A college basketball player at the University of Wisconsin has taken to sitting on the bench during the pregame national anthem playing. Her rationalization is this:
I’m going to speak up about things that are harming my culture and my people.
She certainly should speak against iniquities, but she needs to understand that her culture is American, and her people are her fellow Americans.
Full stop.
No. No way in H E Double Toothpicks.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo [D] visited the White House on Tuesday to urge President Donald Trump to rethink a provision in the 2017 tax overhaul that Cuomo says is prompting a sharp decline in state revenues.
The Democratic governor met with the Republican president to discuss the $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes—known as SALT.
Cuomo said the cap is prompting wealthy residents to flee New York and contributing to a recent drop of more than $2 billion in tax receipts.
If there’s a drop in State tax receipts from this, there are two intertwined parts to the obvious solution, and they don’t include raising the Federal taxes on everyone else so New York (and New Jersey and California) can continue their profligate ways. Those two parts are reducing the States’ current usurious tax rates to more reasonable levels and reducing spending to fit within those collection levels.
Then step back and watch the increased economic activity that will result increase the prosperity of all the citizens of the State—and enjoy the increased revenues to the State that will result from the increased economic activity.
Aside: the AP‘s own distortion: Residents in high-tax states such as New York, New Jersey and California could see substantial increases in their federal tax bills this year because of the deduction cap. No, they won’t. They may well see their total Federal and State tax bill go up, but that’s due entirely to the increase taxes owed the States from their high tax structure.
Shades of FDR, and a betrayal from the putative right of center. Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) wants Government to dictate to private enterprises what they must do with company profit.
The plan backed by Rubio encourages domestic investment by making full and immediate expensing permanent “as a way to discourage companies from pursuing share repurchases.”
Right move, wrong reason. Immediate expensing ought to be a permanent item in tax code reform on its own right. Delaying expensing or stringing it out is just another aspect of using our tax code for social engineering, which bastardizes our tax collections and distorts our market away from the most efficient use of our money—whether business money or personal. And that most efficient use might well include stock buybacks; that’s a business decision with which Government has no business interfering.
“Discourage” companies? That’s a fiction. What Government starts as “discouraging,” it very quickly converts to barring. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) are pushing for precisely this sort barring of legislation,
to curtail the ability of companies to purchase stock buybacks[,]
and Rubio is just as enthusiastically joining with them on this. A report released by Rubio’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee had this in it:
Cash spent on share repurchases is not cash spent on capital investment, though the degree to which a relationship exists may vary by sector and firm type[.]
That’s not strictly true. Money spent on buybacks is money not spent on that business‘ capital investment. But do Rubio, Schumer, and Sanders really think that money goes under the mattresses of those now ex-shareholders?
Of course that money does not. It goes into one of three places, each beneficial to our economy. One is investments in other companies, facilitating those companies’ capital investments.
Another is spending on consumer and business goods, which enhances market demand, which increases cash flow into those producers’ coffers—which facilitates their capital investments.
The third is savings. As anyone who didn’t sleep through their high school econ course knows, savings are banks’ and other lenders’ source of funds which they loan out—to businesses so they can carry out their capital investments.
Hence the need to let businesses make their own decisions without Government diktat. It’s disappointing that a nominally Republican Senator doesn’t understand any of this.
Now it’s Twitter that’s engaging in toxic (non)-speech, not the speech in the tweets themselves.
A Canadian blogger is having to sue Twitter over the latter’s blatant censorship of free speech because, apparently, she isn’t toeing the Twitter (or me also “movement”) sexual politics line.
Meghan Murphy, the founder of the blog Feminist Current, was locked out of her account last year when the company asked her to delete a tweet that said, “Men aren’t women,” CNET reported, citing the lawsuit. A second tweet said, “How are transwomen not men?” according to the suit.
This is evil?
In January, a Houston homeowner successfully defended himself and his family against a large, violent home invasion—with a gun.
Authorities say the homeowner defended himself when the suspects entered the home. Following the shooting, the suspects fled from the scene.
…
At another scene, a vehicle was found about two blocks from the shooting, where a man was found dead in the backseat.
Authorities say that out of five people shot, three of them died. All were suspects in the alleged home invasion.
In Florida this week, another homeowner successfully defended his property—with a gun.
The Volusia County Sheriff’s Office said…a woman called 911 to report a stranger on her property.
When the woman’s husband walked outside [with his pistol] to check the situation out, he told deputies he found the man standing at the door to his garage with his hand on the doorknob.
…
Once deputies got to the home located south of Daytona Beach they allegedly found a syringe, tools and gloves on Edwards.
…
[The man] was charged with attempted burglary and possession of burglary tools, according to police.
No one was shot this time, either—it was only property at risk.
Imagine the mayhem that would have resulted in the first instance had the homeowner not been armed. Imagine the theft, and the possible mayhem (because burglars really don’t like witnesses), in the second instance had the homeowner not been armed.
This is the gun control Progressive-Democrats and their accomplices of the Left want to take away from us.