Tag Archives: morality

Are They Not Working Americans?

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The news writers in The Wall Street Journal note, correctly, that

IRAs and workplace retirement accounts were created to help working Americans save for old age by providing tax incentives for doing so.

Then they spent more than 2,700 words decrying some who have had more success at that than others, as though those with that success do not deserve that success while claiming that such success is a mark of dysfunction of those IRAs and workplace retirement accounts and the associated incentives.

But how did these successful ones achieve the growth of their retirement-oriented accounts? One example:

Gregory Baszucki’s [IRA] holds at least $68 million—and possibly a whole lot more.
Baszucki, 61 years old, is one of hundreds of people who bought stakes in promising startups when the shares were worth peanuts, stashing them in retirement accounts and watching their values balloon to eight figures or more. What they are getting, essentially, is the mother of all tax breaks.

That’s wrong how, exactly? Baszucki did what he was encouraged to do by financial planning experts and by Government through its design of the retirement savings programs. He stashed away some stock shares in his IRA so their value could grow tax deferred, or tax free if he put them in a Roth IRA, th latter which is designed explicitly to allow retirement savers to set aside already taxed monies to grow and be free of taxes on withdrawal. What these news writers carefully ignore is the broadly chancy—extremely so—nature of startups: most of them fail. Baszucki could easily have lost all of his stakes in their entirety. That he has been better than most of us in choosing startups for his investment money, or luckier, is an outcome to be celebrated by the rest of us and an outcome which we all can achieve with our own skill and/or luck.

And this from the article:

Those entrepreneurs and their financial backers are increasingly using that strategy to pile up giant retirement-account balances, all subsidized by US taxpayers….

This is plain wrong, to the point of deliberately offered disinformation. Of course none of that is subsidized by taxpayers. The government simply isn’t getting the tax revenue from those giant retirement-account balances; no one else is paying in that revenue in the place of those account holders.

Steven Rosenthal, a retired tax lawyer lately of the Tax Policy Center:

We aren’t talking about saving enough for your needs in retirement. This isn’t keeping you off the dole in old age. This is yacht financing or dynasty building.

And

Senator Ron Wyden (D, OR) and Congressman Richard Neal (D, MA) plan to introduce a bill this week that would require annual withdrawals from accounts over $10 million for individuals of any age. The planned legislation stemmed in part from long-running concerns that some investors might circumvent annual contribution limits on retirement accounts by undervaluing shares in companies that aren’t public, “thus substantially increasing their tax benefits,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in 2014.
“This is an egregious loophole we’ve got to close,” Wyden said. “Congress created tax-advantaged retirement accounts to help more Americans save for a dignified retirement, not to help the ultrawealthy dodge taxes on insider deals and build titanic fortunes.”

The Progressive-Democrats’ position less obtusely stated: “Give us the damn money, already. It’s not yours, it’s Government’s.”

This is the arrogance of those presuming to determine what the needs of others are; this is the resentment of those who don’t have presuming to determine the legitimacy of the wants of those who do have. And dynasty building? There’s something wrong with parents looking to leave their children better off than they are? To these resentful ones, yes: success must be capped, and the children must be knee-capped of their inheritances.

Are the Baszuckis of our nation not working Americans? Of course they are. This is nothing more than a naked drive to punish those who have been more successful than others by taking away their success and redistributing it to those favored by Know Betters. It’s what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants; it’s what the Democratic Socialist of America party, a core constituent of the Progressive-Democratic Party has as its explicit goal; and it’s what the fundamentally mendacious press is pushing.

A fundamental question that Know Betters and Redistributionists must answer is this: what’s their limiting principle defining how much success is too much? What’s the basis for their claimed principle—should they have the integrity to name one?

No point in waiting for an answer. It’s a an amorphous, generalized claim born nakedly of covetousness, it’s wrong, and it’s anti-American.

“Did That…?

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Minnesota’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Tim Walz posed three questions after he pardoned convicted child molester Tou Lue Vang and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio had him immediately deported.

Did that make us any safer? Did that make the children that are left behind any more stable? Did it improve the idea that we can’t all be judged by our worst day?

Ex-Los Angeles Mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt responded in his own way:

If you find yourself defending a child molester, saying: “WE can’t be judged by OUR worst day,” you probably need to have your hard drives checked.

I answer Walz’ in my own way.

Absolutely, kicking that child molester out of our nation made us safer.

Absolutely, it made the children left behind vey much more stable, with the threat from that molester gone from their lives.

The idea that we can’t be judged by our worst day is a cynically offered red herring and nothing else. It is, though, a mark of Walz’ awesome self-importance that he thinks that question is in any way substantive.

Sadly, dangerously, Walz’ attempted cover up plaint and softness toward child abuse and abusers are an all too typical example of Party’s general softness on crime, especially those committed by illegal aliens.

The Racism of the Progressive-Democratic Party

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It’s demonstrated once again, and disgustingly so, by a law “professor” at the University of Michigan, Barb McQuade, with this post of hers:

By forcing a “colorblind” Constitution, Roberts usurps the proper role of Congress. Congress may limit rights if law is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling government interest, such as promoting diversity or reducing disparate impact discrimination.

Never mind that—as McQuade must surely know—there is nothing in our Constitution that mentions promoting diversity or reducing disparate impact discrimination. There is, on the other hand, the first Article of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, which explicitly bars preferential treatment under any guise. The salient clause mandates equal protection of our laws—of which our Constitution is the supreme Law of our nation. There are exactly zero caveats or exceptions in that clause.

Keep in mind, instead, that McQuade is a member of the erstwhile Democratic Party, now Progressive-Democratic Party

  • that forced a bloody civil war over States’ “rights” to keep slaves
  • that after losing that, created the Ku Klux Klan to intimidate and murder blacks and their white supporters
  • that enacted generations of Jim Crow laws aimed at functionally disenfranchising blacks
  • whose cultural and Party icon, Woodrow Wilson, resegregated the Federal government after it had been integrated in the post bellum decades—blacks should be grateful for the protection of segregation, he held
  • whose next hero, Franklin Roosevelt, enacted national-level minimum wage laws explicitly to keep blacks from migrating north to compete (successfully, as it was turning out) against white laborers on the wages they were willing to accept and who refused to integrate our armed forces
  • that emphasized Party bigotry by expanding it to include sexism with its ongoing zealous push for identity politics
  • that explicitly still(!) holds blacks to be intrinsically inferior by classing them as permanently oppressed and unable to compete at all without special government treatment.

McQuade is far from alone in her racist bigotry, and (tertially) it’s a sad commentary on the degradation of what was once a strong, high quality law school that she’s employed there.

H/T ralflongwalker

“Black Democrats Fight for Political Survival”

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The lede identifies the source of this political…confusion.

The Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate Alabama’s congressional map has split the political future for many Black Democratic voters.

Black Democratic voters. Not American voters favoring the Democratic Party who happen to be black.

And this:

In Montgomery, Democrats believe they still have a shot at keeping their seat….

Their seat. No. As Scott Brown nearly put it a few years ago, with all due respect, it’s not the black voters’ seat, it’s the voters’ seat. Nor is very much respect at all due the racist trope that the seat belongs to black voters exclusively.

Maybe these Progressive-Democrats should consider no longer running on their race, and instead run on their Party’s domestic, foreign, and economic policies instead. The rest of us, along with our courts (finally), have figured out that the critical opening phrases of our Declaration of Independence and the opening Article of the 14th Amendment to our Constitution really do mean what they say.

Progressive-Democrats for Child Abuse

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The lede has it.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is pouring $15 million into new sex change initiatives for children and adults, framing the taxpayer-funded move as a defense against the federal government.

It’s bad enough, some of that money being spent on grown adults making their own decisions about their bodies and their lifestyles, but why are taxpayer dollars being donated to this?

It’s completely despicable, though, that one red cent is being spent to mutilate children with these procedures that are irreversible, cause severe long-term physiological and emotional damage, and are done from decisions made by children who are wholly incapable of such decisions or by adults acceding to these children’s wants.

What’s almost as bad, though, is that no one in Progressive-Democratic Party leadership, no one in Party establishment—no mainstream member at all—is speaking against this government-sponsored mutilation of badly confused children. This is what Party will inflict on all of our children if this calculated tragedy is allowed to spread beyond New York City.