Tag Archives: politics

Delays, Delays

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Stalls, stalls. That’s what State is doing over the Clinton email national security disaster with its latest request to be “late” delivering the court-ordered documents.

“The Clinton email team must perform its work on site. … This storm will disrupt the Clinton email team’s current plans to work a significant number of hours throughout the upcoming weekend and could affect the number of documents that can be produced on January 29, 2016,” agency lawyers wrote in their request.

No. State has been stalling and outright obstructing this release for years—that’s why the matter is before a Federal court and under that court’s order and nominal supervision to deliver on a set schedule in the first place. All through that ordered schedule, too, State has continued to delay, stall, obstruct, release at less than the court-ordered rate. The latest such stall was when State whined that the Christmas holiday schedule for their precious email sorters was more important than complying with the Court’s order and the people’s right to know what Democratic Party Presidential candidate was doing with her private, unprotected email server while she was Secretary of State. This storm would be irrelevant if State had complied with the original requests in the first place, or had complied with the court’s order in the second place.

No. State plainly is now in contempt of court. The Federal judge needs to hold, promptly, a hearing wherein State supervisory personnel should show cause why they shouldn’t be jailed for their contempt until the emails have been delivered and the contempt condition resolved.

Another Advantage

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…of low oil prices. Low prices are good for American consumers, especially in winter, when we not only have to drive, but we have to heat our homes.

Here’s an additional advantage, though.

But falling crude prices, US-led sanctions and diminished oil exploration threaten Russia’s oil industry and raise questions about its capacity to continue underwriting President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions at home and abroad.

Sanctions hurt Russia in a lot of economic ways, but that interference with Putin’s designs on eastern Europe can last only as long as the sanctions régime holds up. The falloff in exploration actually would work to Russia’s (and Iran’s) benefit, were it to last a long time, as that would diminish supply relative to demand, and so would raise oil prices.

That’s the kicker, though. Russia (and Iran) need $100+ oil in order to balance their budgets. Today’s $30 price, which I think will last at least into the intermediate future, if fracking and shale oil haven’t more permanently altered the supply availability environment, means that if Putin wants to continue his aggression against his neighbors, if he wants to continue to try to reconquer those nations and so reconstitute the old Soviet Union empire, he’ll have to borrow money to do so.

However, the only thing he has with which to repay such debt is revenue from oil and natural gas sales; the Russian economy is that dependent on extraction—it produces nothing else. At today’s prices, Putin will have to sell 3+ times as much oil as he would have had to just a couple of years ago. That creates a vicious circle: the more oil he produces and sells, the longer downward pressure on oil price continues.

And with Iranian production entering the market shortly, courtesy of Khamenei’s Best Bud President Barack Obama, those prices will be the recipient of additional downward pressure.

Right Idea, Wrong Answer

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Congressman David Jolly (R, FL) had a piece on Fox News in which he lamented the amount of time Congressmen spend raising money for their future campaigns for Congress.

He’s right. Congressmen do spend too much time doing this.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee recently greeted an incoming crop of freshmen with a prescribed schedule that highlighted fundraising “Call Time” of four hours a day as the chief priority for any new member of Congress. The actual time they suggested working in Congress each day: just two hours!

It’s not just Democrats, though; Republicans do this, too.

However.

I’m introducing legislation called “The Stop Act.” It simply says that that no member of Congress may personally ask you for money.

This does not mean that you as a citizen cannot choose to contribute to a candidate. It is your constitutional right of political speech to do so.

And

We can’t have a part‐time Congress in a full‐time world.

He’s mistaken here. Congressmen don’t need to be banned from personally asking me for money. If they were, each Congressman would only hire a staffer to do it for him—driving up the need for money. What does need to be addressed, and not necessarily with a new law, is the incentive to raise money.

Why is it so expensive to be a Congressman? A couple reasons, far from the only ones (I’m eliding inflated campaigning costs), are the high cost of living in DC and the surrounding area, and the cost of travel. Modern communications technology, though, greatly reduces (though it does not eliminate) the need for Congressmen to be personally present all the time.

Another reason is the existence of a full-time Congress. We don’t need a full-time Congress, even in a full-time world, though Congressmen do need to be fully present and fully focused during part-time Congresses. Congressmen think the only way to measure how much they’re doing for their constituents is by the number of laws they get passed. A full-time Congress simply emphasizes that pressure.

In fact, though, the best measure of what they’re doing for their constituents is how many law proposals they successfully block. The best measure is how effectively they’re keeping government out of the lives of their constituents, not how successfully they’re injecting government into those lives via another law. Changing their mindset would greatly reduce the incentive to raise money.

This proposed law is an example of misplaced incentive.

EU Stimulus

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Mario Draghi, of the European Central Bank, wants to keep stimulus efforts going, even with low oil and gas prices (even in Europe) having a dragging effect on inflation. Here’s the kicker, though:

Central bankers sometimes ignore falls in oil and food prices, arguing they are highly volatile and often beyond their influence because they are formed by global market forces. But Mr Draghi said the governing council is worried that a long period of low oil prices may lead to declines in the prices of other goods and services, and perhaps wages, through what central bankers term “second-round effects.”

I’ll disregard the premise that a long period of low oil prices is inherently deflationary, rather than just leading to a period of adjustment to a new, lower-cost equilibrium. My question for Draghi is what’s the down side of wages falling in a deflationary environment, even one that is merely a move to a lower-cost equilibrium?

Sure, no one likes to see a smaller paycheck, but this is a political question, not an economic one. However, if prices of goods and services are falling, no buying power is lost with that smaller paycheck. On the other hand, if wages don’t fall more or less along with those other prices, the outcome is a higher wage cost for the employer than the market value of what he and his employees produce. And that leads to job loss. Now we have a (new, relatively) high paycheck that has no value at all because the out of work ex-employee isn’t getting it.

Further, if I’m wrong, and a long period of low oil prices is, in fact, inherently deflationary, the producers can’t sell at all, as the buyers simply wait for prices to fall further before buying. If wages don’t fall commensurately in this environment, not only will jobs be lost, but many producers, unable to sell, will go out of business. And all of that company’s jobs will be lost.

In either case, employment is the second-round effect with which bankers like Draghi should concern themselves.

Well, Of Course

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…the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Inspector General on Wednesday effectively cleared the EPA of allegations of bias in its quest to preemptively kill a proposed mine in southwest Alaska.

The EPA’s IG—which works for the EPA’s Administrator—reached this conclusion even though it was “unable” (it claimed) to get hold of two years’ worth of emails from a key, carefully unnamed, retired employee. The IG claims in the report to have subpoenaed that worthy, but there’s no indication the IG ever bothered even to try to enforce the subpoena.

What else could we expect from an “inspection” function that works for, and is beholden to, the head of the agency it’s putatively inspecting?