Because It Is Apparent DC
Doesn’t Care About This Definition

Government is always looking to expand its ability to lord over the private sector.

Congress has done far more than its part – passing all sorts of laws that have very little to do with the Constitution and its extraordinarily limited role for the federal government.

But Congress doing all that overreaching itself – eventually brought some angered scrutiny from We the People. Congress doesn’t care what we think, mind you – they just don’t want to hear it from us.

So about a century ago government began erecting myriad, unelected Executive Branch departments, agencies, commissions and boards. To unilaterally add those very many busy hands to the power grabbing government was doing.

But that too drew angered scrutiny from We the People. Because even though these very many departments, agencies commissions and boards aren’t elected – the President who oversees them is. And if it’s possible, the President likes hearing it from us even less than does Congress. More

Sadly, Obama Also Exported This

The Barack Obama Administration was seriously anti-American. I do not say this lightly.

Evidence is coming to light all over the world that the Administration routinely, actively worked against American interests – seemingly everywhere any American was interested.

We last week chronicled how Todd Robinson – the Administration’s Ambassador to Guatemala – worked with Guatemalan environmentalist radical groups to coach them to sue an American company that had invested $1 billion in a Guatemalan silver mine.

The Administration’s Ambassador then pressured the Guatemalan government to appoint radical Left judges – who then presided over the cases the Administration’s Ambassador had coached the local environmental radical groups to file.

Not exactly an America First approach, is it?

Some of the Administration’s anti-American foreign work – began at home. And in our next particular instance – very late in the Administration game: More

Almost Certainly the
Most Important Property of All

Those of us who appreciate a free market economy that actually has vim and vigor – know we need Intellectual Property (IP) protection. Even more so now in our 21st Century Information Economy:

“Economy in which knowledge is the primary raw material and source of value.”

And how do we protect “knowledge” – “the primary raw material and source of value?” With IP protections – also known as copyrights, trademarks and patents.

God bless our Agrarian Economy Founding Fathers – they got this. And they got this – back when most people were tilling fields rather than putting quill to parchment (let alone typing on keyboards).

Of such incredible import did the Founders deem IP protection – they ensconced it by name in the Constitution: More

A Prolonged, Pronounced Problem

It boggles the mind how monstrously dumb the Republican Party can be. They ain’t called “The Stupid Party” for nothing.

To wit: The GOP has spent the last seven years winning more than 1,000 elective offices up and down the ballot – in large part because Obamacare has been such an unmitigated disaster. They spent great swaths of that time – campaigning very vigorously on repealing it.

Now that the GOP controls both houses of Congress and the White House – they are steadfastly refusing to repeal Obamacare. It’s as if they missed entirely the last near-decade. Or spent it lying their faces off. Either way – they are being titanically stupid.

Also to wit: So many think the political rise and election of Donald Trump demonstrates said stupidity. The exact opposite is true. The GOP’s dumbness predates Trump – by decades. Trump is a response to the dumbness – not a symptom of it. More

Stealing…is Stealing

One of the ongoing ridiculous myths that exists on the Left – and, even more maddeningly, with some on the alleged Right – is that stealing intellectual property (IP) is…not stealing.

In this warped worldview, entering a Best Buy and stealing a DVD movie – is bad. Downloading-without-paying-for the exact same movie – is somehow less bad. It is, in fact, not bad at all.

The weak and feeble argument for this – is that you are not stealing anything physical, so you aren’t stealing. You aren’t depriving anyone of anything tangible.

Which is absurd. You aren’t stealing the DVD from Best Buy to get the shiny, flat piece of plastic. You are stealing the DVD from Best Buy – to get the IP that is imprinted on the shiny, flat piece of plastic. More

Apple Training Their Sights on the US Economy

In Reality, stealing is bad. In Washington, D.C. – it is the operational model. A feature – not a bug.

So it is understandable that when a Donald Trump campaigns for President in part on halting theft abroad, DC Conventional Wisdom (which is neither conventional nor wisdom) – is that he will lose the election. His introduction and insertion of Reality – is utterly alien to the DC Geniuses.

The theft Trump highlighted with the greatest frequency – is the $600 billion (and likely more) per annum in intellectual property (IP) theft in which China and the rest of the world engages.

We invent and create things – and they steal them. Which does egregious damage to our economy now. And it is a woeful disincentive to our continuing to invent and create things – which does egregious damage to our economy going forward. More

This One Goes to Eleven

iEverything tiny little company Apple (market cap: $820 billion) is in the midst of executing a unilateral war against Qualcomm.

Apple Sues Qualcomm Over Patent Royalties: “Apple also wants back some of the billions of dollars it claims it was overcharged in ‘Qualcomm’s illegal scheme’ to control the market for mobile phone chips.”

No, what Qualcomm is doing – is engaging in a legal, very reasonable effort to control the market for its patents.  Apple wanted to use Qualcomm’s patents, Apple signed contracts to use them, Apple uses them – and now Apple is trying to get out of paying for using them.

Oh – and to put this in technological perspective: The iPhone – without Qualcomm’s patented technologies – is basically a skinny rotary phone. Just about all the things that make an iPhone an iPhone – come from Qualcomm. More