Friday Musical Interlude - One More

One more Friday Musical Interlude, One Less Problem (Ariana Grande).

Friday Musical Interlude - Friday Night Gurus

Last week I had a Friday Musical Interlude that actually featured the word "Friday" in the title. Continuing that trend, here's Friday Night Gurus by the Studio Killers.

Thursday Hillary Bash - Vacuity?

In stark contrast to Elizabeth Warren's juvenile 99 percenter manifesto (so well refuted by none other than Sarah Palin), Hillary Clinton remains vacuous and void of any meaningful policy platform.  At least, that's how she's starting to be viewed on the left.  When you lose the left in the modern Democratic party, you are dead in the water.

No less than liberal media pundit Andrew Sullivan takes up the case against Hillary:

The Clintons are still self-pitying money-grubbers – $12 million in speaking fees since she left the State Department? – and now their offspring, exploiting her nepotistic advantage with all the scrupulous ethics of her parents, is continuing the grift. If you ask of Clinton what she’s fighting for, what she believes in, if you want to get her to disagree with you on something, good luck. Any actual politics right now would tarnish the inevitability of a resume-led coronation. That the resume has little of any substance in her four years as secretary of state does not concern her. She was making “hard choices”, and if we cannot appreciate that, tant pis.

I’d like to find a reason to believe she’s a political force who stands for something in an era when there is a real appetite for serious change. She could, after all, decide to campaign vociferously in favor of the ACA this summer and fall (universal healthcare is, after all, one of her positions), but that might siphon money away from her foundation and candidacy. She could get out there and start framing a foreign policy vision. But, again, too risky. I see nothing that suggests a real passion for getting on with the fight – just the usual presumptions of a super-elite, super-rich and super-cocooned politician of the gilded age.

And he was far from done at that point. Positively catty.

Granted Clinton has posited a number of liberal positions, but in true Clinton fashion, those positions are as flexible as all Clintonian triangulation positions are.  Those of us on the right should fear her potential election.  But with a growing notion of draft Warren, and Warren herself staking out far, far left positions, what should we worry about more - a Clinton win or a Warren win?

Clinton will end up looking moderate by comparison.  She loses the liberal base to Warren as a result but looks more appealing to self-proclaimed centrists as a result.  Which scenario is worse?

And given a position of far left, or a position of no positions, which is less damaging to a Democratic presidential nominee?  Given 8 wearying years of Obama, the right will be more weary of the left, and the left will be more weary of the center where they believe Obama has landed.

There are no obvious answers here, but either nominee would make a terrible president, and any Republican nominee should look glorious to both conservatives and libertarians by comparison.  Then again that's not always how those on the right judge their candidates these days.

FATCA - anger more non-Americans with imperious government

Canadian bank - back off Obama!

In a note related to the earlier Wednesday Warren Warning, there's a glaring problem that doesn't seem to be getting noticed. Businesses are leaving America in droves, off-shoring labor and now looking to actual foreign incorporation.  Meanwhile illegal immigrants are streaming in with even greater volume and velocity.  There's a stunning disconnect in the minds of much of American leadership - more people coming in, more jobs going out.  This will not end well. In fact it will be disastrous.

In the minds of Democrats, this attempt to legislate business behavior is the logical follow up to nefarious FATCA.  It's aim is to mandate that companies don't or can't even leave the United States. It's a trap. At that point you have completely removed freedom of choice. That is morally wrong.  And that should be the argument against Democratic leadership: stupid politics that are morally wrong.

There is also a big problem with FATCA that hasn't got much play in the United States because it doesn't impact Americans, except that it actually does:

The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act became U.S. law in March 2010 but will take effect around the world on July 1, 2014. The goal of the law is to find offshore accounts held by U.S. taxpayers seeking to avoid paying taxes on them.

Under the law, banks from around the world will be asked to sift through their accounts to look for clients with U.S. connections, then share that information with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

The U.S. is looking for tax cheats, but critics say innocent people are getting caught up in the hunt.

Who is affected by this law?

The short answer is almost every Canadian. It is expected to cost banks substantial amounts of money to implement the systems required to find residents with U.S. connections, costs the banks may well pass along to all their clients.

Some estimate it could cost $100 million for each financial institution.

So Canadians (and citizens of any other country that banks with a financial institution that wishes to remain FATCA compliant and do business with Americans), are forced to pay new bank fees to help Democrats catch those they believe to be American tax cheats.  And they were people simply avoiding taxes legally. But your government greed is now affecting me personally. Thanks America.

And that comes from a polite Canadian.  Imagine what someone in Switzerland or Brazil or Saudi Arabia might be thinking about this.  This liberal oligarchy running D.C. is doing more damage to foreign relations than Americans seem to realize.  

It's no coincidence that FATCA is one letter short of fatcat.  That's how liberals view the business world.  And voters just keep on helping institutionalize this way of thinking by empowering Democrats.  It's idiotic.

Wednesday Warren Warning - Imperious

Elizabeth Warren's grasp of U.S. government seems tenuous at a minimum. The alternative, and frankly more plausible, explanation of her most recent pronouncement is that she is simply imperious. If you thought president Obama has had an imperial presidency, could you imagine a president like this:

Democratic senators are calling for President Barack Obama to take executive action that would essentially increase the tax burden on many American companies. The White House isn’t ruling out a unilateral act, invoking the phrase “economic patriotism” to condemn companies that incorporate overseas...

The letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Jack Reed of Rhode Island...

“However, our efforts should not preclude executive action to prevent corporate inversions. The coming flood of corporate inversions justifies immediate executive action,” the letter said, according to Roll Call...

Corporate inversion is when companies that primarily do business in the United States incorporate in another country to avoid the heavy U.S. corporate tax rates. Put another way, it’s when a U.S. company with a foreign subsidiary becomes a foreign company with a U.S. subsidiary.

There is absolutely zero thought given to the notion that if companies are doing this there must be a real problem with being incorproated in the United States. Tax policy, labor policy, mandates and other government 'oversight' is driving them out. The fact that Democratic senators, including Warren, are blind to this is troubling. But it is less troubling than their solution - a pronouncement that these companies are being unpatriotic and the thinking that another pronouncement will solve the problem. In North Korea the glorious leader has decreed that every man must have his style of haircut.

Wave or No Wave? How about a New Wave?

At this point most pundits and prognosticators, myself included, see the GOP picking up some modest gains in Congress this summer, and just enough seats in the Senate to take the slimmest of majorities - 51-49. That doesn't seem to constitute a wave election for Republicans and certainly not for conservatives or libertarians.  After 6 years of awful progressive liberal leadership, you might be inclined to be despondent about America.  If her people are just not smart enough in sufficient numbers to see their mistaken ways and really change the course of the nation, then maybe America deserves it's slow choking death of liberty and prosperity.

Here's the problem.