Daily Archives: 1 May 2020

New Jersey Wants Federal Dollars

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But it’s not a bailout, Governor Phil Murphy (D) insists.

“I wouldn’t call it a bailout. I would just say this is a war, we’re at the front lines,” Murphy said, stressing that his state does not want federal help at this time for “legacy” budget issues that predate the pandemic.
“We know what we got to do with the old legacy stuff, we need help with the here and now: educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff.”

Of course…. To the extent that any Federal dollars should go to States, New Jersey for instance, those dollars should go directly to the educators, police, fire, EMS, the front-line stuff; they should not pass through the State government on the way.

And: to mitigate the fungibility of money, those Federal dollars should be matched by State dollars. A State government should not be able simply to reallocate the funds it would already have been sending to “the front-line stuff” to other purposes on the premise that Uncle Sugar is picking up the front-line tab.

…if we do not get significant direct and flexible financial support from the federal government, we will be forced to make many difficult decisions about programs we all rely upon and which we will lean on in the months ahead.

What decisions to make vis-à-vis excessive public pension commitments and payouts, for instance. Regarding excessive and overwrought regulations that cost tremendous amounts to enforce and tremendous amounts for businesses and individuals to satisfy, and so that divert monies from their more efficient allocations and thereby restrain economic activity and reduce revenues to the State’s government.

Difficult decisions, indeed.

Conspiracy Theorist in Chief

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That’s Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden, as he showed with this claim about President Donald Trump.

Mark my words, I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held[.]

That’s of a piece with his predecessor CTIC candidate, Hillary Clinton, who insisted that Trump would never concede the election when he loses to Clinton in 2016. Which she has then proceeded to do functionally, her concession speech on the morning after the election notwithstanding. Which her understudy, Stacey Abrams, still absolutely refuses to do after she lost the Georgia governor race two years ago.

There are a few things wrong with Biden’s irrationality here. For one thing, Trump has no reason to want to delay the election; he’s well satisfied—as are many political experts, and not only those on his campaign team—that he’ll win in anything from a close election to a landslide.

The Biden conspiracy, too, is demonstrably false, as any junior high schooler knows, and most grade schoolers. Trump can’t delay the election. Its date is fixed by law as the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Congress would have to change the date, which is to say each house of Congress would have to agree with each other to change the date and then on the new date to be chosen. And then Congress would have to get the President to agree or to muster a veto override vote. In each house separately.

Electors, chosen by the States and the ones who actually will elect the President and Vice President, meet the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December to hold their election. That’s another date set by law and not changeable except by the above, by design slow and cumbersome, process.

Regardless of any of that, there’s no practical reason to delay the election. Our Constitution fixes a President’s term of office end as 20 January. Full stop. Pesky law provides for the succession to the presidency if the President cannot serve—which Trump could not, if he’s not reelected, which he could not be if there’s no election before that 20 January.

With conspiracy-mongering, Biden provides another demonstration of his unfitness for office.