Health Care for All

In Great Britain, Justice Nathalie Lieven of the Court of Protection (an ironically named court, as you’ll see in a bit) has ordered a woman’s pregnancy be terminated by abortion in the mother’s 22nd week.  The woman has the mental capacity of a grade schooler, and so Lieven has ordered the abortion ostensibly for the mother’s own sake.

Never mind that neither the woman nor the woman’s mother want the abortion, and the woman’s mother has said she would care for the baby—her granddaughter—as well as her daughter (for whom she already cares).  Lieven insisted

I am acutely conscious of the fact that for the State to order a woman to have a termination where it appears that she doesn’t want it is an immense intrusion[.]
I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination[.]

A judge operating on her personal view of “best interests” rather than written-down law or written Constitution definitions—and recall that our own Left considers our written Constitution not binding on anything—is a judge operating with far too narrow a view of justice, much less “interests.”

This judge, operating in her personal view of “best interests,” is carefully and cynically disregarding justice for, and the best interests of, the baby she’s ordered killed.

And this:

Doctors at the trust [NHS trust, a section of the Great Britain’s National Health Service] wished to abort her pregnancy and argued that, due to her diminished mental capacity, the abortion would be less traumatic for the woman than giving birth, especially if the baby would then be placed in foster care.

These are doctors who care not a penny for the trauma they want to inflict on the baby.  But, then, these are doctors operating under a Government program of taxpayer-funded health-care-for-all; these are doctors from whom Government has arrogated all moral responsibility; these are doctors therefrom wholly lacking personal moral concerns.

And this:

Lieven also said she did not believe the woman’s mother, who already helps care for her daughter, would be able to offer care for a grandchild at the same time.

Because no parent ever, much less a woman, has ever been able to take care of two children at the same time, even if one has a “mood disorder”—whatever that is in the British NHS lowest-bidder medical system.

No, this is the British judge’s decision: kill the baby before it’s born, lest it become an inconvenience to the health-care-for-all System.

This is taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand—judge’s as well as mother’s—that would be available under the Progressive-Democratic Party’s Government-run Medicare for All.

Update: Sometimes, justice strikes. Sadly, this only applies to the particular case, still, it is justice. Lieven’s shameful ruling was appealed by the mother, and it has been overturned. A British appellate court’s judges, Lord Justice McCombe, Lady Justice King, and Lord Justice Jackson, straight up reversed Lieven’s ruling; although they said they’d give their rationale only “at a later date.”

Prior to the reversal, Westminster auxiliary bishop John Sheridan had said [emphasis added]

Forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will, and that of her close family, infringes her human rights, not to mention the right of her unborn child to life in a family that has committed to caring for this child.

That last also emphasizes why this bit of justice is so narrow.  John McKendrick QC, representing the woman’s mother, told the appellate court that

Lieven’s analysis of what was in the woman’s best interests was flawed.

His argument wholly ignored that bit about the baby’s own interests, his inalienable right to life. As long as the baby’s welfare is routinely ignored in such debates, the whole question of abortion is badly skewed.

The Land of the Free

Free Stuff, that is.  Here’s the latest from Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA).  In addition to all the other free stuff she wants us to have, now she wants free child care.

[F]amilies living below the 200% poverty threshold (roughly $51,500 for a family of four) would get free access to child care and early education….

With this, Warren wants folks who, by her own definition, are not poverty-ridden to get free child care.  Notice, too, she’s lumped in with child care her “early education”—that’s her tacit admission that our public schools no longer provide actual education; they’re just child care facilities.

More importantly than that, though, is how she would pay for all of this.

Warren proposed using money from the ultra-millionaire tax that she announced at the end of January. Under the tax, anyone with more than $50 million in assets would pay a 2% tax. For those who have assets valued at $1 billion or higher, it would be a 3% tax.

That might—might—cover expenses for the first few years.  But Warren has no clue of what to do next (beyond, I assume, the usual Progressive-Democrat “solution” of raise taxes some more).  Warren has no clue where to get the money for all this free stuff (recall that she’s using her tax on the evil rich for other spending, too) when we don’t have any more rich because they’ve been taxed out of existence, no one aspires to be rich anymore (with the associated loss of economic activity and steady impoverishment of our population as a whole), the few remaining rich have moved their money overseas (and perhaps joined their money).

But hey—it’s Free Stuff today.  It’s votes today.

More important even than all of that is the moral damage she proposes to do to us Americans.  No longer are we to be responsible individuals, we’re just to be come wards of the State.  Her State.  Her State will supplant our individual morality with her own version; her State will strip us of our individual responsibilities, our individual duties.  Her State will do those.

Elizabeth Warren’s State is a socialist State.  John Adams wrote more than one hundred years ago that the nation of our Constitution required a virtuous, moral people to run it.  That’s not Elizabeth Warren’s State.

You’ve Made Enough Money

The New Jersey governor says so, and he wants to raise the income tax on the rich and the not-yet rich—those making more than $1 million per annual year*—by almost a full per centage point, to 10.75%.

Because, he argues.

So far, even the Progressive-Democrat-run legislature is demurring from that move, but the governor seems poised to veto a budget that doesn’t have the tax increase.

Give it up, the Progressive-Democrat governor says. I have better uses for your money than you do, the Progressive-Democrat governor says.

 

*Think $1 million is a lot?  It is, but not so much in Trenton.  On a cost of living basis, that would be worth $1.4 million in northern Texas.

The Progressive-Democratic Party

…in microcosm.  Progressive-Democratic Party candidate for a Denver, CO, city council seat says openly that she wants to replace our capitalist economy and “usher in” “community ownership” of all property by any means necessary.

The Progressive-Democratic Party is silent on her goal, and by that silence demonstrates quite clearly that Party favors this push.

Keep this in mind in November 2020.

The Fed’s Market-Chasing

They’re at it again, or talking like it.

Federal Reserve officials meet Tuesday recognizing they may need to cut interest rates should the economic outlook darken. The question is whether that moment has arrived or if they need more information before deciding.

The choices…are between cutting rates now if they see the economic outlook worsening or holding off and cutting next month if the picture grows darker.

No, the question proceeds from the false premise that the Fed should cut rates, with its partially false alternative that the Fed should hold rates steady for a time.

The Fed is compounding its error:

Policy makers are considering whether their short-term benchmark rate, which has been in a range of 2.25% to 2.5% this year, is curbing economic growth more than they expected, especially if uncertainty over US trade policy chills business investment and weakens corporate profits.

The Fed is chasing the market and moving too far inside the underlying economy’s cycle. There’s no reason for the Fed to cut its benchmark rate, and not yet any reason to hold its rates steady. The Fed’s mandate is to hold prices stable (its second mandate of full employment is a natural outcome of the strong and growing economy that results from stable prices and need not be considered here).  There’s nothing in there about any obligation to take steps to “manage” the economy’s growth; indeed, that’s a political decision from fiscal policy (even assuming an economy should be managed by any aspect of government) and beyond the ken of any central bank.

On the contrary, the Fed has defined a stable price regime as one with 2% inflation, more or less (the particular rate, within limits, is of little importance). Accordingly, the Fed needs to set its benchmark rates at levels consistent with that inflation rate; the Fed isn’t there, yet—hence no rate cuts would be useful. Once arriving at those historic rates, then the Fed should hold them steady, and then (again I say) sit down and be quiet.