Tag Archives: politics

It Could be made to Work

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President Donald Trump (R) wants a sovereign wealth fund for “promot[ing] fiscal sustainability,” “establish[ing] economic security for future generations, and promot[ing] United States economic and strategic leadership internationally.” This is a slush fund with a gussied up label.

It could work, nonetheless, under a very narrow Critical Item-level set of circumstances.

• slush fund dollars can be loaned only, not committed as grants or investments
• slush fund purposes and scope clearly defined and limited
• scope and types of enterprises to which slush fund dollars may be loaned clearly defined and limited
• slush fund loans to be made at annually adjusting rates equal to the prime rate plus 12.75%, which is roughly comparable to today’s credit card interest rate markup
• slush fund loans to be repaid in full within two years
• principle to be returned to the slush fund; interest payments to be sent to Treasury for the explicit purpose of paying down the national debt
• bankruptcy can be used to discharge slush fund loans, but only via liquidation bankruptcy

Those are stiffly limiting criteria for a Federal government slush fund, but the WSJ editors are correct in every respect in their concerns about the dangers of such a fund. Setting up such a device under these criteria is likely a pipe dream chasing a chimera, but the idea is worth serious consideration: under these criteria, the idea could work; alternatively, the idea could be put to rest for a useful period of years.

NGOs and Funding

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Non-government organizations—are they non-governmental, or are they not?

President Donald Trump (R) has ordered all Executive Branch Departments and agencies to review their funding of non-government organizations (NGOs). His order has this:

The United States Government has provided significant taxpayer dollars to Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs), many of which are engaged in actions that actively undermine the security, prosperity, and safety of the American people.

It’s time to stop Federal transfers of taxpayer monies to NGOs. Emphasize—enforce—that “non-” part. Being affiliated with government—even if only through government financing of part of their operation—denies the “non-” part of their designation.

If us average Americans think an NGO’s activities are appropriate, we’ll support it voluntarily with our own, direct, donations. If we do not, we should not be dragooned into supporting it anyway by having our tax dollars shunted off to it.

Blame Ducking

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It’s not blame shifting or blame casting, even though it might seem so. Those are just tools, though, employed in the cause of ducking blame. Pennsylvania’s Progressive-Democrat governor, Josh Shapiro, has provided the latest version.

Electricity rates are spiking in the State over which he rules. PJM Interconnection, the State’s largest power provider, has approved 38 GW of new generation, but the generators are not being built: high interest rates and inflation, not Shapiro’s fault but demonstratively that of his party’s actions at the Federal level, have made the building too costly, even with the plethora of green subsidies.

Shapiro has, though,

pitched an energy plan to fast-track the construction of renewables and a cap-and-trade program that would effectively subsidize them by punishing fossil fuels. Such policies would likely lead to the retirement of more base-load fossil fuel generators….

And that restriction on energy supply can only further drive up energy prices for Pennsylvanians. This sort of thing already has done so, in fact, hence the present spike for the State’s citizens.

Now Shapiro is blaming PJM for those rising prices while ducking away from his own green policies, and his party’s national-level policies, that are the actual cause of the straits in which Pennsylvania’s citizens find themselves.

This is the Progressive-Democrat mantra: it’s not their fault; it’s never their policies. It’s always and everywhere someone else’s fault.

Progressive-Democrat Obstructionism

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The Trump administration, this time in the form of CIA Director John Ratcliffe, has extended an 8-month buyout offer to the CIA. Typical of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s insistence on Federal government power, Senator Tim Kaine (D, VA) had this objection:

There’s no statutory authority that I can see for the president making this offer[.]

That’s the Party position on government: nothing is permitted unless Government explicitly permits it. Of course, that’s not how our government works in the structure laid out by our Constitution. Quite the opposite, in fact: the lack of explicit statutory authority is no bar at all against the President—or the CIA Director in the present case—making such an offer.

For Kaine’s benefit, though like his Party cronies, it’s doubtful he’ll read it, here are the 9th and 10th Amendments to our Constitution:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

And

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Of course, Trump, and Ratcliffe, would need statutory authority to require those folks to take the buyout offers, but no such requirement exists—only the offer. Which is a better severance package than most any private sector organization has ever offered. The CIA personnel, and those other Federal civilian personnel, under the offer even get to keep their current insurance benefits; they won’t even be forced onto the horribly expensive COBRA plans for the eight months.

Chaos? Whipsaw?

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Some folks think the speed with which tariffs were laid onto Canada and Mexico and then delayed happened in a chaotic manner, with whipsaws in the mix. After all, shortly after President Donald Trump (R) announced the tariffs, US automaker managers called Susie Wiles, Trump’s Chief of Staff, and she supposedly assured them of carve-outs IAW existing trade treaties. Then Trump reiterated his tariff threat with no word of automotive carve-outs. Then agreements were made with Mexico and Canada that satisfied much of what Trump has wanted from those two nations, and he agreed to delay the tariff’s implementation. Or at least that’s what the newswriters’ imaginary “people familiar with” tell them. And all of that happened in just two days.

It’s certainly possible that the situation was a chaotic as newswriters claim.

There’s another interpretation, though.

This is just the Federal government, with a businessman in charge now better schooled in politics and the techniques of maneuvering politicians, moving at the speed of business.

In conjunction with that, keep in mind that those automobile makers assemble their vehicles in American- and Canada-domiciled factories from parts made in, or passing through, both Mexican and Canadian factories and middlemen. Whatever this administration does vis-à-vis cars and trucks, thus, would get back to those Mexican and Canadian companies and their governments.

Accordingly, a two-pronged approach: pass words back to those governments through their companies, and speak directly to those governments, with what amounts to a backdoor carrot and stick process that emphasizes the stick.

There’s this, too: the tariffs were delayed, not called off. It’s a clear move to see whether the Mexican and Canadian governments actually do what their President and Prime Minister have said they’d do.

Aside: It’s illustrative of what passes for news media today, that the news writers and news commenters (I hesitate to call them analysts) generally choose the most negative interpretation to tout, and never offer other, just as apparent, interpretations (and not just mine) with explanations of why they think those interpretations are not in play.

Another aside:

[T]he United Steelworkers, who lobbied for an oil exemption to protect their members working in refineries, decried the tariff action, saying that “lashing out at key allies like Canada is not the way forward.”

This from an organization that, like each of its brethren, feels perfectly free to lash out at businesses, threatening their existence with production-blocking strikes whenever they don’t get their own way.