Tag Archives: political economy

Government Subsidies for Local Newspapers

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Dean Ridings, CEO of an organization self-absorbedly called America’s Newspapers, thinks it’s a terrific idea that the Federal government (presumably, government at any level) should…subsidize…local newspapers.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act will provide the local news industry time to continue its transition to a more digital future and to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation or other means, to be paid when Google and Facebook use its content. It is not a permanent handout.

It is not a permanent handout. That’s just risible; Ridings knows better. It would be both a handout and permanent.

And this: time to work out a better arrangement, either through legislation….

Just what we need—a Government Press for the locals: Local Izvestia, Local Russia Today, Local China Daily, Local People’s Daily in the US. Even if the legislative aspect didn’t come to fruition, the strings will be attached to the subsidies from the start.

No.

If the locals want a local press, they’ll have one through a free market. No government funding—which is to say no taxpayers’ money from outside the community, from entirely different States, from clear across the nation—is necessary or even useful.

More Disingenuosity of the Left

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Buried in the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill that they’re so desperate to hurry up and get passed before anyone can peruse it is this payoff to unions:

The bill the House passed would allow union members to deduct up to $250 of dues from their tax bills. The deduction is “above the line,” meaning filers can exclude the cost of dues from their gross income. In other words, union dues would get the same treatment now reserved for things like insurance premiums and retirement contributions.

The Progressive-Democrat Senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, claims it’s no payoff at all; it’s because

Unions are the backbone of the middle class. This legislation would put money back in the pockets of working families.

Never mind that union membership in the entire private sector is only a bit over 6%, not close to any sort of middle class backbone.

What the Progressive-Democrat carefully ignores, too, is that absent the vast increase in taxes included in the reconciliation bill, there’d be no need to put money back in the pockets of working families because that money wouldn’t be leaving those pockets in the first place.

The WSJ has the right of it:

The true goal of the tax break is to fill union coffers by making dues less of a deterrent to joining. The incentive would be particularly strong in 23 states without right-to-work laws, where workers pay partial union fees whether or not they’re members.

(Keep in mind, too, that the Progressive-Democrats also are pushing legislation that would eliminate right-to-work laws in those 23 States and nation-wide.)

Bread and circuses. Vote buying.

Nothing Definitive, Still

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The Joe Biden (D) portion of the Biden-Harris Presidency has decided to nominate Jerome Powell for a second term as Federal Reserve System Chairman. Lael Brainard, current member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, was in close contention for the nomination.

So…

Biden will nominate Brainard to become the vice chair of the central bank’s board of governors.

Splitting the baby, so everyone gets a participation trophy.

Typical of Progressive-Democrats.

Government Control of the Means of Production

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And it begins with Government control of the means of financing the means of production (among other things to be financed).

The acting head of the US’s top banking regulator called for banks to be screened for climate risk as part of their periodic stress tests and said the agency’s own regulatory approach was focused on maintaining the safety and soundness of the financial system.
“Banks face all sorts of risks everyday—credit risk, market risk, liquidity risk,” said Michael Hsu, acting comptroller of the currency. “What’s emerging now is that climate change is going to be impacting a number of those risks in different ways, and we need banks to prepare for that.”

This is nonsense. The risk that banks must be able to manage, in this venue, is the risk involved in Government reaction to the “climate change,” whether global warming is real or not.

Hsu’s attempt has nothing to do with the safety and soundness of our nation’s financial system; it has everything to do with an attempt to increase Government control of our nation’s financial system.

He Said It Out Loud

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While using the subject of reparations and the claimed need for them, as his tool, Congressman Jamaal Bowman (D, NY) said the truth out loud.

When you analyze the landscape of the country, and when you see the leaders of our corporations, the CEOs, the majority of the presidents of this country, and when you look at who in this nation has wealth and power and influence and it doesn’t represent you, that is a trauma in and of itself[.]

This has nothing to do with reparations, whether or not such a thing is warranted based on events of more than 160 years—six and seven and more generations—ago. This, Bowman made crystalline, is all about jealousy of success and all about capping those successful, taking what they’ve earned away from them and giving it to others for no reason but those others aren’t as rich.

This call for redistribution also calls those who aren’t jealous of the wealthy’s success liars for their insistence that they aren’t jealous, that they aspire to become wealthy, also.

This call for redistribution also denies those who aren’t wealthy their opportunity to achieve their own wealth—they’ll only be capped in their turn.

This call for redistribution only concerns the Progressive-Democrats’ drive to “fundamentally change America,” to turn our nation into a socialist State.

One other thing: listen to Bowman’s (who’s black, which matters only in this context) phrasing.

intergenerational trauma that our people have experienced…. …form a commission to study the impact of these traumas on our people.

Our people. Not “Americans.” Not “the American people.” Bowman doesn’t even consider 10s of millions of Americans actually to be Americans. He’s segregating them out from America. That’s the Progressive-Democrats’ racist identity politics in action.