Tag Archives: political parties

Part of the Agreement

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…on Reduced-Build Back that Senators Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Chuck Schumer (D, NY) settled on last week is this Progressive-Democratic Party gem, and which illustrates in no small part the depth of the betrayal that is Manchin’s agreement.

The Senate drug agreement would require the Health and Human Services Secretary to “negotiate” prices for 10 of the top-spending drugs in Medicare starting next year and 20 by the end of the decade. If drug makers don’t accept the government’s offered price, they would get slapped with a 95% excise tax on their sales. Take his offer or else.

If that’s not the opening shot in the destruction of the American pharmaceutical industry, it’s certainly the beginning of the end of the industry’s interest in innovating and in leading the world in innovation.

That’s to the severe detriment of every American citizen who gets sick.

Some Lipstick for the Pig

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Here’s some of what’s in the Build Back Reduced bill—formally styled Inflation Reduction Act—that Senator Joe Manchin (D, WV) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) agreed, which Manchin euphemizes as an all-in energy policy:

[T]he Interior Department would be required to offer up at least two million acres of federal land and 60 million acres of offshore acreage to oil and gas producers every year for the next decade. If Interior officials fall short, they wouldn’t be able to advance some permitting aspects of the wind and solar projects on federal land.

Offer up. But at what price? And for what duration before the leases expire? Look for the Biden administration to use lease pricing to actively discourage producers from buying leases, to slow walk the subsequent permit applications that would enable the leases to be acted on, and to use the failure to get the permits on time as excuses to terminate the leases/allow them to expire.

Wisdom from the Home Front

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Regarding the Joe Manchin (D, WV)-Chuck Schumer (D, NY) deal on Reduced-Build Back, this:

with another $64 billion dedicated to extending healthcare subsidies for three years for some Affordable Care Act users.

Her analysis:

If it [ACA] made “health care” affordable, there would be no need for any subsidies, much less extended ones.

Yep.

That’s to the Good

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) may be planning to visit the Republic of China next month. Some folks are worried about that.

A Taiwan trip by Mrs Pelosi (D, CA) would likely set back any nascent rapprochement and set off a new bout of tensions, US officials and international affairs specialists said.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside of not continuing a “rapprochement” with an enemy nation whose avowed goal is to supplant and control us.

And

The visit, they said, would confirm Chinese suspicions that the US is deepening support for Taiwan, allowing its democratic government to resist Beijing’s claims to the island….

As well we should be doing, on both counts.

Further making Pelosi’s putative trip imperative is the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping’s threats of dire consequences, including military, if she actually travels. Any withdrawal of the trip now could only be taken as American abject surrender in the face of threats.

There’s this, too:

For Beijing, a trip by a politician as senior as Mrs Pelosi is seen as part of a perilous backtracking by the US on commitments limiting its relations with Taiwan.

We never should have betrayed the RoC all those decades ago in the first place. After all this time, it’ll be deucedly expensive and risky to correct that mistake, but it’s never too late to do so. All that just makes it imperative to get started; the expense and risk only grow over time.

Hostage Taking

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Recall that the President Joe Biden (D) administration, some months ago, said it would

withhold food assistance funding from schools unless they comply with the administration’s guidance on a range of LGBT issues.

After these months of trying to get the administration to retract that threat—after all, in Dole v South Dakota, the Supreme Court said the Federal government could use funding to influence, but not to coerce, State compliance—22 Republican AGs have filed suit to try to force the administration to retract its threat. Notice, too, that no Progressive-Democratic Party AGs are party to the suit.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita has the right of it:

[T]hey’ve [the Biden administration] reached a new level of shamelessness with this ploy of holding up food assistance for low-income kids unless schools do the Left’s bidding.

It truly is disgusting that this Progressive-Democrat Biden administration would use children as hostages in its attempt to coerce K-12 schools into accepting Party’s extremist position.