Tag Archives: political parties

The Coercive Power of the State

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This is the Progressive Democratic Party of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as articulated by California Governor Jerry Brown (D). At the just concluded Paris “Climate” Summit.

Tom, you used the phrase “policy.” Good policy. But I want to unpack that term a little bit. Inside the policy, you need a law. You need a rule. You need the coercive power of government to say, “Do this.” Now, you have to be wise and don’t say something stupid or order something stupid but the fact is, the regulations supported by the laws drive innovation.

And

You do have to have, at the end of the day, a regulation, a law. Progress comes from well-designed regulatory objectives that business then follows.

You can be sure California is going to keep innovating, keep regulating. And, shall I say, keep taxing.

All for the very best of causes. This complements the Left’s drive to take our weapons.  All for the very best of causes.  All for political power.  And, we mustn’t neglect Mao Tse-tung’s position:

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

The Tolerance of the Left

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A board member of the ACLU’s Colorado branch (ex-member, now) has resigned after he actively advocated the murder of those who disagree with the Left.

Loring Wirbel, on his Facebook page, posted

The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, “This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before Election Day.” They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force…

Naturally, the Colorado ACLU denied complicity:

[The Colorado ACLU] does not condone the recent personal Facebook post of regional volunteer Loring Wirbel.

Right. And we believe them.

It isn’t just a disgruntled ex-ACLU member, either. Fern Delise, of Fountain, CO:

It’s tempting to walk into a republican party meeting with my dead husband’s gun and just start shooting people.

Tolerance, all right. Left-style.

An Iron Curtain

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The USSR set up an Iron Curtain around its nation and its “sphere of influence” in Europe that was designed to keep its citizens from leaving for greener pastures. The Curtain became a real, physical barrier in the form of the Berlin Wall. To a large extent, it worked: even though citizens did manage to escape, the outflow was reduced markedly, and far too many citizens died on the Berlin Wall (or under it) attempting to escape.

Now the proud Progressive and Democratic Party Presidential candidate wants to erect an Iron Curtain around the United States designed to keep American businesses from leaving.

Hillary Clinton’s plan to deter companies from leaving the US will include an “exit tax,” her campaign said Monday, making it even more restrictive than President Barack Obama’s proposals.

Never mind that American business owners and managers have a fiduciary duty—embedded in our laws as well as our morality—to maximize profits for the company and its owners—partners, shareholders, Mom and Pop. Never mind that this mandate to maximize profits necessarily includes minimizing costs. Never mind that the US taxes its businesses at the highest rate in the world, and that these tax bills are significant costs.

Never mind that minimizing the tax bill is a necessary part of that fiduciary duty, and it must, then, include consideration of foreign tax environments—and tax inversions, the process of buying, or being bought by, companies in jurisdictions that have lower tax rates and then moving the company into that lower tax jurisdiction.

Mrs Clinton would…require[e] companies to pay US taxes on deferred foreign earnings if they attempt to “game” her new threshold….

The current “threshold” is current law that allows inversions so long as the American company’s shareholders will own less than 80% of the new, merged company. Clinton’s lower threshold is, carefully, not yet specified.

This is the sort of barrier to our economic freedom, the sort of increase in Big Government taxation, the sort of destruction of our individual liberties to which we can look forward if we get this Progressive Democrat for President.

This is only a precursor to additional barriers to free movement we can expect from this Progressive Democrat.

Hillary Clinton’s Tax Proposals

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And she has lots of them. I’ll list her tax credit proposals here.

  • $1,200 to offset the costs incurred by a family member caring for an aging parent
  • $5,000, refundable (it’s paid even to those who aren’t paying any income tax), for out of pocket health costs
  • $1,500 “apprenticeship” for businesses who hire entry-level workers, per such hire
  • 15% of the value of bonuses paid out if businesses create employee cost-sharing programs, paid to those businesses
  • Unspecified amounts for low-income homeowners who install solar panels

She also wants to expand these extant wealth redistributing credits:

  • Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit
  • Work Opportunity Tax Credit
  • New Markets Tax Credit
  • American Opportunity Tax Credit
  • Wind, solar, ethanol tax credits

We don’t have enough pages to our tax code rules, you see, and we don’t have enough special exceptions to our tax rules and who pays—and who gets.

Never mind that none of this tax gerrymandering, none of this redistribution of OPM according to Progressive rules rather than the needs and wishes of those doing the earning, would be necessary with a low, flat rate tax code that admitted of no exceptions, no deductions, no credits, no loopholes, no gerrymandering; a tax code that would be used to fund government and not be abused for social engineering in accordance with Progressive demands.

Economics and Secession

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Spain’s economy may be beginning to recover, even to boom, from the global Panic of 2008.

In its second estimate of gross domestic product for the quarter, statistics bureau INE said the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy grew 3.4% in the July-to-September period compared with the year earlier period, up from a rate of 3.2% in the second quarter.

To be sure, these are only two quarters’ worth of data. It’s also unclear how much of this growth is spread throughout Spain, and how much is concentrated in the secessionist province of Catalonia.

This will be interesting to watch, both for the improvement’s impact on the secession movement and for any later impact from a continued movement toward secession.