Tag Archives: politics

Uninformed

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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is upset because his enormously high taxes are going to be exposed in all their fiscally painful glory by the just-passed tax reform bill.

We’re going to propose a restructuring of our tax code. I’m not even sure what they [Republicans] did is legally constitutional and that’s something we’re looking at now.  You can change the tax code. You can’t penalize my state because of its political affiliation. There’s never been a double taxation before in the history of the nation.

Cuomo and his fellow Progressive-Democrats in the State’s government have been needing to “restructure” how much they’re overcharging the good citizens of New York for some time.  That’s a separate issue.

Passing a tax law that applies the same criteria to each of our 50 States equally?  That equality is unconstitutional only if Cuomo can make the case that New York is somehow special and doesn’t deserve equal treatment under law.

Andrew Cuomo: the canonical uninformed voter.

A UN Vote

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Recall that the UN voted strongly to condemn the Trump administration’s decision to move our Embassy to Israel to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.  In a Letter to the Editor of The Wall Street Journal, one letter writer objected to our response to the vote.

America should support other countries’ right to vote their conscience as the US does, whether or not we agree with them.

America does support other countries’ right to vote their conscience, whether or not we agree with them. It’s a two-way street, however. Others, including our letter-writer, need to support America’s right to act in accordance with our conscience—to object to those votes and their outcome, and to act accordingly.

No one—most especially America—moved to prevent those votes from occurring.  Others, though, including our letter-writer, are acting, it seems, to deny our right to respond.

We Can Help

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And we should.

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has pledged to step up defense spending to defend the self-ruled island’s sovereignty in the face of China’s growing military assertiveness in the region.

A good start would be to sell missile defense systems to the Republic of China along with modern aircraft—both air defense, like updated F-16s and F-15s, and ground attack, like F-16s and A-10s.

We also should resume sea and air patrols of the Taiwan Strait, something we’ve not done for far too long.

Prove They’re Serious

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Russian President Vladimir Putin and his satrap, Bashar al Assad, want to hold peace talks in Sochi with a view to ending the fighting in Syria.  At least 40 groups in the al Assad opposition demur and are refusing Putin’s attempt.

“We reject this, and we affirm that Russia is an aggressor that has committed war crimes against Syrians,” the statement signed by 40 rebel groups said. “Russia has not contributed with a single move to alleviate the suffering of the Syrian people and it has not pressured the regime it claims it guarantees to move an inch toward any real path toward a resolution.”

These groups would rather continue the UN’s efforts to mediate, even though the UN has been useless futile since its mediation attempt began in 2014.

My suggestion: don’t go running off to the comfort of a resort town as many as 800 miles away from the theater. Putin and his satrap should offer to hold the talks in Idlib or Kobane or Ghouta.  Ghouta even is convenient to al Assad’s capital.

So should the UN’s “negotiators,” come to that, prove they’re serious.

A Thought on Student Loans

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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is taking steps to redress the Obama administration travesty of a student loan program, but these can only be interim steps and by themselves are entirely insufficient.

Unfortunately, the student loan programs are entirely dysfunctional and want complete revamping. My high-level suggestions:

  1. student loan discharge only via bankruptcy, no special treatment of these loans
  2. let schools and students write their own loan agreements, including interest rates and payback provisions, without Government interference
  3. hold those schools and students to those agreements
  4. if Government guarantees any student loans, do so IAW the following:
  • interest rates charged must be commensurate with the employability and median first-five-year pay of the major being pursued; higher rates for lower employability and median pay. Higher risk loans should pay higher rates
  • in the event of bankruptcy discharge of a loan, the school floating the loan must completely reimburse the government, NLT the following fiscal quarter, for the taxpayer loss from the bankruptcy discharge.