Tag Archives: political parties

Some Thoughts on Immigration

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Started 24 years ago, the EB-5 program allots 10,000 visas annually to foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in US development projects, from dairy farms and ski resorts to hotels and bridges. In return, the investor and family members become eligible for green cards, or permanent residency, typically within two years.

There are similar quotas, if not monetary requirements, on the other visas we issue.

But why? Immigrants are good for the United States: they bring with them ideas, problem solving techniques, entrepreneurship, a demonstrated view of the importance of family, and so on.

Beyond that, they are spring-loaded to take to heart the modern Conservative/18th Century Liberal view of their personal responsibility and liberty, and the proper role of limited government in their lives (in too many cases, they’re coming here explicitly to escape an intrusive, controlling government)—they already possess much of that view.

Why are modern Conservatives afraid? In any contest of ideas, the Conservative message will resonate with the majority. Immigrants are not at all “natural Democrats.” Far from it: they’re natural Conservatives.

An Example of the Immorality of Moral Equivalence

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In President Barack Obama’s speech before the UN earlier this week, he had this to say:

This group [ISIL, Obama’s term for ISIS] has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria. Mothers, sisters and daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world.

Then he said this in juxtaposition:

I realize that America’s critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals; that America has plenty of problems within our own borders. This is true. In a summer marked by instability in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri—where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions.

Because the shooting of one young man by a policeman, with the facts and circumstances of this not yet known, is equivalent to the butchery of ISIS’ terrorists.

Yeah.

Democrats and Inversions

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Inversions in this context, to oversimplify, are when American companies buy foreign companies and then relocate their headquarters to that foreign country in order to take advantage of that country’s lower tax rates. That this is part of an American company’s management fiduciary duty to the owners to minimize costs and maximize profits is unimportant to the denizens of the present administration and to too many “Republicans” as well.

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew, had some thoughts about the evils of inversions.

These transactions erode the US tax base, unfairly placing a larger burden on all other taxpayers, including small businesses and hardworking Americans[.]

Of course, Lew and Obama carefully ignore the fact that half of us Americans already pay little or no taxes, “unfairly placing a larger burden on all other taxpayers.”

They also ignore the fact that it isn’t their money in the first place; the money belongs to the companies’ owners.

They also ignore the fact that our “tax base” already is excessively progressive and that it has the highest business rates in the world.

Lew went on:

These first, targeted steps make substantial progress in constraining the creative techniques used to avoid US taxes, both in terms of meaningfully reducing the economic benefits of inversions after the fact, and when possible, stopping them altogether.

A better way to reduce the economic benefits of inversions would be to do the patriotic thing: lower, drastically, the tax rates on American businesses. Taxes, after all, are at the foundation of our Revolutionary War—not only the stereotypical taxation without representation, but also the point of that demand of representation: so we could keep tax rates from getting out of hand.

If our business tax rates were lowered sufficiently—Ireland, for instance, taxes businesses at 12.5%, compared to our 35% rate—a couple of things would occur. The first would be a cessation of inversions, and if our business taxes were lowered significantly below 12.5% (I’ve been advocating all along for an elimination of taxes on our businesses), foreign businesses would be attracted to the US, bringing with them the jobs they have.

The other thing that would occur involves the $2 trillion that American companies with foreign branches, affiliates, and so on are holding overseas in order to avoid our usurious tax rates. With those tax rates vastly reduced, that money would come home. $2 trillion is a lot of jobs and capital investment (which is more jobs in the nearby future) waiting to happen.

But tax rate reductions are anathema, if not inconceivable, to Democrats.  And to too many “Republicans.”

Democratic Plant?

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This is part of a Facebook exchange between supposed Libertarian candidate for US Senator from North Carolina, Sean Haugh, and a North Carolina voter, via The Daily Caller. A fuller excerpt of the exchange is at Alex Pappas’ article behind the first link above.SeanHaugh_CroppedIn case the image is hard to read, the exchange goes like this:

Sean Haugh, Libertarian for US Senate: Well, obviously our realities are quite detached. I prefer my reality over yours because logic, reason and evidence exist in mine. I pity ignorant morons such as yourself and wish you would stop voting.

Janna Badalian: Using insults in lieu of rational argument is a Dem trademark as well—you just proved my point for me. Sad that we’ll have the Hag in Senate again because of you and your silly followers.

Sean Haugh, Libertarian for US Senate: I have learned that there is no value in explaining to an idiot why they are being an idiot, because, y’know, they’re too stupid to understand anything.

This is the position on American citizens held Herb Croly, one of the founders of the Progressive movement, of which today’s Democrats are proud aficionados and with whom Haugh so plainly identifies.

[T]he average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Haugh sure sounds like a plant to me.