Federal Aid to States

Dead equine pounding time.

Brian Blase, ex- of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council, had a thought on this. While generally skeptical of expanding Federal aid to the States qua States during the present Wuhan Virus situation, he did suggest guidelines within which Congress should act in the event it does decide to provide any Federal dollars to the States.

If it must incur additional debt to help states, Congress should abide by four principles. usw.

No, there’s only one principle by which Congress should abide here.

The States don’t need help; it’s the many (even most in the present Wuhan Virus situation) citizens of, and businesses in, those States who need help. Any Federal dollars should go directly to those citizens and businesses, bypassing the States’ governments entirely.

The only State government involvement that might be useful here would be to make available to the Federal government the State unemployment insurance data bases and the identification of those small businesses applying for loans under the Feds’ various Wuhan Virus situation relief programs.

One bonus principle: once the current situation is reasonably under control, the Feds’ copies of those data should be certifiably and verifiably destroyed.

Personal Responsibility and Black Americans

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, among too few others, has pointed out that part of the reason the Wuhan Virus is hitting minorities so much harder than others—with blacks getting the bulk of the ink on this—is because of their inaction on factors under their control.  Leave aside factors like the pre-existence of health conditions like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension, medical conditions that are generally beyond their control. Leave aside, further, that individual life-style choices can nevertheless significantly affect, if not eliminate, those conditions.

In addition to suggesting that blacks should put more of their personal attention toward those medical conditions, Adams was so rude as to suggest that blacks should exercise an additional measure of personal responsibility and do better about complying with CDC guidelines regarding preemptive measures: frequent hand washing, shelter in place except for essential tasks, and use face coverings/keep safe distances from others when in public (especially the former when the latter isn’t possible).

Of course, the Left, with its race-baiters at the fore, objected, vehemently and in their own racist way.

To assert that blacks have the power to affect their own destiny was deemed racist, heartless, and outrageous.

Well, of course it was. No less a light than that icon of the Progressive movement, Woodrow Wilson, insisted to blacks that they should be grateful for the protections of segregation.

Blacks, in the eyes of the Left, simply aren’t capable of personal responsibility.