Tag Archives: political parties

Progressive-Democrat Extortion

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The Progressive-Democrats in Congress held up the last Wuhan Virus Federal aid program for four critical days, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Pelosi (D, NY). These persons tried to force inclusion in the aid an array of programs irrelevant to it but central to the Progressive-Democrats’ ideology and platform.

They’re at it again. The new aid effort, currently under way in the Senate, is centered on small businesses and their employees: an additional $250 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program

Two top [Progressive-]Democrats—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—in a statement on Wednesday morning said they want the additional $250 billion for PPP to get packaged with other provisions, such as $100 billion for health-care institutions, $150 billion for state and local governments and extra help for food-stamp recipients.

These two, and their cronies in both houses of Congress, are holding up the aid while they try to force inclusion of $100 billion for health-care institutions, $150 billion for state and local governments and extra help for food-stamp recipients.

This is just naked extortion. Nice aid program you have there. You need to pay some protection fees for it.

Never mind that additional funding—from some source, not necessarily on the taxpayers’ backs, but maybe so—for hospitals, et al., for state and local governments who’ve a long history of fiscal irresponsibility, for those on food stamps could easily be discussed and debated in a separate bill or three.

Never mind, too, that not a single red penny of the $150 billion already appropriated for health care and medical-related stockpiles has been spent. Piling more money behind that bottleneck serves no purpose beyond virtue-signaling.

No. Small businesses and their employees can just go hang unless Progressive-Democrats get their demands met. As The Wall Street Journal put it, [t]ens of thousands of small businesses are heading for bankruptcy without short-term liquidity from the feds. That’s OK, though, if Party can’t get its demands met.

Again, no. Paying the vig, paying the ransom—paying the Danegeld just gets the payer stuck with the Dane forever.

The Coming Wuhan Virus War

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Daniel Henninger worries about the next Wuhan Virus war (he refers to it with the more press’ saccharine, more politically correct label, “coronavirus” war).  This is a political war between the American Left and the rest of our American nation.

In the course of his piece, though, he had a couple of remarks that I’m not sure he really understood.

A federally led policy is appropriate in a national crisis like this.

Indeed, but federally led, not centrally led.

But once it passes, the issue will be whether to revert to the freest private economy we had in a generation or whether deeper, explicit social direction and economic protections by the national government are justified.

This depends entirely on whether Americans in general understand the difference between “federal government” and “central government.” That’s a distinction Progressives, Progressive-Democrats, and their “education” divisions of teachers unions have been working so hard for so long to muddy.

We’ll need to turn out in force in the coming election to prevent Progressive-Democrat destruction. Yes, that’s part of the war which worries Henninger—but the answer to Progressive-Democrats’ divisiveness and destruction cannot be, at this crossroads for our nation, simply to turn the other cheek or otherwise ignore attacks on our freedoms and our personal responsibilities.

State Governments and Socialism

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A current government move to control the means of production—classic socialism when the controls are widespread—is this, involving what’s left of our nation’s insurance industry, at the State level.

In at least three states, lawmakers have proposed legislation to force insurers to pay billions of dollars for business losses tied to government-ordered shutdowns.

Never mind what already agreed policies say. To Hell with signed contracts. Government men Know Better, and being above petty commitments themselves, can’t conceive the idea that commitments actually matter in a free society, in a free market economy.

Some regulators have declared moratoriums on cancellations and nonrenewals of policies.

This is Government assuming control of the insurance companies and dictating what they will produce.

Here is the blatantness of the power grab made manifest:

In Massachusetts, state Senator James [Jamie] Eldridge (d) said that the depth of the coronavirus pandemic has made bold legislative action a necessity. A bill he has proposed would require insurers to pay so-called business-interruption claims to small businesses even if policies contain virus exclusions.

Insurers get reimbursed later? No, they’ll have to apply to Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democratic government-appointed insurance commissioner for that, and the commissioner would be authorized to bill those same insurers, “possibly over years,” to cover the payouts. I am altering the deal; pray I don’t alter it any further.

Of course, all of this is for the best of reasons and soundest of motives. For some politicians, that’s actually true, too, regardless of the misguided nature of their actions.

For most, though, this is just another implementation of Progressive-Democrats’ mantra of never letting a crisis go to waste; they’re just too useful for expanding government power.

Progressive-Democrats and the Law

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And contracts.  Since the SARS epidemic of some years ago, insurers have declined to cover losses related to virus or bacteria damage, and they wrote their policies to that effect. State regulators—who controlled and still control the structure of insurance policies and the premiums allowed to be charged for those policies outside Obamacare—agreed.

However.

New Jersey Assemblyman Roy Freiman, a Democrat, introduced a bill that would retroactively rewrite interruption coverage contracts and force insurers to foot some losses for any policyholder with fewer than 100 full-time employees.

Contracts be damned. They don’t fit the Progressive-Democrat agenda, so by Progressive-Democrat-run Government fiat, they must be tossed.

Here’s the kicker, though.

Mr Freiman says he doesn’t know if he has the legal authority to do this, but he says he doesn’t care.

The law be damned too—it’s in the Progressive-Democrat’s way. Don’t get enough of his fellows in the legislature to agree with him and change the law. Don’t get actual voters to agree with him and so get legislators to stand with him to change the law.

No. The Progressive-Democrat already Knows Better; everyone should just get out of his way so he can toss the law without any silly delays from the ignorant unwashed.

In Defense of an Election Defeat

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Ex-Congressman Dan Lipinski (D, IL) lost his State’s primary election largely—almost entirely—because of his pro-life position on abortion.  He wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal explaining how that loss came about:

I faced it [the question of whether he should have changed his abortion stance to win the primary] head-on in my statement. I defended my pro-life position, which is rooted in both my Catholic faith and science. “I could never give up protecting the most vulnerable human beings in the world, simply to win an election,” I said. “My faith teaches, and the Democratic Party preaches, that we should serve everyone, especially the most vulnerable. …”

Then he closed his piece with this:

[P]arty leaders and presidential candidates refuse to tolerate anyone who doesn’t support abortion on demand at any time, paid for by taxpayers.
The Democratic Party asserts that its highest priority right now is to defeat President Trump. The party’s treatment of pro-life voters belies that claim.

Party’s treatment of Party non-believers doesn’t belie the claim so much as it makes the claim harder to satisfy. After all, babies don’t vote, but pro-life citizens of all political bent do.

Kudos to this rare Democrat who put integrity and honor and respect for life above winning an election.