Archives: politics

The New Protectionism?

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A deep cultural divide between the US and Europe in their approaches to Silicon Valley has thrust European officials into the role of global tech-industry cops.

Notice that.  The EU is looking to dictate to the world how other nations’ businesses must conduct themselves, whether in Europe or not.  This “thrust” is an economic matter, too, so the question arises concerning just how much culture actually plays—or is it an economic matter.  And since the economics of the thing is aimed at protecting EU companies, the underlying question comes clear: is the EU protecting against unfair practices, or is it just protecting its domestic businesses from competition, a competition EU companies lose because they can’t keep up—especially under the costs inflicted by, for instance, the EU’s own labor laws?

And this:

Just Friday, Germany approved new legislation imposing €50 million fines on social-media companies that fail to quickly remove hate speech and terrorist content—over strident opposition from and other tech companies, which advocate self-regulation to tackle those problems. That step followed the €2.42 billion ($2.76 billion) fine that the European Union’s executive arm levied this week against Alphabet Inc’s Google for abusing its dominance as a search engine.

The concept of “free” speech is dragged in through the EU’s and now Germany’s imposed limitations on that, which have economic opportunity implications far beyond the mere freedom question raised in that post.

The Republic of Korea is considering using this sort of thing nakedly for protectionism.

South Korea’s antitrust chief told the Yonhap News Agency he will examine how to curb the market clout of Google and Facebook.

No fair.  Those guys are competing too successfully.

My thought isn’t new.  Ex-President Barack Obama (D)

said the EU’s investigations into big US tech companies were “more commercially driven than anything else,” suggesting the EU was trying to help out European competitors.

It’s just becoming more obvious.

Of What are they Afraid?

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President Donald Trump has formed his commission to look into national-scale voter fraud, as promised, and that commission has asked each of the several States for a potful of voter roll information.  Even though the commission has asked for a broad range of data, it has emphasized that it wants only the data that are publicly available according to the respective States’ laws.

Nevertheless, a significant number of States have chosen to refuse to supply the data.  Virginia Governor Terry McAuliff (D), for instance, wondered with a straight face “what voter fraud?  Who—us?”

I have no intention of honoring this request. Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia[.] … At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.

California Secretary of State Alex Padilla also has refused.

…not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally.

Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes:

Kentucky will not aid a commission that is at best a waste of taxpayer money and at worst an attempt to legitimize voter suppression efforts across the country[.]

Look who’s prejudging the outcome of an investigation that’s just getting underway.

I fail to understand why these folks want to obstruct the investigation.  After all, what better way to shut down Trump than to show, via his own commission, that his voter fraud beef is bogus?  Unless the beef is valid, and these guys have something to hide.

Naw.  Couldn’t be.

Look Who’s Talking

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Congressmen Jamie Raskin (D, MD), Sheila Jackson Lee (D, TX), and Anthony Brown (D, MD), and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D, DC) are pushing a bill that would remove President Donald Trump under the 25th Amendment because, as these Progressive-Democrats insist, Trump is mentally unfit for office.

Indeed, Raskin has said he’s been thinking about this bill since he was elected last fall.  He insists now

This is a president who seems increasingly at odds with everyone and everything around him[.]

With no trace of understanding the irony of this person making this claim after having refused to attend the President’s inauguration.  In fact, the only persons Trump is at odds with are Progressive-Democrats like Raskin and his fellows in both houses of Congress, and that only because they’ve made it their business, through their leaders Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), to oppose everything Trump or Republican.

Notice a pattern there?

Paranoia: typically includes thinking of a persecutory nature, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia.

This is a textbook description of the Progressive-Democrats’ mindset ever since they lost the elections last fall, including this time the Presidential election.  This has been what the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have been doing since the Trump administration took office, with one specious (to be generous) charge after another: of “Russia collusion,” of “interfering with Comey’s investigation,” of “Trump obstructing justice,” of “Republicans will kill thousands of people with their health care reform,” of “Republicans only want to give tax breaks to the rich,” all at the expense of doing the people’s business in Congress.

Plainly, there is need of such a bill.  But it needs to be aimed at members of Congress who have put their irrational conspiracy theories ahead of their duties to the point some members are no longer capable even of high functioning.

The Meaning of “Is”

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The four liberal Justices on the Supreme Court are still confused.  One of the underreported (the Wall Street Journal did its part here) end-of-term decisions that the Supreme Court announced was its ruling in California Public Employees’ Retirement System v ANZ Securities, Inc.  The Court held that the law means what it says, neither more nor less.

The case revolved around whether Calpers could proceed with a 2011 complaint over securities the pension fund purchased from offerings in 2007 and 2008. The Securities Act of 1933 says that in “no event” shall an action be brought “more than three years after the security was bona fide offered to the public.”

But Calpers’ 2011 filing was too late; it was past that three-year limit (even if only by months relative to the 2008 offerings).  Not minding how special Calpers is (a legend in its own mind as my wife puts it), the Supreme Court held that

the three-year limit “admits of no exception” and “creates a fixed bar against future liability[.]”

Interestingly, the ruling was only by a 5-4 vote.  The liberal faction of the Court was just as self-important, or perhaps confused, as Calpers in disdaining the law: with their four votes they ignored, or were confused by, the meanings of “no event” and of “three years.”

An Area for Sales Increases

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We must be on the right track.  Now it’s time to push the pace.  The People’s Republic of China doesn’t want us to sell to the Republic of China the wherewithal to defend itself against aggression, not even the pittance that is the $1.4 billion arms deal that the Trump administration is contemplating.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang on Friday said Washington should immediately stop the sale to avoid harming relations with Beijing.

He said the deal would severely damage China’s sovereignty and security interests and runs contrary to Washington’s commitment to a “one-China” policy.

That’s risible.  Leaving aside whether good relations with the PRC should come at a cost as steep as meekly abandoning an ally and friend would be, what’s harming those relations is the PRC’s constant drumbeat of threat against the RoC; the PRC’s occupation of international waters and of islands that belong to the sovereign nations surrounding the South China Sea to the east, south, and west (although the RoC has conflicting claims to some of those islands); and the PRC’s aggressions against Japanese islands in the East China Sea.

Further, there’s no threat to any “one-China” policy.  There’s only one China on the Asian mainland, and there’s only one China on the island of Taiwan.  No one is arguing otherwise.

Our next step should be to help the RoC to upgrade their defense forces and equipage into something that truly can defend the nation.