Ben Weingarten

Reader. Writer. Thinker. Commentator. Truth Seeker.

Category: Government (Page 9 of 15)

21 Thoughts About The Fed, China, Markets and #BlackMonday 2015

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On August 24, 2015

In Business, Economy, Government

First, if we really are entering a global bear market worldwide, this must be said up front:

The Fatal Conceit aside, here are my 2 Bitcoins worth of thoughts in the wake of today’s market convulsions:

1) People ought to stop thinking The Federal Reserve can drop manna from the heavens.

The Fed is not G-d. It is a group of very mortal central planners who control the cost of money. Unfortunately now, they control so much more, in an attempt to manipulate the prices of financial assets and prop up whole industries.

We should pray for a world in which people’s lives do not hinge on transcripts of Fed minutes.

2) The Fed has zero incentive to raise rates and extricate itself from financial markets.

It will always find an excuse (turbulence in the markets, tepid growth, political uncertainty) to follow the path of least resistance (in this case keeping the Fed Funds rate at 0% ad infinitum). What political reason could it possibly have to allow interest rates and prices to normalize?

Peter Schiff agrees:

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99 Things Worth Reading Every Day If You Possibly Could

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On August 21, 2015

In Defense, Economy, Government, Media, National Security, Politics

One question I get asked frequently by friends and colleagues is, “What do you read?”

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Without fail, this leaves me fumbling for my phone as I pull up my RSS feeds on Feedly — perhaps a good reflection of the fact that we care more about content these days than brands, plus are incapable of memorizing anything thanks to the moral hazard of smartphones.

Instead of fumbling, I have decided to compile some of my favorite sources into one post that from this point forward I can easily share.

Here are the sources:

Newsletters

1) Ben Domenech’s The Transom
2) Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt
3) Matt Levine’s Money Stuff
4) Omri Ceren’s Email Distribution

Websites

1) Abnormal Returns
2) Ace of Spades HQ
3) Algemeiner
4) Althouse
5) American Thinker
6) Andy McCarthy
7) Ann Coulter
8) Breitbart
9) Business Insider
10) Cafe Hayek
11) Caroline Glick
12) Commentary Magazine
13) Conservative Review
14) ConservativeHQ
15) Daniel Greenfield (Frontpage, Sultan Knish)
16) Debkafile
17) Diana West
18) Drudge
19) Eli Lake
20) FiveThirtyEight
21) Free Banking
22) Free Republic
23) FT Alphaville
24) Gates of Vienna
25) Gatestone Institute
26) Gateway Pundit
27) Gavin McInnes
28) George F. Will
29) Ginni Thomas
30) Hot Air
31) Instapundit
32) Jeffrey Lord
33) Jihad Watch
34) Johnson’s Russia List
35) Josh Rogin
36) Judicial Watch
37) Kurt Schlichter
38) Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion
39) Lucianne.com
40) Melanie Phillips
41) MEMRI
42) Michelle Malkin
43) Monica Crowley
44) Mosaic Magazine
45) National Review Online
46) New York Sun
47) New York Times Editorial Page
48) New York Times Upshot
49) Noisyroom
50) Pajamas Media
51) Patrick Poole
52) Patterico’s Pontifications
53) POLITICO Magazine
54) Powerline
55) RealClear Books
56) RealClear Markets
57) RealClearPolitics
58) Reason Magazine
59) RedState
60) Richard Epstein
61) Roger Kimball
62) Seeking Alpha
63) Small Wars Journal
64) Spengler
65) Steve Coughlin
66) SteynOnline
67) Tablet Magazine
68) The Altucher Confidential
69) The Big Picture
70) The Daily Caller
71) The Daily Reckoning
72) The Daily Signal
73) The Federalist
74) The Freeman
75) The Hill
76) The Long War Journal
77) The Pragmatic Capitalist
78) The Reformed Broker
79) The Times of Israel
80) The Volokh Conspiracy
81) The Washington Times
82) The Weekly Standard
83) The XX Committee
84) TheBlaze
85) Thomas Sowell
86) Townhall
87) TrevorLoudon
88) Truth Revolt
89) Twitchy
90) Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
91) Walter E. Williams
92) Washington Examiner
93) Washington Free Beacon
94) Watchdog.Org
95) Zero Hedge

The Federal Bureaucracy is So Broken that HUD Helps the One Percent Get Subsidized Housing

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On August 21, 2015

In Government

Forgive me for using the Occupy rhetoric in the title, but this is rich:

In a recently issued report the agency’s [HUD’s] assigned watchdog reveals that more than 25,000 “overincome” people, including the Nebraska millionaire mentioned above, live in public housing. Nearly half of the overincome public housing tenants around the country earn $10,000 to $70,000 a year more than the limit to qualify for the benefit, the IG found. About 1,200 have exceeded the income max for around a decade and thousands of others for more than a year.

Examples in the report include a family of four in New York City with an annual income of nearly half a million dollars and hundreds of thousands more in rental income from real estate holdings that pays $1,574 a month to live in a government-subsidized apartment. In Los Angeles a family of five that’s lived in public housing for decades made over $200,000 last year and paid only $1,091 a month for a four-bedroom apartment. This is outrageous and violates a HUD rule that states public housing was established to provide decent and safe rental housing for eligible low-income families. [Emphasis Judicial Watch’s]

What do the SJWs of HUD plan on doing about this?

… HUD has no intention of taking action to stop the fraud: “We did not find that HUD and public housing authorities had taken or planned to take sufficient steps to reduce at least the egregious examples of over income families in public housing,” the IG report states. “Therefore, it is reasonable to expect the number of overincome families participating in the program to increase over time.”

Additionally:

… a high-ranking agency official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Public Housing Milan Ozdinec defends HUD’s policy allowing taxpayers to get fleeced. “There are positive social benefits from having families with varying income levels residing in the same property,” Ozdinec said in a written response to the probe. “Forcing families to leave public housing could impact their ability to maintain employment if they are not able to find suitable housing in the neighborhood. Further, for families with children, it may be more difficult to find affordable child care, and it may impact school-age children’s learning if they are forced to change schools during a school year.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

 

Featured Image Source: Wikipedia.

Hamas Lawyers Up With the Help of the Red Cross While Israel Unilaterally Disarms

By

On August 19, 2015

In Government

Michael Freund has the details in the Jerusalem Post:

This past Sunday, The New York Times ran a story encapsulating all that is wrong with the Western world’s approach to extremist Islamic fundamentalism.

In a report appearing in its first section, the paper revealed a startling bit of news: “Red Cross offers workshops in international law to Hamas.”

That’s right. The global institution, which claims that it works “to prevent suffering by promoting and strengthening humanitarian law and universal humanitarian principles,” is busying conducting seminars for terrorists in Gaza on how they can be, umm, more humanitarian when attacking Israel.

What’s next? Teaching table manners to the Taliban? The Times article goes on to describe the three-day seminar that the Red Cross conducted for Hamas last month. It included role-playing and case studies, noting that “one exercise involved an armed group firing on an invading tank from the garden of a civilian home near a hospital.” How educational! Mamadou Sow, head of Red Cross operations in Gaza, breezily noted to the Times that earlier this year, when he presented Hamas leadership with a critique of their conduct during last summer’s Gaza war, they “welcomed it” and “indicated that they are a learning organization.”

The article does not indicate whether Sow was able to maintain a straight face while uttering such inanity.

But lest you suspect that Hamas’ indiscriminate firing of thousands of rockets at Israel may indicate that it is somewhat indifferent to the value of human life, Red Cross leaders went out of their way to stress that “they have seen an increasing commitment from Hamas leaders and linemen alike” to respect international humanitarian law.

“For the first time,” said Jacques de Maio, Red Cross director for Israel and the Palestinian territories, “Hamas is actually, in a private, protected space, expressing a readiness to look critically at a number of things that have an impact on their level of respect for international humanitarian law.”

Curiously, de Maio made no mention of the two Israelis Hamas is believed to be holding captive, Avraham Mengistu and an unnamed Beduin, or of the organization’s refusal to take responsibility for their fates. So much for their “respect for international humanitarian law.”

The gathering was one of six such workshops organized by the Red Cross for Hamas’ Kassam Brigades this year, in addition to two more for other, unnamed terrorist groups.

These are the kinds of stories you get in a fundamentally sick society of dupes, useful idiots and worse.

Perhaps the Red Cross’ legal aid for Hamas is something our federal government should look into, on top of the organization’s failed efforts to stymie a Government Accountability Office (GAO) inquiry into its activities, the subject of a recent report from ProPublica:

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Sen. Robert Menendez: Traitor, Sider With Tehran Hardliners, Teahadist. Kudos to Him.

By

On August 18, 2015

In Foreign Policy, Government, Politics

In some respects, the indictment of Sen. Robert Menendez may have been the best thing to have ever happened for those who oppose President Obama’s appeasement of Iran in the form of his disastrous nuclear deal.

For the New Jersey senator — no longer forced to be loyal to the Obama administration that cut his legs out from under him by way of the Justice Department — was able to take a position on Iran that his craven colleague Sen. Charles Schumer would not: No to the Iran Deal and no to any presidential veto.

Following up on his under-appreciated but compelling statement against the raising of the U.S. flag in Cuba (perhaps the only other issue on which I agree with Sen. Menendez), the senator made an emphatic and pointed speech at Seton Hall University, formally declaring his opposition to the Iran Deal.

It surely must have stuck in the Obama administration’s craw.

From the address:

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One Question Every Planned Parenthood Proponent Should Have to Answer

By

On August 14, 2015

In Government, Politics

The grotesque videos unleashed by the Center for Medical Progress, evocative of the ghoulish Kermit Gosnell, have been covered extensively elsewhere, and one cannot adequately condemn their content in a simple blog post.

But I do wish to touch on a related issue as our craven Congress “considers” whether to defund Planned Parenthood — as you can tell, I suspect that this effort will simply be more “failure theater.”

The question that must be asked of Planned Parenthood’s proponents is why if there is such deep support for the organization can they not fund it themselves?

Why in this case do progressives believe that government must impose morality, or amorality depending on your perspective, through legislation by forcing millions of Americans to support an organization anathema to them?

Does anyone believe that George Soros couldn’t pull together a consortium to fund the group in perpetuity?

Now of course, Planned Parenthood’s supporters would likely argue its federal funding is justified as a matter of public safety or “general welfare.”

But so are many things for which government has no involvement (or clear Constitutional basis on which to lavish funds), and had no involvement mind you until President Richard Nixon decided it should.

Leave aside that debate however.

What federal funding of Planned Parenthood really gets to is a question of the proper size, scope and nature of government.

The more areas in which government interjects beyond its clearly defined Constitutional prerogatives, the greater the probability that it will use taxpayer funds to support causes that violate the beliefs of large swaths of citizens. This is true on a bipartisan basis.

And this brings us to one of the brilliant insights of the Founders, who created a constitutional republic as opposed to a democracy.

In a republic, the rights of the smallest minority, the individual, are protected because of a limited government with negative rights.

On the other hand, in a democracy we get majority rule, where 51% of the people can vote away the rights of the other 49%. Stated differently, democracy tends to yield a tyranny of the majority, which is wrong in principle and most always in practice no matter what party is in power (can majority rule compel virtue, and would such rule be moral even if it could?).

Were our representatives to have remained true to the vision of the Founders and faithful to our Constitution and its animating principles enshrined in the under-appreciated Declaration of Independence, all Americans would be supporting fewer things that violate their consciences and deeply held beliefs.

In the final analysis, it is our job to hold the politicians’ feet to the fire, whether on Planned Parenthood or an infinite number of other recipients of state largess that we find repugnant.

 

Featured Image Source: YouTube screengrab/Center for Medical Progress.

The Upside of European Demographic Decline? Beautiful Villages for Sale.

By

On August 12, 2015

In Economy, Government

From the Christian Science Monitor comes a story that one suspects will be manifesting itself across other parts of secular progressive Europe: Entire emptied Spanish enclaves for sale.

You probably know the backstory:

All of Europe is rapidly aging, as women choose to have fewer children, or none at all, and immigration – despite the shrill news about a flood of migrants into Europe – has failed to reach the corners of the Continent where populations are the oldest.

Demography is quick becoming the key policy challenge of Europe’s leaders, as countries scramble to figure out how to keep labor systems running and pensions paid.

But it is also having a profound impact on the physical landscape of Europe, from maternity wards and schools closing their doors, to churches being turned into art venues and leisure centers.

What is fascinating is the way in which Spaniards in the Galicia region are seeking to cope with the new demographic normal:

Here in this corner of the Iberian Peninsula, the business of selling abandoned villages has even become something of a policy tool. One mayor is trying to give away an abandoned village in his district for free, so long as “buyers” promise to restore it and add back value – ideally drawing young people while they do so.

If Galicia cannot turn back its demographic trends, says Xoaquin Fernandez Leiceaga, a former lawmaker and professor of economics at the University of Santiago de Compostela, parts of it could quickly turn into wildland.

“Already villages of Galicia are being overrun by weeds and bushes,” he says.

Sounds a lot like parts of modern-day Detroit.

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Let’s Pass a Ban on the EPA’s Onshore Operations

By

On August 12, 2015

In Government

As furor builds over the EPA disaster in Durango, Colorado, I would like to propose a just solution.

Given that the EPA is an unaccountable, job-killing, river-polluting behemoth, Congress ought to pass a ban on its onshore operations.

Joking aside, while political figures try to brush this fiasco under the table without heads actually rolling or the EPA compensating taxpayers for the environmental damage it caused, the point should be made that the federal government should be held not just to an equal standard as private enterprise, but a higher one.

After all, public servants are accountable to all of us. Private individuals are not.

Yet Democratic Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper argues the exact opposite:

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Hillary’s Hypocritical Fear Mongering on Voting Rights Ignores Her Party’s Past

By

On August 12, 2015

In Government, Politics

“Republicans are systematically and deliberately trying to stop millions of American citizens from voting,” said email destroyer Hillary Clinton during a speech at the historically black Texas Southern University in which she played the race card expressed her deep concern about the state of voting rights.

Let’s leave aside Hillary’s fear mongering about a concern the numbers show has proven unwarranted, and neglect of legitimate concerns over voter fraud.

There are two points that ought to be made about Democratic opposition to Republican policies geared towards rooting out such fraud, and the broad-based argument that Republicans seek to suppress minority voters.

First, those Democrats who oppose anti-fraud measures are in effect supporting the suppression of legal voters of all races, whose votes are diluted by fraudulent ones. Stated differently, legal voters are actually the ones being disenfranchised in a system rife with voter integrity issues, not those required to display easily obtainable IDs used for all manner of everyday tasks.

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More Concealed Carry Permits, Less Crime? Read John Lott’s Latest.

By

On August 11, 2015

In Government, Politics

John R. Lott Jr., author of the groundbreaking More Guns, Less Crime, and president of the Crime Research Prevention Center, published a study last month on the rapid growth in concealed carry permits during the Obama years that revealed some interesting takeaways.

Among them, Lott found that:

Between 2007 and 2014, murder rates have fallen from 5.6 to 4.2 (preliminary estimates) per 100,000. This represents a 25% drop in the murder rate at the same time that the percentage of the adult population with permits soared by 178%. Overall violent crime also fell by 25 percent over that period of time.

The broader trend is illustrated below:

(Image Soure: Lott, John R. and Whitley, John E and Riley, Rebekah C., Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States (July 13, 2015).

(Image Soure: Lott, John R. and Whitley, John E and Riley, Rebekah C., Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States (July 13, 2015).

Critics would likely argue that correlation does not equal causation, and violent crime has been falling for decades.

Nevertheless, Lott’s research provides interesting food for thought.

A few other particularly interesting findings, quoting from the report summary include that:

  • Regression estimates show that even after accounting for the per capita number of police and people admitted to prison and demographics, the adult population with permits is significantly associated with a drop in murder and violent crime rates.
  • Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors or felonies at one-sixth the rate that police officers are convicted.
  • Some evidence suggests that permit holding by minorities is increasing more than twice as fast as for whites

Be sure to read the whole thing here.

 

Featured Image Source: AP/FoxNews.com.

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