…commits a terrible act of real journalism, to much-deserved cheers.
It’s not about revenues. It’s about class warfare and Marxism.
A Death Star
…would make a great stimulus and green energy project.
From my point of view, just think what the demand for that much material lifted from earth would do for launch costs. Unless they used SLS, of course.
Newtown
Some reflections:
One Rhode Island professor issued a call — later deleted — for NRA head Wayne LaPierre’s “head on a stick.” People like author Joyce Carol Oates and actress Marg Helgenberger wished for NRA members to be shot. So did Texas Democratic Party official John Cobarruvias, who also called the NRA a “terrorist organization,” and Texas Republican congressman Louis Gohmert a “terror baby.”
Nor were reporters, who are supposed to be neutral, much better. As The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg commented, “Reporters on my Twitter feed seem to hate the NRA more than anything else, ever. ”
Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA — like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood — exists to advocate policies its members want. It’s free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.
As with most things that Leftists call people, when they call them “haters,” it’s projection.
The Community Reinvestment Act
Yes, Virginia, it did cause the housing and financial crisis. Unfortunately for the Leftist narrative that it was caused by “deregulation during the Bush era.”
In a just world people like Jamie Gorelick and Franklin Raines would be in jail.
Time For Some Common-Sense Publishing Controls
My thoughts on the morons in the media and politicians who don’t understand the Second Amendment, over at PJMedia.
Merry Christmas To All
…and to all a good night.
I’m heading back to St. Louis in the morning, then on a plane back to Greece on the Pacific aka the formerly Golden State. I’ll probably check in tomorrow evening, PST.
The SS2 Drop Test
As Clark Lindsey reports, there was a drop test of SpaceShipTwo, that had some, but apparently not all of the propulsion system installed. I wonder if it was carrying fuel? One of the issues I discuss in my book is its ability to abort with a failed ignition, because while it can dump the oxidizer, it’s not possible to get rid of the rubber slug. Steve Isakowitz told me that it is designed to land with a fuel load, from a CG/weight standpoint, so it would be interesting to see if they demonstrated that ability.
Taxpayers Aren’t Stationary Targets
The lesson of Gérard Depardieu:
Economists as far back at J. B. Say and Gustave de Molinari in the 19th century understood this. As Molinari wrote in his 1899 book, The Society of To-morrow, “The laws of fiscal equilibrium set a strict limit to the degree within which it is possible to impose new taxes, or to increase the rates of those already in force. The relative productivity of taxes soon shows when this point has been overstepped, for then returns not only cease to rise, but immediately begin to fall.”
Things can work in the other direction too. Other things being equal, cutting tax rates can prompt revenues to rise. This is not to say rising revenue is a good thing. As Milton Friedman once said, if a tax-rate cut brings in more revenue, the rates weren’t cut enough. Hear, hear!
Nevertheless, revenues can increase after a rate cut. Case in point: the rate cuts of 2001 and 2003, the so-called Bush tax cuts, which President Obama (until yesterday) had been hoping would expire for the top 2 percent of earners. According to the Congressional Budget Office, revenues increased from $1.9 billion in 2003—when all the cuts kicked in—to $2.3 billion in 2008 (in constant 2005 dollars). At that point the Great Recession hit and of course revenues then fell. Tax revenues always fall in a recession because when people lose their jobs they stop paying the income tax. Companies also pay less as economic activity slows down. When would-be tax raisers today complain that revenues are a smaller percentage of GDP than in previous years, that is the reason. It’s not that the tax rates are too low.
It’s not about revenue. It’s about “fairness.” That is, it’s ultimately about “need” and “ability,” i.e., Marxism.
Related: “The truth is, politicians are telling lies.”
This is not an ideological argument about the moral advantages of a smaller state: it is simple economic necessity. As the man said, there’s no money left. And the only ways that anybody can think of for the state to get more of it are either futile (taxing the “rich”) or destructive of any possibility of recovery (more borrowing). What began as a banking collapse has turned into a crisis of democratic politics. Is this what we have to look forward to? The process of campaigning and voting will be an irrelevance: all parties will tell pretty much the same lies. Whichever one is marginally more credible than the others will gain power (probably in coalition with another bunch of liars), and then have to do what needs to be done in whatever desperate, underhand ways it can devise. Nobody will feel that he got what he voted for, because what he voted for was impossible.
And low-information voters believe them, which is how Obama and other Democrats got reelected. But the piper will be paid. As Glenn says:
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t. Debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Promises that can’t be kept, won’t be.
But as with any bubble, the issue isn’t if, but when.
Totalitarianism And Mass Murder
Want to know how it happens? It starts like this:
“I have always been opposed to the death penalty in all cases…”
“Even mass murderers [like Breivik] should not be executed, in my opinion.”
“GW deniers fall into a completely different category from Behring Breivik. They are already causing the deaths of hundreds of millions of future people. We could be speaking of billions, but I am making a conservative estimate.”
Once one is declared an enemy of the people, all becomes possible.
A Very Mannly Christmas
When deception breeds paranoia. I think he really does believe this stuff.
[Evening update]
Michael Mann’s Christmases are now less joyful than at any other time in the last 2,000 years, according to Christmas tree ring data.
[Bumped]