Radar Guns Bad Idea

Radar Guns Bad Idea

Every few years, an issue appears in Pennsylvania that raises people’s antennas, only to fall off the radar months later.

Hopefully, this time will be no exception, as there is yet another attempt in Harrisburg to allow local police to use radar. In the interests of Pennsylvanians and police alike, the best thing would be seeing this bill’s progress arrested so that it fails in a speedy manner, locking up the issue for years to come.

One of the things Pennsylvania has done right over the years is not permitting municipal police to use radar — the only state with such a prohibition.

Yet, there is a clamor from certain special interests — namely local governments and some police departments — to reverse that policy and arm police with radar guns. Their official rationale is “safety,” but we all know better. The real reason is blatantly obvious: Revenue collection. So because local governments squander millions in taxpayer money and now face record budget shortfalls, they want to break the backs of citizens by employing an onerous and unnecessary entrapment system that not only is counterproductive, but also takes valuable resources away from where they are truly needed.

Consider:

1. The police are doing just fine nabbing speeders, thank you very much. Proof? Pop in to any district judge’s courtroom and the place is packed. Law enforcement has plenty of methods for nailing speeders, all performed in real time (stopwatch, distance between two points etc.. Therefore, radar is inherently unnecessaryand would cost taxpayers more money — not just the initial cost, but also training programs and system upkeep.

2. Is radar use subject to abuse, as some claim? Sure, especially in Podunk where Uncle Cletus serves as police chief, judge and jury, but to generalize that police across the board are not to be trusted is a grossly misguided indictment. The legitimate concern is that unintentional mistakes will be made (such as radar guns not continuously calibrated), rather than deliberate game-playing.

3. Radar would relegate police officers to becoming revenue collectors (more than they already are) — and that’s not why they joined the force. Sure, maintaining safety on the roads is an important function of the police, but gunning people all day long just to fill township coffers is way beneath the talents of officers, not to mention creating intense boredom, which dulls their overall skills. And if radar use became law, bank on countless police departments receiving a portion of the revenue — a huge conflict of interest.

4. Police have better things to do. There are only so many cops to go around, yet the crimes they investigate are increasing exponentially. It is imperative that we use those limited law enforcement resources as efficiently as possible — and radar use doesn’t qualify. For every officer engaged in speed trap duty, it’s one fewer expert we have dusting for fingerprints, forensically examining a crime scene, interviewing witnesses and otherwise going after murderers, rapists and robbers.

It’s a lesson learned from the NSA spying debacle. All the untold billions and countless man hours spent wastefully reading law-abiding citizens’ emails was that much less time and resources dedicated to going after the real bad guys — like the Boston bombers. We have to be smarter with the tools and talents we have.

5. Radar would become yet another tool in the arsenal of deception, stoking a negativity in how citizens view police and leading to an “us against them” relationship on both sides. As it is, some police departments in other states (as well as Pennsylvania State Police) routinely hide radar guns on “broken-down” vehicles and farm tractors to catch those driving a bit too fast. Going to those lengths foments anger and leads to the bigger question of “what’s next?” If they are willing to deceive to that extent just for traffic violations, what else will they do in the name of “justice?”

Worse, local radar use would lead to increased use of unmarked cars in speed trap stings, with more positioned on private property (such as residential driveways and business parking lots). Not only does that practice smack of coercion and intimidation, but it is extremely dangerous, especially to women, when pulled over by a unmarked unit. The state law that should be passed would be one banning the use of unmarked cars in traffic/speeding duty. They serve no productive purpose.

With all the problems confronting police, stooping to the level of deception that radar invites — just to monetize routine traffic violations — transforms the respect that our men and women in blue deserve, into resentment.

The ways to deter speeding are easy: Eliminate ridiculously low speed limits (often changing with little or no warning) set for the sole purpose of nailing otherwise law-abiding drivers, and bolster police presence on a municipality’s roads with marked cars. It’s an easy equation, and not just for speeding: Increased police presence equals reduction in crime. It’s common sense.

From both the civil libertarian and utilitarian perspectives, let’s ask our legislators to place the radar gun bill where it belongs — completely off the political radar screen.

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule  proposed last July by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would give the feds “more effective means to affirmatively further the purposes and policies of the Fair Housing Act” as per the Federal Register.

HUD notes that the Fair Housing Act directs program participants to take steps to “foster inclusive communities for all.”

That sounds peachy until it dawns on one that what it means is not the breaking down of historic racial barriers but  the breaking down of the barriers that discourage people who don’t play nice from living next to people who do.

It should further be noted that  this inclusive fostering is not going to occur in the gated communities favored by many GS 15 bureaucrats and the political moneybags who fund their masters.

The rule is scheduled to be finalized in December. Apparently Obama and his team of incompetent wannabe feudalists are afraid of having it an issue in this November’s election.

Hat tip PoliticalHat.com

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing

 

Normandy Invasion 70 Years Ago

Normandy Invasion 70 Years Ago

By Victor Davis Hanson

Seventy years ago this June 6, the Americans, British, and Canadians stormed the beaches of Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian king Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.

About 160,000 troops landed on five Normandy beaches and linked up with airborne troops in a masterful display of planning and courage. Within a month, almost a million Allied troops had landed in France and were heading eastward toward the German border. Within eleven months the war with Germany was over.

The western front required the diversion of hundreds of thousands of German troops. It weakened Nazi resistance to the Russians while robbing the Third Reich of its valuable occupied European territory.

The impatient and long-suffering Russians had demanded of their allies a second front commensurate with their own sacrifices. Their Herculean efforts by war’s end would account for two out of every three dead German soldiers — at a cost of 20 million Russian civilian and military casualties.

Yet for all the sacrifices of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin was largely responsible for his war with Nazi Germany. In 1939, he signed a foolish non-aggression pact with Hitler that allowed the Nazis to gobble up Western democracies. Hitler’s Panzers were aided by Russians in Poland and overran Western Europe fueled by supplies from the Soviets.

The Western Allies had hardly been idle before D-Day. They had taken North Africa and Sicily from the Germans and Italians. They were bogged down in brutal fighting in Italy. The Western Allies and China fought the Japanese in the Pacific, Burma, and China.

The U.S. and the British Empire fought almost everywhere. They waged a multiform war on and under the seas. They eventually destroyed Japanese and German heavy industry with a costly and controversial strategic-bombing campaign.

The Allies sent friends such as the Russians and Chinese billions of dollars worth of food and war matériel.

In sum, while Russia bore the brunt of the German land army, the Western Allies fought all three Axis powers everywhere else and in every conceivable fashion.

Yet if D-Day was brilliantly planned and executed, the follow-up advance through France in June 1944 was not always so. The Allies seemed to know the texture of every beach in Normandy, but nothing about the thick bocage just a few miles inland from Omaha Beach. The result was that the Americans were bogged down in the French hedgerows for almost seven weeks until late July — suffering about 10 times as many casualties as were lost from the Normandy landings.

So how did the Allies get from the beaches of Normandy to Germany in less than a year? Largely by overwhelming the Wehrmacht with lots of good soldiers and practical war matériel. If German tanks, mines, machine guns, and artillery were superbly crafted, their more utilitarian American counterparts were good enough — and about 10 times as numerous. Mechanically intricate German Tiger and Panther tanks could usually knock out durable American Sherman tanks, but the Americans produced almost 50,000 of the latter, and the Germans fewer than 8,000 of the former.

Over Normandy, British and American fighter aircraft not only were as good as or better than German models but were far more numerous. By mid 1944, Germany had produced almost no four-engine bombers. The British and Americans had built almost 50,000 that by 1944 were systematically leveling German cities.

Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were far more pragmatic supreme commanders than the increasingly delusional and sick Adolf Hitler. American war planners such as George Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower, and Alan Brooke understood grand strategy better than the more experienced German chief of staff. Allied field generals such as George S. Patton and Bernard Montgomery were comparable to German legends like Gerd von Rundstedt or Erwin Rommel, who were worn out by 1944.

The German soldier was the more disciplined, experienced, armed, and deadly warrior of World War II. But his cause was bad, and by 1944 his enemies were far more numerous and far better supplied. No soldiers fought better on their home soil than did the Russians, and none more resourcefully abroad than the British Tommy and the American G.I., when bolstered by ample air, armor, and artillery support.

Omaha Beach to central Germany was about the same distance as the Russian front to Berlin. But the Western Allies covered the same approximate ground in about a quarter of the time as had the beleaguered Russians.

D-Day ushered in the end of the Third Reich. It was the most brilliantly conducted invasion in military history, and probably no one but a unique generation of British, Canadians, and Americans could have pulled it off.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals. He can be reached by emailing  author@victorhanson.com .

 

Normandy Invasion 70 Years Ago

Really Lousy Journalism Lessons

Mollie Z. Hemingway has an excellent article on what it takes to be a really bad journalist.

Don’t sweat the details, she says. Don’t question authority.

She says to remember the job is to advance narratives, not report facts.

Yes, it is sarcasm.

Yes, she cites chapter and verse as to how these practices are standard operating procedure in the establishment media.

The article is a year old but is still relevant. It can be found here.

Really Lousy Journalism Lessons

 

Really Lousy Journalism Lessons

Benghazi Constructs

By Victor Davis Hanson

Almost everything the administration has alleged about Benghazi has proven false. Yet also, in Machiavellian fashion, the Obama group successfully peddled useful fictions, effectively deluded the country, adroitly ensured President Obama’s reelection, and cast aspersions on those who sought the truth.

In that sense, so far, the lies about Benghazi have won, the truth has failed.

So what really happened?

The Obama administration felt that it was behind the curve concerning the 2011 unrest in Libya. The so-called Arab Spring revolutions had toppled other governments in North Africa, and it seemed that protesters would do the same in Syria and Libya.

Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power, and Susan Rice did not want to be “on the wrong side of history,” especially given that it looked as if Moammar Qaddafi was likely to fall soon and needed only a little nudge. Given that the British and French were out in front, “lead from behind” seemed a safe, cheap way for the U.S. to intervene and yet not quite intervene — a sort of larger version of a drone strike.

But after Qaddafi’s fall, almost everything that followed proved the U.S. intervention to be a failure. The Americans had ceded leadership to France and Britain and seemed to boast about that fact. They had distorted the U.N. resolutions by going way beyond establishing no-fly zones and sending humanitarian aid. Obama had shown no interest in sending in postbellum peacekeeping troops or in organizing a U.N. force to prevent a Mogadishu on the Mediterranean. The result was a mess for most of 2011–12, as post-Qaddafi Libya settled into something like Somalia or the Sudan.

Al-Qaeda franchises emerged just as the parent organization had been declared to be on the run. Rumors spread that jihadists were arming themselves from the unprotected Qaddafi arsenal in the fashion of an unsettled Iraq around May 2003. Syria’s Assad had no intention of stepping down as ordered by President Obama. And so a full-scale civil war began in Syria, and the Arab Spring descended into tribal violence.

The U.S. decided to round up the most dangerous weapons of Qaddafi’s arsenal and to stealthily monitor the growing though supposedly nonexistent al-Qaeda presence in the detritus of Libya. A large CIA contingent was dispatched to Benghazi; nearby, a “consulate” opened. Ambassador Chris Stevens did his best to coordinate U.S. stealth efforts with what passed for a Libyan government. Rumors, never confirmed, spread that the CIA was shipping some of the Qaddafi arsenal to anti-Assad forces in Syria, hopefully the more secular insurgents. Other talk mentioned al-Qaeda prisoners held for interrogation by the CIA — another no-go topic in the 2012 campaign narrative of a defunct al-Qaeda, a secular Muslim Brotherhood, and an Obama who sees and hears no interrogations.

Stevens and others privately warned that the U.S. presence lacked sufficient security; they feared that the U.S. was doing enough to incite a terrorist response, but not enough to ensure the protection of its own forces if one was launched. But it was a reelection year. A Black Hawk Down firefight might in untimely fashion remind the public of the entire Libyan debacle. Security was not beefed up, and for a time the violence seemed to taper off.

As the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached, there were warnings of planned terrorist attacks on overseas U.S. facilities, especially in Libya, perhaps because the CIA presence was large and visible but not invincible. In an era of lead-from-behind diplomacy, terrorists were not convinced of any dangers from another U.S. armed intervention.

Some rumors later floated around that the consulate hit was in response to the drone assassination of Yahya al-Libi, others that it was prompted by stories of CIA arms transfers, yet others that it was linked to efforts to free captured terrorists. Who knows? But few seemed to care. In any case, the State Department had two general goals: to keep Libya from unraveling and to do so without another U.S. intervention. That translated into a de facto refusal to beef up security just two months before the election, and at a time when most other nations with a presence in Libya were packing up and getting out.

When a coordinated jihadist attack did target the consulate and CIA facility in Benghazi, Washington was entirely taken by surprise. It is not clear to what degree military authorities believed that they could have sent military help to those under attack in Benghazi with good chances of success, or whether they wished to do so but were refused permission.

Clearly, the president did not consider the attack on U.S. facilities a developing national turning point on a level with his decision to take out bin Laden. There were to be no photo-ops of the Benghazi situation room.

On the evening of September 11, by the time Obama was apprised of the strike, there was no chance the U.S. was poised to achieve a great victory, as it had in the bin Laden mission. The president had a busy campaign-fundraising schedule the next day, and so he retired early in the expectation that the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could manage the lose/lose crisis.

Disaster followed, as the jihadists overwhelmed meager U.S. security and killed, over a period of several hours, U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens; Sean Smith, the U.S. Foreign Service information-management officer; and two CIA contractors, Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. Outrage spread immediately as Americans learned that a U.S. ambassador was easily reached by terrorists and just as easily killed.

There were local claims in various places in the Middle East, many of them dubious, that an obnoxious video by a Coptic Egyptian resident in the U.S. had helped intensify the 9/11-anniversary violence elsewhere. Almost immediately the administration latched onto this narrative and massaged it to meet its own political needs.
That the unexpected and unforeseen disaster was due entirely to a reactionary Coptic, anti-Muslim provocateur, ensconced on U.S. soil, who had sown bigotry and religious hatred in a video released months earlier, proved a T-ball home run for Barack Obama.

Mr. Nakoula was in a sense the perfect fall guy. The video was amateurish, the producer a small-time con artist and cheat. Obama went into action in his accustomed teleprompted cadences, denouncing the forces of intolerance and chest-beating his own anguish at such illiberality on U.S. soil.

More importantly, the video as a casus violentiae  was particularly resonant with an administration that had labored to remove the idea of Islamic extremism as a font of terrorism and instead had set up various smokescreens (e.g., jihad as a personal journey, terrorism as workplace violence, the Muslim Brotherhood as largely secular — not to mention overseas contingency operations, man-caused disasters, NASA’s Muslim-outreach mission, etc.). The more Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama hammered the theme of Mr. Nakoula as the guilty party, the more they could showcase their own multicultural bona fides and perhaps thereby explain away the violence (e.g., Obama’s iconic status still resonated in the Middle East; Libya was not a den of jihadists; al-Qaeda was still on the run; extremist right-wing Western provocateurs were still part of the problem).

Someone in the administration quickly discovered that Nakoula had technically violated the terms of his parole, and he was summarily jailed. Nakoula’s incarceration spoke volumes: The Middle East could appreciate that the real culprit was now behind bars. The U.S. had hunted down its own right-wing extremists, and Muslims now had no more reason to explode in spontaneous anger at such bigotry. Finding the real culprits, as the president had once promised, had now been accomplished.

The Nakoula construct, however, posed immediate problems. There were initial intelligence reports (confirmed by the Libyan president himself) that the deaths were caused by al-Qaeda terrorists. There was evidence that U.S. officials had had warnings about the premeditated attacks beforehand but largely discounted them. There was some evidence that the U.S. military might have been able to disrupt the terrorist forces, given that they were not spontaneous crowds who came out of nowhere and could melt away just as easily.

By and large the administration quite brilliantly finessed Benghazi. It turned the tables on the skeptics in the Romney campaign by suggesting that they were using the deaths of brave Americans to score political points. The president and his team cited the fog of war for the initial confusion. They promised in the light of day to go after the perpetrators — a pledge of action that they most surely did not pursue wholeheartedly as the election neared. Western hatred and intolerance, not radical Islam, had caused the deaths, with all the obvious red–blue domestic political implications.

In some senses, the administration photo-ops and spiking the ball on the bin Laden raid (“GM is alive, bin Laden is dead”) paled in comparison with the talking points and party line that immediately created the spontaneous-riot/evil-videomaker theme. Skeptics were deemed to be the politicizers, though the real politicizers were the ones who had distorted the truth.

Finally, time would cure all. The only real worry in the fall of 2012 was reelection. Once Benghazi fizzled in the second debate, with moderator Candy Crowley’s insistence that a presidential reference to generic terror was synonymous with an admission of a deliberate act of political and religious terrorism (as if the road-rage driver who leaves in his wake terror on the highway were a political terrorist), the deaths of Benghazi had entered the black hole of House investigations. The concerned administration officials rightly assumed that, with time, a sort of “What difference —  at this point, what difference does it make?” or “Dude, this was like two years ago” attitude would eventually make Benghazi a sort of bad memory. Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and his associates in this regard were largely right, as the media snapped to attention and reduced inquirers to the status of conspiracy theorists.

What then are we left with?

Were there political reasons why requests for additional security were ignored, suggesting that American lives were not as critical as President Obama’s reelection? At what time on the night of the attack did the president go to bed, and who made decisions not to order military assistance? What was the CIA doing in Benghazi, and what effect did its activities have on our security status? Were reports that the hit was retaliation for a U.S. drone attack accurate? What exactly did top-ranking officials of the CIA initially testify about the attacks, and were their original statements contradicted by later assertions? Who in the administration massaged intelligence synopses and sent out memos to head off accusations of failed leadership? Did the administration pressure (as if pressure were needed) media outlets to downplay the story? Why did our U.N. ambassador assert falsehoods, and why was she selected to be such a spokesman? Who ordered Mr. Nakoula jailed and kept him behind bars? Why were the real perpetrators never seriously pursued as promised? Did the personal problems of CIA director David Petraeus, the administration’s initial reaction to them, his various testimonies, and his sudden post-election resignation have any interconnections? Have all those who participated in the defense of the Benghazi facilities been fully heard from? And have those who were in the chain of command responsible for holding back succor on the night of the attack? What information was redacted in documents requested by Congress or under the Freedom of Information Act, and by whom?

Until these questions are answered, we are left with the strong possibility that the lethal attacks might have been deterred with adequate security, or even neutralized in mediis rebus : that high administration officials subsequently and deliberately misled the public, the U.N., our allies, and the relatives of the dead; that the president of the United States did not consider the attacks a crisis, or at least a crisis that could offer political opportunities, and subsequently and knowingly lied about the causes of the attack; that the U.S. government deliberately jailed a U.S. legal resident for reasons other than those alleged; that a U.S. election was influenced by administration deception; that the U.S. government was engaged in covert actions that might have been connected to the violence or were themselves ill conceived; that top intelligence officials did not tell the truth; and that almost immediately top administration handlers chose to construct a fantasy in lieu of reporting the facts about the death of four Americans.

NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Savior Generals.

Benghazi Constructs

Benghazi Constructs

Soylent Finally Appears

A young, software engineer named Rob Rhinehart decided to create a food that would supply all the nutrients we need without the time, money and effort that usually goes into food preparation.

He developed the recipe through online research, textbooks, scientific journals and self-experimentation, and now he’s marketing the product, which he calls “Soylent”.

Yep.

Just like in the 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston about a bleak, cannibalistic future.

Hipsters will be doofuses.

In fairness, Rhinehart’s product does not contain people but rather things like fish oil, rice protein and lots of raw chemical powders.

And in further fairness, it’s not that dumb of an idea. Rhinehart seems to have his priorities correct as per this interview with Forbes.

 

Soylent Finally Appears

Soylent Finally Appears

Corporate Tax Makes US Strike Out

By Chris Freind

Imagine a baseball team with a self-imposed rule requiring its players to brandish a 50-ounce bat, while the other teams use the standard 32-ounce slugger — a huge difference when facing 95 MPH pitches.

Inarguably, there would be two results:

A. The team with the dumb rule would be in last place, for swinging significantly heavier bats would produce fewer hits, and thus fewer runs.

B. The players and coaches on that team would flee to greener pastures — namely teams without such a self-defeating rule. And players’ values would immediately rise because their productivity would increase. Less restrictive rules would free up players to focus on what they do best, and the extra coin in their pockets would provide even more incentive to work harder.

Common sense clearly dictates that the last place team re-evaluate its policies, make the necessary adjustments, and halt the exodus of its players. How? By allowing its players to use lighter bats, thereby creating a winning environment and achieving a financial windfall in the process.

Naturally, it would be insanity to go in the other direction — digging in even further, and threatening sanctions against anyone leaving the team.

Even a team so obtuse as to establish such a counter-productive rule would undoubtedly see the error of its ways and rectify a bad situation. Right?

Wrong. Welcome to the United States Congress, where both parties adamantly refuse to change one of the single largest factors keeping America in a stagnant, no-growth status: the world’s highest corporate tax.

The latest story regarding the onerous U.S. tax rate is making headlines — and waves — around the world, as American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is attempting to buy Britain-based AstraZeneca (so far, four offers have been rejected). While Pfizer’s target has an extremely promising pipeline of cutting edge anti-cancer medicines, there is another compelling reason to acquire the foreign-based firm: massive tax savings.

If the deal goes through, Pfizer would “re-domicile” in the U.K., substantially lowering its corporate tax rate. Britain finally got with the program a decade ago, when it awakened and realized that its rate — over 30 percent — was driving away business. Since then, the rate has been lowered steadily, attracting wealth and working capital to its shores. The Brits now levy a 21 percent business tax, which will soon drop to 20 percent and possibly lower.

Compare that to the United States’ tax rate of 35 percent, and it’s a no-brainer why any CEO favors moving overseas. Making matters worse, the effective rates are actually higher, once state and local taxes are factored into the equation. So in Pennsylvania, a company pays the highest federal corporate tax on the planet, on top of the nation’s second-highest state corporate net income tax (9.9 percent), on top of local taxes (and Philadelphia is, cumulatively, the highest-taxed city in America).

But that’s not all. There are even more job-killing corporate taxes in the Keystone State, including the capital stock and franchise tax, several gross receipts taxes, public utility realty tax, gross premiums tax, and financial institutions taxes, including the Bank and Trust Company Shares Tax, Title Insurance Shares Tax, and the Mutual Thrift Institutions Tax. Getting the picture?

Rather than fix the problem — steadily sky-high rates that stifle innovation, cause job cuts, place a cap on new hires, and take capital from the free market (where it could be invested in projects and people) — Congress and many states continue to stand by their draconian policies. Instead of asking why companies flee, and what can be done to halt the exodus, government instead advocates penalizing those with the foresight to seek a more secure location, with some congressmen even advocating to make it a crime for businesses to leave.

In Pfizer’s case, it could potentially save $1 billion per year in taxes. And the money saved could hire more people, increase research and development, expand operations, bolster ancillary business, and otherwise fuel a productive economic engine. Unfortunately, that investment would occur overseas, creating little benefit in America. All this because our elected officials are too lazy and or too stupid to do what must be done: lower the tax rates.

Several points to consider:

1. There will undoubtedly be partisan comments that it’s the Democrats’ fault. True, that party deludes itself into believing higher taxes and making the rich (both people and corporations) “pay their fair share” will solve all of America’s problems. But this, like every major challenge America faces, has its roots in bipartisan failure. When it controlled the White House and Congress, the GOP did absolutely nothing to improve the situation (ditto for Pennsylvania, where Gov. Corbett and record Republican majorities accomplished squat in improving the state’s business climate and tax code).

To reverse this, it will take a leader with a clear, articulated vision and strong will. Sadly, calls for such a person keep echoing back, unanswered.

2. It’s bad enough that our taxes are so high, but to make the sin mortal, the money raised is squandered. High taxes can never be justified, but the pill might not be so bitter if at least the money was wisely spent. We all know otherwise.

3. Are there some lobbyist-generated loopholes in the tax code that allow for some corporate deductions? Sure. But they amount to a Band-Aid on a gaping wound, nowhere near enough to stop the hemorrhaging. If they were the panacea, companies wouldn’t have left and countless others would not be considering the same (such as Pfizer and Walgreens). The solution is not smoke-and-mirror deductions that benefit a select few, but a total overhaul of the tax code so that it is universally fair and competitive.

4. Politicians immediately posture against proposed mergers that could take jobs and cash overseas. But it should be obvious that, if American tax rates were competitive, such an exodus could be avoided in the first place. Same goes for the states: if tax rates are too high, expect companies to migrate to more favorable locations around the country.

“We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” So said the great Winston Churchill, and his countrymen have taken note. Yet Uncle Sam remains stuck in the bucket, continually striking out while knee deep in a mess of its own making.

 

Corporate Tax Makes US Strike Out

Pho Street, Delco Dining

Just had a real nice dining experience at Pho Street Vietnamese Restaurant, 204 Baltimore Pike, Springfield, Pa.

The price was very reasonable, and the food was tasty and quite different from the other area Asian restaurants.

Will Springfield become hip?

Fear not for right across the street is McGlone’s Stanley Kup Inn.

Pho Street, Delco Dining