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Archive for 2018
February 19, 2018
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Olympic Viewership Headed for Lowest Numbers Ever.
TAX REFORM AND IRS RESISTANCE.
It’s a little-known fact that for 35 years the Internal Revenue Service has exempted itself from the most basic regulatory oversight. When the Labor Department or the Small Business Administration create “major” or “significant” rules or guidance, they are required to submit them for centralized review. That ensures regulations are consistent with the law and with White House priorities and that they’ve been analyzed for costs, benefits and flexibility.
But in 1983, the Treasury Department signed a memorandum with the Office of Management and Budget that largely exempted the IRS from submitting its rules to White House review via OIRA, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. The memo still stands today. In the face of congressional attempts at oversight, the IRS issued a 1996 opinion claiming that tax statutes are in and of themselves responsible for any costs or inflexibility—that the IRS’s rules are, by definition, pure distillation of law. …
[T]he IRS is already playing games with the GOP tax reform.
Just a week after passage, the IRS rushed out guidance declaring that most taxpayers couldn’t deduct prepaid 2018 property taxes on their 2017 returns to claim that benefit before the new law kicks in. The IRS decided this with no input from the White House or other agencies. IRS bureaucrats—many of them implacably opposed to his White House and bitter over recent congressional oversight—will have plenty of opportunity to cause trouble with its interpretations of a complicated tax reform. …
The swamp is rarely drained, for the simple reason that it takes rare and extraordinary governance. It requires leaders who are willing to offend institutions and top advisers, expose internal abuse, and willingly surrender unjustifiable powers. Today’s Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation are examples of what happens when those leaders follow the far more common route of succumbing to the natives.
Mr. Mnuchin’s Treasury can make the successful rollout and implementation of the Trump tax reform a priority, or it can roll to an IRS bureaucracy. That ought to be an easy call.
In the short term, people need to be fired. Longer term we need serious civil service reform.
CHANGE: Older Men Living Longer.
Of course, as the New York Times has helpfully explained, this is bad news for women and minorities.
NOT THE FINEST EXAMPLES OF FREE SPEECH, BUT EVERYONE GOT TO EXPRESS THEIR OPINION AND NOBODY WAS HURT: Enraged protesters scream at cops, fascists. And that’s how it should be, with everyone getting to speak and nobody getting hurt. I think KPD and the University did a good job with this.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Florida Shooting Update, RUSSIAN Troll Farm Busted and Much, Much More. “Shortly after telling public that it had ignored a very specific tip about a maniac who would go on to shoot up his Florida school and murder 17 children and teachers, the DOJ decided to release a report on RUSSIA collusion so as to divert attention from its epic incompetence.”
Ouch.
BYRON YORK: A Non-Alarmist Reading Of The Mueller Russian Indictments. “The Russian operation, while warranting serious U.S. punishment, emerges as a small, poorly funded operation with a level of effectiveness that is impossible to measure but could be near zero.”
SOUTH AMERICA: Guyana keeps eyes on possible Venezuela’s options.
Stratfor, a United States-based geopolitical intelligence platform, earlier this month reasoned that there could be a two-pronged benefit for the President Nicolas Maduro-led administration if it invades Guyana.
“There are a number of political considerations that may motivate Caracas to make a move. In the short term, the incursion could help Caracas in its ongoing dialogue with the Trump administration over the terms of President Nicolas Maduro and his party’s departure from power. The Venezuelan president won’t leave power — or even loosen his party’s grip over the opposition — unless he has assurances from Washington that he and his acolytes will receive some form of amnesty. And seizing and holding Guyanese territory might offer Caracas a bargaining chip, allowing it to wrangle a better amnesty deal in exchange for a troop withdrawal.
In the long run, holding Guyanese territory could offer Venezuela a way to delay the International Court of Justice’s ruling about the border dispute. After all, the court may hold off on a ruling if Venezuelan troops are present in Guyanese territory. Moreover, the Maduro government may be counting on the incursion to pump up nationalism among Venezuelans. By directing attention outside its borders, the government could be able to buy time before organized domestic unrest gain critical mass, or even forestall any possible military coup attempt by moving units far from the capital,” Stratfor said in its publication, World View.
Things may get a whole lot worse before suddenly falling apart.
JOEL KOTKIN: What The Oligarchs Want: The unaffordable Bay Area, Google’s new neighborhood ‘built from the internet up,’ and China’s police state each offer glimpses of what the tech giants plan to sell the rest of us. The “tech giants” need to face an antitrust breakup.
PARTY OF YOUTH: Biden telling policy aides 2020 run a real possibility.
Biden met with several aides at his office near Capitol Hill to plan for his new diplomacy center. During the meeting, he reportedly told those in attendance — including his former chief of staff, his former national security adviser and a former State Department official — that he had not decided about 2020.
He indicated to his longtime aides that he’d be interested in them joining his campaign if he decides to make a run for the White House, The Associated Press reported.
A spokesperson for Biden declined to comment to the AP.
Biden, 75, is considered a strong Democratic presidential nominee if he runs. He has repeatedly indicated in public he is considering a campaign, but has not made a final decision.
If Biden were to run and win, he would be slightly older entering the Oval Office than Ronald Reagan was leaving it.
OVER AT AMERICAN GREATNESS, an excerpt from my The Judiciary’s Class War. Buy a copy today!
YES. NEXT QUESTION? Has Turkey Gone Rogue?
Erdogan’s slow motion strangulation of democracy, however, will not top Tillerson’s contentious agenda with his Turkish counterpart. A pronounced eastern tilt in Ankara’s strategic orientation has seen this erstwhile NATO ally agree to purchase an advanced Russian air defense system, and attend Moscow-sponsored talks on the future of Syria that excluded the United States. A recent trial of a Turkish-Iranian gold trader in New York revealed that top ministers in Erdogan’s government were involved in a lucrative scheme to help Iran circumvent sanctions over its suspected nuclear weapons program to the tune of an estimated $100 billion.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s campaign of intimidation against critics at home and abroad has included the arrest of U.S. consulate workers and two U.S. citizens in Turkey; the issuance of arrest warrants targeting U.S. critics at think tanks and universities in this country; and death threats by social media trolls close to the Ankara government. Last year Erdogan’s body guards viciously attacked peaceful demonstrators in Washington, prompting the D.C. police to issue arrest warrants for a dozen members of Erdogan’s security detail.
“Much like Iran, Turkey is increasingly becoming a ‘klepto-theocracy’ where government leaders and family members profit handsomely from their positions, and both governments are united by an Islamist worldview that stands in opposition to the West,” said Aykan Erdemir, a former Turkish parliamentarian and senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington, D.C.
Islamism… Socialism… Communism… Fascism… it seems the only “ism” that doesn’t result in robbing a country blind is Capitalism.
THIS IS WHAT, THE FOURTH MAJOR SHOOTING WHERE THE AUTHORITIES WERE WARNED IN ADVANCE? Kevin Williamson: Fire The FBI Chief. “The FBI has a budget of $3.5 billion, almost all of which goes to salaries, benefits, and other personnel costs. Do you know how many employees the FBI field office in South Florida has? It has more than 1,000. Do you know how many employees the FBI has in total? It has 35,158 employees. It has 13,084 agents and 3,100 intelligence analysts. And not one of them could pick up the phone to forward vital intelligence gathered by the grueling investigative work of picking up the phone and taking a tip from a tipster. . . . For now, the FBI is in the stocks. Governor Rick Scott wants FBI director Chris Wray to resign. A self-respecting society would have him whipped.”
OH: Minnesota Terrorist Let Go After Telling FBI She Wanted To Join Al Qaeda And Wear Suicide Belt.
After Tnuza Jamal Hassan was stopped from flying to Afghanistan last September, she allegedly told FBI agents that she wanted to join al-Qaida and marry a fighter, and that she might even wear a suicide belt.
She also said she was angry at U.S. military actions overseas and admitted that she tried to encourage others to “join the jihad in fighting,” but she said she had no intention of carrying out an attack on U.S. soil, according to prosecutors. Despite her alleged admissions, she was allowed to go free.
Four months later, the 19-year-old was arrested for allegedly setting small fires on her former college campus in St. Paul in what prosecutors say was a self-proclaimed act of jihad. No one was hurt by the Jan. 17 fires at St. Catherine University, but her case raises questions about why she wasn’t arrested after speaking to the agents months earlier and shows the difficulty the authorities face in identifying real threats.
The FBI can’t seem to recognize a threat even when they self-identify.
WEIRD, I THOUGHT THAT PEOPLE EXPECTED THAT REPORT TO BE BAD FOR REPUBLICANS: Dem senator warns Mueller against issuing Russia report near 2018 election. But as I understand it, Mueller can only report confidentially to DOJ. If the report is made public, it will be up to the AG.
RACHEL BOVARD: Congress Loses Focus on Illegal Immigration.
DOUGLAS SCHOEN AND ANDREW STEIN: Democrats will lose this fall by fighting over immigration now.
By focusing exclusively on the Dreamers and offering no practical limits on immigration, much less any border security, the Democrats are in the process of writing their own political obituary for November and beyond. But a deal with President Trump can turn this perennially difficult issue into an electoral benefit. Here’s how.
President Trump has proposed a compromise by offering a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers, building a wall on the southern border, ending the visa lottery program, and ending what he calls “chain migration” and what the Democrats call “family unification.”
In fact, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has proposed a bill in Congress based on these four planks. The Democrats have previously said this proposal is dead-on-arrival, which is a clear mistake and there are some small bits of evidence now that the party is waking up to the fact that the Schumer-Pelosi approach was just plain wrong.
My hunch is that Schumer and Pelosi are willing to take the risk because they don’t believe that 1.8 million legalized Dreamers are enough to ensure that elusive Permanent Democratic Majority.
On the other hand, as I’ve written here previously, for Democrats a “bad” deal might be better than no deal at all — if if looks like Mitch McConnell might be able to cobble together enough votes between Republicans and vulnerable Red State Dems for an even “worse” deal.
WAIT, WHAT? Shocker! WaPo Fact Check Agrees With Rubio’s Statement On New Gun Laws.
A funny thing happened during the current national scream that Congress must do something about gun violence. A Republican lawmaker made a common-sense statement about the limits of government and the left went nuts. Then, wonder of wonders, a Washington Post fact-checker agreed with him.
While Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) preens before television cameras and proclaims his own love of hunting and guns, Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) is held responsible for the horrific school shooting on Valentines Day in Parkland, Florida. Rubio accepts campaign donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA) so he must be vilified. The willing cohorts of the left, the media, are only too happy to advance the notion that the NRA is evil and must be relieved of its First Amendment rights.
So, when Rubio was asked about pursuing legislation – gun control measures – he answered with a question of his own: wouldn’t it be best to wait until all the facts are in before everyone starts demanding that something is done by the government? He dared to say that new legislation may not have stopped this latest tragedy. . . .
The Washington Post went back to the Newtown shooting in 2012 and chose 12 mass shootings to analyze. Fact-checkers concluded that none of the shootings would have been avoided by passing new laws currently under discussion. What a disappointment that must have been to the newspaper.
Remember, this isn’t about saving lives or protecting children. It’s about asserting cultural superiority and showing those flyover rubes who’s boss.
And while the Democrats accuse the NRA of having blood on its hands — for, you know, daring to disagree with them on policy — look who Democrats are hanging out with.