November 13, 2019

The Trump Impeachment: What Is The Crime?

November 13, 2019/ Francis Menton

With the big impeachment circus now going on in the House of Representatives, perhaps you have begun to wonder, what is the alleged crime? I know that I have. Should anybody care about that?
There is a very good reason to care. The Constitution specifies the potential grounds for impeachment: “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” (Article II, Section 4). All the possible categories of impeachable offenses specified by the Constitution are crimes. To meet the Constitutional test, you have to have a crime.
In both the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, they seemed to take seriously this requirement of a crime as the necessary predicate. The large majority of the allegations of wrongdoing closely track the contours of well-known crimes defined in the Code.
Here we are in the midst of impeachment mania, and we have completely lost track of the whole idea that there might be a need for an actual crime. I’ve spent some quality time here this afternoon trying to find some intelligent promoter of impeachment who has even ventured a plausible attempt to specify what criminal statute is alleged to have been violated. No success. What I have found instead are various people arguing that no crime is necessary for impeachment.

November 11, 2019

Bolivia: That Was Quick!

November 11, 2019/ Francis Menton

It was barely more than a month ago — October 3 to be exact — that I made fun of a big spread the previous day in The Nation, declaring the country of Bolivia to be the latest, greatest “Remarkable Socialist Success Story”!
And then yesterday, [Bolivian President Evo] Morales may or may not have resigned. That was quick! How could this all have gone so wrong so fast?
To start with, there was the small problem of allowing the electoral machinery to be fully controlled by people loyal to the incumbent bent on re-election. Surely then, wouldn’t Morales’s people have no problem turning any remotely close result into a clear victory? Sometimes what seems like an advantage may not turn out that way.
From the OAS Report on the election: In some cases, it was confirmed that all the tally sheets in a center had been completed by the same person. Sometimes, that person turned out to be the MAS representative accredited as the party's delegate in the voting center concerned. Likewise, several tally sheets were found in which the government party obtained 100% of the votes. In some of those documents, the fields for opposition parties had not even been filled in with a "0". In some of those voting tables, moreover, attendance was 100%, which is practically impossible. . . .

November 09, 2019

November 09, 2019/ Francis Menton

In prior posts where I have addressed the futility of jurisdictions in the U.S. trying to “save the planet” by reducing their use of fossil fuels, my focus has generally been on China and India. Those countries have huge populations (about 1.4 billion each) and still-poorly-developed energy infrastructure. Of course they are going to continue to build power plants until everybody has access to reliable electricity.
But let us also not overlook Africa. Africa’s population is currently about 1.3 billion, but growing much faster than that of China or India.

You may have seen predictions in certain quarters that Africa is going to “go green” as it gains access to energy. But what is the reality on the ground? We can get a good indication by looking at what happened last week at the Africa Oil Week convention, held this year in Cape Town, South Africa.
It seems that the Africa Oil Week convention was attended by representatives of some 75 countries, including 23 energy ministers. According to Reuters, unlike the scene at similar confabs held in Europe, at this one pretty much no one gave a hoot about the issue of “climate change” . . .

November 05, 2019

November 05, 2019/ Francis Menton

I’m old enough to remember a time when government officeholders thought that a significant part of their job was prioritizing various options for public spending, in recognition that overspending on lower priorities would mean that nothing would be left for higher priorities.
The new fad is an unending tidal wave of proposals for new government programs and spending initiatives which will, any day now, bring perfect justice and fairness to the world. Which ones will we implement? All of them!
The budgeting process in New York City under the reign of uber-progressive Mayor Bill de Blasio and a like-minded City Council has been one where any idea that sounds like it might be “doing good” promptly gets funded. I’ll give you a few examples of my favorite wildly skewed spending priorities. . . .
But, with the economy booming, what do we care? Don’t we have plenty of money for whatever spending initiative sounds good at the moment? Actually, we are reaching limits all over the place.
Over in the Democratic Party race for the presidential nomination, the key qualification for running is an unshakable belief that it is impossible to run out of other people’s money.

November 02, 2019

November 02, 2019/ Francis Menton

Here in the U.S., our tradition has long been that we accept the results of our elections, and in particular our presidential elections. The losing side becomes a loyal opposition, free to express its disagreement with everything the winner does in office, but never contesting the right of the winner to exercise the powers of the office. At least that was the way it worked for the first 57 presidential elections.
Anyway, that was then. Now, places like the New York Times and the Washington Post declare to be heroes the bureaucrats who defy any and all directions of the duly-elected President and who search for any grounds they can take to the press or to Congress to undermine the President’s authority and get him removed. In simple terms, elections only count when our side wins.
This rule may be new in the United States, but not in other places. Indeed, our neighbors in Latin America can give us plenty of examples of how things come out under the rule that “elections only count when our side wins.” Two examples are in the process of playing out right now.

October 29, 2019

October 29, 2019/ Francis Menton

Before getting off my current Bidens kick, I want to take just a one more moment to consider Joe Biden’s most recent response when he was asked by a radio interviewer in New Hampshire whether he had discussed with his son Hunter the son’s service on the board of Ukrainian gas producer Burisma.
“At one point that it came out that [Hunter] was on the board [of Burisma]. I said, ‘I sure hope to hell you know what you’re doing.' Period. I said that.”
The question is not whether Hunter knew what he was doing, but rather whether Joe did. Is it really possible that Joe Biden could not have immediately figured out Zlochevsky’s intent in hiring his son in a do-almost-nothing position for $1 million per year? Does Joe really to this day have no idea that he had been corrupted? How dense can a person be?