Tag Archives: political parties

Mistaken?

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In a Fox News article centered on Congressman Chip Roy’s (D, TX) proposed legislation that would bar Federal funds from going to schools that teach critical race theory (the foolishness doesn’t deserve capitalization), Cato Institute’s Colleen Hroncich had this in objecting to Roy’s proposal:

For starters, the federal government has no constitutional role in education[.]

Plainly, the Federal government does have a role, Constitutional or otherwise, in education—hence the existence of those federal funds to schools that Roy’s proposal would block.

Alternatively, Hroncich is correct, and all Federal funds transfers to schools should stop.

Free Market or Pro-Working Class?

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That’s the question posed regarding the future of the Republican Party in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal Saturday Essay.

The headline and subheadline combine to posit a false dichotomy, though.

Can the GOP Become a Real Working-Class Party?
Some Republicans want the party to break from its longtime free-market agenda and focus instead on the needs and frustrations of workers. Others see danger in moving away from the legacy of Reagan.

It isn’t possible to be pro-working class without being also being pro-free market. It’s the free market that generates the prosperity, flexibility of business decision-making, and breadth of worker and potential worker choice that produce the most benefit for workers.

Jim Crow 2.0, Deprecated

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The Just the News lede tells the tale after President Joe Biden’s (D) widely spread conspiracy theory.

A full 0% of black voters in Georgia report having a “poor” experience voting in the 2022 midterms, a notable showing after several years of Democratic politicians arguing that the state is working to suppress black votes.

The University of Georgia’s School of Public & International Affairs ran a poll:

Among black voters, more than 72% said “excellent,” 23% said “good,” just under 9% said “fair,” and 0% said “poor.”

Will Biden or anyone in his syndicate apologize for his smear?

Nah. Suggesting that would be carrying conspiracy theories to ridiculous extremes.

South Dakota’s Purity Caucus

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The State’s Republican governor, Kristi Noem, is being taken to task for—supposedly—overstepping State constitutional bounds in the way her executive branch agencies propose legislation and introduce it into the legislature.

South Dakota’s very own Purity Freedom Caucus is claiming that those agencies

“overstepped their authority” by exploiting a loophole in the state lawmaking process that allows agencies to introduce bills without a legislative sponsor….

In the present case, South Dakota’s Department of Labor and Regulations submitted two bills to the State’s House Commerce and Energy Committee, and the committee’s chairman then sent the bills directly to the House floor rather than first having it processed by his committee—debate and vote.

Congresswoman Tina Mulally (R), treasurer of the legislature’s Freedom Caucus, complained that all of this circumvents the power of the legislature, and

The governor and the executive agencies seem to conveniently forget we have three branches of government, not one[.]

There are a number of things about this. One is that the Caucus beef in the particular case is with the Commerce and Energy Committee chairman, not any entity in the Executive Branch. It was the committee chairman’s decision to skip the committee process, not that of anyone in the DLR.

Another is that South Dakota, indeed, has three branches of government, and they’re coequal; the Executive is not subordinate (nor superior) to the Legislative. Furthermore, the State’s legislature still has to act on the proposed legislation—to shelve it or debate it, and if debating, then to shelve it or vote it up or down. Nothing in the State’s constitution says otherwise.

But the largest thing is the internally contradictory business about executive agencies overstepping their authority by exploiting a loophole. If there is a loophole, there are no related boundaries. That’s pretty tautological.

If members of the self-identified Freedom Caucus doesn’t like the loophole being used, they should move to close it rather than whine about its being used.

The Tax Cut that Isn’t

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Minnesota’s Progressive-Democratic (formally, Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor) governor, Tim Walz, is proposing a “tax cut” of up to $2,600 for Minnesotans. His plan calls for income tax credits, paid in the form of checks to recipients rather than reductions in taxes owed at tax filing time, for Minnesotans. The checks would be for

$2,000 for families with incomes below $150,000, and $1,000 for single filers making less than $75,000. They would be exempt from federal taxes. Taxpayers could also get an additional $200 for each dependent—up to three.

But only for some Minnesotans. Those of whom Walz and his government cronies disapprove, those earning more than those income caps would get…nothing. They’re the ones who will be paying those checks with their tax remittals.

If Walz, et al., were truly interested in a tax cut, those wonders would push for an across the board income tax rate reduction.

But, no—leave it to a Progressive-Democratic Party politician to masquerade an income redistribution scheme as a tax cut.