Tag Archives: political economy

Statehood for DC?

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That’s the House Progressive-Democrats’ plan. They voted on the thing last Friday.

One of the rationalizations for the move is this, from the District of Columbia’s “shadow senator” Paul Strauss:

DC [he’s cited as saying], created in July 1790, pays more federal taxes than any other non-voting territory and does not receive proportional services for their population, which is larger than those of Wyoming and Vermont.
“We are essentially a donor state,” he said.

That’s not an argument for statehood, though. It’s an argument for ending the transfers of citizens’ and their business’ tax monies from one State/territory/District to another other than in times of regional emergency.

What’s being carefully avoided in the discussion is the fact that this new State, were it to come to pass, would provide two Progressive-Democrat Senators to the Senate—and that’s why it’s Progressive-Democrats who are making the push. The same problem would exist were DC just as partisan, but Republican, and Republicans were making the push, and the solution would be just as invalid.

To answer James’ Madison’s Federalist 43 concerns about a State housing the Federal government, Strauss says this new State would exclude the Federal government’s facilities—just surround them entirely:

…Capitol, White House, and other federal buildings would remain in its own neutral area, with only the surrounding area being part of the new state….

Nah. If the politicians are serious about the region simply needing the benefits of statehood, that “surrounding area” should be returned to Maryland and Virginia, from which they were carved in the first place in order to form the District.

There’s no need to create a new State.

Victory for Competitive Free Market Pricing

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So far, hospitals will be required to publish the prices they negotiate with their insurers. This will facilitate the public’s ability to comparison shop for hospital procedures and services so as to drive down costs to the public through competition.

The American Hospital Association had sued in Federal court to block a new Trump administration rule that required such publication, but the judge presiding, Carl Nichols, granted the government’s motion for summary dismissal.

Aside from withstanding the inevitable sequence of appeals, a significant part of what’s left, now, is a requirement for hospitals to publish their success rates for various types of procedure and service.

The Party of Economic Sense

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A Sunday editorial in The Wall Street Journal provides some pretty dispositive data concerning State economic behaviors during the present Wuhan Virus situation.

The baseline: the national unemployment rate for May was 13.3%.

Ten States remained above even 15% in their individual unemployment rates:

  • Nevada 25.3%
  • Hawaii 22.6%
  • Michigan 21.2%
  • California 16.3%
  • Rhode Island 16.3%
  • Massachusetts 16.3%
  • Delaware 15.8%
  • Illinois 15.2%
  • New Jersey 15.2%
  • Washington 15.1%

These States also had some of our nation’s most draconian lockdown requirements.

States with no lockdown or very light-handed stay-home instructions coupled with very early reopening include these, and their May unemployment rates:

  • Georgia 9.7%
  • Arkansas 9.5%
  • Arizona 8.9%
  • Utah 8.5%
  • Nebraska 5.2% (our nation’s lowest rate)

It’s a nearly pure Progressive-Democrat vs Republican view of the importance of economic health, and so of overall health. As with most things, though, there are a couple of exceptions.

Massachusetts, in that top-ten list of poor performance, has a Republican Governor and Lieutenant Governor, although it has Progressive-Democratic Party veto-proof majorities in both houses of the State’s legislature.

Colorado, Progressive-Democrat-run, isn’t on the list of top-five best performers, but that government ended its lockdown very early, and its unemployment rate is below the national average and falling further: from April’s 12.2% to 10.2% in May.

Notice that. The economic recovery rate is markedly improved by early release from lockdown gaol or by not locking up the citizens in the first place.

Keep in mind who has the better sense—economic, liberty, health—this November.

Free Speech for Me

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…but not for thee.

‘Course, we’re all perfectly free to speak approved messages. This is demonstrated by Facebook’s overt, deliberate censorship of a political ad. Days after Mark Zuckerberg so piously said his company would not censor political ads (even though he considered all other speech of which he disapproved freely censorable), he had his Facebook pull a Trump campaign ad because he didn’t like what it said.

The ad in alleged question was a call-out of the dangers of far-left radical organizations, including antifa. The ad used one of antifa’s several symbols as part of the call-out, but Zuckerberg decided that even using the symbol to symbolize hate groups was too “triggering.”

Not only is Zuckerberg committing censorship—and illustrating one of the points of the campaign ad—he’s insulting ordinary Americans, insisting we’re all too stupid to evaluate speech on our own: we have to be instructed by our Leftist betters.

A carefully anonymous Facebook spokesman had this:

We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate…. Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.

The only hate in this incident is Zuckerberg’s and his Facebook’s organized contempt for Americans, claiming as this Anonymous One does, that ordinary Americans are too stupid to understand the plain context of a political ad taken in its entirety.

Errant Satrap

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That’s how the European Union views Great Britain as the EU continues to demand that Great Britain accede to demands they wish to impose on a sovereign nation—solely to bring that subordinate polity to heel. Examples of the EU’s demands:

  • post-Brexit sovereignty to make Britain more competitive via deregulation, environmental rules or tax reform—these must not occur
  • UK’s ability to subsidize industries in line with EU state-aid regulations—this must be curtailed

The first must not be allowed explicitly because of that competition. The second may be bad business overall, but it’s a domestic matter.

And this, regarding tariffs:

new tariff schedule London published last month eliminated levies on some 2,000 goods, or 17% of goods in the schedule, and simplified tariffs on another 40%. Measured by value, 70% of Britain’s imports from other World Trade Organization members will now be tariff-free, compared to 52% under the EU-wide tariff schedule.

Here is the EU’s attempt to prevent British competition.

And the EU’s demands regarding fishing:

bind the UK permanently in EU fisheries rules governing where British and other fishermen can cast their nets. The UK instead wants the same level of sovereignty other coastal countries enjoy to negotiate fishing rights annually.

And that’s the rub: the EU continues to demand to reach into—deep into—British national sovereignty to impose EU governance imperatives on British domestic matters. The EU does not accept Great Britain’s sovereignty.

Every one of those demands individually are deal breakers, and their aggregate demonstrate the EU’s (continued) bad faith in its “negotiations.”

The Brits should walk away from Brussels today and stop wasting their time and effort on the EU’s sham. They have better and more pressing things to do with their resources than negotiating with those who will not.