RIP Nino

I was deeply saddened to hear of the death on Saturday of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. As should be evident from my post on the recent Obergefell decision, I had great admiration for Justice Scalia's tightly-reasoned arguments based on originalist principles. Insofar as his originalism tended to conserve the original meaning and value of the Constitution, he was perhaps the greatest conservative mind of our time and his passing should be mourned by us all.

As for what will happen next, Mr Obama has every right to send a nominee up to the Senate to replace Justice Scalia. The Senate likewise has every right to decline to confirm that nominee. In particular, even if Mr Obama sends up a nominee with impeccable credentials, the nominee may be rejected on the grounds that the Senate does not find his/her judicial philosophy to be suitable for the duties of a Justice (or because of insufficient clarity about his/her judicial philosophy). We have been taught by our Democratic colleagues that rejecting a judicial nominee on such grounds is ok. For, it was they who in 1987 refused to confirm Robert Bork on the grounds that his judicial philosophy was unacceptable and in spite of the fact that Mr Bork was a jurist of unimpeachable qualifications.

Obama's gun control fantasy

Obama wants to take everyone's guns away. But, the episode in San Bernadino demonstrates that such a policy would be futile. As WSJ reports:

[A]t the scene, investigators found three connected pipe bombs set to be detonated by a contraption linked to a remote-controlled car.

In other words, without guns, crazy people will just manufacture homemade explosive devices.

Once again, we need to remind ourselves that it is not the weapons themselves that kill innocent people, but rather, the sick souls who wield them.

The French are now going to discover ...

The French are now going to discover, as the Israelis did before them, that Obama is not their ally. In fact, they will come to realize that George W Bush, whom they have despised as a cowboy, would be a far more willing partner in the struggle against Islamic extremism than Mr Obama will be, who would rather negotiate a pathway to nuclear weapons with Iran than defeat ISIS. Expect a speech from Francois Hollande soon complaining that, whereas French solidarity and support was forthcoming in the post-9/11 days, Obama is dragging his feet after Paris.

Victor Hanson for debate moderator

After the poor showing by the CNBC moderators in the Republican debate last night, here is one vote for Victor Hanson as a moderator in upcoming debates. Victor is just the kind of intelligent conservative who would do an excellent job of posing serious and probing questions to both Republican and Democratic candidates.

An idiot's argument in favor of raising the minimum wage: Part 2

Back in 2013 in a post entitled An idiot's argument in favor of raising the minimum wage I wrote:

Stephen Gandel concludes that "the average Wal-Mart employee's take home pay should be $33,315," whereas it now stands at a mere $22,000. According to this argument, then, Wal-Mart should increase the pay of each American Wal-Mart employee by $11,315 per year. Now, as Mr Gandel himself notes, Wal-Mart has 1.4 million American employees. To give an $11,315 a year raise to 1.4 million employees would cost Wal-Mart an additional $15.841 billion per year. According to Yahoo!, Wal-Mart has 3.26 billion shares outstanding. So, the additional wage expense would amount to about $4.86 per share. Wal-Mart's current earnings per share -- again, according to Yahoo! -- are $5.20. So, we are being asked to believe that Wal-Mart could essentially wipe out its entire earnings per share and this would have no impact whatsoever on its share price. This is what passes for economic argument in our society today.

Well, the jury is in. Wal-mart has indeed been increasing minimum wages. These increases have contributed to an earnings shortfall. As a result, the stock has plunged from a high of around $90 a share to today's current quote of around $60 a share.

USA Today reports:

[Brian Yarborough, a consumer analyst at Edward Jones,] questions whether Walmart will be able to meet even the reduced profit target as the company spends billions of dollars on building its Internet technology platform and raising salaries for sales associates. ... [And equity analyst Ken Perkins of Morningstar writes] "The sell-off and market price of Walmart's shares imply that Walmart's recent investments in e-commerce and wages will be unsuccessful in driving profits long-term."

In his article, Mr Gandel wrote:

So how much should Wal-Mart pay its employees? To tackle that tricky question, I crunched a bunch of numbers and concluded this: Wal-Mart’s workers should get a 50% raise. ... The conventional wisdom, of course, is that if Wal-Mart were to hand out raises, its stock would tank. That may not be true. ... Investors are basically giving Wal-Mart’s executives a green light to raise wages. So why not?

I would like to hear what Stephen Gandel has to say about the impact of minimum wage increases on Wal-Mart's stock price now.

The astounding ineptitude of Hillary's Brookings speech

In a speech at the Brookings Institution, Hillary Clinton stated that it is a foregone conclusion that the Iranians will try to cheat on the nuclear accord they have negotiated with President Obama:

I too am deeply concerned about Iranian aggression and the need to confront it. It's a ruthless, brutal regime that has the blood of Americans, many others including its own people on its hands. Its political rallies resound with cries of 'Death to America.' Its leaders talk about wiping Israel off the face of the map, most recently just yesterday. ... There's absolutely no reason to trust Iran. ... We should anticipate that Iran will test the next president. They'll want to see how far they can bend the rules.

The New York Times gushed in response:

Mrs. Clinton’s speech, at the Brookings Institution, amounted to a strong endorsement of the deal struck by President Obama and her successor as secretary of state, John Kerry.

On the contrary, if Ms. Clinton's assessment that Iran will try to cheat on the accord is correct, then, it is likewise a foregone conclusion that the US will eventually be forced to go to war with Iran. For, if it is certain that Iran is going to try to cheat on the accord, how else will the US be able to respond other than by going to war? It is obvious that the Iranians will not stop developing nuclear weapons until they are forced to stop. Why should they? So far the only pressure that has been brought to bear on them is a round of negotiations that has given them most everything they wanted. So, if it is truly imperative that they be stopped from developing nuclear weapons, we will need use force to do so. Ms. Clinton's statement is simply an acknowledgment of that reality.

But, if that is the case, then Ms Clinton' speech, far from being a "strong endorsement" of President Obama's deal, constitutes instead the strongest possible argument against the accord. For, if it is certain that the Iranians will try to cheat on the deal, then, why on earth would it make any sense for the US to enter into the deal in the first place? It would be far better to go to war with Iran immediately. To do otherwise is simply to delay the inevitable. Entering into accords with the Iranians that they will never abide by is simply the height of foolishness.

It is as if Neville Chamberlain had stepped off the plane, waving the Munich Agreement, and said: "Here is the accord I have negotiated with Herr Hitler, but I don't expect it to bring peace in our time. On the contrary, Hitler is not to be trusted one bit and certainly will attempt to violate the accord as soon as he is able." Would anyone in his right mind have concluded anything other than that Chamberlain's words implied war between Germany and England in the not too distant future? And would anyone have concluded that the agreement with such an untrustworthy character was anything to be celebrated?

The fact that Hillary Clinton, in a speech that presumably was meant to display her foreign policy credentials, should both declare her support for an agreement with the Iranians and also imply that the agreement is not worth the paper it is written on because the Iranians are completely untrustworthy and doubtlessly will try to violate the agreement at the first possible opportunity, is simply an incredible display of foreign policy ineptitude from the woman who aspires to be the leader of the free world. In essence, Hillary's speech argues that we should support President Obama's negotiation of an agreement with a party that is completely untrustworthy. With supporters like this, Obama doesn't need any enemies.

RIP Robert Conquest

There was a great Marxist named Lenin
Who did two or three million men in.
—That’s a lot to have done in,
But where he did one in
The grand Marxist Stalin did ten in.

The great Soviet historian, Robert Conquest, just passed away. His obituary in WSJ is here. I was an avid reader of his histories of Stalin, The Great Terror (dealing with the Stalinist show trials and purges in the 1930's) and Harvest of Sorrow (dealing with the dekulakization and collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine and its disastrous results).

These books may have overestimated (perhaps grossly so) the number of people "done in" by Stalin, but when Conquest first published The Great Terror in 1968, his was almost the only voice of his era decrying the utter villainy of Stalin's regime. In those years, the Soviet Union was viewed by idealistic Progressives (actually, dupes and useful idiots) through rose-colored glasses as a kind of utopia to which Americans should aspire.

Conquest's histories, though perhaps now superseded by later works incorporating information from Soviet archives (unavailable to Conquest when he first wrote and themselves of uncertain accuracy), supplied some of the first realistic portrayals of the horrors of Stalinist Russia.