Category Archives: President
Tax Reform Rescue Mission
During a week of inspiring rescues, President Trump introduced his tax reform plan. The U.S. has the world’s highest corporate tax rate at 39%. As a result, over two trillion dollars is parked overseas in low tax countries like Ireland. Trump proposes a 15% corporate rate as ransom to rescue that cash and bring it home. Which in return will lead to growth.
Tax Reform
Of course Democrats don’t see it that way. To them it’s all just an elitist gift to the rich. Maybe, but Kimberly Strassel points out in the WSJ that Trump is an ideal pitchman for the plan. He’s rich but he’s also seen as a populist outsider:
Mr. Trump has defined himself as the protector of America’s forgotten man, an outsider to the swamp, an America Firster. The result is that he is uniquely qualified to sell a tax plan decried as “elitist” to average Americans.
In Missouri, Mr. Trump busted up the left’s class-warfare model. He didn’t make tax reform about blue-collar workers fighting corporate America. Instead it was a question of “our workers” and “our companies” and “our country” competing against China. He noted that America’s high tax rates force companies to move overseas. He directly and correctly tied corporate rate cuts to prosperity for workers, noting that tax reform would “keep jobs in America, create jobs in America,” and lead to higher wages.
Hate Group Members
The extremist hate group thing seems a little trumped up to me.
The Southern Poverty Law Center says there are between 5,000 and 8,000 Klan members. The SLPC is the media’s go-to choice for hate stats. They even publish this helpful hate map.
But their definition of hate seems broad. They label some Christian groups that don’t share their views on LGBT issues, like the Family Research Council, as hate groups. Then again, I suppose the Klan also considers itself a Christian group not big on the LGBT agenda.
Anyway, I found the FBI figure of 2,200 Klan members quoted in Newsweek archives. So I went with it.
Steve Bannon Eclipse
Steve Bannon is back at his old job as executive chairman of Breitbart News.
Bannon Eclipse
Here’s a timeline of the Bannon eclipse. The last straw may have been his claim in the American Prospect that there’s no military solution to North Korea. Just as Trump was explaining to Kim that he’s locked and loaded for fire and fury.
Alt Right Antifa Moral Equivalency
Democrats, the media, CEOs, Republican leaders, conservative pundits, and Mexican bandits hammered Trump for saying there were two sides to the Charlottesville brawl.
And if there were any “very fine people” in Charlottesville, as Trump said there were, they weren’t to be found among the alt right or antifa combatants. Maybe he meant very fine thugs.
Moral Equivalency
The moral equivalency thing is what really brought trouble for Trump. The idea that neo-Nazis and KKK types were the moral equals of the protesters they were fighting was too much.
Maybe, but the antifa types are pretty bad. Here’s Jonah Goldberg:
These goons and thugs oppose free speech, celebrate violence, despise dissent, and have little use for anything else in the American political tradition. But many liberals, particularly in the media, are victims of the same kind of confusion that vexed so much of American liberalism in the 20th century. Because antifa suddenly has the (alt-)right enemies, they must be the good guys. They’re not. And that’s why this debate is so toxically stupid. Fine, antifa isn’t as bad as the KKK. Who cares? Since when is being less bad than the Klan a major moral accomplishment?
So maybe it’s not moral equivalency. Just Extremely Ugly vs Very Ugly.
Trump Speaks Kim Jong Un’s Language
Give President Trump credit. He speaks Kim Jong Un’s language. Trump promises Kim Fire and Fury. Kim says Trump is “a lump he can beat to a jelly.”
