Monthly Archives: February 2018

Immigration, Progressive-Democrats, and Votes

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President Donald Trump has an immigration bill on offer before the Congress, the Republicans have one, and a bipartisan group of two Senators have one.  Trump’s bill includes legalization and an eventual possibility of citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers (1.2 million, or so, beyond ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) illegal DACA program Dreamers), funding for a border wall, and changes to our visa programs.  The Republicans’ offer centers on DACA protections and a border wall.  The “bipartisan” bill has only DACA protections, not even border security.

The Progressive-Democrats in Congress oppose both of the first two, and all three bills don’t look promising for passage, with that third a non-starter for its lack of protections for our nation.

This is what we see from the Progressive-Democrats.  They’ll vote against a bill that provides protections for the Dreamers protected under DACA.  They’ll vote against a bill that provides protections and legal status for three times the number of Dreamers than were protected under Obama’s DACA.

This is the conclusion that follows.  The Progressive-Democratic Party and its Congressional members don’t see DACA Dreamers—and especially the added Dreamers under Trump’s offer—as human beings.  Not at all.  These people are just a mechanical commodity, a tool to be used politically as a campaign issue on which to raise money and get votes.

The Progressive-Democrats claim that Trump’s offer would reduce overall immigration through the visa changes, and it likely would.  That, though, is just a broader, immigrants-as-commodity for Party political gain, argument.  Immigrants generally aren’t human beings in the eyes of Progressive-Democrats; the mass of immigrants is just a tool.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrats could prove me wrong.  They could stop playing politics with human lives and support Trump’s bill.  Or they could stop playing politics with human lives and support the Republicans’ DACA plus border security bill.

If they don’t, remember their attitude toward men and women and children this fall.

The New Tax Law and Bankruptcy

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The Wall Street Journal is quick to point out how the tax reform bill passed last December does little to help failing businesses.

The new tax law is a boon to most US businesses, but it will make life harder for one type of company: those that are struggling financially or at risk of filing for bankruptcy.

The new tax law was never intended to help failing businesses, though, it was designed to help the rest of us individuals and our businesses—and to help those who are failing do better next time.

The law eliminated a provision that gave money-losing companies a cash infusion in the form of a retroactive federal tax refund by applying current losses to past tax bills. Experts say these tax breaks, called net operating loss carry-backs, gave companies access to money at a critical time….

No, the provision helped current businesses paper over bad decisions and outright failure by letting them rewrite their history; there’s nothing that helped failing businesses do better in future.

The provision, in fact, was written in the aftermath of WWI, ostensibly to help our economy’s manufacturing sector.  On the contrary, though, the provision was enacted to bail out from Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to nationalize significant fractions of our industrial sector and to attempt recovery from Wilson’s drastically inflationary policies.  Any policy enacted for bad reasons always will fail in the end.

“It doesn’t fix the business, but it fixed the balance sheet,” she [Bankruptcy lawyer Cathy Hershcopf] said of the tax benefits.

Indeed.

Market Drops

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The Dow Jones 30 Industrials dropped nearly 1200 points on Monday, a numerically large drop.  But what does it mean, really?  We’ve had a steady, and over the last few months steadily steep, rise in the Dow.  The simple fact is, investors are taking profits off the table.  The proximate cause—the excuse—is fear of inflation triggered (if I can use that term) by good employment numbers and rising wages (finally).  The underlying economy is sound, the tax bill just passed is making our economy more so. To put things in perspective, here are two graphs of the Dow consisting of daily data since 1 January 1980 through 2 February 2018.  The data are unadjusted, meaning they are just the daily close, without dividends figured in.

This graph is of the raw data through the 5th.  Notice that Monday almost doesn’t show up in the grand scheme of things.

This graph uses the same data and puts them onto a log10 scale, which has the advantage of smoothing out exponential growths.  Over the last 37 years, none of the big drops—or rises—show up very well.  The Panic of 2008 only barely appears, and the dot-com bust is just a small dip.  The Dow has been rising steadily, with the short-term burbles put into perspective.

This is a buying opportunity claims this layman investor.

A New Welfare Trap

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This one is in the offing at the State level, and comes as a result of the punitive tax for not buying health coverage was repealed last December.

At least nine states are considering their own versions of a requirement that residents must have health insurance….

And

Maryland lawmakers are pursuing a plan to replace the ACA mandate, which requires most people to pay a penalty if they don’t have coverage. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, are publicly considering similar ideas.

Notice that.  These are Progressive-Democrat-run states.

The less well off who couldn’t afford either the penalty or the remaining costs—high deductibles, low per centage of plan provider payments even after “coverage” kicked in—under Obamacare still won’t be able to afford mandated coverage in these States.

Beyond that, they won’t be able to leave the State and relocate to one that doesn’t inflict these costs.  Their already limited economic resources are a barrier to such relocation.  Added to that, though, will be the lack of portability of the mandated coverage plans: having been dragooned into one by, say California or DC, they won’t be able to take it with them, even to Connecticut or Minnesota.  Or to a State that doesn’t require them to buy something they don’t want.

Progressive-Democrats really are that desperate to keep their welfare “recipients” trapped in welfare cages. Aside from that bit of self-serving…nonsense…the move also demonstrates the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for us Americans.  We are, their behavior and policies say, just too mind-numbingly stupid to be entrusted with our own choices.  We have to be led by our Betters, forced for our own good, to do certain things.

Working for a Living

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Indiana has joined Kentucky in getting approval to add a work requirement to its Medicaid program (separately: Federal approval should not be a requirement; the program should be a State-run and -funded program only).

Of course, there are objections.

Democrats and consumer groups are decrying the GOP push, saying it is antithetical to Medicaid’s goal of expanding health care.

That’s plainly not true, though (I’ll ignore the conflation of health care with health care coverage).  The push is exactly what’s needed to make health care coverage available to all who want it.  The plan, even as minimal as this one is (the work-related requirement would apply only to a small segment of Indiana’s Medicaid enrollees), will facilitate availability, not limit it.  By making it possible for folks to get off this welfare program and into jobs that can enable them to buy their own coverage—if they want it—it will allow the State’s Medicaid dollars be committed to those who truly need Medicaid because they’re too old, too young, and/or too infirm to get desired coverage on their own.