Category Archives: President
Go It Alone – Later
In June the president said that since Congress refused to act on immigration he’d do it himself, just like the little red hen. He promised to go it alone before the end of summer.
On Saturday he announced that he would delay his go it alone strategy until after the November elections. Ezra Klein, usually more sympathetic than not toward Obama, says this is dumb.
Senator Mitch McConnell has a point when he says, “What’s so cynical about today’s immigration announcement is that the president isn’t saying he’ll follow the law, he’s just saying he’ll go around the law once it’s too late for Americans to hold his party accountable in the November elections.”
Klein wonders why Obama is delaying his end run around a Congress he accuses of delaying immigration reform.
This is the problem with the White House’s decision — and, to some degree, the way they’ve managed this whole issue. If these deportations are a crisis that merits deeply controversial, extra-congressional action, then it’s hard to countenance a politically motivated delay. If they’re not such a crisis that immediate action is needed, then why go around Congress in the first place?
Degrade and Destroy
Last week President Obama said he didn’t have a strategy for dealing with ISIL, the Islamist terror concern occupying large swaths of Iraq and Syria.
Degrade and Destroy
This week he said he would “degrade and destroy” those same head sawing barbarians. Moments later he dialed that back, saying he would reduce ISIL to a “manageable problem“.
Just to keep things interesting Joe Biden vowed to chase them to the gates of hell.
Daniel Henninger of the WSJ (you should get a one-time pass) thinks Obama believes America’s real enemies are the unmanageable, “ideologically rigid, anti-science” congressional Republicans.
Attack Rabbit Presidency
President Obama doesn’t have a strategy. The Washington Post editorial board calls him the “can’t do president“.
One thing the president can do is raise funds. He’s spending his holiday week-end doing just that for Democrats. He’s not alone on the fundraising circuit. Jimmy Carter will be hosting Hamas at a dinner in Detroit with the Islamic Society of America.
Beware the Attack Rabbit
Jimmy Carter’s troubled presidency jumped the shark when an attack rabbit evaded security and tried to whack him in a fishing boat. John Kass in the Chicago Tribune thinks Obama has reached the bunny hop threshold. (Here’s a link but you may have to subscribe.)
Economic Patriotism
President Obama’s favorite billionaire is making a run for the border. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway will finance Burger King’s purchase of Canadian donut dynamo, Tim Hortons.
Economic Patriotism
As a Canadian operation, Burger King will still have to pay US corporate taxes on earnings inside the United States. But earnings outside the US will only be taxed at the rate of the country where they occur. US companies have to pay taxes in the countries where they operate and also must pay IRS the difference between those rates and the US rate. The Obama administration calls this economic patriotism.
Burger King’s move is called a tax “inversion”. Matt Levine gives a great explanation in this Bloomberg article.
The US corporate rate, including state and local taxes comes to about 40%. That’s the highest in the world outside the Islamic State jizya. Roberto A. Ferdman provides a nice chart in the Washington Post showing the tax rates of the 34 OECD countries.
The nominal corporate tax rate in the U.S., which combines national, state, and city-level tax rates, is nearly 40 percent—the highest across all 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. Canada’s, by comparison, is just over 26 percent.
Rick Perry is not a Ham Sandwich
If you can indict a ham sandwich I guess you can indict Rick Perry.
The indictment by a special prosecutor criminalizes the intent of a political act. The act in question is the Texas governor’s use of his veto power as a threat against a political opponent.
That’s what governors do. They veto stuff. And it’s usually stuff their political enemies want. In this case that would be Rosemary Lehmberg’s job. She runs the Public Integrity Unit and Perry wants her to step down since she was convicted of drunk driving. As a prod he vetoed her $7.5 million budget.
The indictment is being mocked by some people who are unlikely to vote for Perry if he runs for president. Alan Dershowitz , Johnathan Chait, and the New York Times editorial page, all make that list.
Perry on Rye
One holdout, Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker, says prosecutors have broad discretion and Perry may just be out of luck. Mustard or mayo?
