Tag Archives: political economy

This Move Suits Me

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Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler and his City Council are upset with Texas and our heartbeat law.

Portland City Council is to consider an emergency resolution this week to ban future travel, goods and services from the state of Texas in protest of the state’s new abortion law.
In statement released Friday, Mayor Ted Wheeler said City Council will hold a vote on the resolution on Wednesday, Sept 8, with the intent to ban Portland’s “future procurement of goods and services from, and City employee business travel to, the state of Texas.”

That works for me. Wheeler, acting as both Mayor and Police Commissioner, has actively condoned the rioting, looting, and arson that’s been going on in his city for more than a year, and he’s actively prevented his police force from protecting Federal property. He’s even, just recently, allowed a riotous clash between antifa and a far right group to continue to the point of gunfire by requiring his police to not interfere.

Portland’s City Council is working assiduously to defund the police altogether.

With the exception of those police themselves and the city’s other emergency responders, the city’s employees have shown themselves unfit for decent company. They’ll not be missed here.

Foolishness

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It interlaces with other foolishness, especially when it comes to government. For instance, in August 2021’s 7500 pages of regulatory bidness:

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued a plan to protect the majestic White Bluffs bladderpod, a subspecies of scruffy plant that grows on a row of hills in one county of Washington state. Another subspecies is more common. The most distinctive difference, a state fact sheet says, is that one bladderpod has “stalked hairs,” while the other has “sessile, appressed hairs.”
The Federal Highway Administration, with happier news for Washington state, approved a plan to expand Interstate 405…between milepost 21.79 and milepost 27.06. Why does it take more than a year to approve 5.27 miles of road construction? The 2,269-page environmental review was published last July, and it conclusively showed that the new roadway will not pave over bladderpods.

This is one of the bottomless pits into which our governments—at any jurisdiction and of any party—toss our tax money.

This Pretty Much Says It All

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At a Pennsylvania State House Consumer Affairs Committee hearing, solar industry representatives decried the level of State interest in solar energy production relative to more traditional sources of energy production.

[T]he potential for the industry to flourish still exists, said the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), if only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize more investment.

And this from SEIA’s Mid-Atlantic Senior Manager of State Affairs, Scott Elias:

Some states have more aggressive goals. Even 2.5% by 2030 would increase the demand in Pennsylvania.

If only the state revamped some of its policies to incentivize. That attitude clearly illustrates solar energy’s dependence on Government for its growth.

When solar energy becomes an actually viable source of energy, the industry won’t need government “incentives;” the free market will drive interest and facilitate industry growth.

Debt Ceilings and Spend-Thriftiness

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One hundred and three House Republicans have signed a letter committing themselves to never vote for a debt ceiling increase under any circumstances. Forty-six Senate Republicans have signed a substantially similar letter.  (Aside: the nine Republican Representatives and four Republican Senators should be asked why they’re not signing on.) The signatories

will not vote to increase the debt ceiling, whether that increase comes through a stand-alone bill, a continuing resolution, or any other vehicle.

Of course, Congressional Progressive-Democrats are in a snit over that. Their beef centers, amorally, on “You guys are spendthrifts, too!”

They say most of the spending that will cause a breach of the debt limit later this year was passed on a bipartisan basis before President Biden assumed office.
They also note that Republicans significantly increased the deficit when they were in power during the first two years of former President Donald Trump’s term….

True enough. Both parties are guilty of spending American taxpayers’ money like it’s all Modern Monetary Theory’s bottomless bank of monopoly dollars. That, however, is no excuse for continuing the fiscal—and national economic security—folly.

Progressive-Democrats are in control now, with a majority in the House and control of both the Senate and the White House.

Progressive-Democrats have, today and in the coming months, the political capacity to show that they’re not just a bunch of woke virtue signalers and to live the virtue they claim. Today and in the coming months, the Progressive-Democrats can adjust their spending ways to limit themselves to the existing debt ceiling.

Inflation

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The headline screams Fed’s inflation measure soars by most in 30 years. The lede then cries out

The Core Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation measure, accelerated last month by the most on an annual basis in 30 years.

And

Core PCE, which excludes food and energy, rose 3.6% year over year in July, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the most since 1991.

2020 is an aberrational year, though, with its economic dislocation caused by government fiat rather than by economic forces. All comparisons with 2020 should come with an asterisk.

A better comparison is with 2019, the last year prior to the government’s interference. Core CPE rose only around 2.4% per year compared to those two years ago, according to my third-grade arithmetic and data from FRED (with the graph adjusted to start 2019-01-01), roughly in line with the Fed’s target of 2%.

That’s a rate worth watching, but it’s nothing to get excited over. It’s also the case that, within the current year, month-over-month inflation may be decreasing. It’s too early for this to be taken as a serious trend, but it also bears watching.