Category Archives: politics

Government Sinecures

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Now extended to illegal aliens in Los Angeles County.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously with no discussion to allow the county to no longer require US citizenship for government jobs.

With no discussion. Most likely not with no discussion at all. Likely that discussion took place out of sight of the public. That sure smacks of, if it’s not dispositive of, a violation of California’s open meetings laws.

There’s this, too:

The motion was authored by Chair Hilda L. Solis….

That’s the same Hilda Solis who was Labor Secretary under ex-President Barrack Obama (D). How appropriate.

The big deal is this, though, from Los Angeles County Public Defender Ricardo García:

An immigrant’s experience will advance our vision, mission, and values to protect our clients’ legal and human rights….

It’s certainly true that an immigrant’s experience could be highly useful in the county’s governance. However, this Board of Supervisors’ new ordinance authorizes illegal aliens the sinecure of a (local) government job.

Talk about sanctuary counties….

The Manchin Tax Increase

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Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) continues to…misunderstand…the situation that would be created by his agreement to the Manchin-Schumer Build Back Reduced bill.

People should be paying their fair share, especially the largest corporations in America that have a billion dollars of value or greater.

Manchin—along with his Progressive-Democratic Party cronies—continue to not say what anyone’s “fair share” is. That forces us to conclude that their view of “fair share” is “more.”

And

Can’t they pay at least 15%, so that we can move forward and be the leader of the world and the superpower that we are?

Umm, we became the leader of the world some while ago, well before this 15% minimum tax was dreamed up. It wasn’t necessary then, and it’s destructive to our economy now.

To Repeat

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In a Wall Street Journal article centered on the problems volatile energy prices cause for central banks, there’s this allegation:

The pass-through of higher energy prices to other goods and services, along with their volatility, could make it harder for the Federal Reserve to tell what price shocks are temporary and thus set interest rates appropriately.

Wrong answer.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating. Instead of trying to play the market, or even to time it, the Fed needs to set its benchmark interest rates at levels historically consistent with the 2% inflation rate that it’s historically used for its target inflation rate, and then sit down and shut up.

Full stop.

Press Dishonesty Made Manifest

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According to a just released Harvard study of the motivations for the 6 January 2021 riot at the Capital building, a study that looked at a bit over half of the court documents filed by the 6 January defendants, about 20% of the rioters said their motive was loyalty to former President Donald Trump (R), and about the same number said they acted because they believed Trump’s claims of a stolen election.

Fewer than 8% were interested in starting a revolution. That’s the dishonesty of Progressive-Democratic Party politicians along with the press: they’re hyping the revolution claim, and that’s the central thesis of the Jan 6 Committee’s inquisition.

Here’s the kicker, though. Only 4% of the rioters were motivated by their belief in a QAnon conspiracy theory, and that outcome prompted this reaction from one of the study’s authors, Kaylee Fagan:

The folks with QAnon T-shirts, and signs, and flags were so prominently displayed in much of the visual imagery that came out of the Capitol attack. So we expected to see more QAnon-related concepts come through in the documents.

And who so prominently displayed all that visual imagery? The journalists of the journalism guild, who were so intent on hyping anything that supported their anti-Trump narrative, that they…forgot…to report all of the facts, the whole story of the riots.

Part of the Agreement

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…on Reduced-Build Back that Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Chuck Schumer (D, NY) settled on last week is this Progressive-Democratic Party gem, and which illustrates in no small part the depth of the betrayal that is Manchin’s agreement.

The Senate drug agreement would require the Health and Human Services Secretary to “negotiate” prices for 10 of the top-spending drugs in Medicare starting next year and 20 by the end of the decade. If drug makers don’t accept the government’s offered price, they would get slapped with a 95% excise tax on their sales. Take his offer or else.

If that’s not the opening shot in the destruction of the American pharmaceutical industry, it’s certainly the beginning of the end of the industry’s interest in innovating and in leading the world in innovation.

That’s to the severe detriment of every American citizen who gets sick.