Daily Archives: 11 May 2017

Confusion

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The latest whiner pundit to weigh in on President Donald’s tax reform principles, laid out in a concise one-pager.  And yet these pundits pretend to confusion over it.

President Donald Trump’s plan is silent so far on crucial details Americans need to calculate their tax bills, including the personal exemption and the size of the tax brackets.

And

The president’s latest plan for middle-income households…has left tax experts puzzled. That is because his one-page tax outline released in April is silent on essential details, including how the tax code will treat the personal exemption that reduces taxable income depending on family size. It sets tax brackets of 10%, 25%, and 35% without establishing the income levels that divide them.

And

[T]he plan says nothing about how personal exemptions or head-of-household filing status would be treated….

Geez.  It’s an outline; it’s not intended to be finely detailed. The President has proposed the principles and broad parameters of the taxation portion of his budget, and that’s both entirely appropriate and sufficient.  How personal exemptions, head-of-household filing status, etc, might be treated easily follows from those principles.

The fleshing out—the actual legislation, including bracket income boundaries and those other matters—is Congress’ responsibility, even though it would in an ideal world work with the President in the development of that legislation.  Oh, wait:

The White House is now working with the House and Senate on a unified GOP tax plan, including on the core issue of how much of a household’s income should go untaxed.

It seems more likely that these guys are just bellyaching because nobody is consulting their august selves.

Hysteria

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FBI Director James Comey was fired by President Donald Trump, and the Left is waxing hysterical over it.  Never mind that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (only just confirmed after another example of Progressive-Democratic Party obstructionism in the Senate) laid out the case for Comey’s inability to function as the FBI’s leader.  Rosenstein’s memo can be read here as part of the document chain culminating in Trump’s letter to Comey.  Via Richard Fernandez:

Keith Ellison tweeted “we are witnessing a Consitutional [sic] crisis unfold before our very eyes.”

No.  A Constitutional crisis occurred when President Andrew Jackson ignored the Supreme Court with is “Indian Relocation Project.”  A Constitutional crisis occurred when Franklin Roosevelt rounded up vast numbers of Americans of heritages of which he disapproved and moved them onto “reservations.”  A Constitutional crisis occurred in President Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre.  A President firing an Executive Branch official in whom he’s lost confidence is ordinary business.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY):

Were these investigations getting too close to home for the president?

America depends on you [Rosenstein] to restore faith in our criminal justice system, which is going to be badly shattered after the administration’s actions today.

And (via the link just above):

Other Democrats attributed sinister motives to Comey’s firing, with two Senators, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, describing it in press statements as “Nixonian.” Another Democratic senator, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, said the firing “is disturbingly reminiscent of the Saturday Night Massacre during the Watergate scandal and the national turmoil that it caused,” later adding “We are careening ever closer to a Constitutional crisis.”

And

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said the firing “raises the ghosts of some of the worst Executive Branch abuses”

The shrillness of those three remarks speaks for itself.

These squawks come on the relative heels of some other comments by Progressive-Democrats.  Schumer on the occasion of Comey’s October 2016 reopening of the FBI’s investigation of then-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s email escapades:

I do not have confidence in [Comey] any longer[.]

And Pelosi:

Maybe he’s not in the right job[.]

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, CA), then Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on the same occasion:

The FBI has a history of extreme caution near Election Day so as not to influence the results. Today’s break from that tradition is appalling.

Harry Reid (D, NV), ex-Senate Majority/Minority Leader, in December after the election results had settled in:

I think he should be investigated by the Senate. I think he should be investigated by other agencies in the government, including the security agencies[.]

In a non-Nixonian comparison, Slate (same link) cited Reid as making this one:

Reid went as far as to call Comey the “new J Edgar Hoover,” saying he had the information of Russian involvement in the election and kept it from the American public.

This is sad because this manufactured hysteria is all the Progressive-Democratic Party has left.  It’s unfortunate, too, because with this being all the Party has left, Progressive-Democrats cannot function as an effective party in the two-party system our Republic needs.