Tag Archives: political parties

Federal Aid

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The Federal Paycheck Protection Program is out of money—the first round was that successful—and Progressive-Democrats are once again blocking it from being funded unless they get

hundreds of billions more for hospitals and city and state governments[]

added in.

This is nonsense, but these worthies don’t mind blowing up our nation’s economy if they can’t have their way.

Never mind that the States don’t need more money; any budget gaps they have are the direct result of their conscious spending decisions. They need only to reallocate the monies they’re spending.

To the extent more Federal money really is needed in particular States, those funds should bypass the State governments and go directly to the entities needing the funds—those hospitals, for instance, small businesses—that PPP thing—unemployment insurance facilities, and the like. Along with the stimulus payments directly to taxpayers and pension/SS recipients.

It’s true that State employment facilities are State government facilities, but State governments need not get their hands on the money on the way by; this opportunity could be mitigated by making receipt of the money contingent on the State Government not siphoning other monies already programmed or planned for the employment facility—perhaps even by requiring the State governments to match the Federal disbursements dollar-for-dollar with State spending allocations reallocated. (NB: promises to reallocate future spending should be ignored.)

Employment Insurance

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This is Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s latest brain…storm.

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee proposes getting all 50 states to adopt and dramatically scale up short-time compensation programs—also known as work sharing—in which businesses and companies in distress keep workers employed at reduced hours, with the federal government helping to make up the difference in workers’ wages.

That’s not going to do anything other than shift a part of a worker’s pay from the company employing him to us taxpayers.  With Uncle Sugar—that’s us—picking up part of the tab, companies would have no incentive to keep workers employed fulltime, much less pay them a full wage. They would have an incentive to claim this or that distress.

Such a move also would distort cost-signaling by masking the true cost of labor to a company. That would flow, in turn, to inaccurate price signaling in the market place, since the prices buyers would see would not be tied to the seller’s true costs.

This is just another example of Progressive-Democrats looking to expand their welfare cage and gild it with taxpayer money.

Too Polite to Say

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In an interview on Monday night’s The Ingraham Angle and cited by Fox News, Congressman Jim Jordan (R, OH) had this about the House Progressive-Democrats’ obstructionism and abuse of the present Wuhan Virus situation to push their own progressivism:

[H]e has spoken off-the-record to some congressional Democrats who want to get back to work but are held in line by party leadership.

The Congressman is too courteous. If those Progressive-Democrats really are being held back, it’s not by Party leadership. It’s by their own cowardice.

Full stop.

Capitalism

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William McGurn had a piece in Monday’s Wall Street Journal about Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) attitude toward capitalism, centered on Sanders’ view that every economically successful person is necessarily selfishly greedy, and by extension, that that person’s success is from the fundamental zero-sum nature of capitalism.

Sanders is wrong.

At the bottom of capitalism is an entirely voluntary exchange between two people, each seeing to his own interest. At the end of the exchange, each has satisfied his own interest: each is better off from the exchange than he was before it because each has gained something that he wanted and didn’t have.

And: each, with that exchange, has made the other better off, too.

It scales up. Businesses prosper by making their customers better off, and by giving those businesses their custom, customers make those businesses better off. The better each does—at satisfying both themselves and the others—the better the other does, too.

Both of these are lost on folks like Sanders, and Joe Biden. They don’t even conceive the notion.

Their blinders notwithstanding, though, it’s hard to find a more moral economic system. It’s also hard to find a less zero-sum economic system.

A Progressive-Democrat Governor’s View

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…of the intelligence and responsibility of American citizens, including particularly Kentucky citizens.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear (D) has said he’s going to identify, track, and isolate Kentucky citizens who dare go to their church’s Easter services. His excuse—and that’s all it is, a cynical rationalization—for his government’s surveillance of a broad swath of citizens is the present Wuhan Virus situation.

It’s for the greater good, you see.

I hear people say, “It’s my choice”. Well, it’s not the person next to you’s choice….

That’s plainly not true. It was the person next to you’s clear choice to be there, also, knowing full well the nature and the proximity of the company both of those individuals, and it was the clear choice of all of the rest of the congregation.

Neither is there anything in either the Free Exercise Clause or the Establishment Clause that says “except for when a State governor thinks better.” This is simply a confluence of two Progressive-Democrat ideologies: American citizens are too grindingly stupid to make their own decisions or to act intelligently (here, to govern their own post-service behavior), and religious freedom is just a phrase that’s gone out of vogue because, after all, the Constitution isn’t binding on anything.

Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) is on the right track:

Taking license plates at church? Quarantining someone for being Christian on Easter Sunday? Someone needs to take a step back here[.]

The Progressive-Democrat Beshear has no faith in the citizens of Kentucky or their ability to act intelligently, he wants Government to identify and surveil them and then control them, and he has no respect for Law.

Kentuckians might want to remember this at the next election for Governor, in three more years.