Tag Archives: politics

Right Idea, Bad Plan

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Progressive-Democrat New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani wants to send $6 billion of city taxpayer money to a fancy, glittering new infrastructure of child care centers that he wants to build so mothers of small children—6 weeks old to 5 years old—can get back to work. (As if mothering children isn’t work in its own right, but that’s beyond the scope of this article). Erica Komisar, a psychoanalyst, wants that money sent, instead, directly to the parents for their use in raising their children their way.

That’s the right idea, but it’s a decidedly suboptimal plan.

Instead, reduce the city’s taxpayer bill by those $6 billion. Let all of the city’s taxpayers hang onto their money, instead of giving it up to the city’s government for spending on the favorite programs of whomever happens to be sitting in Gracie Mansion. Those parents of toddlers will benefit at least as much, from the increased city economic activity that tax reduction would generate, activity that would include increasing job availability; increasing wages; increasing availability of child care and babysitters at prices those parents actually could afford; increasing availability of employer-provided child care, not from government mandate but from it being a good business practice.

That economic flow-through won’t quickly develop; there’s a lot of economic destruction from prior city administrations’ Big Government impositions that needs to be corrected. That, though, simply puts a premium on getting a $6 billion reduction in city taxes enacted.

An Empty Promise?

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Supposedly, the US has offered a security guarantee to Ukraine in the form of support[ing] European security guarantees and seek[ing] Senate backing for Washington’s promised role as a means of breaking the current peace talks impasse.

This supposed guarantee

would include monitoring, verification, and deconfliction, the officials said, and would lay out the role the US would play if Russia breached a peace deal and came back to attack Ukraine. They would also include the provision of weapons to deter a Russian force.

Yeah, sure. “Monitoring:” we see you, Russia, resuming your invasion, we’re watching the hell out of you. “Verification:” Yup, Russia really is resuming its invasion. “Deconfliction:” What does this mean? European forces entering Ukraine to fight the barbarian alongside Ukrainian forces? Traffic control to deconflict traffic jams on Ukrainian roads for Ukrainian forces and civilians moving in the other direction? Something else?

“Provision of weapons for deterrence:” This is risible. Europe already is refusing to provide the weapons the UA needs, in the numbers it needs them, or on the schedule it says it needs them. Excuses range from fear of provoking the barbarian to insisting the UA doesn’t really need them like that to claims they don’t have the weapons to provide the UA, having drawn down their armories already with transfers. That last, given Europe’s disdain for any thing military, at least has a measure of plausibility.

The supposed guarantee also purports to include

legally-binding commitments to come to Ukraine’s aid in the event of a Russian attack.

What is the timeline for implementation of a related peace agreement? Would the agreement go into effect before or after “Senate support” had been secured? If after, what support for Ukraine’s continued fight for its survival would be in the offing pending that Senate agreement? If before, how would Ukraine recover or be aided in recovering, from the barbarian’s virtually guaranteed violation of the terms? What would be the Or Else should the barbarian violate the agreement—more monitoring, verification, and…”deconfliction?” All the nations’ governments—including, shamefully, our own—have already been slinking away, their tails covering their crown jewels, from Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nattering on about nuclear weapons.

However sincerely offered, this seems like an empty promise. There’s no guarantee that the Senate, with its two-thirds majority treaty ratification requirement, would support such a thing. A simple Senate majority-voted resolution of support would be meaningless, legally, politically, and morally. Nor is there any guarantee that an alternate path to securing support—bills passed in both the House and Senate, which would require only majority votes (after a 60-vote cloture success in the Senate)—would succeed.

There’s this bit, too, that overhangs any security “guarantee” that might be offered Ukraine. Three of the participants in the Budapest Memorandum—the US, the UK, and France via its separate individual assurance—already have betrayed Ukraine by dishonoring the security and territorial integrity guarantees contained in that document. The Memorandum also was a legally binding commitment.

A Lesson for Republicans

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This one in the final outcome of Chile’s Presidential election, concluded last Sunday.

[Left-wing candidate Jeanette] Jara conceded with over 80% of the ballots counted. [Conservative candidate Antonio] Kast won with 58% of the votes in one of the most lopsided presidential victories since Chile’s return to democracy in 1990.

A marked turnaround in the runoff from the original, in which Jara had won a solid plurality, 27%, with Kast having gotten 24%.

There’s a hint in all of that: Jara was the only one, or maybe of two, Leftist candidates in the pre-runoff electoin; there were more than a half-dozen right and right-wing candidates who, in the aggregate, diluted those final 58-ish% across the lot of them, denying each of them an outright victory in that stage. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that a lesser candidate than Kast, with that dilution, could have been the one making the runoff, potentially handing the final election to Jara.

Republicans could benefit from that hint by coalescing early in their primaries. One or two rounds should be sufficient for all but the most desperately egoistic candidate(s) to identify the only or the couple of candidates who would be viable in the final election. Those egoists hanging on purely out of pridefulness should be resoundingly outvoted to the point of political destruction.

Contradiction in Terms

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This time, regarding President Donald Trump’s (R) move to remodel and expand the White House East Wing so that, among other things, important diplomatic events involving large groups of dignitaries, their significant others, et al., can be held indoors inside a facility fitting for the occasion rather than outdoors, in the White House’s back yard, in tents.

Leftist critics, of course, object. One of their more risible objections is this:

Critics say Trump barreling through bureaucracy to reshape an iconic piece of American history reflects a wider disdain for democratic norms.

Never mind that giving an unelected bureaucratic authority functional veto power is what violates democratic norms.

Republicans and Health Care

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Republican Congressman Jen Kiggans (VA) laid out the problem and in the process exposed an all too typical Republican timidity:

We run on this every time, there’s not an election that comes up where we don’t get beat up on healthcare[.]

Republicans far too routinely cower away from directly addressing healthcare, identifying who’s responsible for the problem, or what to do about it.

Some party elders now say Republicans’ best strategy might now be to avoid the issue altogether.

They’ve had this hide-under-their-desks posture ever since their one serious attempt at health care coverage reform went down in flames via ex-Senator John McCain’s late night showboating No vote killing a bill that would have rescinded Obamacare and restored the then-status quo ante.

A few days ago, Republicans in the Senate (which the press routinely and dishonestly characterizes as “Republican controlled”) offered a bill that would have redirected expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies to individual taxpayers’ Health Savings Accounts, which the bill also expanded explicitly to accommodate those payments. The bill failed on a cloture vote as the minority Progressive-Democratic Party’s Senators bloc-voted against it (thereby demonstrating that a majority of Senators does not confer on that majority party “Senate control”).

Asides aside, what’s shamefully cowardly is that, both during the Republican proposal’s runup to the vote and since the vote, all of those Republicans have been silent on one Critical Item: the Progressive-Democrats’ constant demand for subsidies for the ACA proves how unaffordable is their health care coverage program and how desperately that program needs reform. True, a few Republicans mentioned that the Progressive-Democrats had designed their subsidies to expire at the end of this month, but those were just occasional afterthoughts in other conversations.

It would be good for Republicans, and it would be good for our nation, if Republicans individually and as a political party—including at the State level as well as national—would but screw their courage to the sticking place, and they’ll not fail—not at health care reform, not at getting elected and reelected, and not at maintaining their majorities.

It’s clear that Obamacare/ACA is an utter failure at making health care coverage affordable—even with those taxpayer-funded subsidies, too many premiums in the government’s health coverage market are sky high, and deductibles and the out-of-pocket costs (even capped) are significant fractions of the incomes that the government defines as poverty-level. It’s also clear that Medicaid is rife with fraud and abuse (and waste, but the other two are the most rampant).

Republicans need to talk about health care loudly, frequently, and in specific terms, naming both the outlandish health coverage expenses and the politician they’re campaigning against who favors those expenses and favors keeping Americans dependent on any government they run. Republicans also need to explain in clear, no uncertain terms, that the cuts to Medicaid and the rules for eligibility that they passed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act actually make things better for legitimate Medicaid recipients. Those reforms cut out those ineligible, like illegal aliens in sanctuary States; add income caps to eligibility; and require the able-bodied to work, actively seek work, train for work, or volunteer. Those reforms make more money available for those truly needing Medicaid.

In parallel, Republicans need to push a specific, concrete health coverage reform package that drastically modifies ACA or outright replaces it. This one requires the Chaos Caucus and the entrenched leadership to get off each other’s throats and coalesce around a specific, concrete package.

Republicans have wasted enough time bickering among each other under their collective House/Senate desk.