Category Archives: political economy

Market Imperatives

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Ford has said that it will delay the rollout of its wholly battery-powered three-row electric vehicles, its new model SUVs, from 2025 to 2027. That’s not because of development or production problems, either.

The additional time will allow for the consumer market for three-row EVs to further develop and enable Ford to take advantage of emerging battery technology, with the goal to provide customers increased durability and better value.

“Allowing the consumer market to develop further”—in other words, consumers don’t want these battery SUVs, and Ford isn’t intent on producing and not selling them, until customers actually want them. Which they don’t, never minding Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s æther-borne claim to the contrary.

Those silly consumers—they just don’t know what’s good for them.

Yet Another Misapprehension

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…by the Left in its favoring of and dependency on Government. This one concerns what passes for education in our public schools and is written openly by a Letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Tuesday Letters section.

The letter writer opines that since everything else is free in those schools, so should lunches be free.

We have long provided free books and transportation for schoolchildren, regardless of their parents’ income.

No, we never have. Those books and transportation means were, and are, paid for with our tax money.

We are responsible for students’ welfare from the time the free bus picks them up in the morning until the free bus takes them home at the end of the day.

Again, no we are not. “We” are responsible for students’ education from the time of their arrival at school to the end of the (too short IMNSHO) school day. Parents—the true “we”—are responsible for the students’ welfare all of the 24 hours in a day.

It makes sense that we should also be responsible for students’ nutrition while they are under our care at school.

This makes no sense at all, especially since they are not at all under “our” care at school. That “our” part is exacerbated by the sophistry that “our” care actually is educating our children.

What Progressive-Democrats Think of our Veterans

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Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Maura Healey is moving to turn an erstwhile Boston veterans care facility into a shelter for illegal aliens. She’s intent on converting

the historic Chelsea Soldiers’ Home—which was vacant and scheduled for demolition—into a site for 100 migrant families and pregnant women[.]

Meanwhile, there remain several hundred of our veterans—who are in our nation legally—in Boston who are homeless and need shelter of their own. When the facility was open to veterans, they had to pay $10-$30 per month, depending on whether they needed nursing care or just a place to be. The facility was closed last December, though in lieu of a different, larger facility. Closed, not kept open as an additional facility for our veterans.

It’s true enough that otherwise unsupported pregnant women also need a place to be, and it’s true enough that the women aren’t necessarily illegal aliens. The fact remains though, that for all that earlier support, our veterans had to pay for their stays there. Now that it’s scheduled to become a shelter for illegal aliens, those illegals won’t even have to pay that token fee. America’s—Massachusetts’—taxpayers will foot the bill for them.

This is what Progressive-Democrats think about the generations of Americans, and of those soon-to-be-American by dint of their service, who have fought for our nation, for our freedom, and have been maimed, or killed in those struggles over the centuries. Illegal aliens—who broke our laws and continue to break them by staying here of their own, malice aforethought—will get better treatment under this move than our veterans, men and women in much direr straits as a result of their defense of our nation.

It is shameful that an American political party would treat those who made that party, and all the others, possible in this way.

Timid is as Timid Does

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is upset that Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked, again and extensively, Ukraine’s power infrastructure. He said, through his National Security Council’s Spokesperson Adrienne Watson,

This bombardment—part of a series of Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure— is a terrible reminder of Vladimir Putin’s efforts to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people and plunge them into darkness[.]

Here is our President yapping like a porch dog from the safety of his NSC porch, along with (to mix metaphors) furiously wagging his finger at the barbarian.

While doing precisely nothing material to help the Ukrainians.

Biden is, for instance, holding up transfer of badly needed air defense systems, including Patriot and Stinger, while only “soon” will F-16s start arriving in Ukrainian inventory. Biden has chosen to do nothing regarding delivery of drone and anti-drone systems to Ukraine, forcing them to use those expensive Patriots they do have on far cheaper inbound drowns and missiles. Biden has chosen to do nothing regarding paying for the transfers he has deigned authorize, the lack of which pay-fors are at the core of Republican objections to further expenditures in favor of Ukraine.

Pay Their Fair Share

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Progressive-President Joe Biden is busily trying to raise taxes in his never ending effort to get the Evil Rich to Pay Their Fair Share™.

Here are some numbers and a couple of graphs, via The Wall Street Journal‘s editors:

…for 2021 show that the top 1% of Americans reported 26.3% of the country’s adjusted gross income, while paying 45.8% of total income taxes.

This graph shows the trend of taxes paid and who pays them over the course of this century:

Yet Biden, Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (NY), Progressive-Democrat Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (IL), and the rest of Biden’s Party syndicate, individually and as a group, flat refuse to say what they believe that fair share should be. Plainly, that’s because they’ve already defined among themselves, that fair share to be All of It.

This is illustrated by the tax increases that Biden is actively pushing this year. Per a Tax Foundation analysis,

The tax increases would substantially increase marginal tax rates on investment, saving, and work, reducing economic output by 2.2% in the long run, wages by 1.6%, and employment by 788,000 full-time equivalent jobs. On a gross basis, we estimate Biden’s FY 2025 budget would increase taxes by about $4.4 trillion over that period [of 2024 to 2034]. After taking various credits into account, the increase would be about $3.4 trillion[.]
[Biden’s] tax changes…include “additional taxes on high earners, higher taxes on US businesses—including increasing taxes that Biden enacted with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) —and more tax credits for a variety of taxpayers and activities[.]

As the WSJ editors asked,

Is this not a “fair share” to Mr Biden? Then what would be?

Plainly what would be to Biden and his Party syndicate All of It.

This is the central plank of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s platform this season. And they won’t stop with the Evil Rich as they define down what constitutes “rich” behind their DEI smokescreen.