Trump emergency proclamation

The proclamation is linked here.

Update 1: Headline, The New York Times, March 5, 2019:

Border at ‘Breaking Point’ as More than 76,000 Unauthorized Migrants Cross in a Month

Update 2: Reasons President Obama gave in February 2016 for continuing the national emergency on Cuba that was declared by President Clinton in 1996:

Whereas the Cuban economy is in a relatively weak state, contributing to an outflow of its nationals towards the United States and neighboring countries;

Whereas the overarching objective of U.S. policy is stability in the region, and the outflow of Cuban nationals may have a destabilizing effect on the United States and its neighboring countries;

Whereas it is United States policy that a mass migration from Cuba would endanger the security of the United States by posing a disturbance or threatened disturbance of the international relations of the United States…

The number of Cuban immigrants to the US in 2016 was 43,000. That’s the full year, not a single month. Surprisingly, most of them came via Costa Rica to Mexico, crossing the border at Laredo, Texas!

“Big” vs. BIG

At National Review Online, Kevin Williamson writes:

One of the things about Big Business that provokes skepticism and hostility is just plain bigness, the sometimes incomprehensible scale of modern multinational enterprises.

Well, there is “Big” and there is BIG. Compare these two enterprises:

  • Microsoft: 2018 revenue = $110 billion
  • U.S. Government: 2018 revenue = $3,340 billion (that’s $3.34 trillion)

So government is 30 times larger than one of the world’s tech giants. Another way to look at it is that Microsoft amounts to 3.3% of the government.

If “Big” business warrants skepticism and hostility because of its incomprehensible scale, why should BIG government be perceived as so beneficent?