Tag Archives: culture

A Nanny State Pusher

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Pam Krueger, Founder & CEO of Wealthramp, wants employers offering 401(k) plans to provide access to a vetted network of independent, fee-only fiduciary registered investment advisers as a no-cost employee benefit.

This is because, dumb-asses that all of us Plan participants are, when we are confronted with conflicted advice, hidden fees, and unsuitable products, we’re wholly incapable of evaluating any of it on our own. We need safeguards, she insists, but who would do this vetting? She neglected to say.

Never mind that we already have access to such a network, vetted by independent fiduciaries: NAPFA, The National Association of Personal Financial Advisors. One impediment to employing one, though, is their fee structure, and many participants might be unwilling to pay the fee. Hence the insistence that the employer pay the advisor in our stead.

Have I mentioned, yet, that Wealthramp has its own stable of fee-only financial advisors?

Wealthramp has its own stable of fee-only financial advisors.

Hmm….

One More Step

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Thomas Savidge, of the American Institute for Economic Research, in his letter in Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section, wrote about Washington State’s addiction to spending and its use of increasing taxes—even when they’re unconstitutional under the State’s own constitution—to feed the addiction. He offered a solution to the addiction from Washington’s own history:

Governor Gary Locke (D) in 2002 introduced the “Priorities of Government” strategy of ranking programs based on public value and essential government functions. This approach closed a $2.1 billion budget gap, just under $4 billion in current dollars, without raising taxes.

That, however, was an incomplete solution, for all that it “closed” that budget gap one time while pairing tax increases only with the lowest priority spending.

The complete solution, short of a State constitutional amendment to make more permanent the process, would have been to identify the revenue known to appear for the relevant fiscal year, then to run down the list of priorities, funding each one in turn until the expected revenues have been consumed, and then cut off further spending rather than raise taxes to cover the remainder.

But spending discipline is inconceivable to Progressive-Democrats, as it is today to too many Timid Republicans in DC.

Tax Flight and Iron Curtains

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Progressive-Democratic Party-run jurisdictions keep raising taxes, and those being taxed keep taking their incomes and assets and leaving those jurisdictions. Indeed, [S]tates with the highest taxes continue to lose the most income to States with far less onerous taxing regimes (including no income tax at all) as this graph, based on IRS data, illustrates.

Meanwhile, Massachusetts’ Progressive-Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren and a couple of her syndicate confreres are proposing an IRS/Party iron curtain against the Evil Rich leaving our nation altogether: a 40% tax on all assets, not just income or savings or investment accounts, as the price of leaving.

The bill, called the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act of 2026, would impose an annual 2% tax on the net worth of households and trusts over $50 million, and an additional 1% tax on the wealth of billionaires. To deter the ultra-rich from leaving the US to avoid the new tax, the bill also proposes a 40% “exit tax” on anyone worth more than $50 million who renounces their American citizenship.

California already has an exit tax of sorts, a mix of…aggressive residency and sourcing rules (which can keep you on the hook for California tax if you still have strong ties or California-source income).

The government men of the late Russian SSR were financial pikers in comparison.

This is Party’s platform: raise taxes, and you will like it, or else. And don’t dare try to leave; you won’t like that.

More Child Abuse

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This one by the New Jersey-domiciled Westwood Regional School District Board of Education. The school district, in contradiction of a Supreme Court decision in a heavily similar California case, Mirabelli v Bonta, that held California school policies that froze parents out of their children’s transitioning decisions while in school and facilitated those transitions behind the children’s parents’ backs, is doing precisely that. The Westwood school district is facilitating the transition of children in its schools and doing so behind their parents’ backs.

The Thomas Moore Society, the entity that got the initial ruling against Bonta, has warned Westwood that if it does not reverse its position promptly (14 April is the Society’s deadline), it will bring suit to effect that reversal.

It’s time, too, say I, to move beyond mere civil cases against such entities and to start bringing criminal charges against the personnel running such entities for their determined child abuse practices. These surgeries, hormonal treatments, even simply facilitating dress and verbal transitionings in children are blatant abuses of the children. Other forms of abuse of children are felonies; so should these be.

Have They Really?

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The Liaison Committee on Medical Education is a major medical school accreditor and a serious DEI polluter of medical schools with its demands that

doctors-in-training “learn to recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others and in the healthcare delivery process.”
Medical schools were told that their curriculum should include content about “the diverse manner in which people perceive health and illness” and the “basic principles of culturally competent healthcare.”

As the WSJ‘s editors noted, although not as bluntly, those demands are intrinsically racist and sexist, and when implemented in place of merit, medical student competence suffered badly.

Now the LCME has quietly removed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) protocols from its official guidance.

But has it? Or has LCME simply stopped talking overtly about pushing the schools it accredits to include DEI criteria in their teaching and student selection criteria while continuing the pressure behind the scenes? The same personnel who imposed that broad bigotry in the first place are still in place.