December 09, 2024

Anti-Money Laundering Enforcement And De-Banking

December 09, 2024/ Francis Menton

In a government full of nasty, obnoxious and extra-legal regulatory initiatives to harass the people, the effort to regulate “money laundering” out of existence has to rank at the top.
The basic idea is for the government to require all banks to become involuntary deputies of law enforcement to spy on their customers behind their backs, so that the bureaucrats can gain access to detailed information on what every single person is doing all the time. And thus will all criminality be stomped out!
In the real world, what anti-money laundering (AML) regulation means is that the government gains vast information on the innocent citizenry. This information in almost all cases has nothing to do with criminality and instead finds its principal use in hobbling and harassing the political opponents of the régime.
Meanwhile, the real crooks have plenty of ways (cash, Bitcoin, ten other forms of crypto, gold, MoneyGram, etc., etc.) to continue business as usual.

December 07, 2024

How The Régime Treats Is Enemies, And Its Friends

December 07, 2024/ Francis Menton

Throughout my life, no matter who has been in charge of federal or state prosecutions, there have been voices alleging some level of politicization of the law enforcement process. Mostly, those allegations have been about improper use of government resources to protect those in power, who should be relying on their own private lawyers when their own conduct is at issue.
But then there is the subject of use of the government’s law enforcement and regulatory authority to harass, disable and convict political opponents of the régime. Prior to the Trump Derangement Syndrome era, those sorts of abuses had been notably rare during my lifetime.
But there is nothing remotely comparable in our history to the diversion of law enforcement resources during the past four years toward the effort to take down the political opponents of the régime.

October 01, 2024

October 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

Back in July, I had a two posts (here and here) comparing the then candidates for President, Biden and Trump, on the issue of who is the greater “threat to democracy.”
The posts reviewed actions of each candidate that may be viewed as such threats. For Trump, those things included J6, plus seeking legal advice and then bringing litigation as to what he claimed was fraudulent conduct in the 2020 election; for Biden, the things included having the prosecutors bring phony criminal charges against political adversaries, engaging in a systematic effort with social media platforms to suppress the opposition’s speech, extra-constitutional expansion of the regulatory state, hundreds of billions of federal dollars to fund the political Left, the student-loan-forgiveness vote buying program, and opening the southern border.
Whew — quite a list! Obviously, the contest wasn’t close.
But now comes to my attention another whole category of threat to democracy emanating from the Biden-Harris Administration. This is one I have been somewhat aware of, but I have not been fully aware of the vast extent and systematic nature of the effort. Likely, this category is the worst of all the threats discussed in the extent to which it represents fundamental attack on the constitutional structure.

July 05, 2024

July 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

If the imploding Biden campaign, such as it is, has a main theme right now, that theme would appear to be that Donald Trump is a “threat to our democracy.” Or maybe it’s that Trump is “the greatest threat to our democracy.”
Joe seems to repeat that line every time he comes out of the basement to speak. Here’s a short Instagram video issued by the Biden campaign about a week ago with the text “Democracy is on the ballot,” and “Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our democracy.”
But then, Trump served a full four year term as President. He has a record of four years in the office from which we can compile evidence of actions that he took while holding the powers of the presidency that might be viewed as threats to democracy. Biden also has a record as President, now approaching the same length, so we can do the same thing for him.
So which of the two is the greater threat to democracy?

June 28, 2024

June 28, 2024/ Francis Menton

The rush of end-of-term decisions from the Supreme Court, not to mention last night’s presidential debate, gives me many more potential topics to write about than I could ever get to.
How to choose? On the subject of the presidential debate, I doubt that I have anything to say that a hundred others have not said in the past 24 hours. So then, which of the latest crop of Supreme Court decisions is the most important?
On that last question, my vote goes to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. This is the case that has rather emphatically overruled the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

August 14, 2023

August 14, 2023/ Francis Menton

My last post highlighted two lengthy comments submitted to EPA by groups of states critical of the agency’s recently-proposed “Power Plant Rule.” (EPA’s official title: “New Source Performance Standards for GHG Emissions from New and Reconstructed EGUs; Emission Guidelines for GHG Emissions from Existing EGUs; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” ).
The Rule seeks to eliminate, or nearly so, all greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants, by some time in the 2030s. The comments that I highlighted delve into substantial technical detail, giving serious reasons why EPA’s proposed transformation of the country’s electricity generation system is unlikely to work and poses severe risks to the people’s electricity supply.
What about on the other side? Are there any comments on the proposed Rule that are supportive of the Rule, and that even contend that its restrictions on use of fossil fuels to generate electricity should be made more stringent, and/or advanced in time? The answer is that there are many such comments.
But how do these supportive comments deal with the problems identified in the critical comments?