Monthly Archives: December 2017

Tax Reform and SALT

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The Wall Street Journal Friday opined that a House-Senate conference on the tax reform bills passed by the House and then-on offer by the Senate (since passed, with some changes to the on-offer version) could improve on the two bills and produce a better one for final passage and President’s signature.  The Editorial Board is right as far as it goes.

Notably in the context of their piece and this post, one of those changes to the Senate’s version that was included in what finally was passed was a change to their complete removal of State and local taxes: the Senate-passed version now includes the House’s deductibility of up to $10,000 in property taxes paid.

But the Editorial Board included this in their piece:

…the bill’s biggest flaw, which is a lousy individual tax reform that raises taxes on many Americans in high-tax states. Eliminating the state-and-local income tax deduction, as both bills do, is sound policy. But the bills don’t offset that with a corresponding reduction in the top marginal tax rate.

This is disingenuous because the editorialists know better. It’s certainly true that, with SALT deductions severely restricted (only that $10k max deduction), citizens of Progressive-Democratic Party-run States likely will pay more in State and local taxes. But to call this a raise in taxes on those Americans is obviously false. Those (excessively) high State and local taxes were already in place, and the House and Senate tax reform bills do not, cannot, touch them.

The “offset” needed is not a “reduction in the top [Federal] marginal tax rate;” although such a reduction would be optimal in its own right.  No, the offset actually needed is for State and local politicians, with encouragement from those States’ Congressional delegations, to reform their own tax codes and reduce their own States’ spending.

It would seem that some members of the “Editorial Board” reside in New York and New Jersey while others phone it in from California.

Michael Flynn’s Guilty Plea and Credibility

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Judge Andrew Napolitano has suggested that Michael Flynn’s (late of the Trump administration and a retired general officer) guilty plea for Special Counselor Robert Mueller could lead to a Constitutional crisis by threatening criminal charges against President Donald trump.  Douglas Schoen has suggested that Flynn’s guilty plea should be cause for worry by the Trump administration.

However.

Flynn faced a multiplicity of charges that, if convicted on them, would have put him in jail for decades.  He pleaded guilty, instead, to a simple charge of lying to the FBI, and he faces months in jail from that (even less if he’s well-behaved in jail).

So: Flynn is a confessed liar (and with that he has badly stained the Army’s uniform that he had previously worn with such distinction).  He has sold his testimony (if not his soul) to the highest bidder.

Based on either of those huge failures alone, much less on the two taken together, how would it be possible for any judge or jury to take anything Flynn might say seriously?  How, even, could charges made that are based on anything Flynn might say from now on not be tossed out of hand?  How, even, could probable cause be shown for any warrants, if the claims are based on anything Flynn might say?

Flynn has less than zero credibility.

A Boycott

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CNN and its press corps “journalists” have decided to boycott the White House Christmas Party.  President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump violated yet another press protocol: they invited the technicians and behind-the-scenes media employees who work the White House briefing room so the press corps members’ performances can go on the air to what has been in the past a party solely for the press corps.

These pressmen are claiming to be too offended by Trump’s remarks about them to attend, but CNN will be sure and send a press team to “cover” the party and report on it, never minding that the Christmas party is, traditionally, an off-the-record do.

These persons are serious, too.  They will not attend.  These pressmen are holding themselves out as being too good to rub elbows with the very folks who make their White House press corps jobs possible.  They’re not too good to be seen just with their own crews, either.  They’re saying they’re too good to be at the same party as anyone’s mere technicians.

How unbelievably petty.  How breathtakingly arrogant.

Higher Education Improvement

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The Wall Street Journal has a summary of the House’s The Promoting Real Opportunity, Success and Prosperity Through Education Reform (PROSPER) Act, to be proposed this week.  It’s aimed at

filling that gap [in college graduates’ skills, with 6 million jobs left begging] by both deregulating parts of the sector and laying the conditions for shorter, faster pathways to the workforce. The act focuses on ensuring students don’t just enroll in school, but actually graduate with skills that the labor market is seeking.

Highlights include these:

  • revamp of the $1.34 trillion federal student loan program
    • graduate students and parents of undergraduates would have overall caps on tuition and living expense loans, instead of borrowing whatever schools charge.
    • end loan-forgiveness programs for public-service employees
    • eliminate a program that ties monthly payments to income levels for private-sector workers.
  • community colleges would get more funding to team with the private sector and create or expand apprenticeships and learn and earn programs
  • for-profit college sector would be on equal footing with nonprofit schools regarding limits on federal aid and measurements of graduate success: overall, competency-based education
  • functional repeal of the gainful employment regulation, which ties access to federal student aid to whether career programs lead to decent-paying jobs. Government will no longer be the decider of what jobs are suitable; the graduate and employer will.
  • increased accountability of schools by improving the quality of information available to prospective students
  • “historically black” and developing Hispanic schools would have to provably graduate or transfer at least 25% of their students in order to get funding from the pile otherwise earmarked for these schools
  • require schools to pay back some portion of federal loans if the student didn’t rather than leaving the schools strictly as loan generators that get the proceeds from the loans without regard to suitability or outcome.

All in all, this could represent a major improvement to our higher community college/college/university education system, especially in its core: graduates’ employability and the costs incurred (and by whom) in achieving that employability.

Naturally, the colleges and universities, whose funding oxen are going to get gored, will squawk.  Ignore them, and move past the dinosaurs and vested interests.

The VA Continues to Fail

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…as it continues to exist.  This time, its failure is in not reporting “90% of potentially dangerous medical providers.”

Based on a sampling of 148 providers at five unidentified VA hospitals who required review, officials had only reported nine health care workers since 2014, and none had been reported to state licensing boards.

Never mind that

the VA is required to report providers to a national database designed to prevent them from crossing state lines and endangering other patients.

The GAO says in its report on this failure that much of the failure stems from “confusion” about VA responsibilities and reporting requirements.

Does any reader want to look at some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that I might know about?

VA management wasn’t confused.  They just don’t care.

 

Veteranos Administratio delende est.