Tag Archives: jobs

Build Back Better is Good

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Jason Furman, ex-Chairman of ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) White House Council of Economic Advisers and currently a Harvard Professor of something styled “Practice,” is all about the Biden-Harris reconciliation collection of policies known as Build Back Better.

He even wrote this in all seriousness in his piece in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal:

Build Back Better would have a minuscule impact on inflation over the medium and long term.

Even were that true, though, in the short term where most of us live, especially the lower middle class and poor among us who live especially short-term—paycheck to paycheck—we’re facing not just inflation, which is a rate, but actual steady-state higher prices; higher prices which will last into Furman’s medium and long terms, and beyond.

Meanwhile, wages won’t rise fast enough to reduce those higher prices to the status quo ante‘s buying power any time soon, leaving our lower middle class and poor worse off in Furman’s medium and longer term, and beyond.

That wage rise, further, will be held back by Biden-Harris’ and Progressive-Democrats’ penchant for regulation, which will hinder the rise in productivity that’s necessary to facilitate wages’ rise.

Furman knows this full well; he’s one of the Smart Ones of the Left.

We Need It

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One of the arguments Progressive-Democrats are using to rationalize their claimed need to pass their spendiferous reconciliation bill is one being advanced by Congresswoman Debbie Dingell (D, MI), this time via a Friday interview with Martha MacCallum on her The Story. Huge spending subsidies for child care is necessary because folks can’t otherwise afford it, so they can’t go back to work.

What Progressive-Democrats refuse to address, though—including Dingell (and MacCallum shied away from asking Dingell about it)—is that pre-pandemic, folks could afford child care, the unemployment rate was solidly below 4%, and the labor force participation rate was two per centage points higher than today.

What’s changed? I mean, besides lockdowns, which we now know was a mistake, yet Progressive-Democrats still demand them, and Progressive-Democrats having gained power and insist on throwing money at an economy that cannot absorb it without historically high inflation.

Government Press

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That’s another item buried in President Joe Biden’s (D) and his Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate’s reconciliation bill.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act (LJSA), first introduced in July, would provide a local media advertising credit of up to $5,000 in the first year and up to $2,500 in the next four years, covering 80% of advertising costs in the first year and 50% in the following four years.
Other elements of the bill would provide a federal tax credit to local media outlets that hire local news reporters, covering half of compensation up to $50,000 in the first year, and 30% of compensation up to $50,000 in the following four years. To be eligible, reporters would need to meet a minimum of 100 hours of work per quarter.

Those 100 hours required to get a “reporter” subsidy (here in the form of tax credits) aren’t even for half-time work: they’re less than 20% of full time. Get a Government subsidy for “hiring” a dilettante or a hobbyist. Nice gig for the dilettante or hobbyist.

And what’s with the advertising subsidy (tax credit)? Advertisers pay the outlet for advertising time and space; outlets don’t pay the advertisers for gracing their pages.

Senator Maria Cantwell (D, WA), the item’s sponsor:

The tax incentives in this bill will help local newspapers and digital-only news journalists and broadcast newsrooms remain financially viable to retain and hire local base journalists to cover local news stories.

Naturally, the news outlets and associated unions, including National Public Radio, the AFL-CIO, NewsGuild-CWA, and the Writers Guild of America, East are enthusiastic about the free—an unearned—money.

It’s nonsense. If the local outlets are providing a product that’s useful to the local citizens, their readers, then the local market, those local citizens, will freely support that product with their time, eyeballs, and subscription/purchase money.

Government largesse is entirely unneeded, except as a tool for Government to use to…influence…what gets published, and just as importantly, what does not get published.

The subsidies, and their proclaimed need, are nonsense. But they’re part of what the Progressive-Democrats wish to use in their drive to expand government and government intrusiveness.

Misleading—And Potential Fraud?

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Getting an adverse reaction—of any sort—from an employer-mandated or -encouraged Wuhan Virus vaccination? The Biden-Harris OSHA doesn’t want to hear about it.

The Department of Labor’s pledge Monday to publish an “emergency temporary standard” on COVID vaccine mandates “in the coming days” threatens to worsen the skewed picture federal regulators have been getting from employers for five months.

29 CFR Part 1904 – RECORDING AND REPORTING OCCUPATIONAL INJURIES AND ILLNESSES, among other things as JtN puts it requires employers to “record and report work-related fatalities, injuries, and illnesses[.]” OSHA, though, is exempting employers from reporting Wuhan Virus-related adverse reactions.

And this:

[T]he exemption is a “welcome reprieve to employers” because their insurance could have jumped based on recordkeeping logs of adverse reactions to vaccines, which have “little to no correlation” with an unsafe workplace, [labor lawyer Keith Wilkes of Hall Estill] told Just the News.

Concealing health data from the company’s health insurer could amount to insurance fraud, depending on the terms of the employer-insurer contract. It also could impact negotiations over new or renewed employer-insurer contracts, and fraudulently so if those withheld data are material to the matter being negotiated.

To be sure, OSHA still encourages employees

to file complaints when they believe their employer has exposed them to COVID or is “not taking appropriate steps to protect you from exposure.”

Which, to a candid world, would seem a bit one-sided when the employers are being told by the same OSHA to shut up about adverse reactions.

But that’s the Biden-Harris administration for you.

Because Shut Up

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A surgeon in Minnesota—and actual, licensed doctor, one who practices and not a government bureaucrat who happens to have a medical degree—spoke in favor of individual choice and especially of parental choice regarding their children on the matter of Wuhan Virus restrictions.

He did so publicly, too. Worse, he said it to a school board, one of those fonts of Know Better wisdom.

Dr Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota, told the Fergus Falls school board on October 11 that parents should make the decision about whether or not their children wear masks.

And he was fired for being so impudent. After all, the received wisdom from those bureaucrats who got a medical degree some while back held otherwise and that wisdom must be accepted by the unwashed masses, including those ignorant parents.

The Lake Region Healthcare hospital, his ex-employer, insisted he was fired because his views were no longer congruent with the hospital’s.

In other words, because shut up.

The hospital managers expounded on that. From their spokesman:

To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare[.]

Finger-pointing and blame-shifting regarding who did the canceling.

In this fashion, too, because shut up.