Monthly Archives: August 2021

Economists and Economists

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Casey Mulligan and Tomas Philipson open their op-ed on how free markets provided answers to the Wuhan Virus (my term, not theirs) that government gave us with this remark:

Economists are trained to believe that the purpose of government policy is to correct market failures….

No. Economists are trained to answer the question of what are the likely outcomes given a set of economic/economic-related inputs.

Political economists are trained to answer the question of what, if anything, ought be done about those outcomes. Sadly, political economists increasingly are “trained” to believe that every outcome needs something done about it and that every doer must needs be Government. Political economists are increasingly incapable of understanding that, in a free market, minimally regulated, economy, unfavorable outcomes are, in the very broad main, self-correcting, and favorable outcomes are, in the very broad main, self-perpetuating. They miss the fact that the actual actors in those economies, the individuals, make in their free market aggregation sound decisions.

That’s what comes from the invisible hand that somebody wrote about some years ago. That’s what political economists no longer understand.

The Dumbing Down of America

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Ain’t gonna study, study reading no more, ain’t gonna think, think of writing no more
Ain’t gonna fight, fight the math no more, we’re giving them up, we’re gonna let them go

With apologies to Willie Dixon, that’s Oregon Governor Kate Brown’s (D) position on the education of Oregon’s—America’s—children.

Governor Kate Brown, the Oregon Democrat, signed a bill last month with little fanfare that drops the requirement that high school students prove proficiency in reading, writing or math, before graduation, a report said.

This dumbing down, this selling short, our children is abusive to our children and from that, as well as from the elimination of any pretense of education, is dangerous to our nation.

Progressive-Democrat Controls over Individuals’ Lives

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Here are some of those controls that are buried deep within the bowels of the so-called infrastructure bill just rammed through the senate.

mandate for vehicle manufactures to install “drunk and impaired driving prevention technology” as a standard feature inside of new vehicles

Because all of us are simply too grindingly stupid to make our own decisions about drinking and driving. This is amply proven by the one or two among us who are so stupid, so we all must pay the price.

create a vehicle miles traveled system for taxing drivers based on their annual vehicle mileage is hidden away in the bill’s section 13002, entitled “National motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot”

This also will create an opening for tracking where we go and who/what we visit in addition to tracking how we travel to get there.

grants select cabinet secretaries the authority to fully fund select infrastructure projects with taxpayer dollars by waiving cost-sharing rules

Just gimme the damned dollars and quit asking pesky questions. We Know Better. Never mind that the need for any of these dollars has yet to be established beyond yelling “Infrastructure,” as though that settles the science.

If these controls really were any good, and if average Americans really did take them seriously, Progressive-Democrats would offer them in separate stand-alone bills for public debate and scrutiny.

More important to the Progressive-Democrats, though, is that these policies vastly increase their surveillance state. Even waiving cost-sharing expands surveillance, since the Secretaries designated The Precious Ones will need to identify whose costs are going to be “saved” and who will be called upon to pick up the cost slack.

That’ll Show Them

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With the US leaving Afghanistan and the Taliban moving into the vacuum left by our departure—a vacuum deepened by the lack of interest in the Afghan army, so reminiscent of the Iraqi army in the face of the Daesh, in actually fighting to defend their nation—the Biden administration has developed its answer to stop the terrorists’ advance.

A US peace envoy was back in the Middle East on Tuesday to warn the Taliban not to pursue a military victory on the ground and deliver a blunt message: a Taliban government that comes to power through force in Afghanistan will not be recognized.

That’ll show ’em. A recognition of which the Taliban has no interest will not be forthcoming. Powerful stuff. Truly firm words. The Taliban leadership is quaking in their collective sandals. Quaking with laughter.

Laughing stock déjà vu.

Update: I wrote this last Tuesday. It’s Thursday, now, and the Taliban has captured their 10th Afghan provincial capital. That’s the contempt they have for President Joe Biden’s (D) empty blather.

Sophistry

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That’s President Joe Biden’s (D) current argument regarding the Wuhan Virus and by extension the Delta variant of the virus.

The virus knows no boundaries. You can’t build a wall high enough to keep it out. There is no wall high enough or ocean wide enough to keep us safe from a vaccination in other—from the COVID-19 in other countries.
In fact, just like the original virus that caused COVID-19, the Delta variant came from abroad. As long as the virus continue to rage outside the United States, potentially more dangerous variants could arrive at our shores again.

There’s a hint there, but Biden—and his border czar-ette, co-President Kamala Harris (D) and his HHS (sort of) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas—refuse to see it.

It’s true enough that neither high walls nor broad oceans (nor, perhaps, more localized masks) can protect us from the virus (I’ll elide the already low risk for the healthy among us aspect of protection).

On the other hand, Biden and his two cohorts have deliberately, with careful forethought, thrown open our borders, especially our southern one, to any and all comers, infected or not, criminal or not, smuggler or trafficker or not, vetted or not.

Overall, more than 1 million illegal immigrants have been apprehended at the US-Mexico border between October 2020 and June 2021.

Just from McAllen, TX:

As these temporarily admitted immigrants are released, the federal government does not test them for COVID-19 or provide assistance in contacting relatives or sponsors living in the United States to make arrangements for temporary housing.

And

Since mid-February of 2021 there have been over 7,000 confirmed COVID-19 positive immigrants released into the City of McAllen by CBP, including over 1,500 new cases in the past seven days [28 Jul-3 Aug].

Biden’s, et al., argument is a cynically offered sophistry. We can protect ourselves from the virus by protecting our nation from the carriers of the virus, those thousands of illegal aliens who are carriers. Against those carriers, walls are effective.

It’s time to finish the wall construction. It’s time to reestablish control over our borders. It’s time to reassert control over who comes into our nation.

It’s time to be a nation again.