Tag Archives: jobs

A Court Missed

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Wage Growth

Posted on by
Reply

It’s been almost entirely missed by Progressive-Democrats and almost entirely ignored by the Left and its NLMSM.

Rank-and-file workers are getting bigger raises this year—at least in percentage terms—than bosses.
Wages for the typical worker—nonsupervisory employees who account for 82% of the workforce—are rising at the fastest rate in more than a decade, a sign that the labor market has tightened sufficiently to convey bigger pay increases to lower-paid employees.

Of course, it’s understandable that Progressive-Democrats have missed this. They’ve trained their fire on the Evil Rich and demands that those folks should give up their wealth for redistribution to the…middle class.  All along, Progressive-Democrats have ignored the bottom of the employed and want-to-be-employed spectrum.  Other than, of course, those worthies’ virtue-signaling and anti-employment minimum wage increase demands.

It’s also understandable that the Left and its NLMSM have done their best to ignore this wage increase development.  After all, it comes on the heels of the slowest post-recession (let alone post-Panic) reemployment development since WWII, and it comes so quickly after wages for the typical worker stagnated, and real wages actually declined, during the Obama administration’s post-Panic pseudo-recovery.

Progressive-Democrats also want to talk about the evils of income inequality, while carefully ignoring the opportunity inequalities that would result—have resulted—from their policies.  See, for instance, the results of their mandated minimum wages: net lower income for those still employed low-skill workers and the lower employment rates in thin-margin businesses, second-job family seekers, teenagers looking for their first jobs.  Here are a couple of graphs depicting income inequality.How terrible are these inequalities?

Another Welfare Cliff Example

Posted on by
Reply

A small business owner having direct experience with employees, hiring, and welfare schema, wrote in his Letter in a recent Wall Street Journal:

We are seeing a segment of the workforce, usually single mothers, who want to work but can’t work too many hours because they would lose their federal, state and local subsidies.

This is by the design of the Progressive-Democrats: their goal is to keep these unfortunates trapped in their welfare cage, dependent on Progressive-Democrat politicians’ handouts because…votes.

The letter-writer went on:

Government assistance programs should be designed to allow people to make progress, earning more and building up savings so they can eventually be financially independent. Instead, many of these capable people are locked into a cycle of dependence.

Of course assistance programs should be structured that way rather than locking capable people…into a cycle of dependence. However, letting those people out of the cage would be a reduction of Progressive-Democrat political power.