Monthly Archives: February 2018

Be Like Europe?

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Emulate Germany?  That’s the constant refrain of the Left and of their Progressive-Democratic Party.  After all, Germany is running large budget surpluses, taking the second largest bite out of German wages of all the OECD nations, at nearly 50%, overcoming government spending running 45% of GDP.  Here is an indication of the contempt with which German politicians—both “conservative” and Leftist—view German citizens:

[T]he perception of tax cuts in the country’s political mainstream ranges from slightly shameful to outright evil. Many conservatives see them as overindulgent toward voters, while the center-left views them as morally indefensible gifts to the rich. All parties, with the exception of the pro-business Free Democrats, favor a high degree of redistribution.

“You need high taxes in order to be civilized,” said Sven Giegold, who represents Germany’s Green Party in the European Parliament. “We are very far away from the government having too much money.”

It seems Germans, like Herb Croly’s Americans, are morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of [their] responsibilities as…democrat[s].

And we should be like them.  Sure.

A Proposed Budget Cut

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President Donald Trump’s budget proposal contains a funding cut for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, with effect in 2019, of $125 million.  The Partnership supposedly “created or protected more than 100,000 jobs” just in the last fiscal year.

I’m not convinced that’s a bad idea.  The function is good, but should the Federal government be the one paying for it? After all, it’s our tax money, not the Feds’.  Besides, the Partnership, as originally conceived, wasn’t intended to get Federal dollars; the existing subsidies are relatively new.

State universities already have outreach programs for agriculture, albeit heavily subsidized by the Federal government—Agriculture Extension Services.  It would be beneficial for the several States to set up, again in their State universities, Business Extension Services.  Care should be taken to ensure that these extension programs complement, rather than duplicate, the Small Business Administration, which also works closely with the States’ universities.

It’s the local, small businesses that benefit the most from such services; Big Business doesn’t need the support.  It should be the States who pay for this, using the tax money of the States’ own citizens, not the funds transferred from the citizens of other States.

This illustrates, too, the folly of inter-State transfers of moneys, especially while laundering them through the Federal government along the way (with the Feds taking their taste as the money passes through).

A Party’s Failure on Immigration

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The Party in question isn’t the Republican Party.  Those folks always have had a very stringent position on immigration, and they’ve not hidden their view from the public’s eye.  No, the failing party is the Progressive-Democratic Party.  Those folks have long claimed—a claim we now know to be a cynical pretense, a pretense consistent with the underlying philosophy of the party of Jim Crow and of racist and sexist affirmative action—to be champions of immigrants and of DACA children.  But last week, they voted against every bill, Republican-offered and “bipartisan,” that was brought up.  The Progressive-Democrats wouldn’t even vote for cloture so the bills could be openly debated on the Senate floor.

Many Republicans voted against the bills, too, it’s true enough.  But as I said, they’ve had a sterner view of immigration all along.  It’s the Progressive-Democrats who voted against their avowals, who welched on their public commitments to DACA children and to immigrants and immigrant wannabes.

The Progressive-Democratic Party has shown with last week’s display that they don’t give a damn about DACA children or about immigration reform generally.  They only want the issue for campaigning for their political gain.

DACA children aren’t human children.  Prospective immigrants—including the illegal aliens already present—aren’t adult humans.  They’re just shovels for digging up votes.

This is how the Progressive-Democratic Party so shamefully has said they view these people.  This is what all of us need to remember in the fall.

Investment Acumen

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Investment managers at Harvard and the State of Hawaii—and a potful of others—have made big bets [sic] on the low volatility of the stock and bond markets and on the apparent permanence of that low volatility.

After interest rates collapsed on the heels of the financial crisis, they [pension funds, endowments, and family offices] ran into challenges paying pensioners and filling university budgets, and added riskier bets on hedge funds and venture capital in the hopes of winning better returns.

More recently, some of these investors also made big, unpublicized wagers seeking to benefit from what had been an unusually long period of low volatility, according to pension-fund consultants and others who deal with these institutions. The strategies, often involving the writing of complicated options contracts….

These high-rolling gamblers include such luminaries as Harvard University’s endowment managers, Hawaii’s managers of the State’s Employees’ Retirement System, and the managers of the Illinois State Universities Retirement System.

Talk about betting the farm.  And then, as some of you may have noticed, volatility returned to the markets a couple weeks ago.  The markets returned to normal.

The rise of low-volatility bets is among the reasons this downturn is different, investors say, and difficult to predict.

Right.  This time it’s different is the most common claim of those who’ve bet the biggest and are losing big league.

At least these geniuses aren’t betting their endowments and pensions on bitcoin futures.  Yet.

The Veterans Administration Is Not Getting Better

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VA Secretary David Shulkin, according to an IG report, has been misappropriating VA funds for his and his family’s personal benefit, and he’s been abusing his authority to require a subordinate to act as his “personal travel concierge.”  He

improperly accepted a gift of Wimbledon tennis tickets….

And his Chief of Staff, Vivieca Wright Simpson, apparently tampered with evidence:

made false claims to a VA ethics official by altering an email to get official approval for Dr Shulkin’s wife to take part in the trip as an “invitational traveler,” a status that meant the VA would cover her expenses. Her airfare cost taxpayers $4,312.

Shulkin and his fellow travelers (not only his wife) spent an exhausting 3 and a half days in business-related meetings out of their 10-day trip.  That’s some jet lag.

Of course, Shulkin and his staff denied all of this and complained that the week the IG gave him to respond was, somehow, not enough time.  Must have been still jet lagged.

He’s paid the money back?  He should have known better in the first place.  If the leadership cannot be counted on to perform, how can anyone else be?  Reallocate the VA budget—every single dollar of it—to vouchers for our veterans.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.