Category Archives: ethics

Switzerland Giving up Its Tax Haven Status?

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Spiegel International Online has an article that discusses the possibility of Switzerland giving up a major portion of its banking secrecy laws under political pressure from the US and Germany.  Although the purpose of the article is to discuss the degree of importance (or lack) of the Swiss’ status as a tax haven to the Swiss economy, the discussion raises another question, immediately germane to our own economic condition, about tax havens generally.

Should we care if Switzerland remains a tax haven or gives that up?  If our own tax code weren’t so Byzantine, with such high rates, and with so many excused from taxes altogether (whether from the aggregate of subsidies, credits, exemptions, pick-a-loophole, or just from belonging to a protected class), Americans would have no need of tax havens.

If privacy is our concern, still we should be looking here at home, and reining in an overreaching government.  Sort of the kind of thing elections are for.

Who Skipped Out?

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On Saturday, during his periodic radio address, Democratic Presidential Candidate bellyached about Congress adjourning before his precious addenda had been carried out.

Last week, without much fanfare, members of the House of Representatives banged a gavel, turned out the lights, and rushed home, declaring their work finished for now.

He added

See, when they skipped town, members of Congress left a whole bunch of proposals sitting on the table—actions that would create jobs, boost our economy, and strengthen middle-class security.

This from the guy who thought it more appropriate to attend his fundraiser and party in Las Vegas than to be in the White House dealing with the attacks, vandalism, and flag desecration at our Cairo embassy and the attacks, destruction, and murders at our Benghazi consulate.

This from the guy who has time to sit face to face with the Ladies of the View but who has no time to meet with world leaders—even those who explicitly ask for such a meeting.  “Give me a call on the telephone,” he says through his press rep, Jay Carney, and his campaign advisor, Robert Gibbs.

This from the guy who, for three years, has declined to present a serious budget proposal to Congress, instead proposing exploding spending, increasing deficits, and deepening debt—disingenuous proposals the last two of which couldn’t even get a single Democrat’s vote.

This from the guy whose Democrat-controlled Senate is sitting on 38 House-passed jobs-related bills without even permitting their discussion, much less an actual vote.

Who is it, really, who’s skipped town?  And been out of town all these years?

Welfare, Work, and the Stimulus

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It turns out Obama’s HHS waiver of the work requirement for welfare (in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, signed into law by President Bill Clinton) wasn’t the first Obama waiver of the work requirement.  No, it’s just one more instance of the wealth redistribution in which Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama believes so much.

The Congressional Research Service has a new report out, albeit one done at the behest of an Evil Republican, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (the report can be found here or here).  This report demonstrates that the Obama Stimulus Package, drafted up shortly after his inauguration in 2009 and passed just after that also waived the requirement for work in order to get welfare.

Typically the food stamp program requires that group [“able-bodied adults” between 18 and 49 years old who have no dependents] to work or participate in a training program at least 20 hours a week to continue receiving benefits after three months. The stimulus law, though, allowed states to suspend the rule from April 2009 to October 2010—and most states did.

The CRS study showed that in fiscal 2010, the last year for which data was available, the number of food-stamp recipients in that group was at nearly 3.9 million. That’s up from 1.9 million in 2008.

Though food-stamp enrollment was already rising at the time in part due to the recession, the study noted the number in this group “increased more rapidly than the overall caseload.”

Their percentage of that caseload grew from 6.9 percent in 2008 to 9.7 percent in 2010.

This was no effort to accommodate spiking unemployment, though.  Indeed, it never was intended to—unemployment would never rise above 8% and would fall back to 5.5% by the end of 2009 with the stimulus, Obama promised us.  The waiver was, nevertheless, extended beyond 2010.

The latest CRS report noted that while the stimulus law lifted the food stamp work requirement until late 2010, the law allowing extended unemployment benefits likewise allowed most states to waive those work requirements in 2011 and 2012.

Bread and circuses.

Controlling Religion

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Last Sunday on CBS’s 60 Minutes, reports The Weekly Standard, the Democratic Party’s Presidential Candidate, Barack Obama, was asked this question by Steve Kroft:

Have the events that took place in the Middle East, the recent events in the Middle East given you any pause about your support for the governments that have come to power following the Arab Spring?

Obama gave this answer, in part [emphasis mine]:

…I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because—you know, in a lot of these places—the one organizing principle—has been Islam. The one part of society that hasn’t been controlled completely by the government.

So, in this man’s eyes, Islam—and by extension, all religion?—must be under government control, and not left to the individual consciences of the men and women involved?

He seems to have implemented this view with his attacks on religion here at home—his HHS ruling on contraceptives and abortifacients, for instance; his VA’s attacks on prayer in our National Cemetery System; his Justice Department’s lack of support for (if not outright obstruction of) defending military memorials because some of the symbology looks like religious icons; his attempted omission of any reference to God from the Democratic Party platform, until public outcry forced him into a square-filler insertion of a passing referent; and so on.

Hmm….

Foreign Policy Competence in General

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Now the facts underlying the attacks on our embassy in Egypt and consulate in Libya, together with the murders of our personnel, are starting to emerge into the light.  Intelligence is now conceding that [emphasis mine]

the deadly attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was directly tied to Al Qaeda—with a former Guantanamo detainee involved.

In fact, it’s entirely possible that the erstwhile Gitmo prisoner, Sufyan Ben Qumu, may have led the attack on our consulate.  This was a terrorist that was transferred from Gitmo to Libyan custody—with the proviso that he be jailed there—during the Bush the Younger administration, and who then was promptly released by Libya’s then-MFWIC Muammar Qaddafi.

Moreover, Matt Olsen, National Counterterrorism Center Director, told the Senate’s hearing on the matter last Wednesday,

Yes, they [our Ambassador and three of his staff] were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.

Note that Wednesday testimony by Olsen.  That comes on the heels of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s claim, made through his press rep, Jay Carney, and his UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, of “do what?”  Just a short while prior to Olsen’s sworn testimony, ObamaCarney claimed that there was

no evidence of a preplanned or pre-meditated attack.  I made that clear last week, Ambassador Rice made that clear Sunday.

Indeed, Rice had busily made the rounds of the Sunday morning talk shows claiming that the attack in Benghazi was “spontaneous” and triggered by the Egyptian attack on our embassy there, which ostensibly was over a movie trailer that had been on YouTube for some months prior to this “spontaneity.”  See below concerning the Egyptian attack.

It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.  The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo.

But was this apparent contradiction simply the result of a continuing development of information?  Not so much.  State knew this much in real time: the Libyan president and his intelligence facility had already said the attack was premeditated.  Additionally, there was no major protest in Benghazi in the hours (!) before the attack—which went in from three different directions simultaneously.

Apparently, when the facts contradict your pre-determined outcome, it’s necessary to disregard those facts for as long as possible.

Meanwhile, over in Egypt….

The Department of Homeland Security knew two days before the attack on our Cairo embassy why it was going to occur and that it had nothing to do with a movie trailer.  And so, because DHS and State of course coordinate on such matters, State knew this two days ahead of the attacks, also.

DHS’ intel report, of which Fox News says they’ve obtained a copy, cites a Web site carrying a call to “sons of Egypt.”  DHS has also called this source fairly reliable.  The call demands the following:

Starting now, let the faithful among you form follow-up committees in charge of taking the necessary measures to force America to release the sheikh [the Blind Sheik, convicted and, so far, jailed for a separate terrorist attack]—even if it requires burning the embassy down with everyone in it.

But no actionable intelligence existed, Obama has said.

Oh, and on the matter of the Blind Sheik’s release by our government, there’s this:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has denied the possibility.

Let me say as clearly as I can there is no plan to release the blind sheikh, there is no plan. To my knowledge we have not been approached about it recently by any senior Egyptians.

Leaving aside the careful parsing in this claim, as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck is reputed to have said,

In statecraft, never believe anything until it’s been officially denied.

The potential for this terrorist’s release is especially disturbing since he’s in the hands of a President who began his administration with a World Apology Tour, and whose State Department preceded the attacks on our Egyptian embassy with an apology for a man exercising his free speech rights.

This is a shocking failure to perform.