Archive for 2019

US OFFICIAL: PENSACOLA SHOOTING SUSPECT WAS SAUDI AF OFFICER. “FBI and other authorities began investigating the incident to determine if it was terrorism-related… The shooter opened fire in a classroom building on Friday morning. The attack left four people dead, including the assailant, and multiple people wounded.”

Just spitballing here, but maybe it’s time to take a closer look at Saudi nationals hanging out in Florida for ‘flight school.’ Kinda maybe figured we would’ve done that 18 years ago, but apparently not,” Sean Davis of the Federalist tweets.

OF COURSE SHE DID: Rashida Tlaib Headlined Anti-Semitic Hate Fest. “Tlaib headlined the American Muslims for Palestine’s (AMP) 2020 election conference late last month in Chicago. The freshman lawmaker, known for her routine criticism of Israel and its supporters, shared the stage with a who’s who of leading anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, including Bernie Sanders surrogate Linda Sarsour.”

Is leftism inherently antisemitic, or are purveyors of group-identity politics just natural political allies?

COLD WAR II: Forget Trump — Huawei Now Has A Major New Problem In China.

Two issues have hit the company in the last week—they are unrelated but share a common theme: Total Dependence on China to ride out the U.S. blacklist, it seems, may not be such smooth sailing after all. Huawei needs to keep Beijing and China’s consumers onside—and that may be harder than it once seemed.

Recent hard hitting allegations that Huawei is more involved in the surveillance operations in Xinjiang than it has said in the past would ordinarily prompt the company to step back to shore up its reputation and image overseas. But it cannot risk any kind of snub to Beijing. And, closer to home, there is also now a viral backlash on social media against Huawei’s perceived treatment of a former employee who was jailed for crimes against the company. The timing could not be worse.

The modern parts of China’s industrial base give it strengths the Soviet Union never enjoyed, but also new vulnerabilities.

CLOSE THE DANGEROUS TAX-CUT GAP! Trump’s Tax Cuts Push U.S. Burden Lower in World. “Report says U.S. total tax rate lowest among grouping of major economies except Ireland, Chile and Mexico.”

Driven by the federal tax cut that Congress and Mr. Trump enacted at the end of 2017, U.S. taxes at all levels of government fell to 24.3% of gross domestic product in 2018, down from 26.8% a year earlier and 25.9% in 2016.

That 2.5 percentage-point drop was only the fourth time since 1995 that any country’s tax burden has declined by at least that much in one year outside of the financial crisis, according to OECD, an intergovernmental economic organization with 36 member countries including the U.S.

The steepness of the decline stemmed partly from an increase in 2017, when a one-time tax from the 2017 law was counted as revenue that year.

Measured as a share of the U.S. economy, taxes are now 10 percentage points below the 2018 OECD average of 34.3%. Among 34 countries with preliminary 2018 data, the U.S. tax burden is lower than everywhere except Chile, Ireland and Mexico. The tax cut drove U.S. taxes below Turkey’s, and taxes in France and Denmark are now nearly twice what they are in the U.S.

But there’s still a long way to go, when we’re getting beaten by the likes of Mexico, Chile, and Ireland. We can do this, America!

SPARE US, LORD, OF THIS HOOTENANNY OF INSUFFERABLE ELITISTS: That’s the plea of today’s Issues & Insights (I&I) analysis of the 25th annual United Nations Conference of the Parties on the environment.

Notes I&I: “How long have we been hearing this? Prince Charles has been predicting imminent doomsday for more than a decade, as has Al Gore. Before the conference began, Vice was trying to convince the world that “The Collapse of Civilization May Have Already Begun,” while Extinction Rebellion has been barking madly that “billions will die” and “life on Earth is dying” because of man’s use of fossil fuels.”

And that’s just a taste of the inanity, arrogance and lunacy in I&I’s well-aimed sights.