Tag Archives: political economy

Crippling under “Migrant” Crisis

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New York City Progressive-Democratic Party Mayor Eric Adams thinks the city is crippl[ing] under monumental budget cuts due to a migrant crisis straining public resources.

Adams is either entirely duplicitous in this, or he really is that oblivious to the facts staring him in the face, or he’s consciously turning his face away from what’s going on along our southern border (duplicitous along a different axis). In the first place, he’s not inundated with migrants, he’s getting a small flow of illegal aliens.

To the extent they are “straining public resources,” it’s because, first, the city never has taken public resource availability seriously—see the high level of homelessness before the small flow of illegals began. Second, that “strain” is because he’s chosen to divert those resources away from city residents in favor of supporting those illegals, who have no call on any American resources other than those any detention facility must provide for its inmates.

Aside from that, his city does not, in fact, have an illegal alien crisis. The cities and towns and villages along our southern border have an illegal alien flood crisis. They’re the ones who have to deal with high and increasing flow of illegals across our border.

To further illustrate the manufactured nature of his hysteria, this is what Adams wants to do otherwise with city—city residents’ tax—money.

He wants to remove from the city statues of heroes of our War of Independence and of our subsequent national founding; statues, for instance, of George Washington. He also wants to remove statues of figures involved in the Western World’s discovery of the New World; statues, for instance, of Christopher Columbus.

He wants to create a reparations task force.

He wants anti-racism training for human services contractors and city employees.

All that while pushing for budget cuts—because all those illegal aliens “migrants” of his are costing so much to welcome into his sanctuary city.

Cowardice in DoE

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Recall that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm tried a cross-country trip in her electric vehicle convoy and that, along the way on a hot and humid Georgia day, a staffer driving a gasoline-powered vehicle blocked off an EV charging station so that when the rest of Granholm’s group arrived, one of the EVs in her convoy would have a place to recharge. Police were called over the behavior by a separate EV driver who needed a charge and had a small baby in the car.

Last Tuesday, Granholm was called to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee about that incident among other items. Responding to Congressman Scott Franklin’s (R, FL) question about the incident, Granholm said,

Let me just say, I have a fantastic young staff, just fantastic. It was poor judgment on the part of the team.

Fair enough, openly acknowledging the error like that.

But when pressed by Franklin,

Granholm also sidestepped blame during the back-and-forth with Franklin on Thursday, saying that it was not her that was “saving the spot.”

But whose error, again? Isn’t she the one in charge? Wasn’t her fantastic young staffer only acting within the department culture and associated imperatives that she has consciously developed during her tenure?

This is the arrogance of Government above all, and the MFWIC of DoE above all of that. Not her fault; she’s the one in charge, she’s not one of the worker bees who, you know, actually do things.

Oh, W-a-ah

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These precious ones bring it on themselves.

Big banks and brokerage firms are handing over bigger checks to settle regulatory investigations, including those that don’t result in losses for investors. US market regulators are increasingly demanding tens of millions of dollars to settle technical violations that just a few years ago cost companies much less to resolve.

Because:

The SEC settles most of its enforcement cases, and Wall Street firms prefer to pay fines and avoid litigation that would put more heat on executives. But SEC officials under Chair Gary Gensler are seeking higher fines to settle, even if prior offenders paid less.

We’re supposed to feel sympathy for these…personages. Wall Street Is Furious Over Rising Fines From SEC goes the headline. There’s much about which to criticize Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler, but Wall Street executive shyness, fear of heat, outright cowardice isn’t on that list.

That those worthies would rather settle and skitter into the baseboard holes to avoid a bit of heat does severe disservice to the companies they’re pretending to manage and those companies’ shareholders. Litigation costs too much, and it’s cheaper to settle? Settling repeatedly runs up that cost and alters the balance.

If Wall Street managers were worthy of their paychecks, they’d hie the SEC into court over the SEC’s charges, which range from social and climate justice claptrap to the trivia noted in the linked article to the occasional legitimate SEC beef. It would take only a few wins in court to get the SEC to back off and stick to its knitting.

Knee-jerk settling SEC suits is a violation of those persons’ fiscal duties.

Speaker McCarthy and a Government Shutdown

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Supposedly, there’s considerable pressure on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R, CA) to Do Something to avoid a government shutdown in a couple of weeks.

Maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.

Part of the pressure is purely internally political. There’s no real downside to shutting down the government for a period of time, as the Schumer Shutdown and the Obama Shutdown before that demonstrated.

Besides, the government wouldn’t be fully shutdown—only non-essential areas like the EPA (whose then head demonstrated that 90% of her department employees were non-essential, at least in the short- to mid-term, when she furloughed them) would be seriously impacted.

Social Security and Medicare payments would go as scheduled, Federal debt payments would go as scheduled, our military would still be paid as scheduled, and on and on, all because there’s plenty of tax revenue coming in under current tax law to make those payments.

See this graph, from an earlier article of mine:

Some Basic Arithmetic

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Washington State has spent $143 million to get homeless folks out of camps from state property near roads and housed.

About 1,300 people were swept from roadside camps as of July 31, with roughly 430 of those rejecting help getting into temporary or permanent shelter. That means it took $165,000 per person to clear the camps and house 870 people.
The department says 126 people have successfully exited the program into permanent housing….

Washington has 25,200 homeless folks (that makes Washington’s homeless population the fourth largest in the nation, for those of you keeping track at home). Those exited from the program represent less than 10% of those 1,300 swept. The State’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor, Jay Inslee, says he needs more money:

You can’t do this with zero dollars. We’ll need the legislature in January to step up to increase funding….

Now the third grade arithmetic. The State blew through $143 million to deal with 1,300 homeless. That means Inslee wants $2.772 billion to handle all of the State’s homeless.

Inslee is willing to spend Other People’s Money, those $2.772 billion, in order to house 16,900 of those 25,200 homeless, or, still $165,000 per homeless person accepting the State’s housing offer.

Inslee is willing to spend Other People’s Money, those $2.772 billion, in order to permanently house 2,440 homeless, or $1.135 million per permanently housed.

Of course, my arithmetic ignores economies of scale, and duplication of fixed costs, but you get the idea. The only solution to this problem, or any other, that Progressive-Democratic Party politicians can conceive is to throw ever more Other People’s Money at it.