What Happens…

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…when government is the definer of a citizen’s, or of citizens’, rights? One outcome is illustrated by this particular enumeration of rights granted by Government:

The Fundamental Rights and Obligations of Citizens

Citizenship
Voting requirements
Freedom of speech, press, assembly
Religious freedom
Freedom of person
Freedom from insult
Inviolability of the home
Privacy of correspondence
Right to petition the state
Right and duty to work
Right to rest
Protection of retirement
Protection of old, ill, disabled
Right to and duty of education
Right to pursue art, science
Equal rights for women
Protection of marriage and family
Protection of Chinese while overseas

That list of Government-created and -granted rights is then followed and superseded by this:

When exercising their freedoms and rights, citizens of the People’s Republic of China shall not undermine the interests of the state, society or collectives, or infringe upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens.

What Government giveth, Government taketh away. In the same breath in this case. As is apparent from that last clause, this is what the constitution of the People’s Republic of China does.

This is the risk we run as we allow to our government increasing authority to define our needs, our purposes—our rights.

On Whose Side…

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…is the Biden/Blinken State Department?

Mistakes happen, even egregious ones, even with matters of security. This one, though, should get some folks fired, for cause, and charges brought for the breach [emphasis added].

The independent watchdog for the State Department says the agency deviated from standard policy in the security clearance suspension of Biden Iran envoy Robert Malley, permitted the advisor access to classified meetings, and allowed him to continue work on sensitive issues while he was under investigation.

How does that work, exactly? This is, however it works, sadly typical of the lackadaisical attitude toward national security across a broad range of security milieus held by this Biden-Harris administration and Antony Blinken’s Department of State.

The…screwup…in more detail, from House Foreign Affairs committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R, TX) and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jim Risch (R, ID) [emphasis added]:

The State Department IG’s report is disturbing and sheds light on the multiple ways the State Department grossly mismanaged Mr Malley’s case and intentionally misled Congress. Mr Malley, a political appointee and close associate of the secretary, was treated very differently than a civil servant or foreign service officer.
Among the new revelations in this report, Mr Malley conducted sensitive government business and was allowed to utilize his official email account after his clearance was suspended. As the report noted, this was done out of fear that Mr Malley might “conduct government business on a personal email account.” This concern was valid because it is one of the primary things Mr Malley did to get his clearance suspended in the first place.

The illogic of that last—that it was necessary to let Malley have the access because without it he might have conducted his business through his personal communications (and which he already was doing, but let’s not talk about that)—is so ludicrous that it had to be deliberately done from malice toward our nation’s security.

Hence my opening question: on whose side are Malley’s supervisor, that supervisor’s supervisor, and the official who restored Malley’s accesses and clearance in mid-investigation? They’re plainly not on the side of the United States of America.

Malley’s supervisor and that supervisor’s supervisor should be fired, those who misled Congress on the matter belong in jail for their perjury in their testimony, and individual who reinstated his clearance in mid-investigation needs to be arrested and put on trial for his espionage-related behavior.

Sadly, no State Department personnel will be harmed in the making of this breach.

Rhetoric and Violence

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Progressive-Democrats and pressmen whine that rhetoric of violence is coming from the right at least as much as, if not more, than from the left.

But: it’s folks on left who are trying to murder Republican Congressmen, who are trying to murder conservative Justices, who are trying to murder Republican Presidential candidates.

No one is shooting at Progressive-Democrats; especially, including no one from the right is shooting at anyone on the left.

Progressive-Democratic Party politicians and pressmen both know that. Their bleatings are a measure of their dishonesty.

Tax Deductions

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Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris wants to expand the start-up business tax deduction from $5,000 to $50,000 [sic].

However, in typical Party duplicitous fashion, she gives with one hand and takes away far more with the other. She wants to raise taxes on us citizens and our businesses so much that that deduction increase would disappear in the flood.

  • Increase the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%
  • Increase the corporate alternative minimum tax introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act from 15% to 21%
  • Quadruple the stock buyback tax implemented in the Inflation Reduction Act from 1% to 4%
  • Make permanent the excess business loss limitation for pass-through businesses
  • Further limit the deductibility of employee compensation under Section 162(m) [currently limiting public companies’ tax deduction for compensation of covered executives to $1 million per individual]
  • Increase the global intangible low-taxed income tax rate from 10.5% to 21%, calculate the tax on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction basis, and revise related rules
  • Repeal the reduced tax rate on foreign-derived intangible income

How about cutting out the intrinsic contradictions of deductions here and tax rate increases there to pay for them? How about, instead, simply lowering tax rates across the board—begin, say, with a rate reduction equal in effect to the sum of all the subsidies and credits—Harris’ latest small business “deduction,” for instance and both Harris’ and Trump’s child tax credit, along with the myriad welfare subsidies?

Let the resultant vast growth in activity in the private economy pay for the tax rate decrease. The Jack Kennedy large tax rate deduction, the Reagan nearly as large tax rate reduction, and the Trump tax cuts all led to economic expansion that produced a net increase in revenues to the Federal government—all those cuts were paid for by the responding expanded economic activity.

But Progressive-Democrats are incapable even of saying the words “tax rate reduction.”

Mistaken “Tradition”

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It is a Federal Reserve “tradition” to not adjust its benchmark interest rates in the final months before an election.

The Federal Reserve has historically left interest rates alone in the months before a presidential election. …
Since 1990 the Fed has cut rates in the final two months of a presidential campaign only three times. Each case shows why rate cutting in the homestretch of the political season is exceptional.

Call it two elections, since two of those three cuts occurred during the same election end game. Still, in these 34 years there are nine Presidential elections. Twice in nine opportunities works out to be a skosh under a quarter of the time, or a skosh over a fifth, depending on one’s perspective. That’s a pretty weak tradition.

More important is this remark by then-Dallas Fed chief Robert McTeer:

[W]e’re within a month of the election…it was conventional wisdom we weren’t supposed to act so close to an election.

Except that a decision to not act is an action itself, and choosing not to act on interest rates when the situation otherwise calls for action has its own influence on an upcoming election.

The Fed should make its interest rate moves when the economic environment says it should, regardless of the politics of the moment. Otherwise, the Fed isn’t acting independently on economics, as its DOC requires it to do, but in active response to politics.