Category Archives: politics

Social Safety Nets

Posted on by
Reply

The nearly $2 trillion Wuhan Virus “relief” bill, the American Rescue Plan Act, wending its way through Congress on strictly party lines, is being masqueraded as a safety net for folks badly impacted by the Wuhan Virus situation.

Aside from the plain fact that no such bill is needed anymore—our economy is rapidly recovering, and would continue to do so were it not for the Biden administration’s burgeoning reregulation imperative, explosive spending plans, and its impending tax increases—there’s another aspect of this bill.

I’ve written elsewhere about the 91% of spending in this bill that has absolutely nothing to do with the virus. This is about the “safety net” spending. That spending includes items like these:

  • the largest direct stimulus payments ever provided in legislation at $1,400 per adult who filed tax returns with a Social Security number—which is nearly every working, or was working, person. It includes retirees, who lost no income due to the virus, and so they do not need virus stimulus/replacement money
  • expands the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit to the largest amount on record.
    • increases the Child Tax Credit amount to $3,000 per child and $3,600 for children under age six
    • increases the maximum Earned Income Tax Credit in 2021 from $543 to $1,502
  • continues the temporary weekly federal unemployment payments of $300 on top of state jobless benefits
  • recipients will get a tax waiver on $10,200 of unemployment payments. Heretofore, unemployment payments, as income replacement payments, were taxable as ordinary income
  • $86 billion bailout for union-managed multi-employer pension plans and single employer pension plans
  • $27.4 billion for rental and utility payment assistance
  • 15% benefit increase for food stamp recipients
  • reparations—direct payments, to the tune of 120% of outstanding indebtedness, for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers
  • “aid”—bailouts—for State and local governments—every bit as much handout to these political entities as are the above to individuals

All of these are handouts paid to folks who aren’t working and encourage, however weakly, those folks to continue not working and collecting the handouts. They’re not hands up paid to folks who are looking for work, are working temporarily reduced hours, and especially there are no criteria tying the payments to actively seeking work or increased work.

A legitimate social safety net would be a program that offers limited hands up to folks who’ve had a run of bad luck, or who have exercised bad judgment and learned their lesson, or who have misbehaved and mended their ways. Those hands up also would be tied to measurable efforts to find work or increased hours of work.

Giving handouts—especially broadly targeted or altogether untargeted handouts—making them repeatably renewable or outright permanent, and not keying them to working is no safety net. It’s

An Early Model

Posted on by
Reply

The Georgia Senate has passed, and sent to the Georgia House, election reform legislation that could be a model for other States to follow—while, say I, encouraging—requiring, really—the Federal government to butt out.

Some highlights:

  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and
  • limit mail-in ballots to individuals who qualify based on specific criteria
    • people who are physically disabled
    • are over 65 years old
    • are eligible as a military or overseas voter
    • have a religious holiday around election day
    • work in elections
    • somehow need to be outside their voting precinct during the early voting period and election day
  • eliminate no-excuse absentee voting
  • require voter identification to request an absentee ballot
  • require Georgia to participate in a nongovernmental multi-state voter registration system to cross-check the eligibility of voters
  • allow mobile voting units to be used only to replace current brick-and-mortar voting facilities, not supplement them
  • set up a telephone hotline to receive complaints and reports regarding voter intimidation and election fraud, and require the State’s Attorney General to review them within three days

You’re Not Like Us

Posted on by
Reply

Bion Bartning, Co-founder of Eos Products and Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism President, wrote in Sunday‘s Wall Street Journal of his children’s experience in what used to be (my characterization) a top-drawer private school, New York City’s Riverdale Country School.

The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color.

Then the Bartnings raised concerns to the school’s administration.

I have always felt a strong connection with Martin Luther King Jr’s dream of an America where people “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” I advocate genuine antiracism, rooted in dignity and humanity. But the ideology underlying the “racial literacy” guide distributed by the school wasn’t like that. Instead of emphasizing our common humanity, it lumps people into simplistic racial groupings. It teaches that each person’s identity and status is based largely on skin color, and leaves no place for people like me, who are of mixed race [he’s an immigrant who’s Mexican/Yaqui and Jewish] or don’t place race at the heart of their identity.

The school master’s response—when it got around to it? It was buried at the end of an email exchange about another matter entirely:

I wonder if this might be a good moment to think whether or not this is the best school for you and your family—being philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned.

[B]eing philosophically misaligned is never a very good experience for all concerned. That just adds to it. Wrong think demands expulsion of the wrong thinkers.

This is a naked repudiation of our nation’s years of effort toward the equality of opportunity that flows from integration. This is a demand for a return to the racist segregation of the last century. The Left is resuming, in spades, to its racist history.

Weasel Words

Posted on by
Reply

We saw the value of Senator Joe Manchin’s (D, WV) promises and commitments when he said that he would not support a bill that didn’t have support and input from “his Republican friends”—and then voted for reconciliation on the Progressive-Democrats’ $1.9 trillion Wuhan Virus “relief” bill, passed on strictly party lines. And then he voted for the bill itself on strictly party lines. In neither case was there support from his “Republican friends.”

Manchin also has said he’s against doing away with the filibuster.  Here, though, we’re beginning to see another example of the valuelessness of his commitments.

On the matter of the Progressive-Democrat House’s election “reform” bill,

Top Democrats have voiced they’re not going to allow the filibuster to shut down the recent voting reform bill passed in the House. They suggested there should be reconciliation permission for proposals involving civil and voting rights.
Even Manchin has signaled his willingness to ditch the filibuster when it comes to the election proposal.

And

I’m not willing to take away the involvement of the minority. I’m not going to go there until my Republican friends have the ability to have their say also. … I’m hoping they will get involved to the point where we have 10 of them that will work with 50 of us.

Notice another item here, too. Ten Republicans are required to work with his Progressive-Democrats. No one from Party is required—nor even encouraged—to work with Republicans.

We need to remember this Newspeak definition of “work with” in the fall of 2022—not only in West Virginia, but across our republic.

False Flag

Posted on by
Reply

Progressive-Democrats continue to wax hysterical about an armed insurrection that they claim occurred on 6 January when Congressmen were traumatized by a bunch of rioters who penetrated the Capital Building and inflicted a fair amount of damage and did some looting.

However.

Jill Sanborn, FBI Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division in front of a Congressional joint oversight committee last Wednesday:

To my knowledge we have not recovered any [firearms] on that day from any of the arrests at the scene at this point. No one has been charged with a firearms violation.

And this exchange with Senator Ron Johnson (R, WI):

Johnson: How many shots were fired that we know of?
Sanborn: The only shots fired were the ones [fired by a Capitol Police officer] that resulted in the death of the one lady[.]

What “armed insurrection?” Tough to have one without arms.

No, this whole sad charade is wholly made up by the Progressive-Democrats and their communications arm, the press, to distract from the manifest failures of Progressive-Democrat policies, whether immigration, election (re)form, foreign policy, what-have-you.