Politics

Race, Racism, and the Law in America

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Law, Politics , , , , ,

Rush Limbaugh called the President’s appointee for Supreme Court Justice a “reverse racist.” He is wrong; she is simply a racist. If you discriminate against anyone because he belongs to a racial group (whatever that means, see below), you are a racist. There is no definitional exception depending on the race of the discriminator. Got it?

Judge Sotomayor is an overt racist. Read the papers and think about the decisions she made on affirmative action and the reasons she gave. She is also on record as stating that she would “hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not reach a better decision than….” (quoted from a WSJ editorial). Hemming and hawing aside, that is a straightforward declaration of the judicial superiority of having been born a member of a particular group. The qualifier “wise” does not count. Of course, she is not stupid and she would not say that an unwise Latina has superior judgment.

That declaration was published in something called “La Raza Law Journal.” Yes, you guessed right, “raza” means “race” in Spanish. It’s a law school publication for Latinos, “our race.” Academic ideologues will try to tell you with a straight face that “raza” does not really mean “race.” Just ask them how to say “race,” in Spanish then and watch they stutter and possibly cry. Continue reading →

Communist Dinosaurs

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

I watch a French two-and-a-half-hour weekly television show that’s pretty good in most respects. It mixes no- hold-barred interviews of politicians with talks with movie directors, authors and artists, including singers.  There is a presidential election beginning in France too. It relies on an an incomplete primary system. To make a long story short, anyone with a grievance or an idea who can get 500 signatures of I don’t know whom can run. That makes for a lively and exotic first round of  balloting. In the second round, things get serious. In any case, this time, there is an explicitly “communist” candidate (Trotskyst branch). She runs for an organization that calls itself “Workers’ Struggle” (Lutte ouvriere).

It’s not clear what her party considers as “workers” but from the candidate’s choice of examples of struggle in her interview last night, there is a strong preference for conventional blue-collar and pink-collar workers. Of course, manufacturing jobs are vanishing from France as they have been doing here. People employed in manufacturing are becoming accordingly scarcer. Bad strategic bet that, defining yourself as a workers’ party when you also define workers that way, (going away, going away, gone!).

The “communist” candidate discourse is loud as it is transparent. Let me summarize: Continue reading →

Update on America and on the World

Jacques Delacroix Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Newt Gingrich [recently] won the South Carolina primary by a big margin. I know that’s only South Carolina, perhaps the most conservative state. Still, that’s a major rebuke to serious candidate Romney. The speeches both gave after Gingrich won delineate clearly two major paths for the Republican Party. Romney’s speech was colorless, odorless, rich in platitudes. It was the kind of speech unfairly associated with “moderates” who deserve better.

Gingrich spoke incisively, precisely about what agitates conservatives like me who are not born-again Christians nor any of the other stereotypes the liberal press has invented. We want a smaller government that’s not wasteful and that does not get us into debt for two  generations to come. Gingrich’s speech was well received for another reason: It spoke of simple pride in America, not of imperial pride, not of a wish to dominate, not of hubris but of simple dignity.

There is a pervasive feeling that we lost our national dignity during the three-year Obama presidency. It was not all his fault. Certainly, a major contributor is our large national debt that was already too large when he took office. However, it’s fair to charge Obama for this loss of dignity because he told us repeatedly that America should become a smaller, more ordinary country, and it has. If you tell Mom in anger, ” I wish you died” and she dies, don’t be surprised if your brothers are angry at you. And, President Obama, whose middle name is  still Hussein, bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia, the grandchild of camel thieves who happens to have captured a lot of oil. Continue reading →

Some Possible Consequences of a U.S. Government Default

Jeffrey Rogers Hummel Economics, History, Politics , ,

My Econ Journal Watch article on Treasury default is now available online. It appears in a special issue that is devoted to various articles with differing perspectives on the probability and consequences of a U.S. government default.

Releasing Income Taxes

foldvary Economics, Politics

Disgusting!  is my reaction to calls to candidates to release their income tax returns.

First of all, income tax records are supposed to be able to be kept private.

I can understand wanting to know candidates’ special-interest connections, but these usually do not show up in tax records.

Also, criticism of the low tax rates paid by some candidates is unwarranted. It is not a crime to seek to minimize one’s taxes. Moreover, given an income tax, there are good reasons why dividends and capital gains have lower tax rates. Dividends are already taxed by the corporate income tax. Long-term capital gains have already been taxed by inflation.

Ron Paul said regarding his taxes that his income was low compared to other candidates. What he should have said is, “my taxes are none of your business!” Moreover, the income tax should be abolished. Calls to reveal income tax forms imply approval of income taxation.

Disgusting!

A Libertarian sales-tax party?

foldvary Economics, Politics , , , ,

Is the Libertarian Party becoming a sales tax party?  The past several LP candidates for president have favored excise taxes.  I don’t recall any of them declaring, “Taxation is Theft!”  Now we have former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson as a leading candidate for the LP nomination for president, having abandoned the quest for the Republican Party nomination.  His tax plan as a Republican was a national sales tax, and that remains his tax plan as a Libertarian.

The main organization pushing for a national sales tax calls it a “Fair Tax.”  That is excellent propaganda, but a sales tax is no more fair or just than a tax on wages.  A sales tax violates free trade, makes products more expensive, and indirectly taxes wages and other incomes.  The advocates claim that a shift from income to sales taxes would not raise prices, since the income tax already raises prices, but they are wrong, because much of the burden of a tax on wages is on labor.  A sales tax has about the same excess burden or deadweight loss as an income tax.  Income taxes punish savings, but sales taxes punish borrowing, and there is no logical reason to favor savings over borrowing.  Savings and borrowing should be voluntary individual choices not skewed by taxes or subsidies.

The “Fair Tax” plan exempts business purchases, putting the burden on households.  That invites massive tax evasion, as folks would claim to be buying stuff for a business.  The response of government would be a sales tax gestapo.  If you did not have a receipt for your purchase and could not prove it was for business, you could go to prison.

If the Libertarian Party becomes a sales tax party, it will be unpopular and get little support.  Historically, sales tax advocacy has been a political loser.  This may well be why Gary Johnson got so little support as a Republican candidate for president.  If the LP nominates a sales taxer, I for one will promote the Free Earth Party (http://free-earth.foldvary.net/) as a truly libertarian alternative.

Leadership, International Trade, Hormuz and Ron Paul, Minorities and Ron Paul: The Last-Before-Last Republican Follies

Brandon Christensen Current Events, Politics , , , , , , ,

Well, I am just about debated out. It’s difficult for all the candidates or pretend-candidates to maintain their dignity while answering complex questions in sixty seconds with thirty seconds for rebuttals. It’s worse when the debate is moderated, and many of the questions formulated, by one local unknown and two liberals, one of whom has been an air-head for as far back as I can remember. I am referring to Dianne Sawyer, of course, and I can remember at least thirty years.

Two general comments about the Saturday night New Hampshire debate. (I missed the Sunday morning debate, sorry.) First, as usual, much time was wasted with questions and answers about “leadership.” I don’t understand the questions. I don’t understand the answers; I suspect (strongly) that the candidates understand neither the questions nor the answers about leadership. Leadership is a word that is worse than useless. Trust me, I taught management for about 25 years. If the concept were useful, I would have noticed. It’s useless the way baby-talk is useless. To the average one-year old, everything is a “wah.” It takes all the resources of parental love to assign to or to invent a meaning for each “wah” utterance. I don’t have such love for anything politicians say. Any politician who made it a rule to eschew completely the use of the word “leader” and of its derivatives would instantly gain in clarity and in sincerity.

My second comment is that, as happens every time, the candidates demonstrated their deep ignorance of basic concepts of international trade and of international economics in general. It makes me feel good that I taught the topic for about thirty years. I feel retrospectively, that I must have been doing something useful. I expect such ignorance among liberals. It’s disheartening to encounter it on the conservative and libertarian side. Continue reading →