Tag Archives: political economy

Preemptive Surrender

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This time it’s Senator Roger Marshall (R, KS) who’s announcing his surrender, even before the fight is joined.

Not that fight, the fight to block the President Joe Biden’s (D) and his syndicate’s, the Progressive-Democratic Party, spend- and tax-a-thon reconciliation bill that will take us far down the road to intrusive Big Government and toward outright socialism.

No, Marshall is surrendering before the fight is even begun that will be necessary to undo Party’s destructive policies in one and three years.

The fight in Washington, DC, right now is this: do we want big government socialism or do we want economic freedom? That’s what really this fight is all about. Once they start these programs, they’ll never end.

Once they start these programs, they’ll never end. Not of necessity. They don’t end, they continue, only as long as politicians—any collection of them, Republican Party politicians, for instance—are too timid, too outright chicken, to put an end to those programs when they return to power.

After all, once a different set of politicians are in power, they’ll have the votes, by definition, to undo the Progressive-Democrats’ policies, root and branch. That’ll be hard to do, certainly. But “hard” means “possible.” Look it up.

Worried about losing their seats after taking such supposedly drastic action, such “tough votes?” A potful of Progressive-Democrats voted up Obamacare and then got tossed at the next election. We still have Obamacare.

All those newly elected politicians—Republicans, say—would lack is the will to act. The courage then of the words now that they’re bleating. And a drastic change in their underlying mindset. To stop playing, to coin a term, the victim.

That’s Marshall’s preemptive surrender. His and his ilk’s acceptance in advance of their victimhood. That and his—and his fellows’—preference for the perks and prestige of their office over their integrity.

Dismissive Disingenuousness

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Recall that some Alaskan-harvested fish, 26 million pounds of them, had been stranded in eastern Canada, just a few hundred yards from American fish-processing plants, because President Joe Biden’s (D) Customs and Border Protection managers threatened $41 million in penalties on fish handlers if those fish moved down a 100 yard railroad line into Maine, as the Jones Act explicitly allows.

Biden’s CBP managers decided that those 100 yards didn’t satisfy the Act (or Biden’s and those managers’ whims) after decades of the ride having been entirely satisfactory.

Federal Judge Sharon Gleason issued a temporary injunction against those and any further CBP penalties, allowing the fish to move.

What’s telling about this incident, though, is this statement that the Biden-Harris administration argued in court [emphasis added]:

…an injunction wasn’t needed, because food supply chains had already begun to adjust. “Within days of CBP issuing notices of penalties in this matter the movement of Russian-origin frozen seafood from the Bayside facility began.”

Maybe this isn’t dismissiveness or disingenuousness. Maybe it’s more of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s collusion with Russia.

How Far Left

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Now Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) is being accused in the press of having “taken a hard turn to the right” because she objects to spending trillions more dollars than Progressive-Democrats (and too many Republicans) have already spent and to running up our national debt even further.

ABC News raised eyebrows for claiming that Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) has “taken a hard turn to the right” as she continues to resist the $3.5 trillion spending spree being pushed by her Democratic colleagues.

This is a Senator that pushes for increased minimum wage and reduced health care costs by government fiat rather than via economic competition.

This is a Senator that voted for “climate change mitigation” and “equity” and subsidies for electric vehicles and “green” energy sources as major components of the “infrastructure” bill.

This is a Senator that voted for the $350 billion in increased national debt her “infrastructure” bill would create.

That the press can seriously argue that a staunch liberal like Sinema is moving to the right is an illustration of how far toward the extreme Left the Progressive-Democratic Party and its communications organ, the press, have gone.

Misconception

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In a Fox Business article purportedly explaining how the new international price-fixing tax agreement is supposed to work, there exists this misconception, or at least it would be a misconception in a free and free market collection of nations.

The deal is designed to target corporations that employ a litany of tactics to reduce their tax liability, often by shifting profits, and revenues, to low-tax countries, such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or Ireland, regardless of where the sale was made. The practice by American and foreign multinationals costs the US tens of billions of dollars each year, according to the Treasury Department.

Of course, the practice does no such thing, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen demonstrates her monarchist that is Big Government I mean liberal blinders when she makes such a claim.

Since the money isn’t the government’s, its absence costs the government nothing. The practice does, though, save American consumers and other end-users tens of billions of dollars each year, primarily in the form of lower prices, but also in greater R&D and more innovation—which is lower prices later. The practice also generates more business activity, both from existing businesses and from more startups, which increases economic competition—which is lower prices both in the mid- and longer-term.

The practice also attracts businesses to the nations winning the tax race to the bottom, which increases economic activity in those nations, which increases jobs and citizen prosperity; and that increased economic activity also increases competition in those tax race winning nations—which reduces prices for those nations’ citizens.

And all of that increased economic activity produces increased revenues for the various governments, obviating the need for any sort of price-fixing tax agreement.

Only an illiberal—a modern-day liberal—could love higher taxes, bigger government, and the resulting increased government dependency.

A Hint

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Progressive-Democrats appear to be losing votes in heretofore Progressive-Democrat-safe States.

21st Century Democrats looked at voting patterns throughout the rural Midwest (the heart of flyover country) over the last three Presidential elections. Aside from the expected shift to the right that the PAC saw in agricultural communities, the PAC found a much sharper shift, not just toward the right, but away from the Progressive-Democrats (my term) in rural manufacturing communities.

In the 565 factory town counties (small or midsize manufacturing), 19 had Democratic growth and 537 had GOP growth.

This outcome turns out to be closely tied to job availability and manufacturing facility existence.

In the small to midsize factory town counties…where support for the Republican presidential nominee grew between 2012 and 2020, more than 70% suffered declines in manufacturing jobs.

There’s a hint there regarding the current Biden-Harris administration’s job-destroying regulatory, spending, and taxing policies and its spend- and tax-a-thon reconciliation bill they’re about to pass.

There’s also a hint there for Republicans and about what they need to talk as they campaign in 2022 and 2024 and the outyears.