Tag Archives: political economy

A Progressive-Democrat’s Bigotry

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Recall Senator Joe Manchin’s (D, WV) statement a couple of days ago when he said that he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be pressured into voting for a reconciliation bill about which he has serious, and potentially bill-killing reservations in order to get the already Senate-passed “infrastructure” bill voted on in the House.

Manchin said major parts of his reservations centered on these:

How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansion to social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare faces insolvency and benefits could start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security? How does that make sense?

And

Nor will I support a package that risks hurting American families suffering from historic inflation. Simply put, I will not support a bill that is this consequential without thoroughly understanding the impact that it’ll have on our national debt, our economy, and most importantly, all of our American people.

In response, Congresswoman Cori Bush (D, MO) said

Joe Manchin’s opposition to the Build Back Better Act is anti-black, anti-child, anti-woman, and anti-immigrant.

Manufacturing a racist or sexist beef where there is no racism or sexism, as Bush has so blatantly done, is an especially pernicious form of racism, of sexism, of bigotry in general.

A Window on Biden-Harris Priorities

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Not so much from President Joe Biden’s (D) words or his Vice President and co-President Kamala Harris’ (D) careful silence, as much as what’s left in and left out of the current iteration of his reconciliation bill.

What’s still in after its seeming paring from $3.5 trillion to $1.75 trillion (don’t believe those numbers or that any numbers are anywhere near close to finality or even accuracy, but take them at value for now): climate change initiatives.

What’s out (so far):

  • paid family leave and Medicare expansion
  • drug pricing, paid leave, Medicare expansion on dental and vision
  • pathway to citizenship for millions

As Varshini Prakash, Executive Director of Sunrise Movement argued,

Progressives are the ones who have fought like hell for Biden’s full agenda, and their votes cannot be taken for granted[.]

Yet those concrete and potentially directly actionable programs are the ones that were dropped in favor of the Biden-Harris (and of so many others) fantasy of global warming as an existential threat to our species.

Yet, if those dropped programs actually were any good, they’d be fully supportable and easily voted up in their separate and individual bills. Prakash even (cynically I say) argued that the pathway to citizenship for millions was left to an unelected parliamentarian—never mind that here too, maybe especially so, the pathway to citizenship question, if it’s actually something We the People want, would be easily voted up in a separate Pathway Bill.

But no. Progressive-Democrats know these are not particularly desirable; that’s why they tried, from the height of their control of both houses of Congress and the White House, to ram these things through unilaterally with not a syllable of input from the minority party.

Success or Failure?

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In a Just the News piece concerning how the People’s Republic of China is stealing our (and Japan’s, Republic of Korea’s, and European Union’s) technology and using it to build a military establishment that can defeat us and from that compel us to do PRC bidding, FBI Director Christopher Wray was quoted as testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security September a year ago,

I think I publicly acknowledged that the FBI now has over 2,000 counter-intelligence investigations related to China, by far the biggest chunk of our counter-intelligence portfolio, and we are opening a new Chinese counterintelligence investigation about every 10 hours.

2,000 investigations, with a new one begun every 10 hours. Wray was touting that as the level of effort the FBI is putting into the matter.

What it really looks like is the extent of the PRC espionage effort, especially since those cases and case-openings only represent what the FBI has detected. Those data seem, more accurately, to indicate the degree of success the PRC is having at stealing our data, and the lack of success we’re having in defending ourselves.

That failure is not all on the Federal government, either, for all the centrality of their role in our nation’s security. It’s also, in very significant part, on the managers of our private enterprises and their lack of effort—empirically demonstrated by how often and how easily they’re entered (72 new FBI cases every month, not all of which concern government penetrations)—in protecting their own data.

Wray’s claim does not describe any form of success at all. He describes failure, perhaps even lack of seriousness regarding the matter.

The Cost of Aiding and Abetting

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$590 million dollars. That’s the cost of aiding and abetting ransomware criminals in the first half of this year. That’s what so-called victims of ransomware attacks paid to their putative attackers to reward them for their crimes. Moreover,

The average cost of reported ransomware payments per month in the US in 2021 was $102.3 million. If the current trend continues, the number of SARs filed in 2021 “are projected to have a higher ransomware-related transaction value than SARs filed in the previous 10 years combined,” the Treasury projects.

(The average cost and the total cost differ by about 4%, but the point remains valid.)

Andrew Lipow, Lipow Oil Associates LLC CEO, is busy ducking responsibility—and he’s sadly typical:

The anonymity of a digital currency has allowed ransomware attacks to flourish. If you can’t follow the money today, regulators need to either ban the digital currencies or implement regulations that enable the identification of people and accounts involved in these transactions—just like they would do for a real bank.

Sure. Because criminals engaged in ransomware attacks can be counted on to obey currency laws. What a copout.

Aside from that, whether digital currencies need to be regulated is wholly irrelevant. What’s required is for businessmen to stop paying the ransom, stop rewarding criminals for their crimes, stop actively aiding and abetting criminals. They’re only making their companies willing repeat targets.

Beyond that, this is more than just money out of these companies’ coffers. It’s money out of other companies’ coffers, too, those that are downstream in the supply chain from the company that decides it’s fine to reward the criminals. They have to pay the higher prices the “victim” companies charge to cover their payoffs ransom payments.

It’s also money out of the coffers of other, otherwise unrelated, companies as they must bear the added security costs accruing from having also been made targets by those putative victims so amply rewarding the crimes and the criminals engaged in them.

It’s money out of us consumers’ pockets, too, in the form of increased prices we have to pay as those company executives just treat the “ransom” payments as a cost center, a cost of doing business.

The Biden Slowdown

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Last quarter, our economy grew, sort of: GDP rose 2.0%, compared to 6.7% in the second quarter and 6.3% in the first quarter of this year. That first half of this year’s growth was heavily influenced by the growth that was beginning to boom in the latter half of 2020, as our economy and our nation were coming out from under the Wuhan Virus situation that had so heavily impacted our nation the first half of that year.

This year’s third quarter drastic slowdown, though, is the direct result of the Harris-Biden administration’s failures, of which two are critical to the slowdown.

One failure is Biden-Harris’ insistence on vaccine mandates as a condition of employment and of doing business, whether as a customer or as a business, and related Wuhan virus Delta variant restrictions on our economy. All of these have acted as a heavy drag on our businesses’—especially our mom-and-pop and middle-sized businesses’—ability to reopen and function at all after the prior year’s virus-related dislocations.

The other failure is Biden-Harris’ failure to perform, through their Transportation Secretary, regarding our supply chain. Indeed, the Secretary, who even looks somewhat like A E Neuman, acted on his “What, me worry?” philosophy and took off from work for two+ months—proudly so—on a “paternity leave” departure from duty while the supply disruption got into full swing (and still is growing).

Another factor in this administration’s failure to perform will impact the fourth quarter’s GDP and later quarters’: this added failure is the rampant inflation we’re experiencing now, an inflation driven by growth in consumer and business demand for goods and services and the components needed for producing them far outstripping production growth—that supply disruption.

That demand also is fueled by all the free money Biden-Harris and the Federal Reserve are pumping into the economy. That free money is both unneeded and itself artificially increasing demand.

And this: even if the present inflation is temporary, as I claim, the higher prices created by the present inflation—the prices that real consumers pay for gas, food, and energy and that real businesses pay for the supplies needed to produce and distribute gas, food, and energy—will persist, harming the middle and lower-rung classes severely. This bit may be being presaged by September’s consumer spending. We consumers spent only 0.6% more than in August, a decrease from August’s 1.0% increase over July.

If I’m wrong, the present inflation itself will persist, and prices will rise further, adding heavily to the damage already done.