Tag Archives: politics

“Technical Expertise”

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In The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial regarding the Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v EPA, in which the Court ruled that the EPA had badly overstepped its bounds, the Editors pointed out that

[t]he dissenters bemoan that Congress lacks the expertise to regulate technical subjects such as climate change.

This is a cynically offered sophistry by those activist Justices. There’s nothing preventing an inexpert Congress from consulting experts. Congress does, after all, hold the occasional hearing on matters related to legislation under consideration.

The Uniter Says…

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…to Hell with bipartisanship. Again.

Last time, President Joe Biden (D) wanted an “exception” to the Senate’s filibuster rule so he could get passed the Progressive-Democratic Party’s voting “rights” legislation on strict party lines—no bipartisanship wanted.

This time, Biden wants an “exception” to the Senate’s filibuster rule so Party can codify Roe v Wade in the law.

If the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, it should be we provide an exception for this[.]

The Senate’s filibuster rule forces compromise and bipartisanship—a measure of unity—in legislation by requiring at least 10 members of the minority party to agree to the legislation.

To Hell with bipartisanship, Biden says. Pass Party’s legislation. Unification means everyone does it Party’s way.

California Progressive-Democrats Strike Again

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This time, it’s the California’s Attorney General, the Progressive-Democrat Rob Bonta, who released the personally identifiable information of thousands of California’s firearm owners and concealed carry permit holders.

In the name of transparency, he claims. Oh, and that much transparency was an accident, he claims.

The information “accidentally” released includes

the person’s full name, race, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge.

This is what Bonta said in his Press Release, put out last Monday, regarding his “transparency” move:

The dashboard [Bonta’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal] is accessible though DOJ’s OpenJustice Data Platform. The announcement will improve transparency and information sharing for firearms-related data and includes broad enhancements to the platform to help the public access data on firearms in California, including information about the issuance of Concealed Carry Weapons (CCW) permits….

You bet he broadly enhanced public access to data about firearm ownership and concealed carry permit holders.

This sort of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Bonta knows who is in the IT section of the California DoJ that he runs. He knows who did the software adjustment to release the data from the department’s concealed carry permit holder database. That those folks have not been fired for cause, much less arrested by his California Bureau of Investigation or Bureau of Firearms agents, speaks volumes about Bonta’s role in this attack on honest American citizens, who also are citizens of California.

That Bonta hasn’t resigned now that his release (yes, his release—he’s the one in charge; he’s the one who authorized the release) has been exposed says volumes about his continued approval of the release.

This is a continuation of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s attack on our 2nd Amendment rights, just a few days after the Supreme Court upheld them, explicitly, in striking down New York’s law requiring a citizen to get government permission to exercise his right by satisfying a government bureaucrat that he has a “need” and is a proper—in the bureaucrat’s eyes—citizen.

Update: Corrected the opening sentence, which had mistakenly omitted the first half due to a copy/paste fit of sloppiness.

A Performance Principle

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Norway, it turns out, did really well as a nation during the recent Wuhan Virus Situation.

Not long ago, the World Health Organization published mortality stats from the past two years, which showed that nearly every country’s excess death count spiked during the pandemic. Norway’s barely moved. The Norwegians had pulled off the closest thing possible to an optimal response to the most vexing problems that Covid-19 presented.

Then what? Norway, rather than rest on its laurels, studied the situation, with particular reference to the nation’s successes and failures—and there were some failures, even as Norway did so well overall. Why was Norway, in the words of the WSJ article’s author, so eager to probe its failures? Norwegian economist Egil Matsen is the second chair of the Norwegian commission that was set up early in the virus situation to plan ahead and then to study in hindsight Norway’s response for future reference. He said,

It reflects a desire to see what we did well—and what we did not do well. I think there is perhaps even an expectation that when something this unusual and serious happens to our country, it should be evaluated and we should try to learn from it in the aftermath.

What a concept. Plan ahead, and then see how well the plan did and did not do in an actual situation. Don’t just kick back in celebration—do that, sure, and rue failure when that occurs—but work to do better. Learn from experience. And one lesson here is that, while a physician chaired this sort of commission, an economist was second chair. Economists are trained to take a much more systems approach, to look at the broader picture, of a problem that has a range of national-level implications; a medical professional is trained to understand only the medical implication.

Responding to a pandemic is nothing if not the classic economics problem of weighing costs and benefits.

Inflation and Putin’s War on Ukraine

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Christine Lagarde, European Central Bank President, said she plans on raising interest rates only gradually, while acknowledging that the EU’s inflation problem was steadily getting worse.

Speaking at the ECB’s annual economic policy conference in Portugal on Tuesday, Ms Lagarde said Europe’s inflation problem was deepening, but warned that the region also faced weaker growth prospects related to the war in Ukraine.

And

The ECB’s gradualism, as Ms Lagarde described its approach, reflects the larger economic blow that the war in Ukraine has dealt to Europe….

President Joe Biden (D) also (in)famously blames Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the high inflation in the US.

I wonder if accelerating the shipment of arms and ammunition; accelerating, in particular, the shipment of tanks, artillery, rocket artillery, antiship and antiaircraft weapons; and getting out of the way of transferring combat aircraft (all with associated training and logistics) to Ukraine might then eliminate that inflation cause and boost economic growth by helping Ukraine quickly to win the war inflicted on it.