Category Archives: Politics – international

Something interesting happened in Canada!

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The vid above is about policing in the most woke (= idiotic) city on earth in the most woke (= insane) province in Canada’s fair domain. The rest is about energy policies which provides a lesson to us all.

Ontario was once the wealthiest province in Canada, but is in the process of proving that while there may be much ruin in a great nation, eventually you really can ruin the place if you work at it long enough and hard enough. Here is a cautionary tale proving there are some people for whom no level of ruin is ever enough: $312 Billion: Green Energy Makes Ontario the Most Debt-Ridden Province on Earth. Not long, worth your time, in my view, but here is something to get you started.

A major issue has been crippling energy and environmental policies. It began when, in 1992, then-premier Bob Rae appointed businessman and former UN Under-Secretary-General Maurice Strong to be chairman of Ontario Hydro. At the time, Ontario was a prosperous, economically sound province. Strong changed that when he applied the energy and environmental policies he proposed for the entire world. In 1992, he introduced them through his creation of the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the conference he chaired in Rio de Janeiro.

At the conference, Strong introduced his creation of Agenda 21, a global energy and environment policy of world-shattering implications, and got it ratified. It was at the same conference that world leaders signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC set the ground rules for the UN’s climate science body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In Article 1 of the UNFCCC treaty, it specified:

“Climate change” means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over considerable time periods.

It is a definition that predetermines the outcome of the IPCC’s work. You cannot isolate human causes of climate change without knowledge and understanding of natural changes and mechanisms. The fact that we cannot forecast the weather beyond 72 hours demonstrates how little we understand about natural climate change and its causes. Accurate forecasts require accurate science, and yet the science is still highly immature.

To further his anti-development agenda, Strong needed “science” to isolate and prove that increasing carbon dioxide emissions from industrial activity, a natural outcome of increasing production, would cause runaway global warming. Once the science was determined, the bureaucracies of national weather offices such as Environment Canada (EC) could push policies to cripple energy production, industry, and development. It is not coincidental that Gordon McBean, later assistant deputy minister of EC, chaired the founding meeting of the IPCC in 1985. Other countries and regions were slow to adopt these principles, but in Ontario, Strong was able to use his position at Ontario Hydro to implement with impunity the crippling policies he orchestrated in Rio.

You’ll never guess what happened next.

 

Public choice theory and the American president

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These are from the comments on an Instapundit post on public choice. Brings to mind the ridiculous notion that PDT may be the first politician in who knows how long to have nothing personal to gain from holding office nor does he owe anyone anything for getting him there. A once in a lifetime opportunity. Anyway, from the comments.

Public choice theory explains how government bureaucrats are captured by their constituent private sector companies the bureaucrats are supposedly regulating.

Leftists think that regulatory capture results in the regulators not regulating enough.

People such as you and I might have understood from even a young age about regulatory capture, but most academics didn’t, and in fact, many still don’t. How do we know that they don’t? Because goddamn academics are always proposing Yet Another Bureaucracy to regulate this, that or some other thing, and they’re invariably surprised (genuinely – ie, we’re talking the true nature of the Intellectual Yet Idiot class here) when they get results nothing like what they thought would happen, and often the exact opposite of what they thought would happen. eg, Obamacare and insurance rates. eg2: Obamacare and hospital wait times. eg3: Investment banks and the SEC. I could go on, and I’m sure you could name fifty examples yourself. The origin of Public Choice Theory came out of the time in the UK when the unions, the bureaucracy and academia were pushing the UK off a cliff into a permanent swamp of self-serving stupidity. Thatcher came along and reversed a great deal of that, and PCT played a part in that – Thatcher didn’t just make war on the unions, she also went after the bureaucracy and the academic/bureaucracy axis of government.

Without belaboring the issue with economic cant, it comes down to this. Bureaucrats and bureaucracies never will allow politicians to reduce the scope, size and cost of government, because the bureaucracy is enriching themselves (on a personal basis) by preventing actual cuts in budgets and staffs. The way that bureaucracies prevent cuts is to make lots of busywork, which masks their do-nothing results, but they use their constituent private sector companies and business sectors to help support their own existence. The nut of PCT is this: Bureaucracies are staffed with people who have discovered that by pulling the correct levers in regulations, obscure policy proposals and arcane budgetary rules, that they can become quite well off without having to do anything that resembles actual work as we in the private sector recognize it. The question you should always ask whenever you see a bureaucrat or his organization make a rule change or an enforcement action is “cui bono?” and you should look first and most directly at the bureaucrats advocating the rule change or enforcement action. For example: The SEC doesn’t rock the boat too hard on rule enforcement, because most of the people employed by the SEC are looking for future jobs with the investment banks they’re pretending to regulate.

The reason why government gets bigger is that it is in the personal, direct, financial interests of bureaucrats at an individual level to make it bigger. In other words, the bureaucracy wills it to happen – at every choice, in every action they take.

Israel and the Palestinians next?

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Who knows what lies ahead, but some things that seemed impossible not that long ago no longer seem that way at all. This is the opening to: The “Trump Doctrine” for the Middle East.

  • Trump has shown the strength of the United States and restored its credibility in a region where strength and force determine credibility.
  • Trump more broadly laid the foundation for a new alliance of the United States with the Sunni Arab world, but he put two conditions on it: a cessation of all Sunni Arab support for Islamic terrorism and an openness to the prospect of a regional peace that included Israel.
  • Secretary of State Pompeo spoke of the “Palestinians”, not of the Palestinian Authority, as in Iran, possibly to emphasize the distinction between the people and their leadership, and that the leadership in both situations, may no longer be part of the solution. Hamas, for the US, is clearly not part of any solution.
  • Netanyahu rightly said that Palestinian leaders, whoever they may be, do not want peace with Israel, but “peace without Israel”. What instead could take place would be peace without the Palestinian leaders. What could also take place would be peace without the Iranian mullahs.

What possibilities there are! 2024 might be a world unimagined in 2016. The Great Man theory of history remains the only one that works for me, although the temper of the times does count for quite a lot. Stay tuned.

The right and the left on the ending of the Korean War

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There are two views on North Korea that you can find if you look. The easiest to find is the left-media take that nothing happened, and it’s all a well-worn charade. But then there is this, which I will come to first before looking at the other. This is the positive view, taken from Ace of Spades.

The big news this morning is not only has the summit between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un taken place but as we were sleeping the two signed an historic agreement whereby the North has agreed to scrap its nuclear weapons program as part of an overall denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula.

If you were merely to look at this only through the lens of how the Democrat-Left-Media complex judges success, via optics and feelings alone, then this is the biggest thing since Live Aid. But in reality, this truly has the potential to be one of the biggest foreign policy milestones since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Make no mistake; North Korea has been a belligerent, inscrutable and unpredictable enemy that has overtly and covertly stirred up trouble for nearly 70 years and so an extreme degree of caution and wariness is advised in any dealings with them; the foibles and follies of the past three administrations in particular bear this out as their policies have ranged from farcical to disastrous in terms of American interests and global security. I believe that PDT and his new team of Pompeo and Bolton know this going in.

Beyond all the platitudes and proclamations, when you get down to the granular level, the make or break in all of this relies on verification. North Korea is going to have to open up and submit to an inspection process that is antithetical to its nature as the world’s most closed, secretive nation. Can it do this? Will it do this? I suppose the fact that Kim’s willingness to meet face to face with an American president for the first time, and outside of his own country is something of a tell. He is the X factor in all of this. There may be things going on in Pyongyang as well as in his mind that tell him a rapprochement with the US, and more importantly, a concomitant distancing to whatever extent that is possible with China is in his and his nation’s best interests.

That is how you have to see it. Since memories of the rockets that were being launched not all that long ago have receded and will never be brought to mind by the media, the fact that we are now looking at a possibility of genuine peace is extraordinary. But here is the other side, brought to you via Bloomberg.

Donald Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was unquestionably a success — for Kim.

By credibly threatening the U.S. with nuclear war, he won a one-on-one meeting with the American president — a longtime strategic goal of his family’s regime. And that’s not all.

Trump tossed in a suspension of military exercises with South Korea, while China suggested revisiting economic sanctions that the White House credits for the summit. Meanwhile, the president showered Kim with praise, calling the dictator who leads one of the planet’s most oppressive and brutal regimes “smart” and “very talented,” declaring the meeting “a great honour” and saying he trusts Kim.

Less clear is what the U.S. got in return. American officials said before the meeting they would insist that Kim agree to the “complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement” of his nuclear weapons arsenal. The phrase appears nowhere in Trump and Kim’s statement.

Also missing: basics such as a timetable for Kim to give up his weapons, verification procedures or even a mutual definition of denuclearization. . . .

So far, Trump hasn’t shown he’ll avoid the same trap he’s accused his predecessors of falling into: giving North Korea too much without getting anything in return. While the president repeatedly described the document he and Kim signed as “comprehensive,” at 426 words it is anything but — and there is no indication of when or how Kim will follow through on any of his promises.

Fair enough, but the mingy dogs of the left will never say a good word about something done that benefits even their worthless hides, if it is done by someone whose approval they refuse to grant. But we shall see. These are all issues, but with Trump, Bolton and Pompeo on the watch, there is genuine reasons to hope for the best.

UNDERSTANDING THE ATMOSPHERICS: From a comment at Powerline:

Not a formally educated engineer or scientist, but I understand how things work (passed with flying colors the IC2/3 petty officer test without ever going to “A” school. I just looked at the gear and figured out how it worked.)

The one thing I understood very, very quickly (playing around with ham radio as a pre-teen) was signal to noise ratio. Anyone that understands that concept knows what Trump is doing. Lawyers rarely learn this skill. Their avocation (skill set) is to dissect every comma and period for meaning. To skilled/gifted science/engineering types finding the signal and ignoring the noise is easy peasy with Trump.

In other words take him seriously, but not literally — but that is like garlic to a vampire for a lawyer — most lawyers rank way down the scale from vampires

This is also why I know for a fact that man is not controlling the temperature of the atmosphere by using a quick study of signal to noise ratios of temp data over the long term. If you understand that concept and look at the data (even the climate hysterics data) you see for sure that man has nothing to do with climate — except maybe to move to one that suites you.

Who’s the real free trader around here?

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From America: A Prisoner of Our ‘Allies’. Hits the nail right on the head over tariffs, and much else beside.

The political class is screaming bloody murder over Trump’s performance at the G-7 meeting in Canada, where he reportedly spent most of the time detailing how much the US was paying for the defense of our vaunted “allies,” not to mention the high tariffs imposed on American goods. He then proposed a “free trade zone” in which member countries would drop all tariffs, subsidies, and other barriers to trade: the “allies” didn’t like that much, either. Nor did the alleged advocates of free trade here in the US give him any credit for ostensibly coming around to their point of view. Which reminds me of something Murray Rothbard said about this issue: “If authentic free trade ever looms on the policy horizon, there’ll be one sure way to tell. The government/media/big-business complex will oppose it tooth and nail.”

PDT is a specialist in uncovering hypocrisy and there’s plenty of it around.

[My thanks to Max for posting this in the comments.]

Which side are you on?

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Trump blasts Canada’s Trudeau for ‘false statements’…
Rough talks sour G7 mood; Confrontations…
Trump refuses to back declaration calling for tariff reductions…
Holds rare solo news conference, defends bashing press…

Comes with this:

TRUMP APPROVAL TOPS OBAMA AND REAGAN AT SAME TIME IN PRESIDENCY…

I actually cannot understand why anyone with sense would have preferred Hillary to PDT but by now, if you are not completely persuaded that Trump is our last chance for the West to hold itself together, then your political judgement is good for nothing. Like this in particular:

“The EU understands that the only way with Trump is strength,” said one European official. “If you give in now, he will come back tomorrow for more.”

Hope things continue with his meeting with Kim (the other Kim) on Tuesday.

You tell me, what is North Korea really up to?

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Political calculation is an art and a gift. It cannot be taught and much of it is luck. Yet here we are with the whole world watching so who is to say whether this is right or not: All signs point to North Korea preparing a bait-and-switch. Certainly not “all” signs, but some definitely are. The question is, how will this unfold? We want the North Koreans to abandon nuclear weapons. They want their little shop of horrors to survive with no outside interference. You all follow the news, so what’s going to happen? What should the United States and its allies do?

As a template in this sort of thing, the until-now Secret Transcripts of the Israeli “Security Cabinet” from 1967, which made all policy decisions leading up to the Six Day War and then after it was over, have just been released after fifty years. The SC was made up of the leaders of every party in the Knesset. This is how the documents are described:

The Six-Day War: classified documents unsealed 50 years after the conflict reveal: Jerusalem conquered almost by accident; Israel’s National Religious Party, forerunner to the settler movement, lobbied for military de-escalation at every turn; and nobody in Israel’s security cabinet seems to have seen the country’s most momentous war coming.

You already know what happened, but even so these are fascinating. Read them through and listen to the deliberations that were undertaken in real time. There are two halves, pre-war and post-war.

Part 1

Part 2.

Political calculation is the way everything in politics must be since the future will always be an unknown while everything has to be weighed up since there are no facts about the future. You can only hope for level-headed decision-making but no one gets it right every time while some are worse than others. Fifty years from now we will know what had happened in North Korea, and then we can read the transcripts of how the Americans were weighing things up. By then, who knows, Pyongyang may have become the richest city in the world.

ANOTHER TAKE ON NORTH KOREA: From Pushing North Korea and Iran to the brink:

By now, this much should be obvious to anyone paying close attention: Mr. Kim regards deliverable nuclear weapons as the great equalizer, the means by which he can keep America at bay while he plots to rule the entire Korean peninsula. Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants such weapons in pursuit of an even more ambitious objective: dominating the Middle East and spreading what he calls the Islamic Revolution around the globe. “Death to America” is a longer-range goal, one that Mr. Kim would heartily endorse.

Nothing is obvious to me, but I hope what is clear to those involved reflects the underlying actual reality.

The political calculations behind the Six Day War

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The Secret Transcripts of the Israeli “Security Cabinet” which made all policy decisions leading up to the Six Day War and then after it was over. The SC was made up of the leaders of every party in the Knesset. This is how the documents are described:

The Six-Day War: classified documents unsealed 50 years after the conflict reveal: Jerusalem conquered almost by accident; Israel’s National Religious Party, forerunner to the settler movement, lobbied for military de-escalation at every turn; and nobody in Israel’s security cabinet seems to have seen the country’s most momentous war coming.

You already know what happened, but even so these are fascinating. Read them through:

Part 1

Part 2.

Political calculation is the way everything is since the future will always be an unknown so everything has to be weighed up. You can only hope that such level-headed decision making continues.

500 days gone with 2500 more to come

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Go on. Play it!

With this from Media blackout: Trump’s 60-point accomplishment list of ‘American Greatness’.

In his first 500 days in office President Donald J. Trump has achieved results domestically and internationally for the American people.

  • Since taking office, President Trump has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability.
  • After 500 days, the results are clear: the American economy is stronger, American workers are experiencing more opportunities, confidence is soaring, and business is booming.
  • President Trump has re-asserted American leadership on the world stage, secured vital investments in our military, and stood up against threats to our national security.
  • President Trump has put the American people first and made government more accountable.

AMERICA’S ECONOMY IS STRONGER: The American economy is stronger today and American workers are better off thanks to President Trump’s pro-growth agenda.

  • Nearly 3 million jobs have been created since President Trump took office.
  • 304,000 manufacturing jobs have been created since President Trump took office, and manufacturing employment stands at its highest level since December 2008.
  • 337,000 construction jobs have been created since President Trump took office, and construction employment stands at its highest level since June 2008.
  • Under President Trump, the unemployment rate has dropped to 3.8, the lowest rate since April 2000, and job openings have reached 6.6 million, the highest level recorded.
  • 67 percent of Americans believe now is a good time to find a quality job, according to Gallup.
  • Only under President Trump have more than 50 percent of Americans believed it is a good time to find a quality job since Gallup began asking the question 17 years ago.
  • President Trump prioritized job training and workforce development to empower workers to seize more opportunities, signing an Executive Order to expand apprenticeship opportunities.
  • President Trump has restored confidence in the American economy, with confidence among both consumers and businesses reaching historic highs.
  • Consumer confidence in current conditions has reached a 17-year high, according to the Conference Board.
  • Optimism among manufacturers has hit record highs under President Trump, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
  • Small business optimism has sustained record-high levels under President Trump according to the National Federation of Independent Business.
  • President Trump signed the historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law, cutting taxes for American families and making American business more competitive.
  • American families received $3.2 trillion in gross tax cuts and saw the child tax credit double.
  • The top corporate tax rate was lowered from 35 percent to 21 percent so American businesses could be more competitive.
  • President Trump has rolled back unnecessary job-killing regulations beyond expectations.
  • In 2017, President Trump far exceeded his promise to eliminate regulations at a two-to-one ratio, issuing 22 deregulatory actions for every new regulatory action.
  • The Administration rolled back rules and regulations harming farmers and energy producers, such as the Waters of the United States Rule and the Clean Power Plan.
  • Regional and community banks and credit unions got relief after President Trump signed legislation reducing harmful requirements imposed by the Dodd-Frank Act.
  • Since taking office, President Trump has advanced free, fair, and reciprocal trade deals that protect American workers, ending decades of destructive trade policies.
  • Days after taking office, the President withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and agreement.
  • President Trump’s Administration is working to defend American intellectual property from China’s unfair practices through a range of actions.
  • The President improved the KORUS trade agreement with the Republic of Korea, which will allow more U.S. automobile exports to South Korea with lower tariffs and increase U.S. pharmaceutical access to South Korea.
  • American agriculture has gained access to new markets under President Trump.

AMERICA IS WINNING ON THE WORLD STAGE: President Trump has re-asserted American leadership on the world stage and is achieving results for the American people.

  • President Trump followed through on his promise to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
  • President Trump ordered an end to United States participation in the horrible Iran deal and immediately began the process of re-imposing sanctions that had been lifted or waived.
  • The President has taken action to confront aggression by Iran and its proxies.
  • The Department of the Treasury has issued a range of sanctions targeting Iranian activities and entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force.
  • Under President Trump, the United States has led an unprecedented global campaign to achieve the peaceful denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
  • President Trump’s leadership has contributed to the return of 17 Americans held overseas.
  • In May 2018 alone, Venezuela released one American and North Korea released three Americans who came home to the United States.
  • The President has secured historic increases in defense funding in order to rebuild our Nation’s military with the resources they need, after years of harmful sequester.
  • President Trump signed legislation to provide $700 billion in defense spending for fiscal year (FY) 2018 and $716 billion for FY 2019.
  • The United States has worked with international allies to decimate ISIS.
  • President Trump ordered strikes against Syria in response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons in April 2017 and April 2018.
  • The Trump Administration has imposed a range of sanctions on the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela, including sanctions targeting Maduro and other senior government officials.

AMERICA’S COMMUNITIES ARE SAFER AND MORE SECURE: President Trump has worked to secure our borders, enforce our immigration laws, and protect the safety and security of American communities.

  • Despite limited resources and obstruction from Congress, President Trump has worked to take control of our border and enforce our immigration laws.
  • President Trump has called on Congress to provide the resources needed to secure our borders and close loopholes that prevent immigration laws from being fully enforced.
  • President Trump authorized the deployment of the National Guard to help secure our borders.
  • President Trump’s Administration has carried out immigration enforcement efforts based on the rule of law.
  • From the start of President Trump’s Administration to the end of FY 2017, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) made 110,568 arrests of illegal aliens.
  • Arrests made in this timeframe represented a 42 percent increase from the same timeframe in FY 2016.
  • Of the 110,568 arrests made, 92 percent had a criminal conviction, pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive, or had a reinstated final order of removal.
  • President Trump has made clear that his Administration will continue to combat the threat of MS-13 in order to protect communities from the horrendous violence the gang has spread.
  • In 2017, the Department of Justice worked with partners in Central America to file criminal charges against more than 4,000 members of MS-13.
  • The Trump Administration has cracked down on the import and distribution of illegal drugs in order to stop them from reaching our communities and causing even more devastation.
  • As of April 2018, U.S. Border Patrol has seized 284 pounds of fentanyl in FY 2018, already surpassing the total of 181 pounds seized in FY 2017.
  • The President has launched a nationwide effort to fight the opioid crisis, which has devastated communities across America.
  • The President’s Opioid Initiative seeks to reduce drug demand, cut off the flow of illicit drugs, and save lives by expanding treatment opportunities.
  • President Trump signed an omnibus spending bill which provides nearly $4 billion to address the opioid epidemic.
  • The bill included $1 billion for grants focused on the hardest hit States and Tribes and provided funding for a public-private research partnership on pain and addiction.

AMERICA’S GOVERNMENT IS MORE ACCOUNTABLE: Since taking office, President Trump has worked to ensure government is more accountable to the American people.

  • President Trump has confirmed the most circuit court judges of any President in their first year, and secured Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the United States Supreme Court.
  • President Trump has signed legislation to bring more accountability to the Department of Veterans Affairs and provide our veterans with more choice in the care they receive.
  • President Trump signed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017, improving processes for addressing misconduct.
  • President Trump signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act into law, authorizing $2.1 billion in additional funds for the Veterans Choice Program.
  • President Trump successfully eliminated the penalty for Obamacare’s burdensome individual mandate.
  • The President’s Administration is seeking to provide more affordable health coverage and broader access to affordable alternatives to Obamacare plans.
  • President Trump has released a blueprint to lower drug prices for Americans.
  • President Trump has ensured that the religious liberties and conscience of Americans are protected and respected by the Federal government.
  • President Trump signed an Executive Order to protect the free speech and religious liberties of groups such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.
  • The Department of Justice issued guidance to all executive agencies on protecting religious liberty in federal programs.