October 10, 2020

The Difference That A "Packed" Supreme Court Would Make

October 10, 2020/ Francis Menton

The impending confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court promises to bring us a Court with a 6-3 “conservative” majority. As a result, Democrats could be facing decades in the Supreme Court wilderness.
Even if Biden wins the election for President, the only member of the Court likely to retire in the next few years is Justice Breyer, who recently turned 82; but since Breyer is one of the Court’s “liberals,” Biden’s replacing of Breyer would not change the Court’s ideological balance. The next oldest Justice is Clarence Thomas, currently 72, which is youthful by today’s Supreme Court standards.
But there’s another possibility. Congress could potentially increase the number of Justices, giving Biden as President the ability theoretically to add four, or six, or even more Justices in an attempt to cement a permanent Democratic majority.

October 07, 2020

Instead of Defunding the Police, Stop Regulating the Public

October 07, 2020/ Jane Menton

On September 23, we learned that a grand jury had declined to indict the officers involved in the Breonna Taylor case for causing her death.
Further protests erupted that denounced the result as thwarted justice. Most of the anger has been directed at the police, but that fixation overlooks the larger problem.
There are far too many encounters between civilians and the police that have the potential to turn violent. Punishing the officers will not limit the number of encounters between police and civilians that have that potential.
The only way to do that would be to roll back the number of laws police are called upon to enforce. Instead, the trend is in the opposite direction.

October 05, 2020

October 05, 2020/ Francis Menton

It has been more than a year since I last added a post to this series. The previous post in the series, Part XXVI, appeared on August 20, 2019. For all of the prior twenty-six posts, go to this composite link.
There are two reasons for a new post at this time. The first is that there is some new work out from a guy named Tony Heller. The new work can be found at Heller’s website here, with a date of October 1. Heller also indicates that he intends to continue to add to and supplement this work.
Heller is an independent researcher who particularly focuses on the subject of this series: alterations to past government climate data to create an impression of warming that does not exist in the data as originally reported.
Heller is quite skilled at going through reams of government climate data, and turning those data into useful graphs to demonstrate his points. . . .

October 02, 2020

October 02, 2020/ Francis Menton

Back on July 22, I participated in a debate hosted by the Soho Forum on the question of which presidential candidate a libertarian should support — Biden, Trump, or Jo Jorgensen (the candidate of the Libertarian Party).
I argued the case for Trump. You can watch the July 22 debate, including my presentation, by going to the Soho Forum website.
Later today, at the request of the Soho Forum, I will be recording an update to my July 22 presentation.
Not much has happened to move the needle since July 22, particularly given the dearth of public appearances by both Biden and Harris, and the flat refusal of those two to respond to any remotely unfriendly or probing questions from reporters.
That leaves mostly just the debate of September 29 in the category of new information. Trying to do my job conscientiously, I watched the whole thing. . . .

September 28, 2020

September 28, 2020/ Francis Menton

You have probably read over the past several days, maybe 100 times, that President Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell are violating the “norms” of Supreme Court appointments by nominating, and planning to confirm, Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the current Supreme Court vacancy, with just 38 days remaining before the upcoming presidential election.
If you think there might be something to the theory that “norms” are being violated, you might be interested in the history of the federal court nominations and confirmations of 1801.
Among other things, this history is what led to the famous case of Marbury v. Madison.
Marbury v. Madison, decided in 1803, is likely the most famous of all Supreme Court cases. . . .

September 25, 2020

September 25, 2020/ Francis Menton

When did it become a goal of Democrats and “progressives” to make the people poorer?
I seem to remember a time many years ago when fully bi-partisan government policy in the U.S. was universally directed toward making the people wealthier.
Private investment in new businesses was welcomed everywhere, and especially if the investment involved nice clean white collar jobs and no substantial pollution. Also, when governments got involved in regulation of business, the general idea was to keep consumer costs low, for example in the regulation of electricity and transportation prices. You could dispute whether the means selected were the most effective to make the people better off, but whether the measures actually worked or not, at least that was the goal.
Somewhere along the line, something changed. . . .