Tag Archives: political parties

Political Parties

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Joseph Sternberg, in his WSJ op-ed last Thursday, opined that the Democrats aren’t the only liberal party in collapse, averring that Great Britain’s Labour Party and Germany’s Social Democratic Party are in similar straits. He claimed early in his piece that

three of the West’s major economic powers are undergoing leadership turnover within their main center-left parties.

While the US’ and Great Britain’s leftist parties are threatened with leadership turnover (Germany’s SPD has already undergone one, and it may be continuing), Sternberg is operating under a false premise with most of his claim. Neither the US nor Great Britain have a center-left political party anymore.

The US has only the Progressive-Democratic Party, a far-left party given life by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and vigor by Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and such (so far) lesser lights as Bill de Blasio and Gavin Newsom.

Great Britain has only its Labour Party, which has gone as far-left in the British political spectrum as has the Progressive-Democratic Party in ours. Labour has been enthusiastically taken there by the party’s continued and continuing leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s own lesser light Sadiq Khan.

It would be good for both our nations did our two actually have center-left parties, but there’s nothing forming even in the wings for either of us.

Impeachment

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Now the House Progressive-Democrats have deigned deliver their Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, and the Senate’s trial will begin in earnest (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has been sworn in, and the Senators have been sworn in) tomorrow right after lunch Eastern Time.  There remains speculation about whether the Senate will call additional witnesses in the course of the trial or whether the Senate should simply dismiss the case.

The matter seems clear to my august self.

Under our Constitution, the House has the sole responsibility to conduct an impeachment investigation and to produce the resulting Articles of Impeachment. Further, only the House is allowed to conduct that investigation. Finally, that investigation is entire and complete with the writing of the Articles. Art I, Sect 2:

The House of Representatives…shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

Under our Constitution, the Senate has the sole responsibility to try the House’s impeachment Articles. Further, that’s all the Senate is allowed to do vis-a-vis impeachment. In particular, it cannot conduct its own investigation. Art I, Sect 3:

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments.

The Senate should hear the cases presented by the House’s and President’s impeachment managers, evaluate the case as presented in the Articles, and then vote to acquit or convict. No further investigation, no witnesses, nothing else at all is required or legitimate.

Fiscal Management

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In Tuesday’s Progressive-Democratic Party primary debate, Joe Biden made the claim that he couldn’t afford child care in 1972 on his then-income of $42,000/year.

Jan Brewer, ex-governor of Arizona, had a thought on that via Twitter:

“Jan Brewer @GovBrewer · 12h
“Biden just said he couldn’t afford child care in 1972 when he was making $42,000/yr. Today, that’d be $256,000/yr.  Really Joe?  If you can’t run your own household efficiently, I don’t think you can run our country!

“Vote @realDonaldTrump!”

She used an inflation rate of a bit over 3.5% to get there. I used an inflation rate of 3% to get a bit under $174,000. Over that long time frame, inflation rates bounce around; our two estimates, though, effectively bracket the situation.

Brewer’s point is eminently valid. If Biden can’t hack his own household budget, how can he be expected run our nation’s budget?

Oh, wait—the Progressive-Democrat thinks that, as President, he’ll be able to give himself a raise at convenience through tax increases and to borrow at will because…government.

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.