Monthly Archives: April 2017

A Necessary Bill

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A congressional bill named for Taylor, the Taylor Force Act, would cut off the US aid [to the Palestinian Authority] unless the Palestinian Authority stops the payments.

Taylor Force was an Afghan and Iraq war vet who was visiting Tel Aviv when he was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist—and the terrorist’s family is getting a PA annual pension in celebration of his crime.

This bill is necessary.  Money is fungible.  These transfers, these so-named “aid” transfers, must be cut off entirely; it would be insufficient merely to forbid the transfers’ use for payments to terrorists’ families.  The money’s existence would enable the PA to reallocate money from other sources to the “pensions” without reduction in overall PA income.

Obama-Iran Axis

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It sort of makes any Trump-Russia connection look awfully tenuous.  Politico has a long report out on what actually transpired during Obama’s “negotiation” of the Iran nuclear weapons deal, particularly with regard to the seven folks in American detention whom Obama released to Iran as a deal sweetener.

A couple of highlights (read the whole thing; it’s important):

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with US-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware.

And

[I]n a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives.

And

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the US-designated terrorist organization.

As a probably unrelated aside, recall that Boeing has just concluded a deal to sell 100 passenger aircraft to “an Iranian airline.”

And this:

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China.

Even regarding others we were on the verge of capturing or were tracking, Obama got in the way so he could have his deal.

…Justice and State Department officials denied or delayed requests from prosecutors and agents to lure some key Iranian fugitives to friendly countries so they could be arrested. Similarly, Justice and State, at times in consultation with the White House, slowed down efforts to extradite some suspects already in custody overseas, according to current and former officials and others involved in the counterproliferation effort.

And as far back as the fall of 2014, Obama administration officials began slow-walking some significant investigations and prosecutions of Iranian procurement networks operating in the US

This is the sort of thing then-President Barack Obama (D) was covering up in his rush to get a deal—any deal—with Iran concerning the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

And not a peep about this out of the current Democrats in Congress.

Again, RTWT.

A Tax Code Proposal

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Below is the handout given to the NLMSM at Wednesday’s White House daily press briefing, this time hosted by Chief Economic Advisor Gary Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin for the purpose of discussing President Donald Trump’s tax reform proposal, which was released today via that handout and press briefing.

Also included, as mentioned during the briefing though not on the handout, is a proposed reduction of the peak capital gains tax to 20%, which Cohn and Mnuchin said will stimulate investment—and, I add, stimulate both productivity and new job creation via that increased investment.

About that doubled standard deduction: it increases from $6,300 to $12,600 for single filers and from $12,700 to approximately $24,000 for joint filers.  That’s a jump of $6,300 and (approximately) $11,300, respectively.  For folks with incomes of $50,000, $80,000, and $500,000, these represent reductions in taxable income of 12.6%/22.6% (single filers/joint filers), 7.9%/14.1%, and 1.3%/2.3%, respectively.  This doesn’t particularly favor the rich.

Then Mnuchin had this to say:

This is about massive reductions in business rates for corporations and for small businesses, and many studies show that 70% of the tax burden falls on American workers.  So, by cutting business taxes, this will increase wages for American workers and create more jobs.

It’ll do more than that.  Business taxes are cost centers for those businesses, which costs are passed, in large part, to their customers, just as all other costs are passed, in large part, to their customers.  This tax reduction, if enacted, will greatly shrink that tax cost center, and so it will tend to lower prices for buyers of the business’ goods and services.

As predicted, this is a major tax reform.  Congress needs to get behind it.  The Trump administration is making a large bet on this (although they and the Republican Congress also are working on the flip side,  reducing spending (not just slowing its rate of growth)) in that, in response to a question during the briefing, Cohn and Mnuchen said that this reform would stimulate sufficient economic growth that the Federal revenue reduction nominally resulting from these tax rate reductions would generally not occur in the realization.

Of course, the Progressive-Democrats in Congress immediately started protesting.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the chamber’s Democratic leader, said the proposal to cut tax rates for pass-through businesses would just benefit high-income people like the president himself.

Never mind that the bulk of American pass-through businesses are mom-and-pop businesses and small- to medium-sized businesses, not the large, wealthy ones.  Never mind that these mom-and-pop and small- to medium-sized businesses produce the bulk of the economic activity in the US.  This is the same objection Congressional Progressive-Democrats have to eliminating the death tax: even though the death tax forces children to sell their parents’ small businesses or farms in order to pay the inheritance tax, that tax is necessary because some rich folks might benefit from its elimination.

And there’s this:

Among the biggest changes is the repeal of the state and local tax deduction; the effect of that would be to shift the tax burden from low-tax states such as Texas and Florida to high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey.

And California, and Illinois.  Democrat-controlled states, every one.  Congressional Progressive-Democrats will squall about this, too.

And this:

Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D, OR) issued a statement calling it an “unprincipled tax plan that will result in cuts for the one percent, conflicts for the President, crippling debt for America, and crumbs for the working people.”

What the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have yet to offer is any reason why our middle class and poor should be denied this tax code improvement with its attendant increased opportunity to become wealthy themselves just because it might also benefit the wealthy.

What the Progressive-Democrats in Congress have yet to explain is why they insist on singling out particular groups of Americans for punishment via our tax code just because they’ve been more successful than the rest of us.

And, of course, there was ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl and his permanent question, apparently because he can only hold one concept in his head: “Will the President release his tax returns?”  Never mind that President Donald Trump, and several of his spokesmen have answered this question quite clearly for the last year—both during the campaign and since Trump’s swearing in.

Another Reason

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…to stop sending Federal funds to any institution in the California University system.

The University of California hid a stash of $175 million in secret funds while its leaders requested more money from the state, an audit released on Tuesday said.

The University of California system is run by Janet Napolitano, the former Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.  And the same Napolitano who decided returning American veterans could be terrorist material: her history of dishonesty is a long one.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the audit found that the secret fund ballooned due to UC Office of the President overestimating how much is needed to run the school system that includes 10 campuses in the state.

And

The audit found that over the course of four years, the UC’s central bureaucracy amassed more than $175 million in reserve funds by spending significantly less than it budgeted for and asking for increases in future funding based on its previous years’ over-estimated budgets rather than its actual expenditures.

There’s more.

[A] top staff member in Napolitano’s office improperly screened confidential surveys that were sent to each campus. [California State Auditor Elaine] Howle said answers that were critical of Napolitano’s office were deleted or changed before being sent to auditors.

Of course, Napolitano denies everything.

Never mind her denials.  Just stop sending Federal funds—the taxes paid by the good citizens of New York, of Illinois, of Texas, of…—to the California university system.  Let California deal with its own schools in its own way without the largesse of the rest of the nation.

An Example of the Climatistas’ Political Failure

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Neil deGrasse Tyson in some recent remarks:

…when it comes time to make decisions about science, it seems to me that people have lost the ability…to judge…what is true, and what is not.  What is reliable, what is not reliable.  What should you believe, what should you not believe.

And

When you have people who don’t know much about science, standing in denial of it, and rising to power, that is a recipe for the complete dismantling of our informed democracy.

Indeed.  And yet guys like Tyson are loathe to look into the mirror and see who it is that stand in denial of science, even of the basic tenets of science, like constant questioning, comparing theory with observation and adjusting theory to fit the observations—rather than the climate pseudo-scientists’ practice of ignoring those offending observations while decrying those who disagree with their settled science.

Climate pseudo-science has a long and venerable track record of failed predictions; it’s models still can’t predict simultaneously the past and the present.  Indeed, its predictions of the present are wildly at odds with empirical observations from satellites and high-altitude balloons.  Global temperatures haven’t risen significantly for nearly 20 years, and the rise since the early 19th century still leaves us below the long-term global average.  Atmospheric CO2, far from being a pollutant (a bald, unsubstantiated declaration of the EPA’s pseudo-science), is a well-known plant food.

The only tangible effect of anthropogenic CO2 to date is that CO2 is greening the Earth, stimulating faster plant growth, and more drought resilience across a broad range of species.

And so guys like Tyson decry the failure of democracy and of democratic principles because other guys, of whom they disapprove, get elected.

Because only the correct outcome is democratic.

This isn’t petty hubris.  It’s dishonesty.