Tag Archives: politics

Permanent Court of Arbitration Demurs

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This Hague Court has been hearing the Philippines’ complaint about the People’s Republic of China’s invasion and seizure of the South China Sea, an invasion that occurred at the direct and deliberate expense of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, and other nations rimming this Sea.  It ruled against the PRC, publishing its unanimous ruling last Tuesday.  In its essence, the Court has ruled that the PRC’s Nine-Dash Line, which the PRC used to define the extent of its manufactured historical claim…couldn’t hold water.

China’s claims to historic and economic rights in most of the South China Sea have no legal basis….

And even further,

China [isn’t] entitled to an exclusive economic zone, or EEZ, extending up to 200 nautical miles from any outcrop in the Spratlys archipelago including the largest, Itu Aba, which is claimed by China but controlled by Taiwan.

The EEZ aspect of the ruling is important in another way, too: it renders the PRC’s terraforming, including its military base building illegal.

This will have implications, too, for the legality of PRC behavior and military buildup in the Paracel Islands off the Vietnamese coast and which are claimed by Vietnam and for PRC occupation efforts in Scarborough Shoal, which are Philippine islands.

With the PRC’s Foreign Minister’s office officially rejecting the Court’s ruling, we now can expect an accelerated military buildup throughout the Sea and more aggressive behavior by the PRC’s navy and air force.

Need More Regulation

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That’s the meme of Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Turillo, the Fed’s reputed point man for regulation.  Turillo is claiming that

the lessons of the 2008 financial crisis won’t be complete without better regulation of short-term funding both inside and outside the banking system.

Naturally, the regulatory point man is going to see everything as a regulatory need.

OK, since more regulations are the solution, here’s a suggestion.

How about some regulations prohibiting the Federal government and the Federal Reserve Bank from using credit and lending as social engineering tools?

The PRC is Back in the East China Sea

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Over the last month, the PRC has become more aggressive against Japan, especially in the region of Japan’s Senkaku Island group.  More provocatively, the PRC may be beginning to coordinate its aggression with Russia in the region.

In mid-June, PRC fighters threatened Japanese fighters in the airspace around the Senkakus, and a PRC deep sea combat ship sailed directly at the islands while a Russian destroyer approached from a different direction as though the one was going to stage a landing while the other provided cover for the maneuver.

This sort of behavior has been going on for the last couple of years in the South China Sea, now it’s resuming in the East China Sea, and it comes at the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s (D) so-called pivot to Asia, which is proving more and more to be all hat and no cattle.

The PRC is not any friend of Japan.  Nor is it any friend of ours.  These behaviors are purely acquisitive.  We need to get quite a bit firmer, in actual deed, not just chit-chat, or our friends and allies be forced to make their own accommodations with their, and our, enemy.

A Liberal Justice Talked out of Turn

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg now is in the business of publicly bashing politicians who don’t think like she does.

I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Donald Trump as our president.  For the country, it could be four years.  For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.

We can also turn her remarks around.

I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country would be—with Hillary Clinton as our president.  For the country, it could be four years—or a dozen, with her insistence on extending Obama even further, and even farther left.  For the court, it could be—I don’t even want to contemplate that.

And Ginsburg had these gems:

I don’t expect that we’re going to see another affirmative action case [regarding Fisher v University of Texas, wherein Justice Anthony Kennedy gutted his own prior ruling in the case].  I think [Justice Kennedy] comes out as the great hero of this term.

And

It would be an impossible dream.  But I’d love to see Citizens United overruled[.]

The problem here isn’t that she’s engaging in political speech, though.  It’s that her political speech, because of her position and role in our Federal government—a Supreme Court Justice—means that whatever she says in the political arena can only prejudice all of her subsequent rulings.  With such political bashing, she’s predetermining her position on any case that comes before the Court, and not only those that might be brought under or by a Trump administration.

On the other hand, it’s good to know her prejudices—as well as those pre-written opinions on cases yet to come—beforehand, rather than discovering them in her opinions after the rulings have been announced.  Which emphasizes the importance of a question asked by a tweeter and quoted in The Washington Post piece at the first link above:

If there’s a redo of Bush v Gore, how does Ginsburg not recuse herself, given her Trump comments?

How, indeed?  Worse, how could we expect her to?

Climate and Lawless Democrats

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Recall that Democratic Party State Attorneys General and the Virgin Islands territorial Attorney General have subpoenaed private enterprises for all correspondence related to objections to political agendas touting climate warming and the need to redistribute wealth to “green” energy crony companies.  These subpoenas are intended to gain access to correspondence with anyone at all, and the companies have been threatened by these AGs with RICO proceedings if the victim target companies don’t comply.

In response to that, several of those target companies have countersued, demanding the AGs’ documents related to the AG cases, among other things under FOIA.  The AGs have refused to supply the requested documents, citing…secrecy.

Democratic attorneys general led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman are seeking to block efforts to obtain documents about their efforts by invoking an overbroad claim to secrecy in ongoing legal proceedings, according to the Energy and Environment (E&E) Legal Institute.

According to Chris Horner of E&E,

These activist AGs are trying to write themselves out from freedom of information laws their legislatures have written them into.  …they are hiding behavior that seems to be precisely the sort of abuse lawmakers sought to expose to sunlight when deciding to cover their States’ chief law enforcement officers under FOIA laws….

In fact, these AGs appear to have preemptively colluded in their secrecy.  The AGs involved

circulated a common interest agreement in March that detailed their cooperation in the Exxon matter.  It explicitly prohibited signatories from sharing information about the legal campaign.

The agreement stipulated that if any relevant information “is demanded under a public records law, the party receiving the request shall … refuse to disclose any shared information unless otherwise required by law.”

Oddly, that agreement was discovered in the course of a prior E&E FOIA request; hence the apparent effort to ignore current FOIAs.

Because facts upset their predetermined narrative and undermine their political standing.