Tag Archives: culture

They Don’t Have to Accept the Deal

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The Trump administration has frozen $2.2 billion in funds for Harvard, out of some $9-ish billion in progress, over Harvard’s refusal to rid itself of the antisemitic bigots and terrorist-supporters in its student, professor, and school management populations. The editors at The Wall Street Journal object, but they’re missing the point.

Stipulate that the feds have a duty to enforce civil-rights laws, and Harvard failed to protect Jewish students during anti-Israel protests. But the university agreed to strengthen protections for Jewish students in a legal settlement with Students Against Antisemitism, which praised it for “implementing effective long-term changes.”
The Trump Administration nonetheless demanded last week that Harvard accede to what is effectively a federal receivership under threat of losing $9 billion. Some of the demands are within the government’s civil-rights purview, such as requiring Harvard to discipline students who violate its discrimination policies. It also wants Harvard to “shutter all diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, under “whatever name,” that violate federal law.
But the Administration runs off the legal rails by ordering Harvard to reduce “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization.” It also orders the school to review “all existing and prospective faculty…for plagiarism” and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in “each department, field, or teaching unit.”

Leave aside the underlying premise that the words of “the university” have any value given the ongoing assaults against Jewish students, interference with their getting to class and the ability to participate in class/hear the lecture of those who do make it, interference with their ability to speak at all, and the ongoing disruptions by the terrorist supporters.

Stipulate that Harvard is a private institution, and it can do pretty much what it wants concerning “governance bloat, duplication, or decentralization,” “plagiarism,” and “viewpoint diversity.” As long as the school takes Federal dollars, the Federal government gets to specify how those dollars get used, just as any other donor can do.

Harvard doesn’t have to accept the deal on offer. Harvard also doesn’t have to get Federal dollars. The one is intrinsic in the school’s status as a private enterprise. The other is not at all intrinsic in it. Those Federal donations are nothing more than that—a privilege being received by Harvard, not anything to which Harvard has any right, in any sense of that term.

Responsibility

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The Republican caucuses in the Senate and House are considering restrict[ing] the [provider] taxes’ use to finance state Medicaid contributions entirely, which would have the effect of putting more of a State’s expenditures under Medicaid on the State itself: overall, the restriction would save the Federal government—which is us taxpaying citizens writ nationwide—some $600 billion over 10 years.

There are objections, of course, by those whose money tree would be severely pruned. Ryan Cross, Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System’s Government Affairs VP:

If you end provider taxes, you’re going to shift that burden to the state, either harming Medicaid patients and healthcare-provider reimbursement, or leading to higher state and local taxes[.]

This is disingenuous. Any harm done Medicaid patients, who as citizens of their State are the responsibility of that State, and of healthcare providers, who as operators in that State also are the responsibility of that State, is done by that State through its own decisions regarding the tax remittals of that State’s own citizens. Regarding those decisions, it apparently is inconceivable to Cross and the rest of the Leftists that the State could reallocate its spending to cover the costs rather than just knee-jerk and willy-nilly raise its taxes.

These are $600 billion dollars for which us taxpaying citizens of our nation have better use.

An Alternative Question

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A writer to The Wall Street Journal‘s Thursday’s Letters section responded to Alicia Finley’s column A Good Man for US Manufacturing Is Hard to Find, writing,

Ms Finley says “a good worker, like a good man, can be hard to find these days” and that women struggle to find “suitable mates.” Perhaps that is because they largely want men who make more than $150,000 a year as “professionals.” Why would men want to enter “blue collar” professions only to be rejected by women?

An alternative question, and a more cogent one, I claim, is this: What self-respecting man, blue- or white collar, would want a self-identified gold digger for a wife?

Some Welfare Reform Ideas

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Convert our welfare programs virtually entirely to hand up programs instead of the handout programs that they are currently. There are a relative few folks who truly cannot make their own way and need the support of handouts, but these would be more easily taken care of were the present waste in the form of payments to those who don’t need the help eliminated. That’s even before the fraud and abuse—two virtually synonymous terms in this context—gets dealt with.

Those who don’t really need the help can be dealt with in the following ways. First is to recognize the everyone is capable of falling on hard times, whether through things beyond their control or through their own negligence or mistakes. Give them access to hand up programs, but those programs must come with expiration deadlines after which payments to individuals cease. Extensions should be possible, but they should be difficult to obtain, with the onus on the recipient to prove he still needs them and still is doing his best to meet the criteria for a hand up.

Additionally, hand up programs must come with means testing. Means should be based on the Federal Poverty Guidelines, which in the main, they are. However, currently, “means” generally has thresholds running from 200% to 400%, of the FPG. That has to stop. If a family’s earned income is above the Poverty Guideline, they are tautologically not poverty-stricken. They do not need Federal welfare, even if living just above the Guideline is uncomfortable.

There must be a work requirement attached to all hand up programs. Able-bodied individuals must be working, looking for work actively (not just tossing a resume over the transom once a week or sitting around a union hall), or in training or schooling for work (financial support for the training/schooling, if needed, must come from the State or local jurisdictions).

Finally, Federal welfare must be a last resort after local community, church, and charity capacities are exhausted, then city, county/parish government jurisdiction and larger charity capacities are exhausted, then State and regional charity capacities are exhausted. Particularly regarding the governmental jurisdiction from the city/county/parish level on up to the State, capacity must be limited to existing revenues, with no increases in American taxpayer fund transfers into the State or local jurisdictions.

These are not new ideas, but it’s long past time to implement them. Doing so not only would benefit welfare recipients and those who do not really need welfare payments, it would strongly benefit our nation writ large by reducing drastically Federal spending, with the resulting impact on our yearly budget deficits and our national debt, and by increasing our GDP through all those folks going back to work, improving national productivity.

We Want our Maypo®

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HHS has terminated or canceled, as the case may be, some $12 billion in grants to the States for health-related programs, and a number of State Attorneys General, led by Arizona’s Kris Mayes (D) are suing to keep the dollars flowing.

Never mind that the grants were Wuhan Virus Situation-related, and that that pandemic is long since ended. HHS made that clear in the cancelation notice:

[T]he grants and cooperative agreements were issued for a limited purpose: to ameliorate the effects of the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.

This is clear enough. Yet, the AGs perform their artificial hysteria. Here’s Mayes in particular:

By slashing these grants, the Trump administration has launched an all-out attack on Arizona’s public health system—harming the entire state, but hitting rural communities the hardest. These cuts target the very places that rely most on this critical funding

This is risible on its face. There is no attack, all-out or limited, on Arizona. The State’s governing personnel know full well that the pandemic has been expired for some years, and from that, they knew just as well that the Federal funding for that purpose would come to an end. Arizona, et al., have had plenty of time to (re)allocate State funds to those ends, to the extent each State thought those ends still necessary.

The States chose otherwise, and now they’re demanding their never-ending stream of Federal dollars to continue.

We want our Maypo®, indeed.