Daily Archives: 30 July 2025

Progressive-Democratic Party Policies

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Neera Tanden, ex-policy advisor to ex-President Joe Biden (D), has a proposal regarding immigration. I’ll elide the manufactured hysteria with which she opens her piece.

Our proposal ends the misuse of asylum and restores it to its original purpose—to protect those persecuted for who they are or what they believe.
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…more personnel, better technology, and barriers where appropriate—to deter illegal immigration and apprehend contraband goods.
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We should expand legal immigration—with safeguards that prevent displacement for American workers….

With no ideas for how to prove the legitimacy of those asylum claims; throw money and bodies at the problem, though; and make sure those lettuce pickers and lawn mowers and house cleaners are available to do the dirty work for us.

The core of Tanden’s position, though, is this:

Democrats can win this issue—and cleave Republicans—if they support ending illegal immigration and increasing legal immigration. The left also has a chance to split the right as they have split us.

Party adherents’ policy plainly is merely anti-Republican and not at all pro-what’s good for America and America’s citizens. What about a policy whose goal is America and Americans winning?

Party adherents have no policies that they’re for; their core policy is Oppose the Other Side. Immigration is merely a tool for Party defeating Republicans. It’s not about making our nation greater.

A Thought on Interest Rates

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William Silber had one on the Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday opinion pages. Naturally, I have one on his.

The core of Silber’s thought is this:

The so-called neutral rate of interest is observed in hindsight—by whether the economy is expanding fast enough to keep unemployment low but not too fast to provoke higher inflation. By that measure, the current target interest rate of 4.25% to 4.50% seems about right. I say “about right” because the unemployment rate is low but the rate of inflation is somewhat elevated. That suggests, if anything, the target interest rate should be higher to push down inflation.

Silber is right on the first part. He’s wrong on the second. The current target interest rate “seems about right” because it historically correlates with the Fed’s inflation target of 2%. Now it’s time for the Fed to sit down and be quiet—and to say in so many words that that’s what it’s going to do. Excursions above and below the inflation target are just the noise of a free market. The time is not yet—if ever in the current market conditions—to make any sort of move on target interest rates.