Monthly Archives: August 2022

Climate and Party

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Here is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s goal with the Build Reduced Back Act just passed unilaterally by Party in the Senate and about to be passed unilaterally by Party in the House, in a nutshell as summarized by the Wall Street Journal:

[It] won’t reduce inflation, won’t reduce the budget deficit, and it won’t reduce the world’s temperature. What it will do is transfer some $369 billion from taxpayers and drug companies to the pockets of green energy businesses and investors.

Notice that. The Act isn’t about correcting the planetary climate. Never mind the arrogance of claiming the US can impact the planet’s climate when the People’s Republic of China and India are rapidly expanding their use of/dependence on fossil fuels and the associated alleged pollution output of CO2, or that Africa cannot switch to “renewable” energy. It’s strictly about passing billions of American taxpayer dollars to the Climate Funding Industry in return for (Party hopes) Climate Funding Industry campaign funding, votes, and political power maintenance/enhancement.

And to Reduce Development of New Drugs

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The Wall Street Journal headline reads Democrats Vote to Raise Drug Prices. That’s in response to the Senate Progressive-Democratic Party’s unilateral vote to pass President Joe Biden’s (D) Build Reduced Back Act last Sunday. Included in that bill is a capability for Medicare to “negotiate” the prices on a select list of drugs. Negotiate: accept Medicare’s offer or pay a 95% tax on revenues. Nice drug you got there….

This is one inevitable result:

If drug makers must give Medicare steep discounts on certain drugs, they will compensate by increasing prices in the commercial market.

Even the Progressive-Democrat Senator Chris Murphy (CT) recognized the foolishness of the price control, even as he voted for it Sunday:

You can’t untangle the private sector from the public sector—one doesn’t work without the other.

Except that Murphy is wrong in one regard, a regard to which Progressive-Democrats everywhere are blind: the private sector works just fine without the public sector. Better, even.

There’s another inevitable outcome for which the Progressive-Democratic Party voted with their just passed Medicare price controls, and it’s far longer lasting and far more dangerous to Americans’ health. That outcome is the delayed effort to innovate and the reduced level of drug development that will occur even then, given the severe restrictions that will exist on a pharmaceutical company’s ability to recoup its cost of development, much less turn a profit on the development, and therewith have funds for further development.

Duplicity

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The American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center are at it, this time.

‘Way back in 2019 the Tennessee legislature created Education Savings Account pilot programs for Davidson and Shelby Counties. The ESAs grant money to students accepted into the programs; the funds facilitate students’ departure from poorly performing schools in favor of better schools.

The two county governments promptly sued to block the ESAs from taking effect, and the Tennessee Supreme Court ultimately ruled, last May, that the ESAs were jake, and in June that court denied the counties’ petition to reconsider.

Now the ACLU and SPLC are suing on the legally frivolous (IMNSHO) premise that that delay, manufactured by the county governments, is sufficient reason to further delay implementation of the ESA pilot program.

That’s how desperate the Left is to keep poor and minority kids—especially in Shelby County, although Davidson has a significant poor and minority population—trapped in bad schools instead of letting them transfer and actually get an education.

Nor am I sympathetic to the county school districts’ imagined plight. Those school districts really did have all that time since 2019 to prepare their budgets: they had no reason to ignore the possibility that the ESAs would be upheld and to prepare accordingly. It’s also not at all beyond the districts’ capabilities to have prepared two budgets, with one being centered on no ESA impact and one centered on an ESA impact.

Food or Fuel?

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That’s the choice being forced on Americans by the push for “clean” fuel for our cars, even as the Left and the Progressive-Democratic Party push for elimination of gasoline-burning cars. Dave Loos, Illinois Corn Growers Association’s Director of Biofuels and Research, actually is proud of that diversion of food to fuel.

Illinois has 13 ethanol plants that can produce 1.6 to 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol annually.

A bushel of corn produces 2.8 gallons of ethanol. That’s roughly 590 million bushels of corn diverted from food in Illinois alone. Illinois corn farmers produced 2.13 billion bushels of corn in 2019. The equivalent (because it’s not only Illinois corn in those plants) of more than 27% of Illinois’ corn production is diverted away from food production in Illinois’ plants.

Food or fuel? Food—corn—diverted from Americans’ tables and from ranchers’ animal feed (and so diversion of meat from Americans’ tables) is being sacrificed to produce ethanol for vehicles that are intended to not exist in any great number in a few short years.

And this doesn’t address the environmental and economic damage done by the Renewable Fuel Standard—the Federal government’s ethanol mandate. From Environmental outcomes of the US Renewable Fuel Standard, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last winter:

[T]he RFS increased corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, which, in turn, expanded US corn cultivation by 2.8 Mha (8.7%) and total cropland by 2.1 Mha (2.4%) in the years following policy enactment (2008 to 2016). These changes increased annual nationwide fertilizer use by 3 to 8%, increased water quality degradants by 3 to 5%, and caused enough domestic land use change emissions such that the carbon intensity of corn ethanol produced under the RFS is no less than gasoline and likely at least 24% higher.

That’s an example of the irrationality of Left and of their politicians.

Lies of the Progressive-Democratic Party Politicians

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and President Joe Biden (D) tout the just passed (I ass-u-me; I’m writing this on Sunday morning) Build Reduced Back Act as not raising taxes on Americans with incomes less than $400k per year. Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) agrees with that by her relative silence on the matter.

However, their very own Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation demonstrates the lie of that claim.

Just the News aggregated those data:

Federal taxes will increase by $1.9 billion on those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 and by $10.8 billion on those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 in 2023.
Overall average tax rates would increase from 20.3% to 20.6% in 2023 alone, according to the analysis.

A three-tenths of a percentage point increase might seem like chump change to those politicians, but they need to explain that increase to the large fraction—majority?—of Americans who already live paycheck to paycheck and now will have that “chump change” taken out of their pockets in addition to the taxes they already pay, along with the rising costs of the food, energy, and housing with which they’re already confronted.