Category Archives: jobs

Nationalizing our Economy

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A city mayor wants the Federal government to nationalize critical parts of our economy.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is arguing that the best way to tackle the coronavirus outbreak is for the federal government to take over critical private companies in the medical field and have them running 24 hours a day.
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“This is a case for a nationalization, literally a nationalization, of crucial factories and industries that could produce the medical supplies to prepare this country for what we need,” de Blasio told MSNBC‘s Joy Reid on Saturday, calling for “24/7 shifts” during what he called a “war-like situation.”

Just like the Progressive Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted to nationalize one-sixth of our then-economy, the railroads, because—presaging a later President—they’d made enough money and grown (in his personal view) too powerful.

Just like the Democrats Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman, under the excuse of war that de Blasio is bastardizing—Wilson nationalizing all the factories east of the Mississippi until the Supreme Court overruled him and Truman trying to seize the steel industry until the Supreme Court blocked him.

Just like Progressive-Democrat Barack Obama, who nationalized a current sixth of our economy, our health insurance industry, in order to turn it into a Government mandated, privately funded welfare program.

Now the Progressive-Democrat Bill de Blasio is grasping at his excuse for Government to seize control of our economy.

What’s the Progressive-Democrats’ limiting principle on such nationalizations? Nor they nor their forebears have ever been willing to say. That leaves us to conclude that their limit is the natural limit: complete nationalization of all of our economy—rank, pure socialism.

Remember this power grab attempt in November.

No VoTech in Public Schools

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That seems to be the cry of those who object to a potential requirement that students should learn to code by the time they graduate from high school.

The Wall Street Journal ran another of its point-counterpoint debates, this time on the subject of learning coding—the rudiments of  programming—over the weekend.

Supporters argue

The idea is that such a skill will be invaluable in a world that increasingly runs on computer technology. What’s more, many companies report shortages of workers with programming skills.

Detractors, in addition to crying crocodile tears over supporters having ties to industry, argue

adding a coding requirement for graduation is at odds with the very purpose of public education, and its focus on humanistic values.

Extend the detractors’ logic a skosh. It would seem they don’t want any form of Vocational-Technical classes in public education. Get rid of the VoTech classes in high school that would so prepare these students, with no desire for college, for earning their way in the workaday world (earning more than many college graduates). Get rid of VoTech classes in the public junior colleges, too—after all, these two-year colleges are only for the college-bound looking for a cheaper entry into college and for already working middle-aged adults looking to improve their business skills.

Extend the detractors’ logic a small bit further than that skosh. Computers are as ubiquitous a tool in today’s world as are pens, pencils, and keyboards. Knowing the rudiments of programming is as critical to getting along in the world—now especially for engineers and theoreticians (yes, including feminist studiers)—as is basic writing.  Maybe we should stop wasting grade school money on writing and junior and senior high school money on essay writing.  After all, we have computers for that.

Or, maybe those supporters have the better argument.

A Court Missed

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This time, the DC Circuit Court has erred.  The Trump administration—Health and Human Services—had allowed Arkansas, among other States, to set work requirements on its citizens as prerequisites to eligibility for the State’s Medicaid program. Folks and organizations sued over that, and the case wound up in the DC Circuit Court.  That Court held with the suers and has blocked Arkansas from proceeding with the work requirements.

Writing for the Court, Senior Circuit Judge David Sentelle held, in part, that HHS didn’t address the purpose of Medicaid in a way that suited him:

to provide health care coverage to populations that otherwise could not afford it….

Sentelle wrote further,

The means that Congress selected to achieve the objectives of Medicaid was to provide health care coverage to populations that otherwise could not afford it.
To an extent, Arkansas and the government characterize the Secretary’s approval letter [allowing Arkansas’ work requirements] as also identifying transitioning beneficiaries away from governmental benefits through financial independence or commercial coverage as an objective promoted by Arkansas Works.

Sentelle then wrote that Azar’s approval letter did not discuss this aspect of the matter, either. That, though, is because it’s so blindingly obvious that explicitly writing, in effect, “this, too,” would have been merely redundant.

Of course, HHS did properly account for the principal purpose. Requiring efforts to work or to learn work skills directly accounts for Medicaid’s principal purpose, by helping folks become able to afford health-care coverage and so no longer be part of those “populations that otherwise could not afford it.”

The ruling needs to be appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supremes need to uphold HHS’ requirement.

The DC Circuit messed up.

 

The Court’s ruling can be read here (maybe. The Circuit’s Web page is having trouble with this. The Case is Charles Gresham v. Alex Azar, II, Docket 19-5094).

Leave alone, Jobs, Respect

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Ex-Chicago Mayor and ex-President Barack Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel (D) cried out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this month that Progressive-Democrats are “blowing their chance,” the central theme of which was that the current crop of Progressive-Democrat Presidential candidates seemed to be running against ex-Progressive-Democrat Presidents Bill Clinton and Obama, rather than the current President, Donald Trump.

A Letter to the Editor writer in Friday’s WSJ took issue with Emanuel’s piece; this part in particular drew my attention.

Donald Trump is on the edge of doing more for black Americans than Mr Emanuel’s party has done for decades. He’s leaving them alone, giving them jobs, showing them respect.

I agree with the letter writer (RTWT), but I do have one small correction here. Giving minorities things is what Progressive-Democrats—like Emanuel—do, in order to keep those minorities trapped in the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage. Trump is creating opportunity and helping black Americans—all minorities—get second chances after sometimes serious mistakes, find their own jobs, be able to make their own way.

And you bet Trump is otherwise leaving them alone. This is wholly unlike the Left, even more generally than its Party, which hektors, when not outright smearing, blacks for not adhering to Party, not voting correctly, and thereby being good blacks.

Opportunity, actual help rather than giving things, no soft bigotry of low expectations—that’s true respect.

There was this, also, from Emanuel in his missive:

The next nine months will present our raucous coalition a rare opportunity to establish a new Democratic “metropolitan majority” that could last for years.

This is very illuminating. It makes explicit the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for tens of millions of Americans—those of us citizens who live in flyover country.

Big Government vs Free Market

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An economist says Apple isn’t paying its fair share of taxes. There is many things about which to criticize Apple, but this isn’t one of them.

Davos lights insist that companies are responsible to and for their employees, their suppliers, and their communities. Indeed. And the way to execute that responsibility is to be responsible first to companies’ owners. That’s what helps companies thrive so they can have, and have more, employees and suppliers—which money rotation funds those local communities.

What is Apple’s “fair share?” This economist declined to say—just that it ought to pay more.

The economist insists, instead,

the first step to being a good corporate citizen is to pay tax….

But how much? There’s that carefully undefined “fair share” bit, again. And: why should a business pay any tax at all? After all, the business might sign the tax payment check, but it’s the business’ customers who pay the tax, in the form of higher prices to cover the tax cost. Again, this is carefully unaddressed.

Instead, the economist and the lights of Davos insist that it’s somehow wrong for businesses to minimizes its costs and that it’s somehow wrong for nations to compete on tax rates in order to draw business investment so their citizens can have jobs and prosper.

This is Big Government ideology.

In a free market environment, though, nations do compete on tax rates for the benefit of their citizens. Businesses do work hard to minimize all costs so as to compete effectively on pricing, which directly benefits their customers and which indirectly benefits their communities from localities up through their nations.

In a free market environment, a good corporate citizen works to compete and so to thrive and so to take care of its employees, its suppliers, and its community.