Tag Archives: political parties

Diversity Among Candidates

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In an article reporting (now ex-) Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Cory Booker’s (D, NJ) withdrawal from Party’s primary campaign, The Wall Street Journal noted that Booker has, and continues to do so, decried the “lack of diversity” remaining among Party’s Presidential candidates.  Then the article’s author, Sabrina Siddiqui, asked the question

How could Democrats encourage more diversity in the presidential field?

To which I answer: any way that suits them.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrats should continue emphasizing ethnicity and race as the primary defining characteristics of a man and not the content of his character or the policies for which he argues.

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

Universal Basic Income

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It’s creeping ever more deeply into the Progressive-Democratic Party’s psyche and ideology. It’s an idea that was first dreamed up in the ’70s, and it remains an idea that can only fail were it to be implemented.

Giving everyone a basic income won’t improve anyone’s income; it’ll only incentivize employers to pay a wage diminished by the amount of the guaranteed government payment.  But the failure runs much deeper than that.

Such a scheme is inflationary: the outcome can only be a spike in inflation followed by price stabilization at a higher price level.

Consider an economy in which a producer has two widgets to sell, and two consumers each have a dollar. The producer can sell his widgets for a dollar each.

Now give the two consumers their basic income of $1,000 (let’s say).  The producer still has two widgets, now the consumers each have $1,001 dollars, and the producer can sell his widgets for $1,001 each.  That’s price inflation to a new level—but the consumers’ buying power remains unchanged*: they each still have only enough money to buy one widget, and no more.

Nor is there any incentive—or buying power capacity—for the producer to make more widgets to sell. The producer is getting those same dollars, devalued by the same inflation, that his consumers are getting (from his sales) and so he’s getting no added value to induce him to produce more.  Furthermore, he still can buy the same amount of widget production inputs, and no more; he cannot produce more without incurring greater cost.

 

*Actually, buying power decreases on net for producer and consumer alike, not from the weaker dollar, but from fewer of them in hands of both.  The money for that guaranteed income can only come from one or more of three (sort of) sources. The money must come from the government’s printing press—but that’s the same as the guaranteed income; the dollars just follow a more convoluted path into economy than direct disbursement.  Or the money must come from taxes, which takes money away from consumers and producers directly and leaves them with fewer dollars with which to buy goods and services or to buy inputs to production. Or the money must come from borrowing—which is future taxes or future money printing.

It’s hard to believe that all of those politicians slept through their high school economics, whether they’re today’s crop, like Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and minor town mayor Pete Buttigieg, newly graduated from high school, or Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates and Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), who were in high school the first time this idea was floated those years ago.

Contradictions?

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Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D, MN) condemns our sanctions against Iran—sanctions against that nation’s government, various members of that government, and against that government’s oil sales and other business’ international activities.

calling them “crippling” and asserting they would “starve the Iranian people.”

Of course, the crippling nature of the sanctions is the point of them: to convince the men of the Iranian government to change their ways, to in President Donald Trump’s words, stop trying to kill Americans, stop trying to kill our friends and allies, and to stop trying to get nuclear weapons. If sanctions were not crippling, they’d have no effect. Omar knows this.

And, no, the sanctions won’t starve the Iranian people. Iran produces most of its own food, and food trade is not sanctioned. Omar knows this.

And this:

First he canceled our best shot at avoiding armed conflict—the Iran nuclear deal.

The Iran nuclear deal, on the contrary, transferred $150 billion in lifted sanctions and unfrozen assets to the Iranian government, and it transferred billions of dollars—$400 million of it in cold cash in the dead of night—to the Iranian government—money which went directly to funding Iran’s terrorism-by-proxy efforts throughout the Middle East.  The Iran nuclear deal, further to the point, had no hope of avoiding armed conflict—it actually guaranteed it. This “deal” codified Iran’s “right” to have nuclear weapons after a very few years’ delay, and Iran, true to its word, would have used them to destroy Israel. Omar knows this.

Omar also actively supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which designed to destroy the Israeli economy and to starve that nation into submission. Which submission would bring about Israel’s extinction at the hands of enemies sworn to effect that destruction: Hamas and Hesbollah, Iranian terrorist satraps, and Iran itself, which wants to wipe Israel from the map—a major aspect of Iran’s drive for nuclear weapons.  Omar knows this.

Omar also claimed

Since he [Trump] got into office, the president of the United States has been goading Iran into war….

Because objecting to Iran’s terrorist activities throughout the Middle East and in western Europe is goading Iran.

Because objecting to Iran’s attacks on oil tankers in the Arabian Gulf is goading Iran. Because objecting to Iran’s shoot-down of a drone in international airspace is goading.

Because objecting to Iran’s seizure of a US Navy small craft that, with engine failure had drifted a small way into Iranian water, and humiliating the sailors on board is goading Iran.

Because objecting to Iran having its Popular Mobilization Forces militia in Iraq assault and vandalize our embassy in Baghdad is goading.

Omar knows better.

And this:

Sanctions are economic warfare[.]

Of course they are. Would she prefer a shooting war?

No, not contradictive at all.  This is the face of the Progressive-Democratic Party.

Point, Counterpoint

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A minor flickers maker:

Michael Moore
@MMFlint
Just wondering – is there an American General for whom millions of us would turn out for his funeral? Mad Dog? Kelly? Colin Powel? William Westmoreland? Can anyone even name the chair of the Joint Chiefs?We all support those who serve but would we pour into the streets like this?

An author and commentator:

Dinesh D’Souza
@DineshDSouza
In case you haven’t noticed, Trump draws crowds like this. He is the only one in America who can. What this shows is that America is not a society captive to Caesarism, where blood and conquest brings feverish popular acclaim

Honorable Military Service

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and town mayor Pete Buttigieg has been making a big deal about his heroic service during his five-month tour in Afghanistan.

Greg Kelly and Katie Horgan, both ex-Marines with actual combat duty, had some thoughts about that in their Wall Street Journal op-ed.  So do I.  Kelly and Horgan noted,

He [Buttigieg] entered the military through a little-used shortcut: direct commission in the reserves.

Not even a 90-day wonder—a pomeranian prince.

Especially this:

Mr Buttigieg spent some five months in Afghanistan, where he writes that he remained less busy than he’d been at City Hall, with “more time for reflection and reading than I was used to back home.” He writes that he would take “a laptop and a cigar up to the roof at midnight to pick up a Wi-Fi signal and patch via Skype into a staff meeting at home.”

It’s a mark of the quality of Buttigieg’s “service” that he had less work to do even than that of being a small-town mayor.

Honorable officers, when they’re short of tasks, go looking for more things to do to advance the mission, they don’t head up to the roof top to moonlight on Skype or hide out somewhere recreationally reading.

Oh, and Bob Dole felt no need to lean on his military service, much less his actual wounds, in order to campaign for office. Neither did Phil Hart or Daniel Inouye.  But the unscathed rooftop pomeranian prince does.