Two Can Play the Bailout Blacklist Game

For a week Congressional Democrats have been playing the inclusion game, refusing to back the COVID19 stimulus bill unless it includes a laundry list of pork, special preferences, mandates or policy changes unrelated to the immediate crisis but which promote their partisan ends. Suddenly, this morning, we see them shifting to the exclusion game, in which the power to dispense aid will be used to punish or penalize companies or industries not in the party's good graces.

And perched atop the left's COVID bailout backlist, to no one's surprise, are any ventures or businesses connected to President Trump.   

So, virtually everybody else in the country might qualify for help -- a bailout, if you will -- but any COVID19-impacted businesses connected to President Trump can go bankrupt and go to hell: Is that the vindictive game these plunderers and pirates are now playing?

Okay, so let's play the bailout blacklist game. And let's play it by bipartisan rules.  

Let's also go through the vast investment portfolios of Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and other members of the Congressional Millionaires Caucus; let's go through their campaign donor lists; let's look at the major employers in their states or districts. Then we'll prohibit federal assistance from going to any companies or industries in which they have in investment stake, or which have a history of supporting them politically. That should bring this nasty little game of stick-it-to-Trump to a halt.

Senator Schumer Wednesday morning denied this was designed to target Trump, claiming, in his usual unctuously phony fashion, that it would apply broadly, to any companies in which members of the executive or legislative branches have "majority control." But since most Congressional lifers don't own or directly control businesses, and wouldn't know the first thing about starting or running a business -- their forte is destroying businesses -- this prohibition in fact would apply to a very, very small group of political leaders.

You can further shrink that group by looking at the businesses or industries they're in. The hotel and hospitality industry obviously is poised to take a major hit. It likely will be high on the list of industries needing aid. And how many people in the legislative or executive branch have "majority control" over hospitality companies?  Hmm. Let me think. I'll come up with somebody.

Political journalists obviously knew who Democrats were gunning for. So who does Schumer think he's fooling?           

We have to be thoughtful, selective and hard-nosed about where we target assistance. Not every company or industry in the country can get a bailout. There's just not enough money in the world for that. But when making those decisions, it strikes me as wrong to arbitrarily discriminate against a Trump-connected enterprise that otherwise qualifies for assistance. If the aid criteria are intelligently crafted -- that's a huge if -- and if the process is applied fairly and equitably -- that's another huge if --  shouldn't Trump-related businesses that meet the standard also be covered? 

Or are the people who work in or for this subset of businesses -- it's those people we're supposedly trying to help, right? -- unworthy of the same help other American workers will get, just because they happen to wait tables or clean rooms at the restaurant or hotel connected to the Trump business empire? Democrats obviously want to destroy Trump, not just politically but personally; that's been their Ahab-like obsession since he unceremoniously tossed them out of power. But who they're really punishing with such vindictiveness are thousands of rank-and-file workers who just happened to fill out a job application at the Trump-owned business, but now find themselves in one party's crosshairs through guilt by association.   

This Trump rage is so unhinged and irrational that it ought to qualify as a new mental disorder.While we're on a crash program to develop new vaccines, why not a vaccine that addresses this psychological problem? Seriously. We'll badly need one -- and the medical lab that brings a cure to market will make millions -- if Trump wins reelection this fall.

Denver's Building Permit Racket

This story in Wednesday's Denver Business Journal highlights a question that's been nagging me lately: Why does it take a catastrophic economic downturn for governments to start thinking seriously about the merits of deregulation as an economic development strategy?

The city of Denver is temporarily waiving certain building fees, in an effort to encourage home improvement projects, as a way of boosting the local economy. And it seems to be working, according to the Journal:

"The free permits issued under the city’s “Home Renovation Bonanza” program saved residents an estimated $85.774 in fees, officials said. Building-permit fees normally range from $20 to several thousand dollars, depending on the value of the project.

The program aimed to boost the local economy by encouraging home-improvement projects. The free permits, available June 1-15, are for common improvement projects involving single-family homes and duplexes.

“We wanted a bonanza and it seems we got one,” Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said in a statement. “We hoped to stimulate the local economy by offering an incentive for residents to make improvements to their property. This is a good sign that people are moving forward and doing what they can to get our economy back on track.”

But why does it take an economic downturn before local governments begin to think seriously about clearing away the hurdles they erect to entrepreneurship, enterprise and personal initiative? Why are Denverites required to get permits and pay fees for "common improvement projects" to begin with? Hickenlooper's statement tacitly acknowledges that the fees are an obstacle -- a disincentive -- to home improvement and economic activity; he concedes that they're something the city can do without, at least on a temporary basis, in order to help kick-start the economy. So why not make Denver's "Home Renovation Bonanza" a permanent thing? If it can do so much short-term good, wouldn't the benefits be multiplied over the long haul?

This isn't tenable, from the average politico's perspective, because, in Denver's case, the fees fund a city bureaucracy. If you permanently slash or eliminate these fees, you would also have to slash or eliminate the bureaucracy they sustain, and you would relinquish control over something -- in this case home renovation activities -- that the city and the politicians who run it want to control. It's become a racket, in other words -- one legitimized by official sanction. That's why Denver's "Home Renovation Bonanza" can only be a temporary thing; can only be a tease to the public about what life might be like if it didn't have to jump through so many hoops, and pay so many bribes, to get through the bureaucracy.

Imagine how much more robust the American economy could be if governments at all levels made clearing away economic disincentives a top permanent priority, rather than a short-term respite, to be continued, an anchor on the economy, once the crisis passes. Obamanomics focuses on massive government spending in order to prime the sluggish pump. There are other ways to skin this cat, however. The economic benefits of slashing red tape, eliminating onerous fees and taxes, clearing away the myriad economic disincentives that government creates -- of instituting reforms that get the government off the economy's back, in short -- aren't even talked about, at least at the federal level. Doing this would mean admitting that government is far better at killing jobs than creating them. And that flatly contradicts the statist world view.