miscellaneous (H)

Immigration Discretion

Earlier,

I wrote about the need for discretion in immigration matters, in marriage, and immigration.
Democracy Now, August 10 2011, talked briefly about a gay marriage where one member, the undocumented immigrant, is caring for his partner with AIDS. Regardless of one's feelings
about same-sex marriage, is there grounds for compassionate
discretion, when one person is caring for a United States citizen with critical health issues.

Is this best administered by a government, even the personal intervention
of the President, or participatory democracy?

The Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve made a 15 billion dollar loan to Goldman Sacchs
and it had a peak balance of 34.5 billion. Credit Suisse had
a 45 billion balance. Fortunately, these loans were all paid back.

Bloomberg Business Week, July 11 to July to 2011

Irrational Verbal Exuberance

Stock analysts were more often give "buy" signal when the CEO used
charismatic vision language.

Business Week, Page 017.August 3 2009.

Green

Carbon credit mechanism allow offsets. By preserving trees in the Amazon,
one avoids putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Should those producing
carbon dioxide be allowed to purchase such credits. But the problem is avoiding paying people for not chopping down trees that they would not have chopped
down any way. Deforestation now produces 18% of the global greenhouse
emissions, the same as all the world transport. But Brazil is doing less chopping down of trees now than it did before. (I recall reading many decades ago in a book on the global plenty, that the United States cut down one third of its forests. However, recently, there has been a net increase in forests
in the United States. Thus countries will naturally clear a lot and then
as the forest lands becomes more valuable as there are less of them.)


If money is paid to one group in a country, to preserve some acres, won't
the people who want to exploit simply move to another part of the same forest.
China paid people to stop using HFC-23, a greenhouse gas. But somepeople
received "windfall profits" and they had to create a "windfall profit" tax
to reverse the bonus.

The Economist September 26th 2009, page 94 to 95, Volume 392, Number 8650

Romney

About Romney's successes (Staples) versus jobs lost in other Romney
businesses. "IN sum, the form of capitalism that Romney practices helped revive the U.S. corporate sector in the 1980s and made it more efficient in the short term but left it less likely to produce new products
and technologies--with the excepton of Wall Street, where phenomental salaries lured the smartest young Americans to create fabulous new computerized gambling devices with,
as former Fed chairman Paul Volcker has noted, no redeeming social value."
These strong words came from Time December 12th 2011, article
"Where is the Love?" by Joe Klein, Volume 178 Number 23.

Similarity to the United States Constitution

Several law professors found that Countries adopting new Constitutions
were less likely to makethem like that of the United States.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg recommended the South African, Canadian Charter
of Rights and Freedom and the European Convention on Human Rights
as recommendations.  And the United States Constitution is the most difficult to amend.
The average lifetime for a constitution is nineteen years--Thomas
Jefferson recommended that a Constitution should expire tat
the end of nineteen years.  The U. S. A. Constitution protects

1. speedy public trial, not widely recognized
2. and is an "outlier" in prohibiting governemnt establishnment
   of religion
3. the right to bear arms--only Guatemala and Mexico also do so.

And other Constitutions do protect:

1. right to travel
2. presumíption of innocence--specifically stated
3. entitlements such as to food, education or health care.

Also foreign judges are less likely to cite decisions of the United States Supreme Court.
New York Times, page A1 , February 7 2012