Tag Archives: politics

Income Equality

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William Galston doesn’t think we have enough, and it’s the successful one’s fault.

[T]his [trade leaving nations generally better off] is small comfort to those who lose out, especially because the winners rarely compensate them commensurately.

Galston is operating from a blatantly false premise here.

He does have a couple of solutions to offer.

First, they [government] could significantly expand the earned-income tax credit to bolster the incomes of workers somewhat higher up the income ladder. Second, they could implement a broader program of wage subsidies that would raise the wages of lower- and middle-income earners toward a specified hourly target.

Never mind that, with a Progressive-Democratic Uncle Sugar government paying these wage fractions, employers will have no incentive to pay as high wages.

Why not just skip these middle steps, and provide a Universal Basic Income?

Oh, wait….

Distractions

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Mark Warner (D, VA), Ranking Member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has objected to President Donald Trump’s revoking ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance.

This might be a convenient way to distract attention, say from a damaging news story or two. But politicizing the way we guard our nation’s secrets just to punish the President’s critics is a dangerous precedent.

This is neither politicization nor punishment, but a safeguard of our nation’s secrets.  No one, regardless of rank, once they leave government service should have a security clearance.  They neither have a need to know nor a need for access, the two Critical Items—both of which must be present, not just one of them—for granting clearances.  Trump’s only error here is in not ordering the revocation for all persons who have left government service.

No, what’s happening is that Progressive-Democrats like Warner are using this manufactured kerfuffle over Brennan’s security clearance revocation to distract from the fact that their Party has no message whatsoever other than that America is not, and never has, been great and never will be until there’s free stuff for everyone, paid for by taxing the rich, taxing the energy engine of our economy, cutting back our ability to defend ourselves, and on and on.

Surprised

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Writing on the topic of our applying economic pressure on Turkey as a means of getting an American hostage (among others) freed, Greg Ip expressed surprise and worry about the weaponization of trade in his Wednesday Wall Street Journal article.

Trade wars may be morphing into something more dangerous: financial wars.

This, though, merely exposes his misunderstanding of international trade.  Such trade is far more about national policy applied internationally than it is about economics, and international finance is just a tool of that trade venue.  Trade has always been “weaponized;” it has always been about achieving national political goals, of which economics is merely one.

Ip’s discourse also misuses the term “war;” although, he is not alone in this error.  Trade “wars,” even with finance tools being used extensively, are not shooting conflicts, and even with the global financial dislocations of events like the Great Depression or the Panic of 2008, nations’ existences were never at risk.  While trade, freely wielded as a tool of policy, can be effective at pushing the targeted nation to alter its behavior, it never threatens that nation’s independence.  It’s never war.

What Are You Going to Do about It?

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“The Vatican” has proclaimed its regret for the decades of abuse in Pennsylvania of 1,000 or more children by hundreds of the Vatican’s priests.

The abuses described in the report are criminal and morally reprehensible. Those acts were betrayals of trust that robbed survivors of their dignity and their faith.

The Church must learn hard lessons from its past, and there should be accountability for both abusers and those who permitted abuse to occur[.]

On the other hand, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General has pointed out the skill with which this perfidy was executed.

The cover-up was sophisticated. And all the while, shockingly, church leadership kept records of the abuse and the cover-up.  These documents, from the dioceses’ own “Secret Archives,” formed the backbone of this investigation.

Because the men who run the Catholic Church chose not to conduct their own investigation.  It’s a reminder of the atrocity in Boston two decades ago where the Cardinal there, far from nailing his child-abusing priests, simply relocated them to fresh hunting grounds.  It’s a reminder of the abuses inflicted on Argentine children only recently uncovered—officially, that is.

Talk is cheap, men of the Vatican, and rended garments easily replaced.  What are you actually going to do?

“We’ve Never Been Great”

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The soul of the Progressive-Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders’ and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ blatant, enthusiastic socialism.  Now the Party’s heart is revealed, as well.  Here’s New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) at a bill-signing event for, ironically enough, an anti-human trafficking measure:

We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great[.]

Of course, Cuomo has denied what he meant, but keep in mind: he’s a talented, smooth politician for whom words are stock in trade.  He knew what he was saying.

The fact is that the first time he spoke, he spoke from his heart.  He’s just speaking politically with his corrections.

Notice another aspect of his claim: Cuomo plainly does not feel like he’s a part of our great nation.  “It was never that great,” not “We were never that great.”

Remember what Progressive-Democrats believe about, and want to do to, our great nation this fall.