Avoid Debate

It might make some folks uncomfortable.  That seems to be the position of Lance Morrow, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, in his Wall Street Journal piece.  After all, goes the subhead on his piece:

It would push the country to angrier extremes on either side, stimulating fresh antagonisms.

Morrow urged us all to “stop and think” about the implications of having a debate, here on the matter of reparations for past slavery-related transgressions.

The notion may be too volatile to indulge in a presidential-campaign year.

Leaving aside Morrow’s other major concern—

By pressing the issue they may ensure the re-election of Donald Trump….

—the question remains: if not now, when?  Apparently, “later.”

Better to keep monsters, old and new, locked in the basement, and to let the conversation upstairs in the living room be as genteel as possible—even hypocritical. In matters of race hate, candor is overrated. Hypocrisy may be the moral way to go—until, as time passes, people become more civilized.

Yeah, it’s better just to let the matter fester, building to a later, vaster explosion.

Sure.

Puzzling Through Tax Breaks

The Progressive-Democrats, and too many Republicans, in Congress are trying to sort out what should be done about expiring tax breaks.

Here are some of the expiring or about to expire tax breaks:

  • incentives for biodiesel production
  • deductibility of private mortgage insurance
  • tax credits for investing in low-income areas
  • employers’ family-leave plans
  • expansion of the earned-income tax credit

The answer is really quite simple and straightforward, if extremely difficult politically: let them all expire. Our Federal tax code should not be used for social engineering; it should be used solely for its constitutionally mandated purpose: to fund our Federal government.