Friday, February 2, 2018

Friday roundup

Tomi Lahren may be easy on the eyes, but when she opens that potty mouth of hers, that fact takes a back seat - no, make that a place in the trunk - to the reality that she's a fever-swamper.

Please, please, please read Robert Tracinski's latest piece at The Federalist. It points out that Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome doesn't just afflict those on Capitol Hill. He has to call out some respected think-tank people and pundits, including his own boss at The Federalist, Ben Domenech, for succumbing to RGS in a particular instance:

Last week, Kristin Shapiro and Andrew Biggs (of the American Enterprise Institute) made an original new proposal in the Wall Street Journal for how the federal government could provide generous paid “family leave” for new parents. Here’s the basic idea.
Offer new parents the opportunity to collect early Social Security benefits for a period—say, 12 weeks—after the arrival of their child. To offset the cost, parents would agree to delay collecting Social Security retirement benefits, probably for only about six weeks.
We estimate that to make the Social Security program financially whole, a parent who claimed 12 weeks of benefits would need to delay claiming retirement benefits by only around six weeks. The cost is low because parental-leave benefits claimed early in life would be low relative to retirement benefits claimed later, as earnings typically rise considerably from one’s 20s to one’s early 60s…. Consider an average woman, who enters the workforce at 21 and has her first child at 26. At 25 she would have a salary of about $31,100, according to Social Security Administration data. Using the same formula used to calculate Social Security disability benefits, she would be eligible for a Social Security parental-leave benefit of $1,175 a month, equal to 45% of her earnings at 25…. Because of Social Security’s progressive benefit formula, lower-income workers would receive a higher benefit relative to their earnings.
The idea has also been taken up in the New York Times by The Federalist’s own Ben Domenech, as advice on “How Trump Can Be More Trumpian,” as if that were a good thing.
At the urging of the White House, this idea has already been taken up by some Republicans in the Senate, who have been briefed on the concept and are on the cusp of drafting legislation. It is receiving early support from both conservative and moderate members of the Republican conference, and Ivanka Trump has discussed it at length with at least one—Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Support from Mr. Lee, one of the most conservative members of the party, would be crucial to passing a bill.
As Republicans work to make traditional conservatism and populist Trumpism coexist harmoniously inside their party, creativity is required to achieve compromises on policy goals. By making paid family leave a signature issue for 2018, President Trump would be embracing an idea at the heart of his 2016 success: that he is the one Republican willing to break with party norms to help working- and middle-class Americans.
Now, I like Ben and respect Ben, and I’m not just saying that because he can fire me. (Please don’t fire me, Ben.) A number of the people involved in this proposal are people who I otherwise regard as allies in the cause of liberty. But I feel like I’ve seen this movie before.

He points out the saddening sentiment on which the idea is predicated:

the idea that the most basic tasks humans have been doing for thousands of years—such as parents caring for their children—suddenly can’t be done unless the government subsidizes us to do them.

It's also saddening, but necessary, that he has to go over the most glaringly basic fact about Social Security: It's a direct redistribution arrangement. There is no locked box into which your contributions have been going. The program's finances are already on shaky ground, and imposing yet another way to dole out benefits in the present tense is only going to exacerbate that.

Great writing, crystal-clear thinking.

Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal  lays out for us one of the present moment's clearest examples of the phenomenon of two things being true at once. The Left is existing on fumes of pure rage against the fact that Trump is president, and if such venom and vitriol is all they have to offer as we inch toward the November midterms, and if the economy continues to boom, they could be in for an unpleasant surprise. On the other hand, the Very Stable Genius's base is not adequately taking into consideration that Mueller will probably issue his investigation's findings before them, and they will no doubt, as Noonan puts it, "harpoon" him. They run the danger of still claiming that the VSG is playing 5-D chess, and he'll no doubt encourage their delusion with more petty lashing out, at Mueller's team as well as "fake news" outlets. He could wind up looking "embittered and vengeful" like Nixon when he reached the point of no return.

Remember a while back when the Boy Scouts of America said it was going to stat accepting girls? What part of the country has embraced this gender-bending move most heartily? Northern California. Surprised?
 

21 comments:

  1. The Pubs just passed this great tax break for corporations first and the people second without consideration of spending cuts. This session military spending will be seriously increased. I don't care how reasonable or unreasonable you are, the deficit is going to take a huge hit. Not the time to contemplate expanding OASI bennies to the younger demographic. Of course that's fine with unreasonable gentlepersons but what about the deficit they're always crowing about?

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  2. That is indeed the factor that is glaringly absent.

    But with regard to the tax cuts being for corporations rather than people, they are one and the same, as evidenced by the bonuses, pay raises and, yes, family-leave policies (instituted by the corporations themselves without government coercion) being enjoyed by millions of Americans.

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  3. No Congress ever has the stones to look at what really has to be done to address the debt and deficit.

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  4. It's pretty well known that when the military industrial complex is placated the economy rumbles. Takes real stones to proliferate don't it?

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  5. How many of America’s businesses are part of this “complex”? Is Walmart? Is Apple? Is the corner muffler repair shop?
    Now, it’s true that we need a military strength commensurate with the degree and number of today’s threats, which requires particular kinds of private-sector organizations. But they are just one part of the picture.

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  6. I wonder if not a single Dem vote for the tax cuts has anything to do with the deficit? And, typical of corporate America to throw their bones out. So glad they're happy now. Actually cities and towns have been stripping naked and assuming the fuck position to attract them for decades since they claimed their portion was too steep.

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  7. “Throw their bones out.” Is that anything like paying employees more and offering them more benefits?

    And, no Dems not signing on to letting people and businesses keep more of their own money has nothing to do with the deficit. Dems give less of a flying flip about the deficit than squish Republicans.

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  8. “Assuming the fuck position.” Is that anything like local economic development initiatives?

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  9. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  10. Yes it is and I just felt like using that f word here.

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  11. I really don't get you. Many times you've used the image of rust-belt communities being gutted by the major employers leaving. So what is wrong with these places attracting new businesses?

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  12. Google tax rebates corporate lies

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  13. You'll find a 2017 Forbes article among many others. The annals are replete with broken corporate promises already. This showboating is beyond obviously fake.

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  14. So we should expect corporations to become concerned about America's cities and towns again? We get a bone after they cut health coverage, pensions, pay and other benefits over the decades in the name of maximizing shareholder value? Of course you'll say that's the way it works. And I can't wait to not watch all their multimillion dollar hypnosis tomorrow during the annual Super Bowl fiasco.

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  15. Yup. That’s the way it works. A company that is arriving in town and just starting to build its plant and hire people hasn’t “cut” anything.

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  16. Do tax cuts pay for themselves in terms of higher economic or job growth? The answer, at least among serious economists, is consistently no. Writing in the Washington Post, Heather Long notes:

    "Well, it didn't happen after the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Wages fell in the months and years after President Ronald Reagan signed the bipartisan legislation in October 1986, which slashed the corporate tax rate from 46 to 34 percent."

    “There's just not any evidence that there's a huge effect on wages or economic growth” if you cut business taxes, says Len Burman, co-founder of the Tax Policy Center, a think tank, and a former Treasury official under President Bill Clinton.

    “It's irresponsible to overhype the claims." Burman has found the vast majority of the benefits of a corporate tax cut will go to the wealthy.

    Jamie Hopkins, Professor of Taxation at the American College of Financial Services, added:

    "Tax cuts can trigger economic growth. However, history does not show any evidence that tax cuts pay for themselves via growth. So the growth that might be achieved will not increase revenue for the Government, in the end, tax cuts are revenue cuts for the Government.

    So, if the Government wants to fix any budget issues, tax cuts need to come along with spending cuts."

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2017/09/29/the-one-solid-lie-behind-the-trump-tax-plan/#75db930261b7

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  17. One of the decimated small towns I know is trying to get bridal shops and tattoo parlors to turn the financial corner. That was before Trump's magnanimous corporate tax cut in December without a shred of opposition support nor a single budget cut. Those will be the target this session, but not for the Pentagon, the poor poor Pentagon of thousand dollar hammers.

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  18. The premise - that we ought to look at whether tax cuts “pay for themselves” - is faulty. The point is to maximize the amount of their own money people and businesses get to keep. Freedom begins with getting to keep what is yours.

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  19. The only solution to the debt and deficit problem is to get government out of the business of providing “services.”

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  20. "Wells Fargo, fresh off of defrauding millions of Americans, gets $3.4 billion," Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/paul-ryan-slammed-over-tweet-praising-tax-cut-061603496.html

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  21. A few reasons why all the leftists in the article you link to sound incredibly stupid:

    Re: the Ellison quote: Just what kind of mechanism could have been put in the bill to prevent Wells Fargo from getting a tax cut taht every other company in America was going to get?

    If the answer to that is, "That's the point. No company should have gotten any cut," the inference is that they shouldn't because such malfeasance is typical rather than an isolated instance.

    Re: "that wealthier Americans and big corporations benefit much more from the tax cuts." File under "Well, duh, they have been paying more since they've been making more."

    Re: contributions to Ryan from the Kochs: Of course they're going to contribute to candidates they think are most favorable to their free-market vision.

    You are still using a very narrow swath of the sum total of economic activity in this country to try to make the case that people shouldn't be free to buy and sell goods and services as they see fit.

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