Tag Archives: political parties

Median Incomes on the Rise

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Some statistics:

Real median household income—the amount earned by those in the very middle—hit $65,084 (in 2019 dollars) for the 12 months ending in July. That’s the highest level ever and a gain of $4,144, or 6.8%, since Mr Trump took office. By comparison, during 7½ years under President Obama—starting from the end of the recession in June 2009 through January 2017—the median household income rose by only about $1,000.

These data predate the Trump partial tax reform (partial, because the individual income tax rate reductions still need to be made permanent, an act the Progressive-Democrats in Congress are loath to support). That reform has added an additional $1,400 to the average (not median—mixing apples and salt, to an extent) household, $2,900 per MFJ with two kids household.

This graph puts the matter visually and clearly:

Both rises, though, are faster than anything possible under any of the proposals of any of the current crop of Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates.

A Parallel

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The Progressive-Democrats are pretending to hold “‘official’ impeachment inquiries” against President Donald Trump.  It’s a pretense because were they serious, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) would put the matter to a House floor vote and put all Representatives—Republican and Progressive-Democrats alike—on the public record as being for or against an actual impeachment inquiry, as the House, under majorities of both parties, has done for past impeachment moves.  Instead, she has not; the Progressive-Democrats intend only to keep the smear going for the next 14, or so, months in a naked attempt to control the next election.

It’s a dangerous move, though: ordinary Americans, the object of so much contempt from the Left and from Party, aren’t stupid, and they can see clearly what’s happening.  Further, such moves have backfired in those past, legitimately serious (because deeply bipartisan) impeachment efforts: the minority party made equally serious gains in the subsequent elections.

There’s a parallel situation currently unfolding in Austria.

In 2017, Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache was filmed offering to facilitate the purchase of the Kronen Zeitung, Austria’s largest tabloid newspaper, if the purchaser would commit to editorial support for Strache once she gained control.

The filming turned out to be a setup to entrap Strache (the purchaser turned out to be a woman pretending, for the sake of the sting, to be the wealthy niece of a Russian oligarch), but by whom?

Even today, there are few details about who organized the trap or why they waited two years to release the footage….

Even so, the government fell.  Like Bill Clinton, Stache seemed and seems guilty as hell.

Chancellor Sebastian Kurz called a snap election the day after Strache resigned but by the end of the month, Kurz himself had been ousted by a no-confidence motion and replaced by an interim chancellor.

However, today we’re four months later, the new elections were yesterday, and as of Friday,

The party [Freedom Party, Strache’s party] quickly re-calibrated after Strache’s resignation; portraying themselves as victims in a shadowy sting operation.
“The FPÖ came out as heroes—as martyrs—they rephrased the situation,” says Paul Schmidt, Secretary General of the the Austrian Society for European Politics, an NGO in Vienna.

And

The polls indicate Kurz will be re-elected chancellor and he has not ruled out renewing his old coalition with the Freedom Party.

Indeed, early returns indicate Kurz’ party (not directly involved in the scandal) looks to gain seats.  Like ordinary Americans, ordinary Austrians are not stupid, and they don’t like cheap shots—that setup run by who knows whom—or politicians and seeming self-important activists making serious, purely political moves out of relatively minor business.  Clinton’s misuse of a young intern was certainly serious business for his intern and for him, but the impeachment effort was strictly politically done by a party that simply didn’t like the man.

The Progressive-Democrats’ present effort fits the latter.  Trump is atypical for holders of political office, being routinely bluntly- and occasionally crudely-spoken and prone to acting rather than talking.  He’s very much hated by professional politicians for that atypicality, and especially by Progressive-Democrats, who consider election outcomes their personal property and Trump an unauthorized squatter.  They want their property cleared out, and they’re going to do whatever they think they must to reclaim their property in 2020.

Update: Based on exit polling, it looks like Kurz’ ÖVP will gain 37% of the vote, up sharply from the 31% his party got in the prior election.  Only the FPÖ was damaged by Strache’s misbehavior, falling to 16%, and a renewed governing coalition between ÖVP and FPÖ seems unlikely.  Kurz, though, still needs a coalition in order to form a governing majority.

Wealth Taxes

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates and Senators Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) and Bernie Sanders (I, VT) have proposed taxes on the wealth of Americans—2% on individuals worth more than $50 million and 3% on billionaires in Warren’s case, and from 1% on married couples worth $32 million, rising to 8% on those with wealth over $10 billion in Sanders’.

These are direct taxes, which would make them unconstitutional.  Their unconstitutionality does not arise from their directness but from their lack of State proportionality.  Proportionality—apportionment in the Constitution’s terms—means that such taxes can only be assessed in accordance with a State’s population relative to the other States’ populations, just as Representation in the Federal government House of Representatives is.

Naturally, Warren and Sanders presented their tax proposals armed with economists’ arguments in favor of them.  Two such arguments are these, proffered by Yale Sterling Professor of Law and Political Science Bruce Ackerman, but they fail early.  Ackerman’s first, as paraphrased by FoxBusiness, is that a direct tax, as authorized in our Constitution, was

part of a compromise with the slave-holding South…. The purpose of it was to prevent the North from imposing a “head tax” on slaves, because that could not be apportioned equally across the states.
“Given this history, it is extremely unlikely that the justices will cite the founders’ original compromise with slavery to bar a tax that would serve the cause of economic equality and democratic legitimacy[.]”

This is an idle sophistry, though.  As the Constitutional authorization for direct taxes currently stands—since ratification of the 14th Amendment—all references to slavery and to slaves have been removed from the nature of direct taxes.  The 14th changed the definition of apportionment to referencing only the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed.  That’s the sum and substance of the plain text of the Constitution on the matter of direct taxes.  The historical origin of the direct tax authorization not only is irrelevant, it’s been wholly and explicitly excised from our Constitution as it stands.

Ackerman’s other argument is this that claim that the Warren/Sanders direct tax proposals serve the cause of economic equality and democratic legitimacy.  This, though, is an oxymoron.  Forcing economic equality, even government merely pushing toward it via tax law, is antithetical to democratic legitimacy.  Forcing equal outcomes denies each man his opportunity to show the best that there is in him.  It blocks him from realizing the full outcome from his efforts under his right to equal opportunity.  Indeed, demanding equal outcomes utterly cancels not only each man’s equal opportunity, but his very right to that equality of opportunity.

The Progressive-Democrat candidates’ proposals are wholly unconstitutional—and completely undemocratic.

More on “Pressure”

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The whistleblower’s stuff has been released, and his cover letter and the complaint itself can be read in their entirety here.

A couple things jump out at me right from the start.

One that’s readily apparent in the cover letter is that the whistleblower repeatedly makes clear he has no knowledge of the events about which he claims such concern—it’s all related to him by carefully unnamed source—often “multiple” sources.  He does cite, in attempts to corroborate, remarks publicly made Rudy Giuliani, President Trump, and selected Ukrainian officials, but those remarks are removed from the context in which they were made and given only the context of the whistleblower’s complaint.  Beyond that, he cites claims made by an organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.  This is an organization comprised of Eastern European, Caucasus, Central Asian, and Central American “media and journalists” and unknown personnel represented to be from unidentified “investigative centers.”  The claims made by OCCRP are unsubstantiated in the whistleblower’s cite, yet he presents them seriously and expects those to whom he’s complaining—outside of channels, mind you—to take them at face value.

And this lead paragraph from the whistleblower’s cover letter (right-click and select from the popup menu to get a bigger image):

As we know from the released telecon transcript, no such pressure was applied, nor did Giuliani or Barr play any sort of central role in this non-existent letter, being mentioned on as points of contact in Ukraine’s investigations of corruption.  We also know more generally, from Wednesday’s press conference, that Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said bluntly that he felt no pressure to do anything.

One last thing, an apparently small item, but it illustrates the general level of…sloppiness…with which the “complaint” was prepared. The whistleblower wrote, in the 3rd paragraph of page 3 of his missive that a “readout” of the telecon posted on “the website of the Ukrainian President” was translated “from the original Russian.” The Ukrainian and Russian languages are similar, but they are distinct from each other. Any translation here would have been from Ukrainian.

Wow.

A couple things appear, also, from the ICIG’s (Michael Atkinson) transmittal letter to Acting DNI Director Joseph Maguire.

One concerns the whistleblower’s characterization of Trump’s 25 July telecon with Zelenskiy. Atkinson, in his own words, says that “the ICIG did not request access to records” pertaining to that telecon. The ICIG made no attempt to corroborate or refute the whistleblower’s characterization. Atkinson’s rationale for that decision boils down to his finding such an attempt “too hard, so don’t bother.”  Never mind that Trump, with Zelenskiy’s agreement, released that transcript in a timely manner.

There’s also no indication that Atkinson made any effort to talk with any of the whistleblower’s “multiple US government officials” sources or even any of his named sources—Giuliani and Barr, for instance—to see if they agreed or disagreed with any of the whistleblowers claims of what they said.

That’s not much of a “preliminary review.”

Again, wow.

Many in Congress complain about Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in the Federal government….

Pressure

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Here’s an excerpt from the Trump-Zelenskiy telecon transcript [the odd characters at the beginning of each President’s remarks are lined out classification markings: (S/NF)]:

t:;’HP) The· President: I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your weal thy people… The server, they say Ukraine has.it There- are a lot. of things that went on, the whole situation… I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.
(l!l-,’HP) President Zelenskyy: Yes it is. very important for me and everything that you just mentioned earlier. For me as a President, it is very important and we are open for any future cooperation. We are ready to open a new page on cooperation in relations between the United States and Ukraine. For that purpose, I just recalled our ambassador from United States and he will be replaced by a very competent and very experienced ambassador who will work hard on making sure that our two nations are getting closer.

Yeah, that’s pressure, all right.

And here’s the “pressure” of a request—one request, mind you, not eight times repeated:

There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it… It sounds horrible to me.

The entire transcript can be read here.