Tag Archives: politics

On Whose Side…

Posted on by
Reply

…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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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”

Posted on by
Reply

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.

Disingenuous TikTok Arguments

Posted on by
Reply

The law requiring ByteDance to divest TikTok entirely or have TikTok banned from the US is in front of the DC Circuit Court, and there are at least two arguments that TikTok is making that are…misleading.

The first is this one:

Never before has Congress silenced so much speech in a single act.

No speech is being silenced. Only a particular outlet—TikTok—used by the People’s Republic of China intelligence community is being acted against. That outlet would remain available were ByteDance to wholly divest TikTok, which ByteDance and the PRC, on their own initiative, refuse to do. There also are a plethora of speech pathways for precisely the same speech desires besides TikTok. ByteDance’s/PRC’s decision to let TikTok be closed will have no impact on speech.

The second is this one:

Our constitutional tradition leaves no room for the government to stop Petitioners from expressing their ideas through the editor and publisher they have chosen. The government could no more prohibit a freelance journalist from publishing in a magazine of her choice; forbid an actor from working with a particular director; or tell a musician what studio he can record in.

Of course, no one is making any prohibition of this. The decision to leave TikTok available to the freelancer (or any other journalist), the actor, or the musician is entirely in the hands of ByteDance and the PRC government. It’s their decision to refuse to let TikTok be divested that would deny access to TikTok.