Tag Archives: economics

“Our Federal Dollars”

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It doesn’t get any clearer than this.  Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has illustrated the addictive nature of Federal funds transfers to the States and lower government jurisdictions with that phrase.

In defending his city’s lawsuit against the Federal government over DoJ’s decision to withhold Federal monies from cities that violate Federal law by protecting illegal aliens from enforcement of immigration law, Murray said this:

The federal government cannot compel our police department to enforce federal immigration law and cannot use our federal dollars to coerce Seattle into turning our backs on our immigrant and refugee communities.

Our federal dollars.  The dollars aren’t theirs.  Those dollars are Texas citizens’ money.  Those dollars are New York citizens’ money.  Those dollars are Illinois citizens’ money.  Those dollars are Oregon citizens’ money.  Those dollars are the money of the citizens of every State and territory in the nation, including Washington.  Those dollars are money transferred from all those other citizens around the nation.

This is what such transfers lead to: the powerful addiction of a sense of entitlement to other people’s money and the loss of any sense of responsibility for a jurisdiction’s own money.

Port Automation

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It’s coming to west coast ports, and the unions don’t like it.

The push over the last decade by international maritime ports to fully automate operations has sparked the ire of many US longshoremen whose high-paying jobs and way of life are at stake. The trend also sets up a battle between their unions and companies and governments who see automation as a cleaner, more efficient and more cost-friendly alternative to the current system.

Never mind that west coast ports—three in particular, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Oakland—do 40% of the nation’s (not just the west coast’s) container traffic and so costs there have sharp impact on the nation’s economy.

Never mind that the west coast ports often are subject to expensive longshoremen union work slowdowns.

The Washington Council on International Trade this week released a report that attempted to quantify how severely the [2015] slowdown directly impacted Washington state businesses. That final price tag: $770 million.

Never mind that west coast ports often are subject to even more expensive longshoremen union strikes, including illegal strikes.

Never mind that longshoremen union strikes against west coast ports often turn violent.

The automation will reduce costs—good for the shippers and ultimately for us consumers—and increase profits—which means jobs, albeit different ones and with lags for the different jobs to develop.

And robots don’t do work slowdowns, robots don’t strike, robots don’t get violent when they don’t get their way.

Another Assault on US Intellectual Property

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Beijing has proposed requiring cloud-computing services providers to turn over essentially all ownership and operations to Chinese partners and could result in the transfer of valuable US intellectual property, according to the letter, viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Not “could result”—technology theft transfer is the point of the requirement.  This comes against the backdrop of the People’s Republic of China’s ongoing technology requirements.

China already places restrictions on investing for foreign cloud providers operating in the country under rules passed in the last two years…including forced collaboration with rivals and technology transfer.

Is the PRC market really worth these losses?

House Freedom Caucus of No

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Yesterday, the membership of the House Freedom Caucus of No forced the American Health Care Act, the first stage of a three-stage Obamacare repeal and replace program offered by the majority of the House Republican Conference, to be withdrawn from the day’s backup vote (recall that these No-ers already had forced a delay from Thursday’s vote over their demand to have their way or there could be no Act), and so there will be no AHCA.

As a result of the No-ers’ our way or nothing attitude, the American people now get nothing at all.  We’re forced to stay with Obamacare and the disastrous failure of that program. Of particular interest, included in those American people are these No-ers’ own constituents, whose interests these No-ers so loudly pretend that they’re protecting.  Yet, with their performance, they’ve ensured that their own constituents also get nothing; the No-ers have betrayed their own electorate.

I have to ask: on whose side are the No-ers; their tactics have led directly to the continuation of Obamacare?  Are they on the side of the Progressive-Democrats whose program Obamacare is?  Or are they in Congress for their own benefit?

They’re certainly not interested in the welfare of the American people, or of their own constituents.

For your reference in the 2018 election cycle, here are the members of the House Freedom Caucus of No, who put their demands ahead of the nation’s citizens’ needs:

  • Mark Meadows, North Carolina, Chair
  • Justin Amash, Michigan
  • Brian Babin, Texas
  • Ted Poe, Texas
  • Randy Weber, Texas
  • Rod Blum, Iowa
  • Dave Brat, Virginia
  • Tom Garrett, Jr, Virginia
  • Morgan Griffith, Virginia
  • Jim Bridenstine, Oklahoma
  • Mo Brooks, Alabama
  • Ken Buck, Colorado
  • Warren Davidson, Ohio
  • Jim Jordan, Ohio
  • Ron DeSantis, Florida
  • Bill Posey, Florida
  • Ted Yoho, Florida
  • Scott DesJarlais, Tennessee
  • Jeff Duncan, South Carolina
  • Mark Sanford, South Carolina
  • Trent Franks, Arizona
  • Paul Gosar, Arizona
  • David Schweikert, Arizona
  • Andy Harris, Maryland
  • Jody Hice, Georgia
  • Raúl Labrador, Idaho
  • Alex Mooney, West Virginia
  • Gary Palmer, Alabama
  • Steve Pearce, New Mexico
  • Scott Perry, Pennsylvania

Delays

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The House Republicans were forced to cancel yesterday’s scheduled American Health Care Act vote.  The Freedom Caucus, the Caucus of No, couldn’t be satisfied.  Congressmen like Jim Jordan (R, OH) and Caucus of No Chairman Mark Meadows (R, NC) refused late compromises, all the while insisting by implication from their refusals that constituents of other Congressmen, for instance Tom Cole (R, OK), worked for them and not that Cole worked for his Oklahoma constituents—and that those Oklahoma constituents might have different imperatives than those Congressmen of the Caucus.  So, no compromise from the No-ers.

Even after regulation changes that were part of Phase II of the overall three phase repeal and replace plan were offered to be brought into this Phase I AHCA, the No-ers refused.  Never mind that even the need to make such an offer displayed a monumental distrust by the No-ers of their ex-Congressional colleague, Tom Price, now Secretary of Health and Human Services and the gentleman who would have carried out those regulation rescissions of Phase II.  Even the No-ers’ plaint that they wanted those regulation removals written into law rather than merely rescinded makes no sense: that could have been legislated next year, by this same Congress, and that, as change to a done, deal would have thereby much easier to do.

Nor did a single member of the Caucus of No offer either any plan for getting the changed bill past a Senate filibuster from these too-large changes or any explanation of why their demanded changes would have permitted the bill still to go through via reconciliation and a majority-only vote.

It’s clear that the Freedom Caucus, this Caucus of No, is little more than a collection of yapping porch dogs, or alternatively just a bunch of right-handed virtue-signaling snowflakes, with little interest in actually improving our health provision system or restoring our health care to us constituents and our doctors.