Irony

New York's Democratic Socialists have run afoul of the state's infamously byzantine red tape and may be on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars. This could put a serious strain on the party's finances.

Milei to Send ‘Shock’ Package to Argentina’s Congress on Day One

(Bloomberg) -- President-elect Javier Milei plans to call congress into an extraordinary session and send a large package of reforms to stabilize Argentina’s economy on Dec. 11, the day after his inauguration.

“This is urgent,” he said in an interview broadcast Sunday by LN+ TV, adding that Argentina can’t wait for the usual start of congressional sessions in March. “Solving the central bank’s problems as soon as possible” and “halting monetary emission” that causes inflation are among the urgent issues he intends to tackle with lawmakers, he said.

Once his government gets public finances and the central bank balance sheet in order, it will be able to start lifting capital controls and unifying the country’s diverse exchange rates, Milei said, repeating that he never promised to close the central bank on day one.

The positive market reaction to Milei’s win in the Nov. 19 runoff, evidenced by a rally of sovereign bonds and YPF’s debt, emboldened the libertarian economist to pursue his “shock therapy” agenda of fiscal adjustment.

“This has given us greater strength to redouble our bets in favor of fiscal order,” he said, adding the market read the signs his incoming government sent “to perfection.”

“If the financial markets accompany us and interest rates fall, this will be painful but a lot less painful,” he said of the impact of the spending cuts his government proposes — a key concern in a country where more than 40% of the population lives below the poverty line.

Read the rest here.

See also Javier Milei Is Not Donald Trump.  

Trump Concedes

With thirteen days left in his presidency, growing calls for his impeachment, and top members of his own cabinet discussing the possibility of invoking the 25th amendment, Donald Trump just released a video that amounts to a de-facto concession that he lost the election. In the course of the address Trump also denounced his own supporters whom a day earlier he had incited to attack the nation's capitol in an effort to prevent the certification of the election and threatened them with criminal prosecution. All of which said, he also called for national unity and said he would devote what remains of his time in office to ensuring an orderly transition. 

Meanwhile a Capitol Police officer has died from injuries sustained during Mr. Trump's attack on the Congress.

Note: The above report appears to have been premature. The Capitol Police have issued a statement denying the report's accuracy and the media outlet has retracted it. Sadly, multiple sources are reporting that an officer is on life support and is not expected to survive. 

HT:AG

Update II: The officer on life support has died. See the comments. President Trump, to no ones surprise, has confirmed that he will not attend the inauguration. Vice-President Pence is thought to be favoring attending. The AP is claiming Trump will be the first president since Andrew Johnson not to attend his successor's swearing in. They are wrong. Presidents Wilson was too ill to go to Mr. Harding's inauguration in 1921 and Mr. Nixon left the White House about an hour before Mr. Ford was sworn in. 

The electoral map

Click to enlarge.
Source as of June 6, 2020.

Romney Gets A Boost

A new Gallup poll shows Mitt Romney has narrowed the race after picking Paul Ryan for VP. The poll indicates a statistical tie between the two candidates. Several other polls taken just before the VP pick was announced had shown Obama with a wide lead. It will be interesting to see polling data from other sources and if the bounce has any staying power. More significantly is that there has been a large uptick in enthusiasm from the party base. Romney reported raising almost $10 million last week.

Shed No Tears For The GOP

(With a few exceptions inserted into the text, the essay below closely reflects my sentiments. -John / Ad Orientem)

This election's stunning results are testament to Barack Obama's oratory, background, and skills as a politician. They also amount to a repudiation of today's Republican Party.

The rejection is richly deserved. Over the last eight years, Republican politicians increased the national debt by roughly 2.5 times, ran up what may be a multi-trillion dollar tab in an unnecessary war in Iraq, and spent hundreds of billions on a Wall Street bailout that seems to be doing little good. (I hate to say this but the so called bailout was probably a necessary evil. Things would be much worse if that had not passed.)

Then there was the debacle called Gitmo, a general disdain for basic principles of federalism, the warrantless wiretapping program and hostility to the rule of law, the ascent of so-called neoconservatives, and dizzying fiscal recklessness and government growth. In this decade alone, over 700,000 new pages of proposed or final federal regulations have appeared. (Can I have an AMEN please!)

President Bush can claim some successes, including his 2001 tax cuts (bad idea while we still were running a national debt), his sincere support for immigration reform, and his enthusiasm for free trade (with some protectionist lapses). He was on the right track with private accounts for Social Security and health savings too. (Another bad idea. If those accounts had been privatized they would have been murdered along with the rest of the stock market.)

But those stands can't make up for the rest of his party's policies, such as its enthusiasm for a war that has yielded infamous torture memos and caused the deaths of thousands of American troops and at least 88,000 Iraqi civilians.

If a Democrat had proposed many of the above ideas, Republicans would have yowled. Instead, they adopted them as part of the GOP platform.

No wonder we're not hearing about President-Elect John McCain today.

Perhaps this was an impossible election for any Republican to win. But it was McCain's position during the September debate over the bailout bill that seemed to doom his campaign.

In mid-September, both McCain and Obama enjoyed roughly even odds of winning. Then, after the Arizona senator signed onto the bailout, he slipped so far down he could never climb back. Republican pollster Frank Luntz says McCain could have been a "hero to tens of millions of hard-working middle-class voters who resent seeing their tax dollars handed over to fund the retirement packages of the Billionaire Boys Club." (I think it was less the bailout than the general collapse of the financial markets which precipitated the great awakening on the part of the American people to the realization that we are in serious trouble.)

From the Republicans' perspective, perhaps the best that can be said about their losses on Tuesday is that the GOP has been given a second chance to figure out what its principles are.

In a 1975 magazine interview, Ronald Reagan said: "I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism... The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is."

Unfortunately, that describes concepts that today's Republicans have either discarded or forgotten. Neither the act of creating the U.S. Department of Homeland Security nor the choice to push for the No Child Left Behind law, to take just two examples, would jibe with Reagan's ideas of "less government interference" and "less centralized authority."

Neglect of those principles has created a dangerous situation in the U.S. Congress, where Democrats have just gained five Senate seats and are close to becoming a political monopoly.

Neither party is especially prudent on fiscal matters, of course. But the ability of either to exercise monopoly power in Washington, or something close to it, should worry anyone concerned about limits on government and worried about new taxes and harmful restrictions on free trade.

Divided government has its benefits. One calculation says the best times for the U.S. stock market -- a 20.2 percent stock market return and a 4 percent GDP increase -- happened under a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. Then there's the remarkable stock market boom after the 1994 mid-term election.

If the GOP can do some honest soul-searching and kick its big government addiction, it might get somewhere in the 2010 elections. Otherwise, we may have just witnessed the dawn of a long-lasting Democratic majority.

Too many Republicans have gotten away with talking up free markets, limited government, and the power of the individual, while quietly doing the opposite once elected. This year, at least, voters seemed to have figured that out.

source

Please Pray For Our Country

On the eve of the great election...
For our country, the president, those in the armed forces and all those in public service as also those seeking elective office and the electorate, let us pray to the Lord.
Lord have mercy!

Propositions 8 and 4

(The below is posted at the request of Fr. David Thatcher, an occasional contributor to this blog. - John / Ad Orientem)

Recently, I was asked by a parish member about a couple of very important Propositions in our California election next week. Proposition 8 would re-establish heterosexual marriage — between a man and a woman — as California law; Proposition 4 would require parental notification, as well as a 48 hour waiting period, before a minor girl could obtain an abortion. She knew my position, in particular about Prop. 8, and she disagreed — adding that she also was not for Prop. 4. In response, I wrote the following. I do not attempt to be original in what I say. Rather, I write as an unworthy pastor in the historic Christian tradition and faith.

You ask me if I am interested in polling the faithful in our church, to see how they intend to vote with respect to Propositions 8 and 4 this election in California. Well, voting as a Christian citizen in this land of ours is a matter of conscious before God. I certainly do not see my calling as a priest to impose a particular point of view on these matters. My role is one of moral persuasion. Besides, the question is twofold, at least: there is Christian moral belief on the one hand, but then the law of our country on the other. In addition, while I am interested in what folks think, moral truth is not established (or changed) by taking a vote. If every one in our church parish voted against Prop 8, it would be a source of great grief for me, but it would not change moral truth.

First, taking a position for Proposition 8 is not an act of intolerance, or hate. If marriage is, by nature and meaning, essentially heterosexual, then any law seeking to re-define it is simply mistaken, and needs correction. I certainly disagree with your opinion on both counts, and believe that you are incorrect in your assessment. I have put down my response, worrying that you could, in the end, be offended. Please know that my goal is to speak the truth in love.

I believe that the concept of "civil rights" is confused in our day. Rights do not come from the State; our founding documents and language of inalienable rights are clear in this respect. Rights, as such, are rooted in the structure of nature and creation, believe it or not. Does that not frame the matter differently? If rights are an expression of nature, according to the intent and design of the Creator, and homosexuality is not the way that people are meant to be, viz a viz creation, then the State granting a "right" of marriage is something not at all rooted in reality, is it? After all, every cell of every part of our body has our sexuality imprinted in it, as male or female. Chromosomes! They are XX or XY, female or male (respectively), right? Our affections may get confused, but our nature is not. I suppose there are genetic mutations, but that is another matter.

Another red herring in all this is the framing of rights in terms of some amorphous vision of the evolution, or so-called "progress," of the human spirit. C. S. Lewis refers to this in its different forms: "scientism" (as opposed to science) or "evolutionism" (as opposed to evolution). These "-isms" take a fundamental form of human thought or life which is legitimate in and of itself, like science or evolution, and turns it into a paradigm of interpretation only dimly related to the original activity itself. This many, like Huxley or contemporary "faux" philosophers, see some sort of "onwards and upwards" concept of human "progress" and applies it inappropriately to all sorts of things. Behind it is often lurking an ideology, a kind of utopianism or vision of society, such as is the case with Marxism.

I believe that such concepts of human progress have been applied, inappropriately, to civil rights and freedoms. The thinking, which should seem familiar, goes like this: first is was liberation of the African American from slavery, then came the rights of women through suffrage and then, later, women's liberation; today it is all about the rights of our gay friends. A kind of grid or timeline is erected to frame the issue at kind, in this case an apparent human right. With such thinking, the issue — and now I am talking about same sex marriage, not toleration or the human rights of homosexuals — is not decided so much on the merits of the arguments. Rather, all depends on this model of movement and progress. Are you not on board with same sex marriage? Well, then! You are contrary to this great movement of the human spirit — a sort of political and moral throwback to medieval times, or the like!

This is all nonsense, and I can demonstrate that. If the "right" to marriage is indeed on the table, then what about my right to merry, say, my mother, or perhaps my daughter? I might say, if you object, that we love each other! How dare you interfere with my right to love somebody as I see fit! Or, perhaps I want to marry my pet dog? If you think that is an outrageous reductio ad absurdum, so be it — but beware! One of the leading philosophers today is Peter Singer, at Princeton University, who decries our anthropocentric worldview as "speciesism" and so advocates all sort of animal-stuff as "rights."

This illustrates an important principle, or corollary, if you will: cultural fads and utopian fancies are not the stuff of good law. The legal fabric of our society is not an appropriate forum for such social experimentation. As one Christian pastor once put it: "Marry the spirit of the age today, and you will be a widower in the next." This is one reason why, up until very recently, our nation's courts have been the most stable and conservative force in our government.

Marriage is a societal recognition of the fundamental reality of a man and woman, who then establish a family through procreation. It is rooted in creation, a reality given to us by our Creator. This is not contrary to our nation's concept of liberty and rights. It is the legal recognition of the fundamental equality of all human beings as a law of nature that is the sure foundation for rights.

To consider the so-called right to marriage as rooted in anything other than this is simply to pretend. We can play house with whomever, and I can cross my legal-ethical fingers behind my back and call it marriage, but it isn't. And if we do "baptize," as a culture and nation, homosexual marriage, then the norming of our social scientists/educators begins.

My dear, forgive me, but you're smarter than all this. The argument for same sex marriage is intellectually puerile, in my opinion. Advocacy against Prop 4 is the same, or worse. Good heavens! Do you know any 13 year old girls? If it is true that psychologists have established, now, that the developing human brain's moral reasoning and judgement is not even complete until age 25 (the true end of adolescence, apparently), then how in the world can you grant the power of life and death of an unborn child to someone completely unequipped, at this point in life, to make that decision. Perhaps we should hand out AK-47s to early adolescent boys, as well, because they are afraid of school bullies.

One cannot do ethics or morality from the extreme exception, as you apparently suggest. This is the old error of "situation ethics," popularized in the '70s by Joseph Fletcher. Ethical and moral norms are just that: normal. Rather than completely divorce a pregnant child from her parents by establishing such a hideous law as secret abortions (i.e. murder, if one gives any moral authority to the the teachings of the saints through the ages), we have laws protecting young pregnant girls who are afraid. There is just no excuse that I can see for being against Prop 4, unless you throw out the precepts and understandings of human rights informed by the great tradition of Christian humanism.

You cannot be unaware that Christianity itself tamed the most violent empire in human history by, in a few hundred years, overthrowing both human slavery and the death penalty. I speak of the Roman Empire. Later, it was Christian abolitionists that overthrew the unholy and untenable union of a semi-Christian culture in the American South with ethnic slavery. Christianity established hospitals. Rather, would you embrace a post-modern ethic based upon the autonomous reason and morality, without root and disembodied? The result is, in my opinion, moral anarchy. In the end, it is anything but humanizing, because in the end it isn't classic concepts of moral truth that are king, but demagoguery and fad. The ones with the most power will decide. They will re-define human nature, and play with the very stuff of life and human culture. It is happening. We should see this.

I do not like politics, and I do not like being an advocate of something that many mistakenly believe, mistakenly is just mean. They are deluded, and I cannot define my advocacy by such.

Begging forgiveness and hoping the dialogue will continue,
Rev. David Thatcher
Orthodox Christian Priest and Pastor
Merced, CA

The Libertarian Revolt

...McCain's working on the other realignment: The one where eight years of fiscal recklessness and cultural warfare alienates swing voters and withers the Republican Party until the very base of the conservative movement cracks in half—splitting a coalition that has endured since the Barry Goldwater campaign of 1964.

That coalition between social conservatives and economic libertarians (who tend to be socially moderate to liberal), served the GOP well from 1964 to 2006. It gave the party eight years of Ronald Reagan and 12 years of a Republican Congress. But the Bush years have proven to be one long pulling apart. And, in a matter of days, we may just see the final snap.

Source
Hat tip to Brian

I have occasionally summarized my political philosophy as being a monarchist with strong libertarian tendencies. My politics are generally conservative in the classical sense of the term. I believe that we have a government that is FAR too intrusive into areas it has no business worrying about, even as it ignores things that need regulation. And for me it is getting harder and harder to vote in concience for the GOP these days.

I voted (mea culpa mea culpa...) for Bush in 2000. But I could not bring myself to pull the lever for him again in '04. I voted Libertarian that year. By 2006 my disgust with the Republican Party had reached such levels that I felt obliged to sit out the election. While I did vote for McCain this year and I endorse his candidacy, I do so with more than a few reservations.

This simple truth is that the last eight years have been an unmitigated disaster for our country. We have a president who has shown no respect for the constitutional limitations on the powers of his office and has become a virtual power unto himself. He ignores laws at will with so called signing statements and has unilaterally suspended the writ of habeus corpus. He has authorized various agencies of the government to spy on citizens without a warrant and he has invaded a country which did not attack the United States and in no way threatened us. He has spent our country into near bankruptcy while cutting taxes mostly for persons in the higher tax brackets. He has been vigorously pressing for government regulation of the bedroom while all but suspending regulation of Wall Street. And in all of this he was backed by a rubber stamp Republican Congress for the first six years.

I for one have had enough. I am tired of voting for people who do not share my values or concerns. If the GOP wants my vote in the future they are going to have to start making some changes. As I noted elsewhere the Democratic party's marriage to the abortion lobby is an absolute impediment to their getting my vote. But that does not mean the Republicans are entitled to my vote by default.

If the choice before me is to waste my vote by casting it for someone who might win but reflects almost nothing of my values and in many respects is antithetical to them, or waste it voting for someone whose positions I respect though he may have little chance of winning, I am more inclined to the latter. I voted for McCain because I frankly think some of his neo-con rhetoric in this election has been born more of political necessity than conviction. But I will not criticize anyone who can't go there and who pulls the lever for Bob Barr instead.