Tag Archives: political economy

Lies of Progressive-Democrats

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Here’s another example.

Colorado’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade, plans to hand out Wuhan Virus relief funds (which the State styles “COVID-19” relief funds) to businesses based on the race of the business’ owners. Stephen Collins, Resort Meeting Source owner and represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, is suing the State over that.

Federal Judge William Martinez issued a temporary restraining order barring the OEDIT from acting on the discriminatory release of funds pending final adjudication of the matter in his court.

[H]e found that Collins was likely to prevail in the lawsuit because the Colorado law at issue “expressly requires OEDIT to prioritize minority-owned businesses in distributing grants under the Disproportionately Impacted Business Grant Program” and because “the process for qualifying as a disproportionately impacted business differs for minority-owned and non-minority-owned businesses.”

The lie(s):

OEDIT…forward[ed] two legal documents to Fox News. The office filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming that “race played no role in OEDIT’s funding decisions.”
OEDIT also filed a declaration from Michael Landes, director of OEDIT’s Opportunity Zone Program. Landes claimed that racial preferences will only come into account after all other criteria have been adjudicated.

[R]ace played no role—OEDIT is calling the judge a liar, or OEDIT is violating the State’s law requiring exactly that.

[R]acial preferences will only come into account after….  Landes calls himself a liar: either race played no role or it played a role after all other criteria. Landes calls himself a liar a second time: racial preferences will only come into account after—either racial preferences are being acted on, or they are not. When they’re being acted on doesn’t matter.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

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President Joe Biden’s (D) Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is at it again.

She’s defending the plan, buried in the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill, to snoop into all of our deposit accounts to collect data on each of our transactions of $600 or more. In a CBS News interview, cited by Fox Business, Yellen had this:

…there are “individuals” the IRS does not receive enough information about.
“Look, the big picture is that we have a tax gap that over the next decade is estimated at $7 trillion,” she continued. “Namely, a shortfall in the amount that the IRS is collecting due to a failure of individuals to report the income that they have earned.”

And,

But high-income individuals with opaque sources of income that are not reported to the IRS, there’s a lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on….

If she’s not getting enough information on what folks have earned, what information is she using to support her allegation of underreporting? She doesn’t say.

Her “tax gap” is estimated at $7 trillion. Estimated by whom? She doesn’t say.

[A] lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on. Based on what evidence does she make this claim of this magnitude of cheating and fraud? She doesn’t say.

Most likely, there is a measure, even a significant measure, of tax cheating and fraud. But when it comes to individuals—including members of the Left’s hated rich and successful—speculation must give way to facts and specific achievements. Beyond that, these allegations of tax cheating and fraud are allegations of crimes, and to investigate these, including snooping into personal or business financial matters, specific probable cause must be demonstrated before a judge and warrants must issue before the snooping can be done.

Absent hard data that we all can see, this preemptive snooping that Progressive-Democrats want to do is simply borne of paranoia.

Into their hearts it has creeped.

Preemptive Surrender

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This time it’s Senator Roger Marshall (R, KS) who’s announcing his surrender, even before the fight is joined.

Not that fight, the fight to block the President Joe Biden’s (D) and his syndicate’s, the Progressive-Democratic Party, spend- and tax-a-thon reconciliation bill that will take us far down the road to intrusive Big Government and toward outright socialism.

No, Marshall is surrendering before the fight is even begun that will be necessary to undo Party’s destructive policies in one and three years.

The fight in Washington, DC, right now is this: do we want big government socialism or do we want economic freedom? That’s what really this fight is all about. Once they start these programs, they’ll never end.

Once they start these programs, they’ll never end. Not of necessity. They don’t end, they continue, only as long as politicians—any collection of them, Republican Party politicians, for instance—are too timid, too outright chicken, to put an end to those programs when they return to power.

After all, once a different set of politicians are in power, they’ll have the votes, by definition, to undo the Progressive-Democrats’ policies, root and branch. That’ll be hard to do, certainly. But “hard” means “possible.” Look it up.

Worried about losing their seats after taking such supposedly drastic action, such “tough votes?” A potful of Progressive-Democrats voted up Obamacare and then got tossed at the next election. We still have Obamacare.

All those newly elected politicians—Republicans, say—would lack is the will to act. The courage then of the words now that they’re bleating. And a drastic change in their underlying mindset. To stop playing, to coin a term, the victim.

That’s Marshall’s preemptive surrender. His and his ilk’s acceptance in advance of their victimhood. That and his—and his fellows’—preference for the perks and prestige of their office over their integrity.

Dismissive Disingenuousness

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Recall that some Alaskan-harvested fish, 26 million pounds of them, had been stranded in eastern Canada, just a few hundred yards from American fish-processing plants, because President Joe Biden’s (D) Customs and Border Protection managers threatened $41 million in penalties on fish handlers if those fish moved down a 100 yard railroad line into Maine, as the Jones Act explicitly allows.

Biden’s CBP managers decided that those 100 yards didn’t satisfy the Act (or Biden’s and those managers’ whims) after decades of the ride having been entirely satisfactory.

Federal Judge Sharon Gleason issued a temporary injunction against those and any further CBP penalties, allowing the fish to move.

What’s telling about this incident, though, is this statement that the Biden-Harris administration argued in court [emphasis added]:

…an injunction wasn’t needed, because food supply chains had already begun to adjust. “Within days of CBP issuing notices of penalties in this matter the movement of Russian-origin frozen seafood from the Bayside facility began.”

Maybe this isn’t dismissiveness or disingenuousness. Maybe it’s more of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s collusion with Russia.

How Far Left

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Now Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) is being accused in the press of having “taken a hard turn to the right” because she objects to spending trillions more dollars than Progressive-Democrats (and too many Republicans) have already spent and to running up our national debt even further.

ABC News raised eyebrows for claiming that Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D, AZ) has “taken a hard turn to the right” as she continues to resist the $3.5 trillion spending spree being pushed by her Democratic colleagues.

This is a Senator that pushes for increased minimum wage and reduced health care costs by government fiat rather than via economic competition.

This is a Senator that voted for “climate change mitigation” and “equity” and subsidies for electric vehicles and “green” energy sources as major components of the “infrastructure” bill.

This is a Senator that voted for the $350 billion in increased national debt her “infrastructure” bill would create.

That the press can seriously argue that a staunch liberal like Sinema is moving to the right is an illustration of how far toward the extreme Left the Progressive-Democratic Party and its communications organ, the press, have gone.