Tag Archives: political parties

Licensing Illegality

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The New York State Assembly wants to give drivers licenses to illegal aliens. The New York Immigration Coalition is completely on board and has begun pressuring the State’s Senate leadership to rubberstamp the Assembly on this. These Progressive-Democrats and their activist supporters rationalize the move this way:

He [NYIC Executive Director Steve Choi] said issuing licenses to immigrants would reduce hit-and-run-vehicle crashes, lower insurance costs and make it easier for immigrant laborers—including those working on farms—to get to work.

This is nonsense. Illegal aliens still will run from their accidents—they’re still illegal, and they would face arrest and deportation if they hung around.  This, in turn, means the license move will have little to no effect on insurance costs—just as, for instance, illegal aliens have little to no impact on the costs of other forms of insurance.

As to the other foolish claim, immigrant laborers already have no trouble getting to work, including to farm work. Only illegal aliens have this trouble. The illegal aliens could correct this problem, though, by (re)entering legally.

On that last, there is a valid beef: it takes entirely too long to get legal entry permission, and the caps on legal entry are far too low.  These, though, are not addressed at all by drivers licensing.

Medicare for All

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I [sic], VT) has the canonical version of Medicare for All; the other Progressive-Democrat candidates have only slightly varied versions of it.  Here’s Sanders on his Next Big Idea for health care provision and health care coverage:

You will have a card which has Medicare on it, you’ll go to any doctor that you want, you’ll go to any hospital that you want.

Right.  Been there, done that.  Both claims were straight up lies then, too.  There is a major difference, though, between Sanders’ two lies and ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) two lies: Sanders would make private insurance illegal—both the selling and the possessing.  That, though, only potentiates the power of Sanders’ lies.

As The Wall Street Journal mentioned on the other side of the link,

The point of Medicare for All is to cut reimbursement rates to Medicare levels, which government can now set so low only because private commercial reimbursement rates are so much higher. Cutting reimbursement rates would “probably reduce the amount of care supplied and could also reduce the quality of care,” CBO says.

Not could—would.  Reducing availability cannot help but reduce quality, if only from denying it altogether to many who need it or would merely benefit from it.  But that’s not the only pathway: that reduction in availability will flow, at least in large part, from that reduction in reimbursement rates.  As a result of that, those doctors and hospitals whose talents and skills warrant higher pay will limit their practices to the bare minimum.

That’s not out of personal greed, either: costs of care delivery go up markedly as the number of patients go up.  Absent meeting costs with fees charged, these providers would have no choice but to limit their costs by limiting their services and the numbers of potential patients served.

There’s another cost path, too: the more complex or difficult, or even merely rare, a medical problem, the more expensive it is to provide services for dealing with it.  Capped reimbursements will limit the availability of that care. And—lower reimbursement rates again—lower the quality of those providers willing to provide the care.

Disarmament

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The Progressive-Democratic Party wants to disarm us. That’s made clear by Party Presidential candidate and Senator Cory “Spartacus” Booker’s (NJ) gun control plan.  Senator Spartacus wants, among other requirements [emphasis added]:

  • prospective gun owners must prove to the FBI that they’ve completed a gun-safety course to obtain a federal gun license
  • that federal license would be required to purchase a firearm
  • a federal background check on virtually all sales
  • the federal license would be good for only five years
  • current firearm owners would have to get this federal license, also
  • limit handgun purchases limited to one per person per month

This can only be taken as an assault on the federal republican nature of our nation and a backdoor assault on our 2nd Amendment.

Background checks already are required by the feds in order to purchase a firearm.  States already require licenses—which themselves carry safety courses as part of the licensing procedure—in order to carry firearms on public property (a couple of States have Constitutional Carry capabilities, instead).

No, this expansion of background checks and federalizing the licensing requirement can only be for building a Federal database of who has weapons.

Background checks to screen prospective owners and buyers for felony records can be useful—at the State level—but when the checks are used to build a database of weapons owners, which is the only purpose for requiring existing firearms owners with their proven track records, to get federally licensed, those checks become a lethal danger to individual liberty. Such databases are too easily used by governments at all levels of jurisdictions (the Federal level is only the most powerful) to seize legally owned weapons under any guise that seems convenient—whether an “emergency” or a claimed domestic violence threat.

Even the domestic violence bit might seem legitimate, but for the process for the accused to get his weapons back and government’s demonstrated intransigence in returning other seized property after the seizure has been deemed erroneous.  One has only to look at the lengthy nature of the proceedings for getting weapons back.  One has only to look at the outright refusal of jurisdictions to return confiscated vehicles, even cash, seized under drug or money laundering claims proven erroneous.

Progressive-Democrat Hysteria

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Now illustrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA).

She says that Attorney General William Barr lied to the Senate in Wednesday’s Senate hearing because he refused to say what Progressive-Democrats want him to say.  This was emphasized by Senator Mazie Hirono (D, HI), who spent nearly all of her question-time in that hearing smearing Barr (with charges of lying) instead of asking him questions.

Pelosi also gleefully has called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) the grim reaper (following McConnell’s statement that he’d have to be the Grim Reaper if the Pelosi persisted in sending up her bad and partisan Progressive legislation).

Because not saying what Progressive-Democrats demand be said, not doing what Progressive-Democrats demand be done, is somehow dishonest.

The Progressive-Democrats’ FUD-raising behavior would be risible and worth ignoring, were it not for how dangerous Party is with its control of the House.

Fueling the Housing “Crisis”

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California’s Progressive-Democrats are at it again; although, this time they’re not active only in California.  Now they’re looking to

expand subsidies to middle-class families—some with six-figure incomes

under the pretense of “helping” folks afford housing in this manufactured crisis of housing.

California Governor Gavin Newsom has proposed funding housing for families whose income normally wouldn’t qualify them for assistance programs. Last month, his administration set aside $200 million for middle-class families in a $750 million package meant to combat the state’s housing crisis.
DC Mayor Muriel E Bowser has proposed a $20 million workforce fund to help families earning up to $141,000.

Boston and Philadelphia city governments are pushing the same sort of nonsense for the same sort of reason.

Aside from money spent on this pandering is money not spent on serious problems, these moves will only make the problem worse. The moves only increase demand for a not very flexible or easily expanded supply—and so supports, and increases, price, and so exacerbating the problem.

The way to address housing costs for the residents of a city—and the citizens of States like California—is to get the governments out of the way.  That means reduce duplicative regulations associated with housing and housing construction and eliminating regulations that exist solely for the benefit of unions and other special interests.  It means reducing zoning limits that drive up the cost of building and of living in a neighborhood.