Daily Archives: 19 June 2015

Iran and our State Department

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The guy who sits in the Secretary of State’s chair, John Kerry, had this to say regarding this administration’s “negotiations” about Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In particular, he was talking about this administration’s give a hoot attitude toward nearby history.

The possible military dimensions, frankly, gets distorted a little bit in some of the discussions in that we’re not fixated on Iran specifically accounting for what they did at one point in time or another.

We know what they did. We have no doubt. We have absolute knowledge with respect to certain military activities they were engaged in. What we’re concerned about is going forward. It’s critical to us to know that going forward, those activities have been stopped, and that we can account for that in a legitimate way.

But that’s how you know they might be telling the truth about “those activities” going forward. You match what you know with absolute knowledge (Kerry’s naïveté regarding the perfection of intelligence would be cute if it weren’t so dangerous) with what the Iranians tell you. Deviations between the two—since you already know these things without doubt—are demonstrations of Iran lying, and so you have no way of knowing that they’ve stopped “those activities.”

One more thing regarding “military dimensions…gets distorted a little bit:” for what do you think the Iranians are building their nuclear weapons except for those weapons’ military dimension?

It’s going to be a long and dangerous 18 months.

Progressive Tax Credits

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Targeting youth unemployment, Hillary Rodham Clinton plans to propose tax credits to encourage businesses to train young people and offer apprenticeships to develop lifelong job skills.

Clinton’s campaign said she would outline a proposed tax credit of $1,500 for every apprentice that a business hires….

Here’s a thought. How about lowering taxes altogether and getting the tax code out of the business of social engineering? With suitably low taxes, you wouldn’t need to play games with taxes as inducements to do this or as discouragements from doing that.

With suitably low taxes and the code out of the business of social engineering, businesses could spend their energies on sound business planning rather than on shopping around for a tax deal.

With suitably low taxes and the code out of the business of encouraging this or discouraging that, there’d be less need for special interest groups or lobbyists to push for this or that Very Important Consideration in our tax code. (Yeah, yeah, I know.)

There’s this, too, in Clinton’s plan:

The campaign said the tax credit proposal would require accountability for employment and earnings outcomes for businesses receiving the credit. Apprentices would need to be registered in order to be eligible.

The Progressive gives, and the Progressive takes away.   The savings gained from her tax credit will be fully recouped in the costs of compliance. However, the government will grow, and more IRS bureaucrats will be hired, so it’s all good.

Note, too, that this doesn’t begin to address jobs availability in the ensuing robust, growing economy.