Category Archives: political economy

Irrelevant

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Or it should be. Biden administration folks, on the way out the door, are jumping to employment at the special interest groups and lobbyists who influenced their decisions while they were in office, and they’re doing it at a higher rate than prior administrations. For instance:

Even though Trump has vowed to roll back the Biden-Harris administration’s climate agenda, these relationships will be maintained and could be strengthened as former federal employees under the current administration go to work for climate groups that will continue to lobby the agencies in support of the activists’ preferred policies.

Not necessarily.

If the incoming Trump administration personnel are true to the terms of their selection for nomination, and if the kitchen cabinet DOGE group, with their goal of reducing the size of the Federal government work force (among other goals), has sufficient influence in Congress, those lobbyists and special interest groups should have little influence, especially with fewer bureaucrats available to be…lobbied…and so easier to keep under control by their government bosses.

In an ideal operation, they should be irrelevant altogether. Especially, they should be ignored if they’re employing ex-Biden administration officials, given those worthies’ utterly failed, damaging even, policies.

Yet Another Reason…

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…for moving our supply chains out of the People’s Republic of China, and for no longer doing economic business at all with the PRC. In response to the Biden administration’s lately decision to further restrict the export of advanced computer chips to the PRC, that nation has restricted the export of critical computer-related minerals to us.

China announced Tuesday the banning of exports to the United States of chemical elements and other essential high-tech materials, in apparent retaliation for the US limiting semiconductor-related exports.

Those elements include gallium, germanium, antimony and certain other extremely hard materials to the US. So far, that’s just the ordinary progress of war, including the economic war the PRC has been waging against us for years.

However.

We shouldn’t be dependent on an enemy nation for materials critical to our economic function or our national security. That we are was driven home by the supply chain disruptions caused by the Wuhan Virus Situation; that this administration has chosen to do nothing about it, that our private enterprises have chosen to do nothing about it—each is shameful in its own right. That continued dependency only facilitates the PRC’s war against us and our economy.

We have these elements, along with nearly all of the rare earth elements and other extremely hard materials, in the ground within the political boundaries of our nation as well as within the boundaries of friendly nations. If it costs more to supply from those sources—and it will cost a pretty penny at this stage to guts up the necessary mines—that’s the cost of national defense and of our status as a free and sovereign nation.

A Bureaucrat with an MD…

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…chimes in. Robert Califf, MD, two-term US FDA Commissioner, and long-time government bureaucrat wants the government’s bureaucracy left alone.

As the world’s largest bureaucracy, the US government has ample room for improvement.

Awfully decent of the old boy to acknowledge some minor issues. Then he writes this in his Letter:

…a broad call for support from the workforce would be much more likely to succeed than castigating the workers who have chosen to serve the American public. Instead of suggesting “large-scale firings” and asserting that “if federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the Covid-era privilege of staying home,” Messrs Musk and Ramaswamy would be well-served to inspire the workforce to work with them to become more efficient.

This is an example of why bureaucrats who happen to have medical degrees must have their words taken only skeptically.

No one is castigating the workers; Musk and Ramaswamy instead are insisting that those let go not be stigmatized by that while insisting they be given generous severance packages and plenty of notice to find other work before their government jobs end.

Government isn’t the only place employees need to resume working from workplace offices or cubicles—corporate America also is waking up to the need for in-place, face-to-face interactions and collaborations. It’s entirely appropriate to require government employees work full time in the offices and cubicles alongside their colleagues. Those who resist are those resisting the teaming and collaboration that is so necessary to work and so much more effectively done when done in person, and those persons are reducing the efficiency and limiting the potential of their teams. They should be let go.

On that matter of efficiency, this is best achieved with a smaller workforce operating under narrower scoped of responsibilities, tasks, and goals.

Califf is a senior bureaucrat in a government “medical” bureaucracy looking to preserve bureaucrats’ job. Nothing more.

Defund PBS and NPR

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Howard Husock, of American Enterprise Institute, thinks that is a bad idea. Unfortunately, his argument for continuing to send taxpayer money to these entities is pie in the sky irrationality. He does acknowledge the deep progressive tilt of National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service, and his own abuse by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a Congressionally-created entity that partially funds PBS and operates NPR, when he was a member of CPB‘s board of directors over a pro-ideology diversity op-ed he’d written: CPB stripped [him] of [his] committee assignments and accused [him] of violating [his] fiduciary duties. Because thought diversity is intolerable.

Nonetheless, he wants our taxpayer money to continue flowing to this left-wing “public” company and its subordinate formations.

Were PBS and NPR (and, I say, CPB) successfully shorn of taxpayer funding, Husock worries that

liberal foundations—many of which already support NPR and individual PBS programs—will step in to keep NPR and PBS alive. The Ford, Gates, Hewlett, Rockefeller, Kellogg, MacArthur, Robert Wood Johnson, and Open Society foundations have been NPR financial supporters and could easily fill a funding gap or even donate directly to the CPB, a chartered nonprofit.

He didn’t recognize the so what in his own words. Those entities already financially support those left-wing outlets; it won’t matter that those entities, and others, would step in to fill the gap from the loss of taxpayer funding. It won’t matter because what those three outlets publish won’t change.

Husock had this rationalization, too:

There would be no more congressional hearings about NPR‘s ideological bias, as were held in May. But the imprimatur and implied government seal of approval—the “national public” branding—would remain.

The former is another so what. Congress doesn’t do anything about that naked bias other than waste time on public virtue-signaling—by both parties—hearings. The latter is a matter of messaging, something the Republicans are heroically bad at. The outlet, in fact, wouldn’t be public anymore because it wouldn’t be receiving public funds anymore.

Husock closed his fantasy with posits of what Congress should do instead of cutting off the taxpayer dollar spigot: emphasize the purpose of promoting local “journalism,” ban advertising for “causes,” make CPB board budgeting debates and decisions public.

See above regarding Congressional inaction. Ask also—which Husock did not ask—about definitions of such things as “cause” and “journalism.” Then ask—which Husock also did not ask—about enforcement mechanisms.

Skip over the messy pie in the sky time-wasters. Defund NPR, PBS, and CPB.

“Pay Their Fair Share”

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Once again, I challenge all those Progressive-Democratic Party politicians, including but not limited to (in no particular order), Senator Elizabeth Warren (MA); soon-to-be-ex-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY); former Senator (DE), Vice President, and soon-to-be-former President Joe Biden; former Senator (CA) and soon-to-be-former Vice President Kamala Harris (D); Senator Martin Heinrich (NM); and Congresswoman Melanie Stansbury (NM) to identify, specifically, what is the fair share of income taxes that the rich should pay—hard dollar amount, or tax rate, or percent of income, or…. Cynically, all they’re willing to say is their feelz: pay up and pay more; it’s not “fair,” otherwise.

Here, though, in concrete terms, is the situation with that especially evil bunch of Americans, those in the top 1% of income-tax filers:

  • 22.4% of the country’s total reported earnings
  • share of income taxes paid 40.4%
  • average federal tax rate of 26.1%

Here is what the smaller people pay in the way of income taxes:

  • • bottom 10%: no taxes
  • second income decile: -4.8%–yes, negative, due to all the refundable tax credits they get
  • third income decile: 2.8%

Back to the top:

  • top decile—which includes those 1%-ers: 27%
  • especially evil top 0.1% earners: 33.5%

This graph shows the trend from 2001 to 2022:

Of course, those Party politicians know all of this; they being so much smarter than us poor, ignorant average Americans, and all. It’s a measure of their dishonesty and of their contempt for us that they foist their cynical class divisiveness on us. It’s also an indication of what their natural limit and purpose on taxing is: their limit is all of it from their definition of rich, who aren’t all that numerous; their purpose is to give it to enough of the rest of us to buy enough votes to stay in power.

It hasn’t worked yet, but the rest of us need to remain vigilant and active, lest the outcome of last month’s elections become just a one-off bump in Party’s march. A warning of that is given by the outcome in the House of Representatives elections, where not enough Progressive-Democrats were tossed.