Monthly Archives: April 2013

Immigration and Assimilation

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National Review Online has an article on the unfolding (immigrant) terrorist attack in Boston (unfolded: the two proximate terrorists are dead or caught; unfolding: learning from the surviving terrorist whether they acted alone or as part of a larger op).  In the article, John O’Sullivan talks about the assimilation into British society of the immigrant terrorists who attacked the British subway system 7 July 2005.

For almost the entire youth of the 7/7 bombers, the British had acted as if they were ashamed of their national identity and history.  So young men, with the usual propensity of young men to want to identify with patriotic and idealistic causes, had been told that there was nothing admirable or heroic about being British.  It was a sort of swindle, and one, moreover, that had been perpetrated especially upon people of their ethnic backgrounds.  They had therefore looked around for a heroic cause they could identify with.  The radical Islamists provided them with the cause of radical Islamism—and they embarked on the relatively short road to mass murder.

Sound familiar?  O’Sullivan thinks so, too:

The fact that Senator Schumer has declared ex cathedra that the Boston bombings have no significance for the immigration bill before Congress merely shows that folly has no natural internal limit.

Particularly in light of the older brother’s continued feeling of alienation from American society:

I don’t have a single American friend, I don’t understand them[.]

2nd Amendment Rights and Steamrolling

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President Barack Obama, in his dismay that he couldn’t dictate his position on gun control via demagoguery, expressed his dismay thusly:

The gun lobby and its allies willfully lied about the bill.

The Senators who voted against it are cowardly and had “no coherent arguments as to why we wouldn’t do this.  It came down to politics.”

“A minority was able to block it from moving forward” through “this continuing distortion of Senate rules.”

What Obama chose not to mention, though, is the steamrolling tactics he tried while coming down with his own politics, attempting to impose his minority position through an attempt to preempt actual discussion of the bills—by distorting Senate rules and while outright lying about his behavior and his role in the gun control bills’ failure.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) could have forced an up-or-down vote on the Manchin-Toomey background check bill—it got 54 votes on the cloture motion, so he might have gotten the bill passed.  No, though.  He and Obama didn’t want debate, they didn’t want Americans—or our Senate stand-ins—to have a chance properly to study the bill and (the horror!) to propose amendments before voting on it.  We all would have gotten that chance because skipping the cloture vote would have required Obama and Reid to sit through 30 hours of public debate and amendment before the vote could happen.  The word came from on high: no scrutiny, do the cloture vote.

In the midst of his crocodile tears over the lost opportunity for the Newtown children, Obama angrily denounced fears over a national registry of gun owners—saying that the just defeated bill explicitly banned the creation of such a registry.  That ban was in the bill, true enough.  But the fears are no less real for that.

Were Progressives to win the 2014 mid-terms and regain control of the House, who can believe that the registry ban wouldn’t be promptly rescinded and a registry created making used of the now additional two years of background checks?

This is another failure of Obama’s doing.  As Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard has pointed out, Obama and his cronies have zero credibility after their shenanigans vis-à-vis Obamacare, border security, Dodd-Frank, the present gun control “debate,” demonizing—and slandering—all those who disagree throughout his administration’s rule, etc, etc, etc.  Obama’s blandishments about registry bans simply are unbelievable.

A Thought on Tax Reform

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I don’t always disagree with Fox Business on tax reform, but when I do, I prefer smaller, flatter taxes.

They start with a bang (although I really couldn’t tell whether FB agreed with this), quoting NYU Law School Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation David Shaviro:

It’s hard to run an income tax properly because you have to know how assets change in value.  In theory, you should be taxed when assets go up and receive deductions when they go down.  But people come up with ways of getting around the rules.  It’s a cops and robbers game.

Nah.  There’s no economic or moral reason to tax income except as income.  Nor need there be differing treatments depending on whether “assets” or income go up or down.  You had an income last year?  You should have paid (let’s say) 10% of that to the Revenooers.  You had a larger income this year?  Pay 10%.  Period.

Here are a few more examples.

Should Go: Home mortgage interest deduction. Shaviro argues, “It’s a tricky proposition, but I say it needs to go,” he says.  “It creates a tax price that favors home ownership.”
[Personal finance expert Jordan ] Goodman says the deduction should stay, but be more limited.  As it stands currently, those with multimillion dollar homes can receive deductions on interest of up to $1 million on their first mortgage, and up to $100,000 for their second mortgages.
“It’s a reverse Robin hood tax,” he says.  “The bigger the house you have, the more of a tax deduction you get.  It would destroy the housing market entirely to take it away, but let’s cap it at $500,000 instead of $1 million.  This is subsidizing rich people getting a big house with a big mortgage.”

I’ll ignore the idiocy of punishing a disfavored group, as Goodman wants to do.  He’s plain wrong on the impact on housing markets.  Eliminating the deduction, as Shaviro correctly wants to do, would be disruptive only until the new equilibrium is reached; it wouldn’t destroy the housing market.

Needs to Go: Corporate debt buying. Our current tax code favors companies who are loading themselves up with debt instead of equity, Shaviro says.  “This gives companies the incentive to have debt,” he says.  “You deduct interest that you pay to shareholders but not the interest you pay on dividends.”

Correct, but for the wrong reasons.  Businesses shouldn’t be paying taxes in the first place.  They’re not the ones paying, in the end, we consumers are because those taxes get passed on as higher prices.

Should Go: Renewable energy tax credits. The credits the government offers for renewable energy items such as buying a hybrid car or installing solar panels is [well]-intentioned, not necessary, says Goodman.  “The actual results in the real world have been relatively minimal,” he says.  “The solar industry is in a depression now, but if the industry is ‘so big’ the government shouldn’t have to subsidize it.  If it’s that good, let people pay for it on their own.”

Again, correct, this time partly for the wrong reasons.  The tax credits—any tax credits or subsidies or deductions—distort the market and mitigate against rational, market-oriented solutions.  Regardless of the target, whether renewable energy, oil and gas, or mortgage interest, all credits, subsidies, deductions, and what-have-you should be purged from the tax code.

Are We Projecting?

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The People’s Republic of China, in its latest national defense report, is accusing the US of “destabilizing” the Asia-Pacific region, because we’re shifting the focus of our attention there instead of keeping it on Europe.

PRC Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun, referring to enhancements of our ties with our friends and allies around the Pacific and the South China Sea, and to our strengthening (a little bit) our military presence in the area:

Certain efforts made to highlight the military agenda, enhance military deployment and also strengthen alliances are not in line with the calling of the times and are not conducive to the upholding of peace and stability in the region[.]

We hope that the relevant parties would do more to enhance the mutual trust between countries in the region and contribute to peace and stability

Never mind that the PRC defense budget is second in the world only to our own, it’s grown by 500% over the last dozen, or so, years, and they’re currently engaged in a massive sea grab.  Things would be much more stable if we’d just abandon our allies, friends, and trading partners, and let the PRC get on with it.

Projecting, are we, Mr Yang?

Meddling with Science Education

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Now the educators are politicizing the “science” to be taught our children.  Newly released national science standard “proposals” will include the pseudo-science of manmade climate change as a “core concept.”

The new standards claim

Human activities, such as the release of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels, are major factors in the current rise in Earth’s mean surface temperature (global warming)

without any regard for the lack of actual science, or even data, to support that thesis.

On the other hand, some of the objections to this politicization miss the point and, if these objections are the ones that successfully defeat the nonsense, they’ll create their own problems.  There is, for instance, the worry that

the very presence of climate change instruction in classrooms will create controversy.

So what?  That actually would be beneficial.  A proper handling of the controversy (of any controversy, come to that) would constitute an excellent mechanism for teaching critical thinking, to say nothing of the opportunity to teach the social aspects of dealing with controversial matters.