Category Archives: culture

You Didn’t Earn That

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The European Commission has criticized seven member states for “aggressive” tax practices, whereby governments try to undercut others to attract multinational companies.

Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation, and Customs doesn’t like competition; he actually thinks it interferes with the “integrity of the European single market.”

[T]hese practices have “the potential to undermine the fairness and the level playing field in our internal market and they increase the burden on EU taxpayers.”

This, of course, is nonsense on a number of fronts.  The Commission has yet to justify the high taxes of those member nations that are so put upon by the others’ low(er) tax rates.  The Commission has yet to say how competition is disintegrative.  The Commission has yet to explain why the playing field cannot be leveled by those high-tax nations lowering their tax rates and thereby also lowering the burden on those EU taxpayers who are citizens of those high-tax members.  The Commission has yet to demonstrate that tax competition creates, in any way, an uneven playing field—especially since the varying national tax rates are fully within the control of those nations.

Besides, that money belongs to EU Governance, not to the people who earned it or whose enterprises earned it.  And you member nations: your sovereignty belongs to us.

Or So He Says

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Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian claims his company’s decision to cut ties with the National Rifle Association to the extent it will no longer offer discounts for NRA members was apolitical.

While Delta’s intent was to remain neutral, some elected officials in Georgia tied our decision to a pending jet fuel tax exemption, threatening to eliminate it unless we reversed course. Our decision was not made for economic gain and our values are not for sale[.]

Of course.

Bastian maintains that in cutting its affiliation with the pro-gun rights group, Delta tried to remove itself from the gun control debate.

Never mind that Delta was never in the gun control debate until it chose to enter it with this move.

Bastian also claims that the company is “reevaluating the group discounts” it offers to members of other organizations that are “politically divisive.”

Sure.  Two things about that, though.  Delta actually has stopped the discounts for NRA members; it’s only “evaluating” that move for other groups.  And: Bastian has chosen, so far at least, to decline to offer his criteria that define “politically divisive.”

I won’t be flying Delta anytime soon.  Or United Airlines, which is perpetrating a similar boycott.  I will be using FedEx, which says that while it disagrees with the NRA on some questions, it won’t discriminate against any of its customers over political beliefs.

A Mayor and Violent Illegal Aliens

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Some numbers are in following an ICE raids in northern California last week that Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned her illegal alien constituents was coming before the raids went in [emphasis added].

Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials announced this week that the four-day raid led to the arrest of 232 illegal immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Of those 232, 180 “were either convicted criminals, had been issued a final order of removal and failed to depart the United States, or had been previously removed” from the country and had come back illegally.

Another 115 “had prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault, or had past convictions for significant or multiple misdemeanors.”

Acting ICE Director Tom Homan said that, as a result of Schaaf’s heads up [FoxNews‘ paraphrase],

there are roughly 800 illegal immigrants they were unable to locate.

Including how many more with prior felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, such as child sex crimes, weapons charges and assault a reader might wonder.

Schaaf is proud of herself, too.

I did what I believe was right for my community as well as to protect public safety[.]

Especially the safety of her illegal alien community members.

Now we know where the mayor stands on gun control.  And on protecting the children of any of her constituents.  On the safety of any of her legal constituents, come to that.

Arms Keeping and Bearing “Reform”

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The House passed a bill last December that greatly expands background checks and that mandates concealed-carry reciprocity among the several States.

The Senate should take up that bill without further delay and pass it as well.  With the much broader background checks, there’s no longer any rational argument for opposing concealed-carry reciprocity.

It’s a pipedream, though; there aren’t enough Progressive-Democrat Senators willing to vote for cloture.  The lack of progress is too important to them as a campaign issue.

Census and Ethnicity

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The Census Bureau is revising its role in government-mandated identity politics, and not necessarily for the better.  For decades, it has been directed to sort Americans into ethnic groups so Federal funds could be allocated to those Americans held to be minorities (never mind that with all Americans being equal under law, there are no minorities—and that the lack of practical truth in that is a failure of enforcement not an indication of any fundamental falseness in that).  The government-required bigotry even went so far as, when Americans were allowed to check off more than one ethnicity, the Census Bureau, rather than leaving it at that, would re-identify such a misguided person as a member of the smaller “minority,” and if an American checked “Caucasian” and a “minority,” that unfortunate was re-identified as the “minority” member.

Now the Census Bureau is looking at revising how it collects its identity politics data for the 2020 census, and a social scientist, David Hollinger has a suggestion.

Mr Hollinger has proposed to do away with the pan-ethnic groups altogether and “count instead those inhabitants who identify with descent communities from specific countries.”

As long as we’re revising the census, here’s my suggestion: just add a box for “American,” with no “Government will re-identify you” capability.

Where is self-identifying when it’s useful?