Author Archives: eehines

The IRS Is Going Broke?

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The IRS is in front of Congress, saying the $60 billion with which Congress plussed up its money pot last year—an addition that was supposed to last for 10 years—already is used up, and Commissioner Danny Werfel is in, pleading for an additional $104 billion. The Wall Street Journal editors are correct to wave a big, red BS flag on that, saying Congress should demand (and conduct, I say) an audit of the IRS and its spending instead.

I agree. But I also say there’s an alternative path to controlling the IRS, and its spendthrift ways, and that alternative would benefit all of us average Americans and our businesses. It’s a proposal I’ve offered before.

Congress should pass, and the President should sign, legislation that would vastly simplify our tax code. The new tax code should have no income tax levied on our businesses—which don’t pay much in the way of income tax, anyway; business customers pay most of it—and the new personal income tax should be a single flat rate on all income, regardless of source, and with no credits, deductions, subsidies, or other frou-frou gerrymanders on income.

A rate in the range of 10% to 15% would raise all the revenues for the Federal government it needs to provide for the only three Constitutionally mandated spending types: providing for our national defense, paying our Federal government debts, and providing for the Article I, Section 8-enumerated items of the general Welfare of the United States.

A vastly reduced IRS, consisting primarily of receiving clerks, would be all that’s necessary to manage the resulting tax code. It’d be hard for such a reduced agency, even a Federal government one, to waste $60 billion.

US EVs and Critical Supply Chain Inputs

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Stephen Wilmot’s lede in his Wall Street Journal piece lays out a major outcome of the tariffs proposed by Progressive-Democratic President Joe Biden on a variety of EV inputs sourced from the People’s Republic of China.

Making cheap electric vehicles in America is getting even tougher.

And

Based on a crude calculation, the tariff increase could theoretically add roughly $1,000 to costs per standard-range Model 3—not unaffordable, but inconvenient when Tesla is desperate to remove costs wherever possible.

There are moves afoot that seek to alter that sourcing.

A response more in the spirit of US government policy would be to bring LFP [Lithium-Iron-Phosphate] battery production onshore.

And

One of the strings attached to the $7,500 tax credit available for EV purchases as part of the Inflation Reduction Act is now that no battery materials can come from a “foreign entity of concern,” a designation that includes China.

The problem with those kinds of moves, though, is that they’re woefully incomplete. The original input to those products is lithium, and the vast majority of that is mined in the PRC, and the vast majority of the lithium that is mined is refined in the PRC—including being shipped from non-PRC mines to the PRC for refining. It’s functionally the same for nickel, another major component of EV batteries (LFP batteries aren’t yet ready for prime time), the only difference is that most of the nickel is mined in PRC-owned mines in Africa.

Leave aside the idea of whether battery cars are anything other than another form of personal transportation, like the various external combustion engine-powered cars we’ve tried out over the years, or the original battery cars of a bit over 100 years ago.

The situation extends far beyond some battery inputs. Leaving ourselves dependent on an enemy nation for any of the Critical Item inputs to our economy is far more than an inconvenience, and far more expensive than just dollars spent on alternative sources. Our national security, our national freedom, depend on eliminating that dependence.

The ICC and its Sham Concern for Civilians

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The editors of The Wall Street Journal correctly point out the failure of the ICC to differentiate between legitimacy and terrorism vis-à-vis the war Hamas terrorists have inflicted on Israel, a war the terrorists intend to prosecute to the destruction of Israel, no matter the cost to Gazan civilians. It is a failure, I claim, borne of the ICC’s cynically constructed false equivalence between the terrorists and Israel. It’s an equivalence, I claim further, that’s borne of the ICC’s intrinsic antisemitic bigotry.

The worthies of the ICC are, after all, among the most talented and highly educated of us.

There’s one point, though, that badly wants an emphasis that’s sadly lacking otherwise.

The ICC claims Israel is “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population….”

If, however, we take the terrorists’ claims of 35,000 undifferentiated Gazan casualties at face value, and the IDF’s claims that 10,000-12,000 of those were Hamas terrorists (the IDF uses the gentler term “combatants”), that’s a civilian to combatant casualty ratio of around 3 to 1. That’s an historic low ratio for urban warfare.

If the Israelis are deliberately directing attacks against the civilian population, they are truly atrociously bad shots.

They’re Not Journalists

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Just the News had a Saturday article that debunked the claims—claims actively supported by the press—by a plethora of insurers that climate change is responsible for their changing policies, increases in premiums and deductibles, and growing numbers of exclusion clauses in the policies they do sell.

I’m interested in one apologia for the press offered by Ryan Maue, a research meteorologist [emphasis added].

Journalists aren’t equipped to go into the studies. They’re not economists. They’re not climate scientists. They’re journalists. They’re supposed to ask questions and dig deeper by going to ask all the sources, or go find experts either to talk on the record or off the record. And for whatever reason, this field just does not do that.

No, they’re not journalists. Among other criteria for journalism and those who claim to practice the form was a long ago editorial criterion requiring a journalist to produce two (or more) on-the-record sources to corroborate any number of anonymous claims the journalist might include in his piece. The journalism practice, the practice’s editors, and the practice’s writers have long since walked away from that criterion.

The question then becomes: what concrete, publicly measurable standard of journalistic integrity is used today in the practice of journalism? The answer is none. At least that’s the implication from the myriad times I’ve asked that question of a number of those claiming to be journalists, and the zero times I’ve gotten a response.

The current crop are not journalists; they are proselytizers when they’re not being propagandists.

Trading with the Enemy

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Sunday Letters section put it succinctly regarding free global trade:

I support free global trade except with countries that cheat and steal and use slave labor.

He wrote that in the context of his decrial of the People’s Republic of China as attempting to rule all of Asia and the global economy.

The PRC’s goal is broader than that; PRC President Xi Jinping has said in so many words that his goal for the PRC is to supplant the US as the world’s sole superpower, which would give the PRC the political, economic, and military power to control our own national actions.

From that, I would add to the letter-writer’s criteria for free global trade: no trade, free or otherwise (beyond, perhaps, non-critical commodity goods), with enemy nations. That would include Russia, Iran, and northern Korea, as well as the PRC.

An aside (but not too far over): it’s common to decry northern Korea’s use of slave labor, but I submit that that is something of a misnomer. Using slave labor implies that other laborers aren’t slaves, holding their jobs—or not—voluntarily. In northern Korea, though, all of the unfortunates resident there—every single one of them—are slaves of the thugs that rule over that gang territory.