Hallelujah!

 

Today, June 23rd, 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas, born on this day in 1948, delivered the majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking at the beating heart of New York's flagrantly unconstitutional Sullivan Act.

The Sullivan Act, passed in 1911, establishes strict gun control within New York State with particular application within New York City.  It guarantees that obtaining a personal firearm is going to be a long and costly bureaucratic nightmare.  Beyond that, obtaining permission to actually carry that firearm on your person is nearly impossible.  A few years back, I posed the question "How many concealed-carry permits are there in New York City?"  The answer I derived was '2,291'.  In a city of 8.8 million people, that is statistically zero.

Two New York residents who had 'possession' permits for their pistols (valid only at their home or business) wanted to carry those firearms concealed on their persons and were denied because, in keeping with the Sullivan Act, they were unable to demonstrate to the examiner that they had a need to be armed beyond simple self-defense.  Five other states (you can almost guess who they are, can't you?) impose similar or identical restrictions.  The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association funded the several lawsuits resulting from that denial, culminating at the Supreme Court as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Justice Thomas has several times in the past castigated his fellow justices for turning away 2nd amendment cases that were similar to Bruen, and it appears his complaining has finally borne fruit.  The 6-3 decision gave Thomas the pen since the 2nd amendment seemed to have been his pet project.  Finally, he has the ability to author a strong defense of the 2nd's original meaning.  The 135 page decision will take some effort, no doubt, but given Thomas' erudition, it will be worth every minute.

Thank you, Justice Thomas.  We have been waiting so long for this.  Happy birthday.

 

Update:  I have managed to actually read the official opinion (footnotes omitted) and there is something else in there that I didn't realize originally: NYSRPA v Bruen also explicitly instructs lower courts that when dealing with 2A issues strict scrutiny is the applicable level of judicial review.  That means that any new or existing law, when it appears before a lower court, the state must now make a compelling case that the law at issue is both compliant with the Constitution and necessary for the public safety.  When challenged, NYS will have to defend its $445 fee for doing a background check beyond that done (for free) by the federal government.  Good luck with that.  They will have to defend the overly intrusive 32 page questionnaire each applicant is required to complete.  Good luck with that, too.  Basically, the entire Sullivan Act is now at risk of being gutted like a perch.

 

Undoing The Gordian Knot

 

The current economic maladies gifted to us by the Biden administration have left the American people, by turns, angry, confused, and benumbed.  The largesse bestowed upon favored institutions — trillions of dollars backed by nothing — has triggered an inflation that seems not to have an end in sight.

The price of gasoline is up sharply, and inflation is only one cause.  The other cause(s) are centered around declining refining capacity due, largely if not entirely, to obsolete plants going offline and not being replaced with modern equipment.  They aren't being replaced because the government has to approve new refineries, and that isn't happening.  Old equipment is expensive to operate, and that has to be recouped at the pump.  We're told that the embargo on trade with Russia is (partly) at fault, although just a few years ago we were energy independent, a net exporter of petroleum products.

Food prices are also up sharply coupled with actual shortages, notably of baby formula, driven, we are told, by a shortage of truck drivers, higher prices for diesel fuel, and some owner-operators simply parking their rigs because it's too expensive to operate them given the existing rates available from shippers.  Supply-and-demand has not yet kicked in to establish a new equilibrium point.  California, the entry point for most Asian exports, is choking on container ships.  There aren't enough trucks to get the containers off the docks.  There aren't enough trucks because California won't allow a truck to enter the port facilities unless it meets California's overly-strict environmental requirements.  There are enough trucks.  There aren't enough conforming trucks.  Congress, with the power to regulate interstate commerce, doesn't see that this concerns interstate commerce, but regulating guns obviously does.

The pain felt by the man in the street is predicted to spell bad news for the Democrats come November.  Even those who voted for Biden (the live ones, anyway) are having second thoughts about the wisdom of installing an enfeebled septuagenarian in The Oval Office.  Unfortunately, that will probably translate to a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress in the next cycle, and that will translate to... no noticeable change, because the GOPe isn't going to upset the apple cart.  When they fail, once again, to correct the problems they were sent to Congress to correct, the Democrats will be able to make a plausible case for remaining in office in 2024, and the destruction of the American economy will proceed apace.

There are, to be sure, a bunch of fresh faces among the Republicans running for office this year, and some of them may actually have spines, unlike the stereotypical GOPe incumbent.  If there are enough of them, we may see some push-back against the current destructive policies.  Having control of even one house of Congress means that bad bills can be killed, and budgets can be butchered.  That's what it will take to regain control of our current death spiral.  Failing that, get ready for another Great Depression.

Let's hope that the new crop of GOP office-holders are bold enough to draw their swords.  That's the only way this knot will get undone.

 

The Problem With Inflation

 

Inflation in one form or another has always been with us.  Even during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was some inflation.  Inflation, however, really 'got its legs' beginning in the 20th century.  Two events gave it the boost it needed to become a household fixture: the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the 16th Amendment (Income Tax).

The Federal Reserve Bank made it possible for the federal government to fund itself with deficit spending: 'borrow' money from the Fed and pay it back sometime in the future — maybe never.  Our 'national debt', the Keynesians told us, was no problem because 'we owe it to ourselves!'

The Income Tax made it appear that the federal government was actually 'paying' its way.  Well, actually you're paying its way, sort of...

Until the advent of COVID hysteria and the latest round of massive government spending bills, it was estimated that the value — the purchasing power — of a 1913 dollar had fallen to about five cents ($0.05).  Yes, inflated by a factor of twenty.  Since COVID, it has gotten much worse.  80% of all the greenbacks in circulation today were printed within the past 3 years.  Since (Milton Friedman warned us) 'inflation is everywhere and at all times a monetary phenomenon', that means that our hypothetical 1913 dollar is now worth approximately a penny.

Now, if you are a businessman or a wage-earner, your prices or wages will rise to accommodate the inflation.  Everything seems to adjust itself, to 'establish equilibrium'.  Generally.

If you aren't a businessman or wage earner, if you are living on savings, things are going to be somewhat different.  Your savings are static.  They don't automatically rise to establish equilibrium with the new prices for everything.  This is why AARP is always so concerned about their members, many of whom are on fixed incomes.  For them, everything is suddenly more expensive and their 401k's don't seem to be quite as lush as they felt last year or the year before that.

We are told by our politicians that this inflation is transitory, meaning it will subside within the planning future.  (Janet Yellen is lately 'walking back' that pronouncement.)  Even if it is, there's still a serious problem left unaddressed.

The real problem is this: once inflation subsides, prices will still be high.  Just because runaway inflation becomes less runaway, prices don't go down.  They stay at the elevated state the last runaway inflation left them at.  Things are still unaffordable; they're just not becoming more unaffordable.

What us senior citizens on fixed incomes really need is a little runaway deflation: prices retreating to levels not seen since 2018... or 1958... or 1918.

Is that going to happen?  Not likely.  For that to happen, the government would have to grow smaller and less expensive.  The Mint would have to collect greenback dollars and take them out of circulation — while not printing any replacements.  We would then have the situation of 'fewer dollars chasing the same amount of goods'.  We haven't ever seen that happen with the U.S. economy, so we don't know exactly how such a thing would work out, but it would be an interesting experiment, no?