Tag Archives: political parties

A New Welfare Trap

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This one is in the offing at the State level, and comes as a result of the punitive tax for not buying health coverage was repealed last December.

At least nine states are considering their own versions of a requirement that residents must have health insurance….

And

Maryland lawmakers are pursuing a plan to replace the ACA mandate, which requires most people to pay a penalty if they don’t have coverage. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia, are publicly considering similar ideas.

Notice that.  These are Progressive-Democrat-run states.

The less well off who couldn’t afford either the penalty or the remaining costs—high deductibles, low per centage of plan provider payments even after “coverage” kicked in—under Obamacare still won’t be able to afford mandated coverage in these States.

Beyond that, they won’t be able to leave the State and relocate to one that doesn’t inflict these costs.  Their already limited economic resources are a barrier to such relocation.  Added to that, though, will be the lack of portability of the mandated coverage plans: having been dragooned into one by, say California or DC, they won’t be able to take it with them, even to Connecticut or Minnesota.  Or to a State that doesn’t require them to buy something they don’t want.

Progressive-Democrats really are that desperate to keep their welfare “recipients” trapped in welfare cages. Aside from that bit of self-serving…nonsense…the move also demonstrates the Progressive-Democrats’ utter contempt for us Americans.  We are, their behavior and policies say, just too mind-numbingly stupid to be entrusted with our own choices.  We have to be led by our Betters, forced for our own good, to do certain things.

Working for a Living

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Indiana has joined Kentucky in getting approval to add a work requirement to its Medicaid program (separately: Federal approval should not be a requirement; the program should be a State-run and -funded program only).

Of course, there are objections.

Democrats and consumer groups are decrying the GOP push, saying it is antithetical to Medicaid’s goal of expanding health care.

That’s plainly not true, though (I’ll ignore the conflation of health care with health care coverage).  The push is exactly what’s needed to make health care coverage available to all who want it.  The plan, even as minimal as this one is (the work-related requirement would apply only to a small segment of Indiana’s Medicaid enrollees), will facilitate availability, not limit it.  By making it possible for folks to get off this welfare program and into jobs that can enable them to buy their own coverage—if they want it—it will allow the State’s Medicaid dollars be committed to those who truly need Medicaid because they’re too old, too young, and/or too infirm to get desired coverage on their own.

Mid-Term Elections

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At their retreat last week, Republicans indicated that they intend to run heavily on the tax reform they got through at the end of last year.  It’s good to have something positive on which to run, especially since, at least for the near term, the Progressive-Democratic Party has nothing on which to campaign other than its #NeverTrump and #NothingRepublicanNoWay platform and its standard disparagement of ordinary Americans like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D, CA) claim that the tax reform’s aftermath of bonuses and pay raises are just crumbs.

As an aside, it must be good to be as rich as Pelosi, that a $1,000 bonus or an increase in take-home pay of some $2,000 per year is just chump change.  President Donald Trump is stinking rich, Vstly more so than Pelosi, and he doesn’t think this added money is trivial.  I’m not stinking rich; I’m not even as rich as Pelosi—not by a long shot—those $1,000 matter to me, as do the added $2,000/yr take-home.

Back to my point.  Republicans can’t only run on their tax reform, though.  They need to add three things to their campaign.  The first addresses, preemptively, the fact that the personal income tax rate cuts—that increase in take-home—expire in about eight years.  Republicans need to emphasize that the only way that rate cut expiration actually would occur would be if Progressive-Democrats in Congress (especially in the Senate where they can filibuster) block those cuts from being extended or made permanent.

The second thing is to go on the offensive regarding DACA.  Most Americans, and it’s pretty much evenly spread across party and independent lines, want the children who were brought by their parents into the US illegally dealt with compassionately and with finality: no more doubt hanging over these folks’ heads.  A couple of Republican proposals for achieving this are on offer. The Republicans currently in office need to push heavily and loudly one or the other or both of them this year, even though—even because—it’s an election year.  Demonstrate that they’re not the ones too timid to do something major and concrete in an election year.

Republicans also need to hammer on Progressive-Democrat Congressmen constantly saying “No.”  Republicans need to be asking loudly, both in their own districts, in their neighboring Progressive-Democrat incumbents’ districts, and in neighboring open districts why Progressive-Democrats so vociferously oppose any plan on offer that takes care of the DACA children—and that does so largely on Progressive-Democrat terms.  Or do the Progressive-Democrats see these folks only as a talking point and not as a group of human beings?

It would have been good if President Donald Trump, during his SOTU speech last week, had pointed to the Dreamers (not the same group as DACA, but there’s tremendous overlap) in the gallery as guests of Progressive-Democrat Congressmen and said to them, “I have a proposal put before Congress that addresses your needs, including a path to citizenship.  Why are the Democrats so opposed to that?”  But that’s water under the bridge, and he still has time to ask that.  Often.

The third thing Republicans need to add to their campaign is their plan for the future.  What do these guys want to do to make American lives better, and how—concretely, an aspect Republicans never have done well—will those things actually make our lives better?

Democrats

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…will not compromise.  The Progressive-Democratic Party refused President Donald Trump’s offer of compromise and bipartisan work during Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.  They booed Trump’s request that both parties work together on immigration reform, never minding that he offered DACA protections—via legislation, yet, rather than an ephemeral Executive Order—for one million more children brought here illegally and young(er) adults brought here illegally as children than ex-President Barack Obama (D) had.

They sat, refusing even to acknowledge with polite applause, our nation’s economic successes.

That subset of the Progressive-Democratic Party, the Congressional Black Caucus (a misnomer, since they refuse to allow black Republicans to join the group), sat on their hands, refusing to acknowledge black unemployment gains—the lowest level since the statistic began being recorded—and Hispanic unemployment gains—the lowest level since that statistic began being recorded.

The Progressive-Democrats refused to acknowledge a child whose efforts led to American flags being put, on Veterans Day, on the graves of veterans that otherwise would have gone begging.

They even refused to acknowledge the work done to redress Government’s failures regarding our veterans—they just sat, like bumps on a log.

Some of them boycotted the speech rather than respecting the occasion, rather than respecting their own constituents by representing them at the speech.

Congressman Luis Gutierrez (D, IL) even stalked out of the speech after the bulk of the Representatives and Senators present began chanting “USA! USA!”

This is the contempt in which the Progressive-Democratic Party holds us Americans.

Remember their intransigence and their arrogance this fall.

In Which the New York Times and the BBC Miss Again

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It seems the women journalists in the pay of the BBC were being paid significantly less than their male colleagues, to the point that Carrie Gracie, BBC’s China Editor, resigned her position in protest (I’m citing a New York Times report about the BBC.  Why that’s important, rather than citing a BBC report directly, will come clear in a bit).  Gracie has returned to London, still a BBC journalist, but there she’ll be paid the same as her male colleagues.

And how did that equal pay come about, you might ask?

According to “the organization” (presumably a BBC mucky-muck or BBC mucky-muck’s spokesman),

The BBC has agreed to pay cuts with a number of leading BBC News presenters, and others have agreed in principle[.]

Jeremy Vine, one of the high-powered, and highly paid, journalists getting his pay cut, agreed with the move, and he did so in all seriousness.

I think it needs to be sorted out, and I support my female colleagues who have rightly said they should be paid the same when they’re doing the same job.  I think the BBC’s on it, and this story is part of it.

Wow.  Just wow.

If Gracie really is the doing substantially the same work as her colleagues, why shouldn’t she get a pay raise to get to substantially the same pay?  That’s how bad it is, folks.  This is the Left’s mindset.  It doesn’t even occur to them to raise the pay of the lower paid.  All they can think of is to cut the higher paid.

Hold back the successful.  Don’t push forward those behind.  Instead of a win-win outcome, the Left prefers the everybody loses outcome.

On second thought, the NYT, which was as silent on the pay cut/pay raise question as the BBC, and the BBC didn’t miss.  This is what progressives, the Liberal NLMSM, and the US’ Progressive-Democratic Party want.  Hold back the ones ahead, don’t help the ones behind catch up.