Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Progressive-Democrats and their…Preferences

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has buried another item in her 1,400+ page demand list of “relief” supports that she is requiring in quid pro quo for her support for the Senate Wuhan Virus relief bill that her minions in the Senate are actively blocking: $35 million for operations and maintenance for New York’s JFK Center for the Performing Arts. Pelosi’s bill would provide funding for

…employee compensation and benefits, grants, contracts, payments for rent or utilities, fees for artists or performers….

Notice that: Pelosi is actively denying the same relief for average Americans and the small, medium, large businesses that employ them unless she can have her Precious Ones subsidized—by those same out-of-work employees and closed-down small and medium-sized businesses, especially, who must pay the taxes for Pelosi’s demands.

Your Progressive-Democratic Party in action—not working for anyone’s benefit but their own.

Government Ownership of Private Companies

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There is a move afloat that, as part of a (supposedly) temporary support measure during the current Wuhan Virus situation, the Federal government should inject money into troubled businesses by taking equity stakes—buying shares of stocks—in them.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, that’s a bad idea, and it illustrated the dangers by describing the failure of Japan’s moves in this regard.

As it happens, we have a domestic example of the dangers of governments buying private company stocks: CALPERS. That huge (State) government pension fund has, for all the best reasons, invested in a broad range of American companies, and it has invested in some of them heavily.

Like all significant owners, CALPERS is using the influences of its stakes to push those companies to act on its imperatives. Unfortunately, CALPERS’ imperatives are government imperatives, and these are not necessarily sound business imperatives.

The Federal government doesn’t need to expand that negative risk.

Progressive-Democrats and Crises

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We’re seeing their execution of Rahm Emanuel’s theory in spades these days.  The Republican-majority Senate has a proposal in the Senate, agreed in bipartisan fashion with Progressive-Democrat Senators that would aid average Americans and the small, medium, and large businesses—including our farmers and ranchers—weather the government-mandated shutdown of our economy in response to the present Wuhan Virus situation.

The bill would provide loans to businesses to help tide them over the current loss of revenue—many of the loans converted to grants if the businesses retain their employees on the payrolls.

The bill would provide payments of some few thousands of dollars directly to Americans now on lockdowns of varying degrees but that prevent the majority of them from going to work at all, so those individual Americans and their families can stay reasonably current on their ongoing bills.

The bill would facilitate production of badly needed medical supplies, both for the protection of medical personnel and first responders and for the support of hospitalized patients in the care of those medical personnel.

Like I said, these were bipartisanly agreed provisions.  Now those Progressive-Democrats in the Senate have welched on their agreements to these provisions. Now they’re actively—and as a Party—blocking cloture votes so the bill can’t even go to the floor for debate and an up-or-down vote.

Those Progressive-Democrats, having gotten their marching orders from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA)—imagine that: even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) has surrendered his Senate authority to Pelosi—who has decided she needs

  • to expand and make permanent unemployment provisions (which would trap the unemployed in the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage)
  • anti-carbon provisions added in
  • collective bargaining measures be added in
  • fuel emissions to be imposed on airlines
  • expansion of subsidies for wind and solar energy

None of these have anything to do with the COVID-19 situation and the associated government-mandated economy shutdown.

Progressive-Democrats’ behavior here is just naked blackmail and the holding of American citizens and our economy hostage for the Progressive-Democrats’ personal and ideological profit.

Remember this all up and down the ballot in November.

More Obstructionism

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Senate Republicans have a bill in the works that would provide aid to businesses and their employees who are at risk as a result of government-mandated business reduction to minimum production or to outright closure.  That plan would provide for

taxpayers to receive up to $1,200, with married couples eligible to receive as much as $2,400 with an additional $500 for every child. Those payments will scale down for individuals who make more than $75,000 and couples that make more than $150,000. Individuals who make more than $99,000 and households that earn more than $198,000 won’t be eligible for direct assistance.

And

provide $50 billion in loan guarantees for passenger air carriers, $8 billion for cargo air carriers and $150 billion for other large businesses, authorizing the government to take equity stakes in them. The proposal also includes $300 billion for loan guarantees for small businesses.

Progressive-Democrats in both the Senate and the House object because of course they do—it’s not their idea.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) said late Thursday that the Senate Republican plan “is not at all pro-worker and instead puts corporations way ahead of workers.”

Of course. Because direct payments to workers are not at all pro-workers.  Because workers who lose their jobs because employers went out of business will simply be transferred to the Progressive-Democrats’ welfare cage.

The Senate plan does need to be carefully constructed, though, so that any money offered to businesses is promptly repaid, at market interest rates.

A Start

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But we need to go further.  Recall that an official of the Communist Party of China threatened to cut off US access to life-savings medicines that are manufactured in the People’s Republic of China [Bing Translate translation from the Xinhua publication].

If China retaliates against the United States at this time, in addition to announcing the travel ban on the United States, it also announced the strategic control of medical products and the ban on exports to the United States, then the United States will fall into the ocean of new crown [corona] viruses.

Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR) and Congressman Mike Gallagher (R, WI) have introduced legislation that will begin to address such dependencies and improve our national security.

The Chinese Communist Party threatened to cut off America’s access to vital drugs in the midst of a pandemic caused by its own failures. It’s time to pull America’s supply chains for life-saving medicine out of China and make the CCP pay for contributing to this global emergency.

The proposed legislation would

  • task an FDA registry with tracking drug ingredients
  • ban the Federal government from buying drugs with a supply chain that originates in the PRC
  • require drugs to be labeled with the name of the country where they came from
  • provide benefits to manufacturers who make their drugs or medical equipment in the US
  • take effect in 2022.

But it, or quickly following legislation, needs to go much farther.

  • Feds should buy no drugs with a supply chain that passes through the PRC, not merely originate there
  • manufacturer benefits should be limited to preferential government buys and support for drug development, not overt outlays of taxpayer money
  • push the pace: the requirements should take effect in 2021, or sooner, depending on how quickly manufacturers can readjust their supply chains

Further legislation should do the same regarding other items important to national security, items like medical equipment, computer chips of all types, energy-related equipment.