Tag Archives: politics

Trust is a Two-Way Street

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Of necessity, trust must flow both ways. If one does not trust another, the other cannot rely on the one even to behave in a predictable manner toward that other, much less be trustworthy in turn.

The IRS has begun pushing 501(c)(3) nonprofits—the sort of nonprofits that the IRS has been caught targeting punitively conservative versions of—to give up the social security numbers of their donors.

Under the proposed rule, the IRS would create an optional filing for 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Those participating would, as part of their yearly report, turn over the Social Security numbers of any donors who give $250 or more to a charity in a given year.

The IRS’ claimed rationale for this is to simplify the ability of donors to claim the deductions on their tax returns by allowing the IRS to “verify” donors’ claims on their returns.

No. Since the IRS cannot be trusted by American taxpayers, it’s in no position to worry about the trustworthiness of an American taxpayer. There is no legitimate rationale for this “voluntary” reporting.

Further, for those who think this “optional” form of reporting will remain voluntary, I may know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe in which you might also be interested.

Inversions

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Corporate inversions occur when a business in a high tax country gets bought out by a company in a low tax country and the bought-out company moves its own headquarters to the buyer’s country. This is occurring increasingly with American companies laboring under US’ usurious corporate tax code.

The Treasury Department—the Obama administration—demurs from these, and it has written, and it is writing more, rules to interfere with such moves. For instance,

The government still is working on tighter rules for a corporate tax-avoidance technique known as earnings-stripping and could release them in the coming months.

And this one:

One aspect of the rules, which limit companies’ ability to transfer foreign operations to a new foreign parent company, will apply to future transactions by all companies that completed inversions since Sept 22, 2014….

Such moves are things that a Progressive, Democratic Party-dominated government would love, but they’re anathema to liberty—interfering with the private decisions of American business owners as they do—and to a free market, which at the core of liberty.

The correct move, although it would restrict the personal power of government officials and their cronies and lobbyists, is to lower the corporate tax rates to globally competitive levels so that inversions of American companies become unattractive and so that other countries’ businessmen want to come here. With the job opportunities for Americans such additional businesses would represent.

“Refugees from War Aren’t the Enemy”

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That’s the title of “The Editorial Board’s” opinion piece in their New York Times Wednesday. I used quote marks in that prior sentence because the persons who wrote this absurdity lacked the moral, much less the intellectual, courage to sign their names to it. The lede is this:

The House is expected to vote Thursday on HR 4038, the American Security Against Foreign Enemies (SAFE) Act of 2015, which Republican sponsors say “would put in place the most robust national-security vetting process in history” for refugees, one that would “do everything possible to prevent terrorists from reaching our shores.”

The opinionists then proceed to distort that explanation: their title says it all, but they make things explicit with this claim in their penultimate paragraph:

…it is fair to say that the people who will be denied resettlement by this bill would be the victims of war….

No, that’s not the case. This bill simply looks to ensure that the terrorists are adequately sorted out from refugees and the former barred.

No one, as even this Board knows, is arguing that refugees are the enemy. This is the NYT‘s straw man. Those worthies will have to play with their dolly without me.

Encryption and the Government

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Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance wants Congress to enable government agencies—the police in Vance’s case—to penetrate private citizens’ encrypted cell phone communications. His justification?

Just for iPhones alone we have 111 cases that we are not able to access…due to new encryption protocols[.]

Out of a population of 320 million Americans possessing some 200 million smartphones—the targets of Vance’s desire—Vance has a problem with 111. That’s roughly akin to five people out of the entire city of New York. Five problems, and so all of New York City must lose their ability to protect their privacy against government snooping. One hundred and eleven problems, and so all Americans must lost.

Trust us. We government men would never abuse this power.

This is exactly the arrogance of officials of intrusive government that drove our Founders to write the 4th Amendment. Can’t crack the encryption, even with a warrant? Do actual police work. You have brains. It only takes one failure? Reread Ben Franklin’s remark about security and liberty.

We’ve been over this.

 

Political Experience

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As the terrorist threat becomes ever more apparent—Paris, for instance—political experience in a Presidential candidate would seem to be at a premium, according to political…pundits. I agree: given the US’ role in the world, even after President Barack Obama’s seven-year retreat, a retreat actively supported by the Democratic Party, political experience is highly important. Especially with the damage done by that retreat, political experience is highly important. So is an ability to learn policy issues and rationally to form policy and adjust it as empirical data flow in.

Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is often touted as unbeatable in the Democratic primary campaign—she is—and she’s just as often touted (a few too early polls notwithstanding) as virtually unbeatable in the general election. Her political experience is the support for that unbeatability.

Let’s see, then, what are some highlights of her political experience?

  • HillaryCare
  • Bimbo Eruptions
  • For the Iraq War before she was against it (sound familiar?)
  • Successfully passed three Senate bills: created a historic site, named a post office, named a stretch of highway
  • For Keystone XL before she was against it
  • Foreign government “contributions” to her (and her husband’s and daughter’s) Clinton Foundation while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Communications security and classified material handling while sitting in the Secretary of State’s chair
  • Libya
  • Benghazi

Clinton has remained steadfast in all of these, save for her flip-flopping on Iraq and Keystone. Especially, she has remained steadfast on Obamacare (née HillaryCare), security matters, Libya, and Benghazi.

She should run on her political experience. The Republican Presidential candidate should run on her political experience.