Monthly Archives: May 2018

“I Lost Because I’m a Capitalist”

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Hillary Clinton’s latest excuse for why she lost the 2016 Presidential election is that she’s a capitalist.

Hillary Clinton claimed Wednesday that declaring herself to be a “capitalist” during the 2016 presidential primaries may have hurt her with Democratic voters.

And she said

It’s hard to know but I mean if you’re in the Iowa caucuses and 41% of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I’m asked “Are you a capitalist?” and I say, “Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.” You know, that probably gets lost in the “Oh my gosh, she’s a capitalist!”

Sounds like a Republican campaign ad to me.  Maybe something along the lines of “The Democratic Party—proud Socialists.  Is that really what we need in DC?  Is that really who we are as a nation?”

Free Speech of the Left

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Recall Kanye West’s remarks supporting President Donald Trump, even though he disagrees with Trump on a number of questions, and West’s further remarks saying that 400 years of slavery was a choice—and his follow-on statement that the latter remark was “just an idea.”  Just an idea that Americans who happen to be black don’t all have to think alike—they’re as free to think and speak their own minds rather than engaging in Left-approved group think as any other American.

In a clear demonstration of West’s point, we get this from a pair of denizens of the Left:

A Detroit radio station said it will ban Kanye West’s music over controversial comments the rapper made earlier this week that slavery “was a choice.”

Hosts Shay Shay and BiGG of 105.1 the Morning Bounce made the announcement Thursday on Facebook with the hashtag “Mute Kanye.”

These two went further:

We don’t want to hear Kanye’s music, we don’t want to play Kanye on our show, we don’t want to talk about Kanye anymore.  So we are taking a stand and we aren’t playing his music anymore; we just are refusing to give him a platform.

Not only that.  Because they don’t want to hear it, these two are dictating what their listeners will be permitted to hear, and they’re dictating to their listeners how they’ll be allowed to evaluate what they are permitted to hear—because Shay and BiGG think their listeners are too grindingly stupid to think for themselves, or their listeners must be required to think only Left-approved thoughts and evaluate with Left-approved paradigms.

They have to be kept locked away in the mental prison that West talked about.

And Leftists, of which Shay and BiGG are only too typical, are the keyholders.  Because there’s only way right way to think and to speak, and these personages Know Better.  George Orwell would be proud: censorship is free speech.  Or Vladimir Putin: there is no free speech, only permitted speech.

Slippery Stairs

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In a Miami speech to peddle his book, ex-FBI Director James Comey had some remarks about gun control, insisting those who object to changing existing law as starting down a slippery slope are simply wrong.

It’s not a slippery slope, it’s a concrete set of stairs….  Let’s have these conversations standing there, holding the rails.

Slippery slope or concrete stairs, it’s still a downward trip away from individual liberty.  It’s instructive, too, that he continues to decline to identify his limiting principle on gun “control.”  Where would control efforts stop, does he think?  What natural limit exists?  So far, all he—and other gun control supporters—are willing to do is have us rely on the good offices of a government that would limit our access to weapons.

Until gun control supporters identify their limiting principle, there’s no debate to be had.  Of course, it may be that they’ve already identified their limit.

Misunderstanding

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At the tail end of a Wall Street Journal article discussing the relationship between Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Congress (and in particular the House Freedom Caucus), Rosenstein made this remark:

We have a responsibility to work with the Congress. They have a responsibility to understand their duty is not to interfere.

This is a breathtaking lack of understanding by a Federal lawyer. Oversight by Congress does not mean simply watching. Interference is absolutely required if Congress, through its oversight, detects inappropriate or wrong behaviors.

Or would Rosenstein insist that funding cuts—Congress doing its job—are interference?

Taxes and Deduction Caps

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New York thinks it’s found a way around the tax reform act that cut Federal income taxes and capped the deduction taxpayers can take for State and Local Taxes (vis., State income and property taxes).

The idea, which became law last month, creates a new optional payroll tax that shifts the state and local tax deduction from individuals who can no longer fully take it to businesses that can.

However,

Employers are worried about compliance costs, interactions with union contracts, complexity across state lines, and the difficulty of explaining to workers how a plan that might lead to smaller pay raises still puts more money in their pockets.

In response,

The Wall Street Journal asked the 10 largest private employers in the state and in New York City, along with all Fortune 100 companies based in New York state, whether they would opt for the new payroll tax. None that responded said they would do so

Hmm….

Here’s an alternative idea; work with me on it, it’s simple and not very nuanced.  The State jurisdictions should simply lower their income and property tax rates.  That would bypass the SALT cap by making it less important (and as a happy side effect it would leave more money in the hands of the State’s citizens).