Category: subsidy

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national politics & policies regulation subsidy

The Great De-Platforming?

Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, AM radio, technology, regulations, mandates

“There is a certain amount of irony in seeing Republicans come to the floor proposing mandates on business,” said Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in the U.S. Senate, yesterday. Kentucky’s junior senator objected “to Republicans picking winners and losers.”

At issue is a bill pushed by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tx.), the AM For Every Vehicle Act. Automobile manufacturers are phasing out amplitude modulation (AM) on radio receivers, and Cruz objects primarily on two rationales: 

  1. emergency roadway communications rely upon AM frequencies, and 
  2. since conservatives dominate AM talk radio, the move looks suspiciously like a sneaky way to decrease conservative and Republican political influence. 

“AM radio is where a lot of talk radio is found,” argues Cruz, “and talk radio is overwhelmingly conservative. And let’s be clear: Big business doesn’t like things that are overwhelmingly conservative.”

Technology and media change all the time, and as ostensible advocates for free markets, it’s no business of Republicans so much as to nudge the market in one direction or the other. Perhaps AM’s days are numbered. 

Shed a tear and move on.

Cruz characterizes the issue as one of free speech. Paul expresses incredulity: “The debate over free speech, as listed in the First Amendment, is that government shall pass no law. It has nothing to do with forcing your manufacturer to have AM radio.”

It gets messier: electric car manufacturers say that the AM band interferes with their batteries, and the technology to shield the batteries is expensive. So Cruz’s law would forbid companies from charging more for this tech.

If you ask me, the batteries being harmed by AM radio indicates a glaring defect not in a radio platform but in the platform of electric cars.

So it’s great that Rand Paul’s amendment to undermine Cruz’s mandate would also nix the electric car tax credit. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies subsidy

Community Chest

community chest, immigration, subsidy, incentives

When it’s time to go home, the circus manager has a trick up his sleeve, just to get people off the property: turn off the rides.

The U.S. is something of a circus today, so policymakers may want to take the cue.

This applies especially to illegal immigration on the southern border, which is increasingly being acknowledged as a major problem. While it may be interesting to learn, say, that this past month more Venezuelans than Mexicans were nabbed coming north (and, presumably, more not caught), the big picture truth is that since taking office President Joe Biden has presided over a huge increase in the overall illegal flow of economic migrants.

Switch off the subsidies and surely the rate would go down.

But what are the subsidies? 

A recent article in The Epoch Times explains: “Identification cards for illegal immigrants are increasingly being issued by non-government organizations (NGOs) to help [border-crossers] establish a foothold in U.S. cities and access services they can’t get through federal programs.”

The programs are mainly in blue cities and states, and thrive under the imprimatur of DEI: diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Often called “community IDs,” these instruments seemingly out of Monopoly, the board game, “are accepted by police departments, school districts, and food programs” across the country. 

What’s worrisome is that “the federal government grants billions of taxpayer funds to NGOs that help illegal immigrants who cannot usually access federal programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).”

This makes the problem not one of “free immigration” but of subsidized immigration.

And that can, at least theoretically, be much more easily slowed. Stop giving money to NGOs to support this traffic. Existing taxpayers deserve at least that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment subsidy

Taken for Billions and Billions

Congress, clowns, wizards

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) pandemic assistance loan programs didn’t go off sans hitch. 

“Over the course of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, SBA disbursed approximately $1.2 trillion of COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funds,” explains a report from the SBA’s Office of Inspector General. “The economic assistance was intended to help eligible small business owners and entrepreneurs adversely affected by the crisis.” 

You might think that $1.2 trillion would do the job, if anything could.

But of course there was “a hitch” — it’s the thing in government we are never “without.”

The hitch was fraud.

“So far,” writes Eric Boehm at Reason, “investigations into COVID-related fraud have netted 1,011 indictments, 803 arrests, and 529 convictions. The joint efforts of the SBA, U.S. Secret Service, and other federal agencies have resulted in nearly $30 billion in COVID funds being seized or returned to SBA. . . .”

But that’s not even a quarter of it. The Inspector General’s report indicates that the SBA made 4.5 million loans to fraudulent recipients, and the full estimate of their loot is $200 billion — more than 15 percent of the total. 

No mystery, though. “It is noteworthy that SBA executed over 14 years’ worth of lending within 14 days, and this was just the beginning.”

Politicians’ make-believe would have us thinking they can just command things to happen and they do. “Everything is possible.” Because, well, “government.” Or “willpower.” Or what-have-you.

Well, losing hundreds of billions is always on the table.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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deficits and debt media and media people nannyism subsidy

The Giveaway Epidemic

buying votes

The most recent trend in vote buying is to propose huge giveaways on narrow subjects, like “reparations for slavery” (to people who were never slaves and from people who never enslaved) and “debt cancellation” (a national issue with student debt).

The most recent example comes to us from the nation’s capital, where “D.C. officials plan to cancel as much as $90 million in residents’ medical debt,” according to Jenna Portnoy’s piece in The Washinton Post.

But brace yourself: the rationale is racial. Though medical debt is a huge issue with all races of people, Washington, D.C., is majority black, and this giveaway is characterized as “an effort to ease a burden that data shows disproportionately impacts people of color.”

There is no magic presidential wand, here, however — as with Mr. Biden cancelling student debt. Nor the insane levels of “reparations” contemplated in San Francisco. In this case, the “District will use $900,000 in year-end surplus funds* to purchase debt, for pennies on the dollar, on behalf of about 90,000 D.C. residents earning up to four times the federal poverty level or whose medical debt is at least 5 percent of their income….”

Similar schemes are in the works in Connecticut, New Orleans, Toledo, and Illinois’s Cook County.

Interestingly, some of this has to do with COVID, or, more properly speaking, the pandemic responses, which were devastating on nearly every level. Including pocketbooks. But the focus is not, here, on fixing America’s amazingly messed-up health care system, but, instead, race and “equity.”

Over 100 million Americans are said to hold $195 billion in debt.

Before we try to correct for this mess, we might wish to inquire rationally why medicine in America is so messed up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The tsunami of federal pandemic funds bestowed on local governments is largely responsible for the surplus.

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education and schooling judiciary subsidy

One Way or Another or Another

student debt relief

The courts have not been kind to President Joe Biden’s unilateral attempt to erase some $200 billion to $500 billion in student-loan debt. (By “erase” I mean force all taxpayers to pay debt incurred by the millions of borrowers eligible for the forgiveness program.)

Last month, a federal judge issued a temporary stay on the program while the litigation plays out.

On November 10, another federal judge, Mark Pittman, ruled that the program is a “complete usurpation” of congressional authority. Per Pittman, the U.S. is “not ruled by an all-powerful executive [but] by a Constitution that provides for three distinct and independent branches of government.”

In consequence, the Biden administration stopped accepting applications for student-loan debt relief. By then more some 26 million borrowers had applied.

On November 14, another federal court also blocked the program. So Biden’s debt-transfer plan is apparently at least thrice bogged down.

Except that another student-loan-debt-erasing thing has been going on since early in the pandemic, a pause on debt payments rationalized by the economic hardship imposed by lockdowns.

This pause was set to lapse at the end of this year, with payments to resume in January. But according to a White House insider “familiar with the matter,” the administration has been making “increasingly firm plans to extend the repayment pause.”

The pause also costs taxpayers money. The original rationale for it no longer exists. Like the mega-debt-relief program, extending the pause would also be unconstitutional.

This subsidy is also unlikely to inspire kindness from the courts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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education and schooling subsidy

Education Fraud

student, debt, relief

It’s a mess.

Families are often sold a bill of goods regarding higher education.

Unless a student pursues a subject like computer science, architecture, engineering, or medicine, it may take decades to pay off student loans.

Graduates who specialized in Advanced Basket Weaving, the Sociology of Postmodern Literary Stylings, and Marxist Techniques for Making White People Feel Guilty just might snag a high-paying job as an Ivy League professor or senior manager of a corporate “antiracism” task force. But beyond those few spots, opportunities are scant.

And, of course, many people who pursued legitimate studies in the liberal arts or technical subjects also don’t make enough to emerge from massive debt any decade soon. Nor does every STEM grad necessarily cash in. Individual results vary.

What to do?

The Biden administration has decided to wipe out student debt en masse, expanding the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program so that about 40,000 student-loan borrowers escape debt immediately and the debt of millions of others is slashed.

But is forcing others to pay this debt through their taxes — parents and children who perhaps carefully avoided taking out student loans — a just and practical answer to the problem?

The long-term solution is to get the government out of the business of subsidizing higher education in any manner, whether in the form of direct payments to schools or loans to students. Without the massive subsidies, tuition costs would decline.

The short-term solution? Launch an investigation into whether the U.S. Department of Education, colleges and universities — along with both Republican and Democratic administrations — have engaged in fraud against those who took out the loans. 

If students were defrauded, first seek redress from the perpetrators. Not the taxpayers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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