Monthly Archives: September 2014

Democrats and Inversions

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Inversions in this context, to oversimplify, are when American companies buy foreign companies and then relocate their headquarters to that foreign country in order to take advantage of that country’s lower tax rates. That this is part of an American company’s management fiduciary duty to the owners to minimize costs and maximize profits is unimportant to the denizens of the present administration and to too many “Republicans” as well.

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, had some thoughts about the evils of inversions.

These transactions erode the US tax base, unfairly placing a larger burden on all other taxpayers, including small businesses and hardworking Americans[.]

Of course, Lew and Obama carefully ignore the fact that half of us Americans already pay little or no taxes, “unfairly placing a larger burden on all other taxpayers.”

They also ignore the fact that it isn’t their money in the first place; the money belongs to the companies’ owners.

They also ignore the fact that our “tax base” already is excessively progressive and that it has the highest business rates in the world.

Lew went on:

These first, targeted steps make substantial progress in constraining the creative techniques used to avoid US taxes, both in terms of meaningfully reducing the economic benefits of inversions after the fact, and when possible, stopping them altogether.

A better way to reduce the economic benefits of inversions would be to do the patriotic thing: lower, drastically, the tax rates on American businesses. Taxes, after all, are at the foundation of our Revolutionary War—not only the stereotypical taxation without representation, but also the point of that demand of representation: so we could keep tax rates from getting out of hand.

If our business tax rates were lowered sufficiently—Ireland, for instance, taxes businesses at 12.5%, compared to our 35% rate—a couple of things would occur. The first would be a cessation of inversions, and if our business taxes were lowered significantly below 12.5% (I’ve been advocating all along for an elimination of taxes on our businesses), foreign businesses would be attracted to the US, bringing with them the jobs they have.

The other thing that would occur involves the $2 trillion that American companies with foreign branches, affiliates, and so on are holding overseas in order to avoid our usurious tax rates. With those tax rates vastly reduced, that money would come home. $2 trillion is a lot of jobs and capital investment (which is more jobs in the nearby future) waiting to happen.

But tax rate reductions are anathema, if not inconceivable, to Democrats.  And to too many “Republicans.”

This Needs to get Moving

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Fort McClellan, Anniston, AL, housed among other units the Army’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Corps. This Corps was responsible for the containment and disposal of chemical weapons, and it carried out this function, primarily, at Ft McClellan, a task it had done since before WWII. The base was closed 15 years ago due to failures in containment and leaching of the toxins into the soil and local water supply.

Monsanto also had been leaking toxins into the area’s water supply and soil from its own herbicide manufactory. Locals suffering from the effects of these contaminants successfully sued Monsanto in 2003, four years after McClellan’s closure, but for reasons that aren’t particularly important to this post Army personnel and their families who had been stationed at the base were blocked from joining the suit.

In January of last year, the Fort McClellan Health Act was introduced to fill the resulting gap in these veterans’ ability to get coverage and medical treatment for the effects of their own and their families’ exposure to the toxins handled at the base. It’s been languishing in committee (first in the House’s Committee on Veterans Affairs, then the Subcommittee on Health) since then.

This is an unacceptable bureaucratic delay (because I don’t think the Congressmen themselves don’t care about our veterans’ or families’ health), and it must stop. This bill needs to be promptly debated and brought to fruition, properly paid for, and moved along to House passage, following which the Senate needs to move it to a vote and the President sign it into law.

Write your Representatives and Senators. Call them. Email them. Social media. There’s been enough delay, not just for the last 21 months, but since this problem first came to light over a decade ago.

Democratic Plant?

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This is part of a Facebook exchange between supposed Libertarian candidate for US Senator from North Carolina, Sean Haugh, and a North Carolina voter, via The Daily Caller. A fuller excerpt of the exchange is at Alex Pappas’ article behind the first link above.SeanHaugh_CroppedIn case the image is hard to read, the exchange goes like this:

Sean Haugh, Libertarian for US Senate: Well, obviously our realities are quite detached. I prefer my reality over yours because logic, reason and evidence exist in mine. I pity ignorant morons such as yourself and wish you would stop voting.

Janna Badalian: Using insults in lieu of rational argument is a Dem trademark as well—you just proved my point for me. Sad that we’ll have the Hag in Senate again because of you and your silly followers.

Sean Haugh, Libertarian for US Senate: I have learned that there is no value in explaining to an idiot why they are being an idiot, because, y’know, they’re too stupid to understand anything.

This is the position on American citizens held Herb Croly, one of the founders of the Progressive movement, of which today’s Democrats are proud aficionados and with whom Haugh so plainly identifies.

[T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Haugh sure sounds like a plant to me.

Some Ally

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Under pressure from its Arab neighbors, Qatar has expelled some key players in the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission, among other things, is to overthrow secular governments throughout the Middle East and replace them with MB-approved governments. Those expellees are making a beeline for…Turkey, a NATO member and supposedly staunch Middle East ally of the US.

However.

In addition to giving asylum to the MB’s leadership, Turkey

  • is host to the Palestinian Authority’s Hamas branch “overseas command center”
  • allows ISIS to use Turkey’s territory to sell ISIS-stolen oil on Turkey’s black market
  • refused to join the US’ effort to eliminate ISIS in Iraq and Syria—Turkey won’t even allow air missions against ISIS to originate from allied bases in Turkey
  • allows “radical Islamists” to freely cross its borders with Syria and Iraq

And this:

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Saturday that 49 hostages who were seized by Islamic militants in Iraq [from the Turkish Consulate in Mosul] have been freed and safely returned to Turkey….

Given what ISIS does with its other hostages, and that coziness outlined above, this sounds like part of a payoff.

Some ally, indeed.

Yet Another Thought on Republican Communications

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Republicans and Conservatives keep hurting their prospects of success by (dare I say it?) bitterly clinging to their glittering generalities and vague claims that they’ll be better than their Democratic Party opponents. They need to stop being afraid of providing specifics: each Republican candidate needs to lay out in clearly assessable terms what he plans to do in the coming term if he’s elected.

It isn’t enough to say that Conservative principles are good for the country. If the Conservative message truly has meaning, it’s worth laying out in concrete terms; there’s nothing to fear in a contest of ideas—or of concrete actions—with Democrats. Indeed, it’s necessary to lay them out. It’s necessary to say, explicitly, how this Conservative principle will help a particular farmer in Outback, Nebraska; how this or that principle will make life and the future better for the single mom from the ‘hood in Omaha.

Of course, a candidate’s Democratic opponent will attack the Republican’s specifics—there’s always something wrong with the particulars. Isn’t there? But, to paraphrase General Eisenhower, this attack is to be regarded as an opportunity. There are three things that can happen from a Democrat’s attack on any Republican’s specific proposals, and they’re all favorable to the Republican candidate having the brass to respond.

First, Democrats responding to the Republican candidate’s plan are not putting forward their own ideas; they’re reacting to Republicans. They’ve lost the initiative.

Second, the Republican candidate now has an opportunity to emphasize the fact that he has a plan, he knows what needs to be done; the Democrat has nothing of the kind: all the Democrat can do is sit on the sideline and carp about others.

Third, the Democrats and their supporters will be wrong on the facts and the logic tying the facts together, and their attack will be an excellent vehicle for demonstrating this. Loudly and publicly.