Category Archives: politics

Another Leak

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The Wall Street Journal reported another leak concerning Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s pseudo-investigation of all things related to supposed collusion by President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russia [emphasis added].

A meeting in the Seychelles weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration between a Russian executive and a top Republican donor close to the Trump transition team has drawn the scrutiny of special counsel Robert Mueller, who has heard testimony that appears to conflict with an account of the same meeting given earlier to House investigators, according to people familiar with the matter.

Specifically,

Mr Mueller’s investigators have heard testimony from a witness that the donor, Erik Prince, wasn’t introduced to the Russian by intermediaries from the United Arab Emirates, as he had told the House panel….

And

Mr [George] Nader told Mr Mueller’s investigators that he attended Mr Prince’s meeting with the Emirati delegation and that the Emiratis didn’t make the introduction between Mr Prince and Mr Dmitriev….

How—and why—are these leaks being made?  Can we even believe them, given the leaker’s dishonesty made manifest by the fact of his leaks?

…a spokesman for the special counsel declined to comment.

Not even to decry the leak.  But, then, of course not.  He’ll let the leak stand unaddressed.

“People familiar with the matter” include Mueller and his team.  Certainly, “people familiar” include folks other than Mueller or his team, but Mueller’s continued studied refusal to decry not only this leak but all of them is strongly indicative.

Mueller seems to be getting desperate to show something—anything—that would justify his having spent the millions of dollars he’s spent on his…investigation.

An Interesting Move

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Work for welfare is a tried and true means of helping folks who need a hand up and further for helping them get out of the government-dependency cage.  Wisconsin is applying an interesting twist to the thing.

Wisconsin is relying on an unusual argument to tie new work requirements to food stamps: it says it needs the workers.

And

[Wisconsin’s] labor force grew 1.2% in 2017, and the state’s jobs listings website shows nearly 100,000 positions unfilled. Mr Walker believes some of the 925,000 people on the state’s FoodShare program could help.

Governor Scott Walker (R):

We can’t afford to have anybody on the sidelines.  This is as much as anything a workforce issue.

Yewbetcha.

This could work.  The program will, though, in addition to helping Wisconsin’s poor and worker shortage, invite movement into Wisconsin by (oh, say) Illinois citizens.  To the extent that jobs remain available from Wisconsin’s historically low unemployment, this would be good.  A risk, though, is that the program might lead to overshooting the jobs available, leaving the costs of the program expanding while its benefits—employment of welfare recipients—stagnate or fall off.

Better than Nothing

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…and good for the region, although not as good as it could have been with US involvement.

Japan, Canada, Mexico and eight other Pacific nations [Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam] are set to sign a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, on Thursday.

This is a missed opportunity for the United States and a foreign policy mistake by President Donald Trump.

The goal of the pact is to open borders to more trade in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific region and to set international standards, which many see as crucial to managing the encroaching dominance of China….

That last illustrates why international trade, in all its forms, is more about foreign policy than it is economics.  The particular, foreign policy, failure has also weakened our ability to influence the People’s Republic of China, on trade, on the South and East China Seas, on northern Korea.

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.

Because, Tax

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In a further demonstration that the Progressive-Democratic Party knows only how to tax and to raise taxes, there’s this.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed repealing major pieces of the just-passed tax law, in a plan that would raise taxes on corporations, estates, and high-income households to pay for $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending.

And the Progressive-Democrats actually are touting this for the mid-term elections this fall.  It’s not your money, after all, it’s Big Governments, and Progressive-Democrats Know Better how your money should be spent.

Can’t possibly pay for the infrastructure by cutting spending somewhere else.  Mm, mm.

That today’s Republican Party can’t figure out how to cut spending somewhere else (House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R, WI) Social Security and Medicare reforms come to mind) just compounds the problem, it in no way excuses the Progressive-Democrats’ failure.