Restoring America’s Assimilation Apparatus

amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/restoring-americas-assimilation-apparatus/

November 19, 2018

If the goal of immigration reform is to preserve American culture and prosperity, then the question would-be reformers would do well to ask is what strategies will have a chance at success.

Heated rhetoric about hordes of gangbangers and birth tourists overrunning our border will work, maybe, with about 40 percent of American voters. Cryptic escalatory references to how “the Second Amendment will save us” are futile jabberings. If it had to, the American government would deploy swarms of slap drones and other high-tech counter-insurgency gadgetry that would neutralize America’s rebel “militias” in hours. These are impossible options.

The good news is it doesn’t have to be this way. American culture and prosperity can be preserved.

Immigration policy can move to a merit-based system, where admittance is based on applicants having valuable job skills, English language proficiency, good health, and cultural compatibility. There is a way to build a consensus among American voters that demands these reforms. The question is where to look.

As Henry Olsen explained in these pages recently, the Trump coalition has a tenuous hold on power—at best. “Whether it is regaining a portion of . . . RINOs or a winning a much larger share of Hispanic or African-American votes,” Olsen wrote, the president and the MAGA movement “need more supporters to succeed.”

How? Here it is necessary to consider the art of the possible. Are RINOs or liberals ever going to support immigration policies that preserve American culture and prosperity? Probably not. Those voters—mostly members of the upper middle class—love to virtue signal their aversion to any border policy that might invite even hints of “racism,” at the same time as they love the cheap labor that immigrants provide to clean their floors and cut their grass. They will be the last to be convinced.

What about “people of color,” those voters who constitute the other half of the Democratic bloc? Why should Trump Republicans settle for 10 percent, or even 40 percent, of their votes? What would it take for these voters, most of whom are either immigrants or have immigrant parents, to embrace American culture as passionately as the Irish and German immigrants of a century ago, and want to defend it?

The answer is simple: Attack and permanently discredit the forces in America that are doing everything they can to prevent assimilation. There are three critical fronts in this war.

University Campuses and K-12 Public Education
The degree to which the extreme Left now dominates university campuses in America defies brief description. America’s universities are training ethnic and racial minorities to despise traditional American culture and to believe they will experience lifelong discrimination in a hostile culture steeped in “white privilege.” But the programs that enable these seditious actions can be challenged in court, because they are discriminatory, they violate academic freedom, they undermine the economic value of an expensive college degree, and, in public universities, they waste taxpayers money.

Examples include the Orwellian diversity statements that applicants now have to submit to be considered for faculty positions. The discriminatory affirmative action plans. The segregation of “safe spaces.” The expensive, divisive, and economically useless ethnic and gender studies. The incredibly expensive “inclusion” and “diversity” bureaucracy. The abuse of Title IX by opportunistic bureaucrats and trial lawyers. Not only can court rulings destroy many of these programs, but people of color could be persuaded to reject such nonsense. Because the degrees they’re earning through them are worthless.

Rescuing America’s public elementary and secondary schools is equally important. There is no reason young people today cannot embrace America’s proud heritage regardless of their national origin.

But instead of receiving a balanced education that highlights America’s unique contributions to universal equality of opportunity, there is an inexorable shift towards textbooks that disparage the nation and its origins. Among the central figures in this growing movement to turn America’s youth against their own country is the late Howard Zinn. His hopelessly biased bestselling history text is designed to fill impressionable, rebellious youth with cynical resentment against everything that’s made America great: capitalism, private property, Christianity, democracy, meritocracy, the Protestant work ethic, and Western Civilization itself.

Fighting the leftist influence in K-12 schools starts with providing alternatives. Charter schools. Vouchers. Continuing to attack the Leftist agenda of the powerful teachers unions. These fights can play out in the courts, but they can also be fought at the grassroots. Because Leftist controlled public K-12 schools are failing to educate students. And the students who are the most negatively affected by Leftist mismanagement are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Exposing the Environmentalist Attack on the West
Nobody denies the urgency of many environmental challenges. Asian trawlers strip mining the oceans for protein. African poachers slaughtering critically endangered species. Chinese power plants belching so much soot they spread toxic clouds across half a continent. Rapid, unsustainable population growth across most of the planet’s equatorial regions.

The trajectory of all attempts to mitigate these genuine challenges is fatally slowed in deference to a corporate, fascistic imperative: Fighting “climate change.”

One may stop just short of declaring the entire climate change movement to be nothing more than a despicable hoax, inspired by globalist dreams of absolute profit and power. Humans can alter climate, probably more through land use than through CO2 emissions, but these impacts need to be honestly studied in order to consider practical options.

Instead, the climate alarmists demand that humans phase out all use of fossil fuel within a few decades. This is patently, ridiculously impossible. Moreover, even if it were possible, according to their own “scientific” projections, it’s already too late. So what’s really going on?

What the climate alarmists are creating, some of them consciously, others as unwitting accomplices, is artificial scarcity of virtually all critical resources; land, homes, electricity, gas and oil, water, transportation. This enriches wealthy elites who own the means of production. They eliminate competition, drive up prices, and collect higher returns. Throughout the Western World they have boxed in cities, supposedly to preserve “open space,” they’ve shut down power plants, they’ve prevented construction of dams and desalination plants, they’ve prevented projects to widen and upgrade roads. The solutions they’ve offered punish low-income communities most of all. High-density, high-rise apartments with sky-high rents. Expensive electricity and expensive gasoline. Water that’s rationed yet still costs more every year. Roads crammed beyond capacity, causing the most harm to those commuters who must live far from their jobs in order to afford their rent.

Why isn’t this an attack on immigrants? Why isn’t this an attack on people of color? Why should they continue to vote for people who used to allow land development to lower the price of land and housing, but now require everyone to cram into the existing footprints of legacy cities?

Why should they vote for people who reject the cost-effective solution of installing scrubbers on smokestacks to enable clean use of fossil fuel, and instead sell subsidized solar rooftop systems to the wealthy, which forces everyone else pay higher utility rates to fund the grid upgrades necessary to accommodate distributed power?

Why should they vote for people who, instead of just building a few dams and permitting desalination plants to supply water to coastal cities, impose water rationing and charge higher rates? Why should they vote for people who could widen the freeways, but instead pour hundreds of billions into mass transit solutions that are impractical and always end up underutilized?

It isn’t difficult to make this case. It takes courage more than money. Courage to be called a “denier.” But if enough people insist on a rational response to climate change alarm, “denier” will lose its power to silence. And the people who are the most negatively affected by leftist climate alarm policies are those who live in low income, immigrant communities.

Meeting Big Money with Big Money
Saving America’s culture and prosperity is tough, because most wealthy people don’t consider preserving America’s culture and prosperity as a high priority.

Their moral argument goes like this: We will shift people and capital to wherever we find the greatest return on investment, because if all of us maximize our returns, collectively we will foster more rapid global economic growth. That’s a comforting argument, especially when you’re disenfranchising an entire nation.

Alas, the argument has a fatal flaw.

American culture—and Western culture generally—is the engine that gave birth to individual rights, capitalist entrepreneurship, democratic republics, the rule of law, a sizable middle class, and the prosperity, adaptability, and stability that enabled their wealth. Not only do the ordinary people who are the inheritors and carriers of this culture deserve better but if their culture is destroyed, the security that wealthy people enjoy will also be destroyed. Hardcore leftists know this. The wealthy RINOs, including leftist and libertarian oligarchs, often do not. They are naïve.

In the November 2018 election, leftist oligarchs and NeverTrump billionaires vastly outspent the Republicans. Pierre Omidyar, Michael Bloomberg, Warren Buffett, Tom Steyer, and George Soros, to name a few, spent hundreds of millions to elect Democrats and push left-wing policies. Usually reliable right-leaning oligarchs, such as the Koch Brothers, not only failed to match the torrent of funding from the left, but they were selective in their support, abandoning Republicans who were too “Trumpian.”

Not only were Republicans outspent in 2018 but the Democrats were smarter with their money. Billionaire Tom Steyer, who poured $123 million overall into 2018 midterms, funneled $3.8 million for targeted youth voter registration, voter contact, and get-out-the-vote efforts just in California, and just in toss-up congressional districts.

Democratic operatives collected individual voter data from online and offline sources, testing thousands of online ads, which allowed them to pinpoint which individual voters in pure Republican households were most receptive to crossing party lines. They recruited an army of amateur opposition researchers to “read every line of every document” of targeted Republicans’ lives, voting records, and disclosure reports.

Anti-MAGA billionaires did everything right. Their upgraded tactics, and their unprecedented funding, are here to stay. Who will counter their efforts?

There are 565 billionaires in the United States. Most of them are globalists; some are left-wing; some are libertarian. But not all of them. It would only take a determined effort by two or three of them, using their money as strategically as the Democrats and RINOs just did, to change the game. It’s time for some of them to step up. Because as it is, in the United States there are well established, well organized networks of think tanks and super PACs on the Left and the Right. But neither of these networks embrace a vision of American greatness that puts Americans first.

Understanding Who’s On Your Side
The battle to reform immigration laws and assimilate newcomers is not racial; it is cultural. The enemies of assimilation, for the most part, are globalist oligarchs and their mostly white liberal pawns.

There exists a vision of compassionate nationalism, however, that makes an uncompromising commitment to the interests of the American people, but does so in recognition that only a strong America—a very strong America—can help midwife the eventual emergence of a global civilization that embraces Western values.

The great independent voting bloc are those millions of Americans—nearly 25 percent of the population—who either have recently arrived in America, or are first-generation Americans. Many of them are intermarrying with whites, especially Asians and Latinos. These voters are up for grabs for a host of reasons.

To generalize, Asians resent being held back by affirmative action. Latinos resent being displaced by more recent immigrants. It’s the same story with blacks. And all people of color are increasingly receptive to the argument that Democrats have done nothing to help their communities. Welfare has failed. Unions have ruined public education. College courses in ethnic and gender studies are a joke. And as anyone with a smile and an open heart immediately learns, America is not a racist nation. We are the friendliest people on earth.

Americans are right to fear unchecked immigration. But their enemy is not the immigrants themselves. It is the liberal totalism that robs everyone of opportunities who is not already wealthy. It is leftist hatred that trains immigrants to dislike America and Americans. As the truth about the leftist elites is exposed, as they are accurately revealed as plutocratic, manipulative profiteers who are indifferent to the plight of ordinary Americans, people of color will join the MAGA movement. And with their participation, many white RINOs and moderate liberals will at last feel comfortable also joining.

Resistance to #TheResistance is not futile. With a positive, welcoming attitude, combined with a well-funded, winning national strategy, America’s new immigrants will be assimilated. And that will be a wonderful thing.

Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images

Re-posted with permission.

No one can give you what is already yours

This is the first of “How Big a Life Do You Want” articles.

No One Can Give You What is Already Yours.

Rights. A lot is said about rights. Not all everything called rights have anything to do with what essential rights are. If one were to get down to the root of the matter – rights are first and foremost unalienable, inherent, part and parcel of your very being. If at any moment the idea is accepted that rights are anything but unalienable, part of your very existence, then what you think you have is no longer a right but a decree, edict, endowment or some specific benefit bestowed by some higher authority, usually some form of government or ruler.

In the first case, your rights are the basis of law; in the latter, laws define your rights. Further, if rights are inherent, unalienable then no person, entity or governing body can be said to have jurisdiction over your rights. This is because the rights of every individual emanate from each and every individual’s very existence; this bundle of rights exist a priori, proceeding any law or government.

This is precisely what was meant by that portion of the Declaration of Independence which reads:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Frédéric Bastiat in “The Law” says it this way:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production–in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.¹

This cannot be understated: whether you believe in a God or not, if your rights begin and end with a governing entity, then you do not possess unalterable, unalienable, inherent rights. What you would have were little more than someone giving you at their discretion what they deem you should have. Their presumption is that they have the right and therefore the authority to decree as they see fit. How do they have such authority? Did you give it to them? By what right do they claim such power? Birth? Privilege? A superior intellect? Some high moral character that sets them apart and above the rest of humanity? Or is it mere political power?

Surely the ridiculousness of this notion can be see for what it is. If what you cling to as “rights” under this scenario can be dismissed at the whim and leisure of a ruling individual or group, then rights do not exist; only authority and political power. If rights are believed to be endowed by authority, and not inherent, unalienable, political structure doesn’t matter – it can be a true dictatorship, an oligarchy or a democracy (which is little more than soft tyranny of the majority).

Are you comfortable with the idea that what you believe you have as a right is nothing more than what another deems it to be? Or does it make more sense that rights are truly part and parcel of your being and the being of every individual? If these essential rights are inherently yours, then they are not and cannot be given to you.

No one can give you what is already yours: Life, Liberty, Property. Everything else grows out of this basic concept. Rights either are inherent and unalienable or law is based upon who rules at the time. The choice should be obvious.
Life, Liberty, Property – these are the essential rights each of us possess. You cannot have one without the other two. The existence of these carries with it your right to hold and enjoy these and to defend them, to keep them from being take from you.

This right of defense (to hold and enjoy one’s basic rights freely) is the foundation of all law. So, the purpose of Law is to protect the inherent and unalienable rights of every individual. Laws or legislation that violate anyone’s essential rights would then be contrary to the purpose of Law Theft and fraud are the taking of your property by force or coercion. Murder is the taking of another’s life. Slavery is the taking of one’s freedom and property. It is lawful to prevent theft, fraud, murder and slavery precisely because they take or attempt to destroy the essential rights of an individual or another group of individuals by another individual or group of individuals.

A characteristic of rights is that one’s possession and exercise of that right does not take from another. Your thinking, your speaking, your breathing, your own efforts do not directly cause the loss of the things in anyone else. Your Property, which begins initially with your own body, is not another person’s, nor does your mere existence, put an end to another individual’s having a body. Your right to maintain and improve your own existence does not preclude another person’s right to do so.

This may seem ridiculous to cover, but over the years so many assumptions have glossed over the basic concepts and observations of our own humanity and our relationships, they have to be mentioned. These are what make a truly free society possible,. Precisely because these are presumptive they are often overlooked and forgotten.

So what happens when the co-equal and inalienable rights of two individuals cross paths? Shall one merely use force to take what they want or need from the other? Or shall a mutually agreeable exchange be made to the basic satisfaction of both parties? Which of these choices would be the more civil and respectful? Which action represents freedom and tolerance?

I ask then, just how big a life do you want?

“The Law” by Frédéric Bastiat can be found in several places (it’s a mere 75 pages):

https://mises.org/library/law

http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html

http://www.constitution.org/cmt/bastiat/the_law.html

http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss2.html

Why it Matters that the United States Is (Supposed to Be) a Republic, not a Democracy

June 13, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

If you want to go to a Presbyterian church instead of a Baptist church, should the government be able to interfere with that choice? Even if, for some bizarre reason, 95 percent of the population doesn’t like Presbyterians?

If you want to march up and down the sidewalk in front of City Hall with a sign that says the Mayor is an idiot, should the government be able to throw you in jail? Even if 95 percent of the population somehow has decided the Mayor is a genius?

Most Americans instinctively understand that the answer to all these question is no. Not just no, a big emphatic NO!

That’s because certain rights are guaranteed by our Constitution, regardless of whether an overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens feel otherwise.

And that’s what makes us a republic rather than a democracy.

But the bad news is that many of our rights in the Constitution no longer are protected.

For instance, Article I, Section 8, specifically enumerates (what are supposed to be) the very limited powers of Congress.

Our Founding Fathers thought it was okay for Congress to have the power to create courts, to coin money, to fund an army, and to have the authority to do a few other things.

But here are some things that are not on that list of enumerated powers (and certainly not included in the list of presidential powers either):

• Department of Agriculture
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Education
• Department of Transportation
• Social Security
• Medicare
• Medicaid
• Food Stamps
• Obamacare
• Transportation Security Administration
• TARP
• Export-Import Bank

And the list could go on for several pages. The point is that the entire modern Washington-based welfare state, with all its redistribution and so-called social insurance, is inconsistent with the limited-government republic created by America’s Founders.

These programs exist today because the Supreme Court put ideology above the Constitution during the New Deal and, at least in the economic sphere, turned the nation from a constitutional republic into a democracy based on unconstrained majoritarianism.

Here’s some of Walter Williams wrote on the topic.

Like the founders of our nation, I find democracy and majority rule a contemptible form of government. …James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said that in a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” …John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” …The word “democracy” appears nowhere in the two most fundamental documents of our nation — the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. …the Constitution’s First Amendment doesn’t say Congress shall grant us freedom of speech, the press and religion. It says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” …In a democracy, the majority rules either directly or through its elected representatives. …Laws do not represent reason. They represent force. The restraint is upon the individual instead of government. Unlike that envisioned under a republican form of government, rights are seen as privileges and permissions that are granted by government and can be rescinded by government. …ask yourself how many decisions in your life would you like to be made democratically. How about what car you drive, where you live, whom you marry, whether you have turkey or ham for Thanksgiving dinner?

And click here for a video that explains in greater detail why majoritarianism is a bad idea.

But perhaps these cartoons will make it even easier to understand why 51 percent of the population shouldn’t be allowed to rape and pillage 49 percent of the population.

We’ll start with this depiction of modern elections, which was featured on a friend’s Facebook page.

And here’s one that I’ve shared before.

It highlights the dangers of majoritarianism, particularly if you happen to be a minority.

P.S. George Will has explained that the Supreme Court’s job is to protect Americans from democracy.

P.P.S. Here’s more analysis of the issue from Walter Williams.

P.P.P.S. Some leftists are totally oblivious about America’s system of government.

P.P.P.P.S. Though Republicans also don’t really understand what the Constitution requires.

P.P.P.P.P.S. Looking at the mess in the Middle East, I’ve argued we would be in much better shape if we promoted liberty instead of democracy.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Does “Freedom” Mean an Entitlement to Other People’s Money?

June 10, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Maybe the warm weather is affecting my judgement, but I’m finding myself in the odd position of admiring some folks on the left for their honesty.

A few days ago, for instance, I (sort of) applauded Matthew Yglesias for openly admitting that punitive tax rates would put us on the downward-sloping portion of the Laffer Curve.

He still favors such a policy, which is very bizarre, but at least his approach is much more honest than other statists who want us to believe that very high tax rates generate more revenue.

Today, I’m going to indirectly give kudos to another leftist.

Writing for the Washington Post, Katrina vanden Heuvel openly argues that the meaning of freedom should be changed. Here’s some of her argument, and we’ll start with her reasonably fair description of how freedom currently is interpreted.

For conservatives, freedom is centered in markets, free from government interference. …Government is the threat; the best thing it can do is to get out of the way. …freedom entails privatization, deregulation, limiting government’s reach and capacity.

Needless to say, I agree with this definition. After all, isn’t freedom just another way of saying “the absence of coercive constraint on the individual”?

Heck, this is why I’m a libertarian. Sure, I like the fact that liberty produces more prosperity, but my main goal it to eliminate needless government coercion.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to her column. She complains that folks on the left have acquiesced to this traditional conception of freedom.

Democrats chose to tack to these conservative winds. Bill Clinton’s New Democrats echoed the themes rather than challenge them. “The era of big government is over,” he told Americans, while celebrating “ending welfare as we know it,” deregulation of Wall Street… Obama chose consciously not to challenge the conservative limits on what freedom means.

Then she gets to her main argument. She wants Hillary Clinton to lead an effort to redefine the meaning of freedom.

This is Hillary Clinton’s historic opportunity. …She would do a great service for the country — and for her own political prospects — by offering a far more expansive American view of what freedom requires, and what threatens it. …expanding freedom from want by lifting the floor under workers, insuring every child a healthy start, providing free public education from pre-k to college, rebuilding the United States and putting people to work… Will she favor fair taxes on the rich and corporations to rebuild the United States and put people to work? Will she make the case for vital public investments — in new energy, in infrastructure, in education and training — that have been starved for too long? Will she call for breaking up banks…? Will she favor expanding social security…? …to offer Americans a bolder conception of freedom…and set up the debate that America must decide.

Needless to say, I strongly disagree with such policies. How can “freedom” be based on having entitlements to other people’s money?!?

Heck, it’s almost like slavery since it presupposes that a “right” to live off the labor of others. But that’s not technically true since presumably there wouldn’t be any requirement to work. So what would really happen in such a society is that people would conclude it’s better to ride in the wagon of government dependency, as illustrated by these cartoons.

Which means, sooner or later, a Greek-style collapse because a shrinking population of producers can’t keep pace with an ever-expanding population of moochers and looters.

Nonetheless, I give Ms. vanden Heuvel credit for acknowledging that her preferred policies are contrary to the traditional definition of freedom.

To be sure, I’d admire her even more if she simply admitted that she favors government coercion over freedom. That would be true honesty, but I can understand that folks on the left would prefer to change the meaning of words rather than admit what their agenda really implies.

P.S. Some of you may recognize that the issues discussed above are basically a rehash of the debate between advocates of “negative liberty” and supporters of “positive liberty.” The former is focused on protecting people from the predations of government while the latter is about somehow guaranteeing goodies from the government.

P.P.S. As mentioned in Ms. vanden Heuvel’s column, today’s effort to redefine freedom is similar to the so-called economic bill of rights peddled in the 1940s by FDR.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Hillary opines on voter fraud, voter ID.

Interesting that with all of the turmoil surrounding Mrs. Clinton that she is now all concerned about voters ability to vote (NYT: Clinton on Voting Rights). Then again, when was distraction not the favorite tool of politicians (“Look over here! Nothing to see over there.”)?

I was listening this morning to a radio discussing voter fraud. Found it ironic one person called made a statement about how little voter fraud actually happens and bolted without any discussion.

I’ve had several conversations with several over the last couple of years. In my research here’s what I found –

1) the actual number of incidents versus the voting population is as it is oft cited by Liberals: minimal or negligible.

• http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/voter-fraud-real-rare/story?id=17213376
• https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud

You’ll find similar sources in Mother Jones, Salon, and The Huffington Post

This, however, is where they stop. However, it is a half truth.

2) It is not the number of incidences; it’s not even the even fewer number of convictions. As with the fulcrum and lever (a very large weight can be moved with minimal effort), it’s not the number of incidents, but the impact of those incidents.

Case in point:

During the 2008 Democratic Primary four individuals within Indiana’s Democratic political/election machine were convicted of voter fraud. They forged enough signatures that had it been caught at the time, then candidate Obama might not have been lawfully placed upon the Indiana ballot. Let that sink in. In one place, four individuals (not a large number in contrast to the entire voting population), effectively influenced the outcome of an entire election through fraud. One incident.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/17/indiana-dem-official-sentenced-to-prison-for-08-ballot-fraud-in-obama-clinton/

This is only one instance. There are many others. Again, number of instances versus number of voters – insignificant. But like the ratio of the rudder on a aircraft carrier, a small thing (relative to the size of the object it influences) can and does modify the outcome (in the case of a ship, its direction) considerably. It doesn’t matter which candidate such may effect – voter fraud literal steals from the masses their legitimate vote, the most significant influence we as citizens have upon the direction of our government. The case above shows just how damaging such fraud can have, regardless of what political party is involved or which candidate it helps or harms.

• http://www.electionintegritywatch.com/be-informed/news-stories/
• http://www.nationalreview.com/article/368234/voter-fraud-weve-got-proof-its-easy-john-fund
• http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/11/04/voter_fraud_and_voter_id_124553.html
• https://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp
• https://www.truethevote.org/category/voter-fraud

What is glaring about the voter fraud that occurs is (1) not all are convicted (some are dismissed for appropriate reasons; some plea bargain) and (2) it appears from what I have found thus far that the vast majority of these are committed by Democrats (I’ve yet to find a Republican that has been indicted for voter fraud).  Interesting, wouldn’t you say?

Don’t know about you, but I’d like to know my vote counts. Otherwise, we are no longer a truly free society.

Grading the Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan

Grading the Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan

March 4, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

In my 2012 primer on fundamental tax reform, I explained that the three biggest warts in the current system.

1. High tax rates that penalize productive behavior.

2. Pervasive double taxation that discourages saving and investment.

3. Corrupt loopholes and cronyism that bribe people to make less productive choices.

These problems all need to be addressed, but I also acknowledged additional concerns with the internal revenue code, such as worldwide taxation and erosion of constitutional freedoms an civil liberties.

In a perfect world, we would shrink government to such a small size that there was no need for any sort of broad-based tax (remember, the United States prospered greatly for most of our history when there was no income tax).

In a good world, we could at least replace the corrupt internal revenue code with a simple and fair flat tax.

In today’s Washington, the best we can hope for is incremental reform.

But some incremental reforms can be very positive, and that’s the best way of describing the “Economic Growth and Family Fairness Tax Reform Plan” unveiled today by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

The two GOP senators have a column in today’s Wall Street Journal, and you can read a more detailed description of their plan by clicking here.

But here are the relevant details.

What’s wrong with Rubio-Lee

In the interest of fairness, I’ll start with the most disappointing feature of the plan. The top tax rate will be 35 percent, only a few percentage points lower than the 39.6 percent top rate that Obama imposed as a result of the fiscal cliff.

Even more troubling, that 35 percent top tax rate will be imposed on any taxable income above $75,000 for single taxpayers and $150,000 for married taxpayers.

Since the 35 percent and 39.6 percent tax rates currently apply only when income climbs above $400,000, that means a significant number of taxpayers will face higher marginal tax rates.

That’s a very disappointing feature in any tax plan, but it’s especially unfortunate in a proposal put forth my lawmakers who wrote in their WSJ column that they want to “lower rates for families and individuals.”

What’s right with Rubio-Lee

This will be a much longer section because there are several very attractive features of the Rubio-Lee plan.

Some households, for instance, will enjoy lower marginal tax rates under the new bracket structure, particularly if those households have lots of children (there’s a very big child tax credit).

But the really attractive features of the Rubio-Lee plan are those that deal with business taxation, double taxation, and international competitiveness.

Here’s a list of the most pro-growth elements of the plan.

A 25 percent tax rate on all business income – This means that the corporate tax rate is being reduced from 35 percent (the highest in the world), but also that there will be a 25 percent maximum rate on all small businesses that file using Schedule C as part of a 1040 tax return.

Sweeping reductions in double taxation – The Rubio-Lee plans eliminates the capital gains tax, the double tax on dividends, and the second layer of tax on interest.

Full expensing of business investment – The proposal gets rid of punitive “depreciation” rules that force businesses to overstate their income in ways that discourage new business investment.

Territorial taxation – Businesses no longer will have to pay a second layer of tax on income that is earned – and already subject to tax – in other nations.

No death tax – Income should not be subject to yet another layer of tax simply because someone dies. The Rubio-Lee plan eliminates this morally offensive form of double taxation.

In addition, it’s worth noting that the Rubio-Lee plan eliminate the state and local tax deduction, which is a perverse part of the tax code that enables higher taxes in states like New York and California.

Many years ago, while working at the Heritage Foundation, I created a matrix to grade competing tax reform plans. I updated that matrix last year to assess the proposal put forth by Congressman Dave Camp, the former Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee.

Here’s another version of that matrix, this time including the Rubio-Lee plan.

As you can see, the Rubio-Lee plan gets top scores for “saving and investment” and “international competitiveness.”

And since these components have big implications for growth, the proposal would – if enacted – generate big benefits. The economy would grow faster, more jobs would be created, workers would enjoy higher wages, and American companies would be far more competitive.

By the way, if there was (and there probably should be) a “tax burden” grade in my matrix, the Rubio-Lee plan almost surely would get an “A+” score because the overall proposal is a substantial tax cut based on static scoring.

And even with dynamic scoring, this plan will reduce the amount of money going to Washington in the near future.

Of course, faster future growth will lead to more taxable income, so there will be revenue feedback. So the size of the tax cut will shrink over time, but even a curmudgeon like me doesn’t get that upset if politicians get more revenue because more Americans are working and earning higher wages.

That simply means another opportunity to push for more tax relief!

What’s missing in Rubio-Lee

There are a few features of the tax code that aren’t addressed in the plan.

The health care exclusion is left untouched, largely because the two lawmakers understand that phasing out that preference is best handled as part of a combined tax reform/health reform proposal.

Some itemized deductions are left untouched, or simply tweaked.

And I’m not aware of any changes that would strengthen the legal rights of taxpayers when dealing with the IRS.

Let’s close with a reminder of what very good tax policy looks like.

To their credit, Rubio and Lee would move the tax code in the direction of a flat tax, though sometimes in a haphazard fashion.

P.S. There is a big debate on the degree to which the tax code should provide large child credits. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal last year, I much prefer lower tax rates since faster growth is the most effective long-run way to bolster the economic status of families.

But even the flat tax has a generous family-based allowance, so it’s largely a political judgement on how much tax relief should be dedicated to kids and how much should be used to lower tax rates.

That being said, I think the so-called reform conservatives undermine their case when they argue child-oriented tax relief is good because it might subsidize the creation of future taxpayers to prop up entitlement programs. We need to reform those programs, not give them more money.

Reposted from International Liberty.

Spending Caps Are the Way to Prevent Unsustainable Fiscal Binges During Growth Years

The Alberta Example: Spending Caps Are the Way to Prevent Unsustainable Fiscal Binges During Growth Years

March 1, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Back in 2012, I shared some superb analysis from Investor’s Business Daily showing that the United States never would have suffered $1 trillion-plus deficits during Obama’s first term if lawmakers had simply exercised a modest bit of spending restraint beginning back in 1998.

And the IBD research didn’t assume anything onerous. Indeed, the author specifically showed what would have happened if spending grew by an average of 3.3 percent, equal to the combined growth of inflation plus population.

Remarkably, we would now have a budget surplus of about $300 billion if that level of spending restraint continued to the current fiscal year.

This is a great argument for some sort of spending cap, such as the Swiss Debt Brake or Colorado’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

But let’s look beyond the headlines to understand precisely why a spending cap is so valuable.

If you look at the IBD chart, you’ll notice that revenues are not very stable. This is because they are very dependent on the economy’s performance. During years of good growth, revenues tend to rise very rapidly. But when there’s a downturn, such as we had at the beginning and end of last decade, revenues tend to fall.

But you don’t have to believe me or IBD. Just look at federal tax revenues over the past 30 years. There have been seven years during which nominal tax revenues have increased by more than 10 percent. But there also have been five years during which nominal tax revenue declined.

This instability means that it doesn’t make much sense to focus on a balanced budget rule. All that means is that politicians can splurge during the growth years. But when there’s a downturn, they’re in a position where they have to cut spending or (as we see far too often) raise taxes.

But if there’s a spending cap, then there is a constraint on the behavior of politicians. And assuming the spending cap is set at a proper level, it means that – over time – there will be shrinking levels of red ink because the burden of government spending will grow by less than the average growth rate of the private economy.

In other words, compliance with my Golden Rule!

Let’s look at other examples.

Why did Greece get in fiscal trouble? The long answer has to do with ever-growing government and ever-increasing dependency. But the short answer, at least in part, is that a growing economy last decade generated plenty of tax revenue, but rather than cut taxes and/or pay down debt, Greek politicians went on a spending binge, which then proved to be unsustainable when there was an economic slowdown.*

This is also why California periodically gets in fiscal trouble. During years when the economy is growing and generating tax revenue, the politicians can’t resist the temptation to spend the money, oftentimes creating long-run spending obligations based on the assumption of perpetually rapid revenue growth. These spending commitments then prove to be unaffordable when there’s a downturn and revenues stop growing.

And as you can see from the accompanying graph, this creates a very unstable fiscal situation for the Golden State. Revenue spikes lead to spending spikes. During a downturn, by contrast, revenues are flat or declining, and this puts politicians in a position of either enacting serious spending restraint or (as you might predict with California) imposing anti-growth tax hikes.

And, in the long run, the burden of spending rises faster than the private sector.

We have another example to add to our list, thanks to some superb research from Canada’s Fraser Institute.

They recently released a study examining fiscal policy in the energy-rich province of Alberta. In particular, the authors (Mark Milke and Milagros Palacios) look at the rapid growth of spending between the fiscal years 2004/05 and 2013/14.

By the mid-2000s, even though the province was again spending at a level that contributed to deficits in the early 1990s, after 2004/05 the province allowed program spending to escalate even further and beyond inflation and population growth. The result was that by 2013/14, the province spent $10,967 per person on government programs. That was $2,002 higher per person than in 2004/05.

Why did the burden of spending climb so quickly? The simple answer is that bigger government was enabled by tax revenue generated by a prospering energy industry.

Over a nine-year period, politicians spent money based on an assumption that high energy prices were permanent and that tax revenues would always be surging.

But now that energy prices have fallen, politicians are suddenly facing a fiscal shortfall. Simply stated, there’s no longer enough revenue for their spending promises.

This fiscal mess easily could have been avoided if the fecklessness of Alberta politicians had been constrained by some sort of spending cap.

The experts at the Fraser Institute explain how such a limit would have precluded today’s dismal situation.

Had the province increased program spending after 2004/05 but within population growth plus inflation, by 2013/14 the province would have spent $35.9 billion on programs. Instead, the province spent $43.9 billion, an $8 billion difference in that year alone. That $8 billion difference is significant. In recent interviews, Alberta Premier Jim Prentice has warned that the drop in oil prices has drained $7 billion from expected provincial government revenues. Thus, past decisions to ramp up program spending mean that additional provincial spending (beyond inflation and population growth) is at least as responsible for current budget gap as the decline in revenues.

And here’s a chart from the study showing how much money would have been saved with modest fiscal restraint.

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. So now today’s politicians have to deal with a mess that is a consequence of profligate politicians during prior years.**

…the decision by the province to spend (on programs) above the combined effect of population growth and inflation between 2005/06 and 2013/14 inclusive built in higher annual spending obligations, that, once revenues declined, would open up a fiscal gap in the province’s budget. As of 2013/14, the result of spending more on programs than inflation plus population growth combined would warrant meant program expenses were $8 billion higher in that year alone. The province’s past fiscal choices have now severely constricted present choices on everything from balanced budgets to tax relief to additional capital spending. If the province wishes to have a better menu of choices in the future, it must, obviously, control expenditures more carefully.

Since I’ve shared all sorts of bad examples of how nations get in trouble by letting spending grow too fast over time, let’s look at a real-world example of a spending cap in action.

As you can see from the chart, Switzerland has enjoyed great success ever since voters imposed the debt brake.

Indeed, while many other European nations are in fiscal crisis because of big increases in the burden of government spending, the Swiss have experienced economic tranquility in part because the size of the public sector has gradually declined.

The key lesson isn’t that spending restraint is good, though that obviously is important. The most important takeaway is that spending restraint appears to be sustainable only if there is some sort of permanent external constraint on politicians. Like the debt brake. Or like Article 107 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.

Remember, there are many nations that have enjoyed good results because of multi-year periods of spending restraint. But many of those countries saw their gains evaporate because policies then moved in the wrong direction.

*Greek politicians also took advantage of low interest rates last decade (a result of joining the euro currency) to engage in plenty of debt-financed government spending, which meant the economy was even more vulnerable to a crisis when revenues stopped growing.

**Some of today’s politicians in Alberta are probably long-term incumbents who helped create the mess by over-spending between 2004/05 and today, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they opted for destructive tax hikes instead of long-overdue spending restraint.

P.S. On a totally separate topic, it appears some towns in New York are listening to the sage advice of Walter Williams on the topic of secession.

Here are some excerpts from an editorial published by the Wall Street Journal.

Some 15 towns have announced they want to secede from New York and become part of neighboring Pennsylvania. …The towns occupy four counties in New York State’s “Southern Tier,” just across the Pennsylvania state line. Pennsylvania allows fracking for natural gas… That part of Pennsylvania is booming. Upstate New York, as anyone who drives through it can attest, is an economic bummer. …Governor Cuomo has created an American version of the Cold War’s East Berlin—with economic life booming on one side of the divide, while an anti-economic ideology stifles it on the other.

Unfortunately, New York’s East Berliners will have to pick up and move if they want to benefit from better policy in the Keystone State.

There is no chance the secessionists will succeed, needing approval from the legislatures of New York, Pennsylvania and the U.S.

Another option, of course, is to decentralize decision making so that local communities can decide policy rather than faraway politicians in a state capitol.

That’s the approach that perhaps would have averted the catastrophe we now see in Ukraine, so why not try it in places where the stakes are simply jobs rather than life and death?

Reposted from International Liberty.

▶ Gowdy Opening Statement at Hearing on Immigration Executive Actions

▶ Gowdy Opening Statement at Hearing on Immigration Executive Actions – YouTube.

A Libertarian Valentine’s Day Message for Venezuela | International Liberty

A Libertarian Valentine’s Day Message for Venezuela

February 14, 2015 by Dan Mitchell

Last year, I shared some libertarian humor relating to Valentine’s Day.

This year, we’re going to be a bit more on the wonky side.

Using roses as an example, we’re going to explore how the invisible hand of the market produces amazing results.

Here’s a great new video from Marginal Revolution University. Narrated by Professor Alex Tabarrok of George Mason University’s economics department, it explains how consumers have amazing access to millions of roses even though (actually because) there’s no agency or department in charge of Valentine’s Day.

And here’s a related video from MRU elaborating on the role of the price system.

The moral of the story in these videos is that a free and unfettered market is far and away the best method of allocating resources.

And the flip side of that lesson is that you get very bad results when politicians replace the invisible hand of the market with the visible foot of government.

Here’s some of what I wrote, for instance, when discussing proposals to give politicians power over wage levels.

…what’s really at stake is whether we want resources to be allocated by market forces instead of political edicts. This should be a no-brainer. If we look at the failure of central planning in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, a fundamental problem was that government officials – even assuming intelligence and good intentions – did not have the knowledge needed to make decisions on prices. And in the absence of a functioning price system, resources get misallocated and growth suffers. So you can imagine the potential damage of giving politicians, bureaucrats, and courts the ability to act as central planners for the wage system.

And here are some excerpts from a post about the damaging impact of subsidies to higher education.

Interfering with the price system is an especially pernicious form of intervention. When functioning properly, prices enable the wants and needs of consumers to be properly channeled to producers and suppliers in a way that promotes prosperity and efficiency. Unfortunately, governments hinder this system with all sorts of misguided policies such as subsidies and price controls. One of the worst manifestations of this type of intervention is the system of third-party payer, which occurs when government policies artificially reduce the perceived prices of goods and services.

And I could cite lots of other examples on issues such as the minimum wage, health care, housing, and agriculture.

Simply stated, you get all sorts of perverse results when politicians interfere with prices.

And that means lower living standards over time as the economy operates less efficiently.

Especially if a government really goes overboard and tries to regulate and control the entire economy rather than “just” interfere with a few sectors. Let’s look at the case of Venezuela. I’ve already written about how first Chavez and now Maduro have turned that nation into an economic hellhole.

It’s so bad that even the establishment media are taking notice.

Here are some passages from Matt O’Brien’s Wonkblog column in the Washington Post.

Venezuela…has the largest oil reserves in the world. It should be rich. But it isn’t, and it’s getting even poorer now, because of economic mismanagement on a world-historical scale. The problem is simple: Venezuela’s government thinks it can have an economy by just pretending it does. That it can print as much money as it wants without stoking inflation by just saying it won’t. And that it can end shortages just by kicking people out of line. It’s a triumph of magical thinking that’s not much of one when it turns grocery-shopping into a days-long ordeal that may or may not actually turn up things like food or toilet paper.

The government is trying to paper over its incompetence by printing money.

…the Bolivarian regime is to blame. The trouble is that while it has tried to help the poor, which is commendable, it has also spent much more than it can afford, which is not. Indeed, Venezuela’s government is running a 14 percent of gross domestic product deficit right now, a fiscal hole so big that there’s only one way to fill it: the printing press. But…paying people with newly printed money only makes that money lose value, and prices go parabolic. It’s no wonder then that Venezuela’s inflation rate is officially 64 percent, is really something like 179 percent, and could get up to 1,000 percent, according to Bank of America, if Venezuela doesn’t change its byzantine currency controls. Venezuela’s government, in other words, is playing whac-a-mole with economic reality.

And there’s also a pervasive system of price controls.

Venezuela’s government wants to wish away the inflation it’s created, so it tells stores what prices they’re allowed to sell at. These bureaucrat-approved prices, however, are too low to be profitable, which is why the government has to give companies subsidies to make them worthwhile. Now when these price controls work, the result is shortages, and when they don’t, it’s even worse ones. …it’s not profitable for the unsubsidized companies to stock their shelves, and not profitable enough for the subsidized ones to do so, either.

In the ultimate triumph of big government, Venezuela is even imposing controls on rationing!

…shortages, which had already hit 30 percent of all goods before the central bank stopped keeping track last year, have gone from being a fact of life to the fact of life. …People have lined up for days to try to buy whatever they can, which isn’t much, from grocery stores that are even more empty than usual. The government has been forced to send the military in to these supermarkets to maintain some semblance of order, before it came up with an innovative new strategy for shortening the lines: kicking people out of them. Now they’re rationing spots in line, based on the last digit of people’s national ID cards.

But you won’t be surprised to learn that all the problems are the fault of the private sector.

It’s a man-made tragedy, and the men who made it won’t fix it. Maduro, for his part, blames the shortages on the “parasitic” private sector.

It goes without saying, of course, that Maduro and the rest of the political elite avoid the consequences of bad economic policy. They all enjoy luxurious lifestyles, financed at the expense of ordinary Venezuelans. Moreover, I’m sure that Maduro and his cronies all have big bank accounts in New York or London.

So I can understand why they like the current system.

I’m genuinely mystified, though, why there are still people who think statism is better than capitalism.

I guess it’s mostly naiveté, a triumph of good intentions over real-world results.

Even though most of these leftists presumably would go crazy if they had to live without the products made possible by capitalism.

Just as portrayed in this video. And this satirical image.

Those of us who reside in the real world, by contrast, already understand the difference between capitalism and statism.

P.S. Venezuela is an economic basket case, but that apparently means it ranks higher than the United States on the “happy planet index” put together by some clueless statists.

Reposted from International Liberty.

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Senator to Loretta Lynch: Why Did No One Go to Jail for Laundering Money to Terrorists?.