Monthly Archives: October 2023

Racing to the Bottom

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So far, Ireland is winning, and that’s paying off big for the Irish.

In the past eight years, the country of five million has watched its corporate tax income triple to the tune of 22.6 billion euros last year, equivalent to almost $24 billion—giving it a budget surplus last year of a comfortable €8 billion euros when many governments are suffering from a postpandemic debt hangover.

And

Ireland became a hot spot for US companies by slashing its corporate tax rate from 40% to 12.5% starting in the late 90s, and offering a well-educated workforce and a tariff-free way into the European Union.

That’s a lower rate than the European Union wants, and it’s lower than the 15% tax, globally applied and agreed among some 136 countries, and that Yellen is so desperate to get the US trapped into.

The Irish, though, are raking in the tax revenues because of—not despite—their lower tax rate regime: they’re leaving business’ profits increasingly in the hands of those businesses for business use, they’re attracting foreign businesses, and all that lower tax-induced increasing economic activity produces, on net, more revenue for the Irish government.

This is the wealth and prosperity that Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden, his Progressive-Democrat Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and the rest of the Progressive-Democratic Party cronies want to deny us ordinary Americans as they demand United States’ participation in a global tax cabal that lets the cabal avoid economic competition in favor of power.

One more thing: the Irish are considering throwing all of their prosperity into a cocked hat in favor of joining the high-tax cabal; they’ll do that at their own severe economic peril.

The Way to End Racism is to Stop Doing Racism

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And that includes ending racial gerrymandering.

On Friday a Fifth Circuit panel heard arguments in a Voting Rights Act lawsuit (Robinson v Ardoin) that seeks to force Louisiana to draw a second majority-minority Congressional district. The case was put on pause while the Justices considered a challenge to Alabama’s map. Now the plaintiffs are using the Court’s Alabama ruling (Allen v Milligan) to advance an extreme racial gerrymander.

Never mind the 14th Amendment’s injunction that nor shall any State…deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Or the 15th Amendment’s Art I:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Or the Voting Rights Act’s Section 2, which prohibits election practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race.

The 14th Amendment bars discrimination on the basis of race—which setting up representational districts explicitly to favor one race over others does. The 15th Amendment makes that even more explicit: favoring one person’s right to vote over another’s explicitly abridges that other person’s right to vote.

As if those Amendments weren’t clear enough—and apparently social justice warriors in the general population and even our courts’ activist judges and Justices can’t read—the VRA is explicitly explicit on the matter.

The Supreme Court is badly mistaken in Allen. Either all American citizens are equal under law, or we’re not. Creating a legislature’s representation districts to favor one group of Americans over other groups is one of the last bastions of racism in our nation.

Butchering Babies

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The Iran-backed terrorist gang, Hamas, has been caught out butchering babies in the Israeli villages the terrorists invaded and slaughtered. Michigan’s Progressive-Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib has been very vocal about her support for the terrorists’ attacks on and within Israel. She’s even flying a Palestinian flag outside her Capitol Hill office. On Tuesday, she was asked, publicly in a Capitol Hill hallway,

Congresswoman, Hamas terrorists have cut off babies’ heads and burned children alive. Do you support Israel’s rights to defend themselves against this brutality?

Silence.

You can’t comment about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads? Congresswoman, do you have a comment on Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?

Silence.

You have nothing to say about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?

Silence.

Do you condone what Hamas has done chopping off babies’ heads, burning children alive, raping women in the streets? You have no comment about children’s heads being chopped off?

Silence.

By her silence, this…person…expresses her equally unwavering support for her precious Hamas’ atrocities, including those baby butcheries.

Energy Subsidies

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This table shows the size of the subsidy for the indicated energy source along with the size of the subsidy per trillion BTU produced by that energy source.

Million$/ TrillionBTU Million $ Trillion BTU
Solar 4.153 7,522 1,811
Geothermal 1.665 353 212
Wind 0.947 3,592 3,791
Coal 0.072 873 12,033
Biomass 0.06 312 5,171
Nuclear 0.048 390 8,065
Oil & Nat Gas 0.033 2,304 68,804

The table is constructed from data in the EIA report, Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Years 2016–2022.

Notice that the Solar subsidy is orders of magnitude greater than those for coal or for oil and natural gas. The wind subsidy is similarly bloated.

Despite these actual facts, the Mainstream Left keeps pushing the myth of too much subsidy for hydrocarbons.

 

H/t: DrBob2 at The Motley Fool.

House Speaker from Outside the House

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Michael Ellis and Greg Dubinsky, in their Thursday Wall Street Journal op-ed, think the Constitution bars anyone not already a member of the House of Representatives from being Speaker of the House. For all that the two are noted lawyers, I still disagree. I have a couple of thoughts of my own on their contentions.

As a matter of longstanding practice, every speaker has been a member, a tradition that dates to the First Congress (1789-91).

Tradition certainly should be taken seriously, but it isn’t law, and so it cannot block any nontraditional action.

His interpretation of his cite from NLRB v Noel Canning also distorts the matter: “The longstanding ‘practice of the government’…can inform [the] determination of what the law is.”

The two indicate that that also bars a non-House member from being Speaker. Longstanding practice—which is nothing more than tradition—can, indeed, inform the determination of what the law is, but it cannot itself determine what the law is. And the law that bars a non-member from being Speaker does not exist.

Article VI requires constitutional oaths of office only from senators, representatives, state legislators, and all federal and state executive and judicial officers. It would make little sense to require an oath of office from these officials while exempting a nonmember speaker. …the speaker engages in legislative functions.

This is illogical on its face. A Speaker, of any provenance, engages in legislative functions, the two lawyers plainly acknowledge. That just as plainly places a Speaker of any provenance within the scope of Art VI’s requirement; he would be required to take the constitutional oath.

And this:

What if the House decided to elect a member of another branch?

Ellis’ and Dubinsky’s Constitutional argument against this is valid: such a one could not serve or would need to resign his existing position in order to serve. Which is likely why no one is advancing such a nomination possibility. This is nothing more than a silly strawman.