Monthly Archives: March 2021

Misapprehensions

Posted on by
Reply

More in a long list of Leftist and Progressive-Democrat misapprehensions. Recall that President Joe Biden has abandoned the Trump administration’s Public Charge Rule. That rule required immigrants be financially stable to become US citizens or obtain permanent residency.

Naturally, the Leftist critics are coming out of the woodwork with their objections.

…the policy hurts those trying to obtain citizenship or [permanent] residency. The Legal Aide society [sic] called the policy a “wealth tax” that discriminated against people on the basis of race and immigration status.

One misapprehension is this business about hurting those trying to obtain citizenship or [permanent] residency. No nation has any obligation to grant residency—permanent or otherwise—or citizenship to anyone wishing to immigrate (more on this in a bit). No nation has any obligation even to entertain such applications. Hence no injury is possible here.

Another misapprehension: the idea that any sort of wealth tax is being applied from a public charge sort of rule. There is no tax intrinsic or even implied in requiring prospective residents or citizens to be independent of the receiving nation’s welfare system, in requiring them to be able to fend for themselves or to rely on their own family. The only tax involved would be the added burden on the receiving nation’s extant taxpayers.

Yet another misapprehension: the idea that requiring a degree of independence or self sufficiency as a prerequisite to residency or citizenship is somehow racist. This beef suggests that prospective immigrants are, because of their race, inherently unable to see to their own welfare. That attitude itself is invidious and racist.

A fourth misapprehension: the idea that any sort of public charge criterion discriminates on the basis of immigration status. No. National borders effect that discrimination. It’s one of the purposes of national borders, it’s a part of maintaining and enforcing a nation’s sovereignty. No one, nor any collection of people, has any inherent right to enter another nation without that nation’s prior permission. Neither has that nation any obligation to grant that permission.

The Biden Panic-Mongering

Posted on by
Reply

In a Wall Street Journal article about the European Union’s failure to deal with its Wuhan Virus situation in any serious way, there are a couple of graphs that bear on our own situation. The first one concerns the number of confirmed Wuhan Virus cases (which is much less than the number of actual infections).

Notice that. At our worst, there were only some 75 cases per 100,000 people, a roughly 0.075% case rate in our population. (The EU was much better at that time, more on that below.)

The second graph concerns our Wuhan Virus mortality rate.

Notice that: at our worst, our mortality rate was around 1.5 per 100,000, a roughly 0.0015% mortality rate in our population. A back-of-the-envelope bit of arithmetic indicates a roughly 0.02% mortality rate given a confirmed case (and even lower given an actual infection). (Here, too, the EU fared better.)

This is the exaggeration of the Biden administration—and of the Progressive-Democrats in Congress—regarding our virus situation.

It’s time to throw off the chains (to use a term of art) of overreaching government and go back to going about our normal daily business.

No more lockdowns. Businesses full open, workers back to work, out of work workers freely able to find work, consumers freely able to consume.

Children back in school in person, K-12 sports and other extra-curricular activities back in full swing, teachers who continue to refuse to go back to in-person teaching fired for cause (which would open up some jobs for actual teachers).

So it is, in the EU. Despite the EU’s incompetence in vaccinating, its case rate and its mortality rate are vanishingly small. Quite apart from the EU’s and its constituent nations’ governing personages needing to get off their dead behinds and get the vaccinations rolling, they need simply to open up and let their citizens’ lives return to normal.

No more excuses.

The Wuhan Virus “Relief” Bill

Posted on by
Reply

…that the Progressive-Democrats rammed through on strictly Party lines (after President Joe Biden (D) so piously promised bipartisanship and the Progressive-Democrat Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, so loudly proclaimed that he would not support any bill that did not have input and support “from my Republican friends”): it was prosyletized by Congressional Progressive-Democrats as desperately needed to revive our sagging, struggling economy.

Here’s how badly our economy was sagging and struggling:

Household net worth—the difference between assets and liabilities—ended the fourth quarter at $130.2 trillion, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. That was up 5.6% from the third quarter and 10% from the end of 2019.

That fourth quarter value is the highest household wealth level on record.

Struggling. More Progressive-Democrat newspeak.

Promises of Progressive-Democrats

Posted on by
Reply

The Biden administration (or, as they like to style it, the Biden-Harris administration (can anyone remember the last administration that was referred to as the President-Vice President administration? The Kennedy-Johnson administration? The Carter-[mumble] administration?)) is making economic recovery promises. Here’s one from his brand-spanking new Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellon:

I’m anticipating, if all goes well, that our economy will be back to full employment—where we were before the pandemic—next year, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that without this, it could probably take until 2024.

Yeah. Obama made similar promises regarding unemployment post his Panic of 2008 “stimulus.” The levels of unemployment embodied in those promises weren’t matched–his promises went unfulfilled–until some years after his promised date. Those failures were at least in part due to the explosion of regulations the Obama administration wrote.

Biden is making the same promise, through Yellen, engaging in the same regulatory explosion, and adding the fillip of overt attacks on our energy industry. And our economy will suffer the fate, exacerbated by that attack on our energy.

UK’s Good Faith

Posted on by
Reply

…has been slapped down. Great Britain surrendered Hong Kong to the People’s Republic of China in 1997 on the PRC’s promise to respect Hong Kong’s autonomy for 50 years, a promise the PRC made within the context of its one country/two systems framework, a promise made in the UK-PRC Joint Declaration.

The PRC began welching on its word when it began, in no particular order (because commitment timelines mean nothing to the PRC) denying duly elected city legislators their seats, arresting peaceful protestors—including provoking violence to create excuses for the arrests—enacting mainland laws allowing Hong Kongers to be “extradited” to the mainland for what passes for trials in PRC courts.

And now the latest step in the PRC’s reneging.

The “patriots governing Hong Kong” is a resolution that will allow a pro-Beijing panel to approve some candidates that it deems sufficiently “patriotic,” according to the BBC. The vote was 2,895-0, with one abstention[.]

And

Thursday’s near-unanimous vote by the National People’s Congress paves the way for China’s top lawmaking body to revamp as soon as next month how the former British colony picks its leader and legislators. The overhaul will give Beijing much greater control over local elections that were meant to be partly democratic—thanks to an effective veto against candidates deemed unpatriotic.
…
The resolution mandates the creation of a commission in Hong Kong that ensures that prospective officeholders conform with criteria laid down in the city’s miniconstitution and national-security legislation.

Nearly unanimous. Nothing untoward, or the least bit odd, about that. Nosirree, Bob. Well, maybe not so odd, coming from a tyranny as it does.