Monthly Archives: February 2021

Facts and Thoughts About Income Tax in 2021

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The sixteenth amendment, ratified in 1913, created the first direct relationship between individual citizens and the federal government. It was the first great erosion of the federalist nature of the country.

I’m not against income tax. We need reliable ways of funding government at all levels. Yet, this amendment weakened the original idea of a union of states formed to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide common defense, and promote general welfare among them. 

Article I, section 2 of the constitution declares that taxes shall be apportioned among the states according to population. Since there are significant differences in prosperity between states, this means of raising money was problematic. Having a tax based on income seems more just and tolerable. 

Money yields power. In the creation of the direct citizen-federal relationship, the central government gradually, over decades, accreted more power over the states. States now petition Washington DC for funds, the direct opposite of what was created at our founding.

It is possible to restore state power and still retain the ability to tax income by placing the collection mechanisms in the states, abolishing or greatly downsizing the Internal Revenue Service.  States could combine their income tax burden with the federal and have some leeway with deductions, incentives and other market manipulations without affecting the rest of the country. The handful of states without income tax create a bit of hurdle that would need to be cleared. Those that favor federalism and states’ rights would rejoice. The expanding statist populace would oppose this.

Power is a zero sum notion. The more power an individual, county, or state cedes, the less is retained. The founders disagreed on a lot of things but on one idea they agreed, that a unitary government with vast sums of wealth and power was an anathema to individual freedom. The founders and politicians ever since have differed in opinion about how much power to give to the central government. With the sixteenth amendment, enormous power has been achieved.

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After breaking the barrier against direct citizen-federal relationships and a drift toward incrementally more social benefits, other connections were established over time. A national retirement plan was established during the Great Depression. A national healthcare funding plan for the elderly began thirty years after that. We have disaster insurance, and a growing array of federally funded health plans today. (Note that the preamble said promote the general welfare. The verb chosen was not provide.)

Historically in the US, progressives have managed to increase federal size and power by appealing to the emotions of the voters, citing desperate need for one group after another. Regardless of why or how it is done, by placing more money in one system, its power grows. I, for one, would like to see a balance restored by getting all social programs away from the federal government and let individual states run them, with a set of simple, unifying principles throughout the country.

The polarization that grips our nation in this era seems to be between the citizens who object to power being removed from states and individuals and concentrated in Washington DC and the citizens who want a strong central government, as long as it is run by people who agree with their position. The number and extent of federal social programs makes our country in the category of social democracy now. Progressives want more while conservatives was less. Without reaching a durable compromise about federal, state and individual power, we will fracture and fail.

Utah’s unfaithful Senator

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My family likes Mitt Romney, in particular the ones that are Democrats and don’t live in Utah. To me, Mitt is the prime example of why the seventeenth amendment was a mistake. In Utah, Mitt is well liked by Democrats, as is Jon Huntsman, liked so well, in fact, that hundreds changed party in order to vote in the primary election to get them on the Republican ballot. Mitt, for those that don’t know, is a Republican Senator who was elected to represent the state government of Utah. That is his singular objective. 

In the constitution before amended, Utah would have appointed a person to represent the legislature and governor by some mechanism that the state, not the federal government, had chosen. To be clear, the US senator was to represent the needs of the state government in a union of state governments (y’know, just like the name says.) In the current version, he represents himself. It is almost certain that a supermajority of the state legislature disapproves of many of his high profile votes. This means that he frequently votes against the institution he was elected to represent. Mr. Romney fails to represent his state. That’s his only job and he can’t do it.

This is what happens when senators are elected by a popular vote. They do not differ from representatives, except they have a longer term. There were problems with the Senate before the seventeenth amendment. We’ve only acquired different problems, ones that erode the basic structure set out in 1786. Arguably, it has added to the strain on our Union currently. Given diversities in many dimensions and planes and given that humans are not angels, there is no perfect system of government. It is also possible that the best form of governance varies according to the culture of those governed. For the people that loved liberty and freedom so much that they or their predecessors fled monarchies in Europe, the best structure seemed to be ours in its original basic structure as it balanced the needs of the people and the needs of state governments with the needs of the union of state governments, aka the federal government. (This explains in part why the states, not the people, elect the president.)

Mr. Romney is a good man, a popular guy, handsome, clean-cut, erudite, successful, wealthy and talented. However, he is unfaithful. He, not a Utahn, philandered to a state with a populace that would elect him, but, it turns out, not a state to which he could be true. He has long focused on the lengthy list of sins of Mr. Trump but cannot see his own political promiscuity. He repeatedly argued and voted to rid the country and the republican party of a man who, despite his flagrant flaws, did a hundred times more to advance conservative ideals than Mr. Romney ever could, ideals that Mr. Romney claims to support during his campaigns, and aspirations that dominate the state government. A man with no flaws has very few virtues, Lincoln said about his choice of generals, but he could have been speaking about Romney and Trump as well.

Lack of fidelity to party is, at most, a peccadillo. Making the state government you were elected to represent a cuckold is unforgivable. 

My Dog is a Democrat

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When I say he’s a Democrat, I refer not to a Blue-Dog Democrat, neither to a Democrat like his human mom. Gus is a progressive. He’s multi-breed and non-white. He’s young and seems to have considerable gender fluidity for reasons I omit for decency purposes, but he reminds me a bit of a certain randy, well-loved ex-president. I  might add that Gus does not wear flannel pants. Wrong generation.

How I determined for certain his political preference was through a PhD animal psychologist who examined the pup last week. She said that resource-guarding explained his violent disposition. If he has played with a toy or even chewed on a broken icicle or a chunk of bark—worthless stuff—and abandons it, my other dog, who is a pacifist and claims to be apolitical, sometimes chews on it himself. When that happens, Gus attacks and bites his jugulars in fit of snarling, clawing profanity.

I see resource guarding constantly by Democrats. “Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”  Joe Biden said this to a black dude in one of his rare appearances in the campaign. (Is that different from saying I own you?) Obvious resource guarding was in operation in that exchange and in many others. Democrats claim all people of color as their own, including Latinos, plus LGBTQs, university faculty, staff and students, journalists, women, and probably other demographic groups that I don’t recall as their property. If any party messes with the groups that they, like border collies, have split off from the herd, then there will be hell to pay.

When the Dems are out of power, their possessiveness continues. Likewise, when had Gus castrated, it did no good. When Gus launches an assault, my wife pulls them apart while I stare in wonderment and think, what the hell? Nigel, that’s my other dog’s name, is a purebred setter, English and regal. When he gets old enough—if he gets old enough—he might react by becoming a Republican, which I’m fairly certain, plays a roll in the ongoing abuse. Gus laid claim to a small orange quilt. Nigel learned to avoid it. Democrats lay claim to states and regions. If the California Republicans away from the coast try to claim the state, they are attacked. Mr. Trump tried to claim the whole country. He spent a painful four years as the chew-toy president, managing to win 84% of counties in his failed reelection bid. Perhaps his acolytes should form the Chew-toy Party, given how they are treated. Gus claims newspapers as his exclusive toy. But, with progressives, it’s not clear who owns whom with it comes to all media including social and tech. The Hunter Biden debacle confirmed that the media resource-guard Democrats. In turn for the protection and counter-assaults, progressives work to boycott and shut down Fox News, conservative influencers and talk radio, the competition. Gus, with his experience, may have opportunity to serve on boards of high tech. He now attacks for no apparent reason, a useful, oppressive tactic.

I missed Gus’s political inclination last November. Three of our six mail-in ballots went missing. (To explain, three of us live here and three deceased souls also get ballots.) When I went on line, I found that the ballots had been submitted, not eaten. It took a seance to learn that the dead people—Democrats all—were saddened at not getting to vote, but pleased with how the dog had punched the ballots.

The Domestic Intel-Op, 2016 – 2020

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One of my personal aphorisms is that we see the world from where we stand. For example, an educated elitist may believe that most people need a college education. A young urban dweller may think that automobile ownership is a luxury.  A person who is left of center politically typically sees a person at the center as being on the right and sees those on the far left as moderates.  Every person is biased. Failure to recognize this constant of human nature leads either to gullibility or dogmatism. Many studies looking at various metrics over the years have shown that most media people dwell on the political left. A group of people that have a similar political worldview is likely to make decisions often without intent ranging from content to vocabulary that demonstrates this leftward bias. That’s rational and also reflects what I had perceived before Mr. Trump came to Washington. My belief that media bias was largely unintentional was shattered by the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.

First, I should point out that a large chunk of Americans believe that the scandal is misinformation, a fiction created by Russian intelligence, the GRU, to disrupt our democratic process. My summary follows. A laptop was left at a repair shop. Many months later, the shop owner sold the old device as abandoned material, which act was legal. The buyer found that it contains material indicating the previous owner was a grifter of sorts, a man who sold access to his father, a former US senator and the current Democratic Party nominee for president, to several questionable or even frankly hostile governments through business ventures. New York Post reporters gained access to this trove of information and spend weeks vetting it before it was published two weeks before the presidential election. The material supported a former business associate who provided documentary support and testimony that the son and his father reaped millions of dollars of profit from a company tied to the communist leadership of China.

A normal news outlet would cover this astonishing breaking news story. Instead, the vast majority of media buried it, just as they had largely suppressed the video of Vice President Joe Biden threatening to withhold $1 billion of foreign aid from Ukraine if they failed to fire the prosecutor investigating his son and the company that hired him. Social media and search engines hid the NY Post laptop story. The reason given for keeping this information away from the public was that it was not only false but an intelligence operation of the Russian GRU. Former CIA director John Brennan said, “It has all the hallmarks of a Russian disinformation campaign.” What media people heard Brennan say, however, was that the story was Russian disinformation. 

The CIA is a great place for clever liars and we appreciate them there, when they are working to keep us safe but not when they are misleading the country, using intel-ops in support of a personal political agenda. The entire Russia Hoax of 2016 – 2020, has all the hallmarks of a John Brennan operation, since it began with his CIA assets as soon as Trump became a nominee. By leveraging Trump’s ill-advised sycophantic approach to Vladimir Putin, Democrat leaders were able to give the Russia  hoax credibility. To be clear, there are still millions of Americans, including Hillary Clinton and Adam Schiff, who still cling to the precept that Donald Trump is a Russian agent and that Russian oligarchs control him, possibly through blackmail or perhaps through some secret club. This notion provided the platform to claim the laptop was a Russian plant. Brennan and others only needed to keep the story out of public view until the election was past or, failing that, make the story another Russian ploy to keep Trump in office.

However, the laptop did not mysteriously appear; that it belonged to Hunter Biden was confirmed in several ways. Much of the laptop material was verified by secondary sources. A former business partner of Hunter Biden’s, who provided a great deal of the hard evidence confirming Biden’s ownership of the laptop, produced additional hard evidence and testimony of questionable dealings by the Biden clan. The partner, as I understand, was not a Republican and not a fan of Donald Trump. 

A pathetic tale of a profligate son grifting on his famous and powerful father’s coattails would normally sell a lot of copy. What was the compelling motivation to suppress this titillating tale of corruption at the height of the father’s campaign? Patriotism or partisanship? Was it elitist patronizing, or the media puppet masters deciding what string to pull? Regardless of reason, suppressing the story was intentional interference with our basic democratic process, honestly informed voting. The left got the electoral result they wanted.

To be or not to be…an autocrat.

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A man with a reputation as an early riser can sleep until noon. That was one of Mark Twain’s observations pertaining to expectation bias.

Let that sink in for a moment.

To paraphrase Shakespeare with a current event twist, the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Trump. The noble Biden hath told you Trump was authoritarian; if it were so, it was a grievous fault and grievously hath Trump answered for it. 

Mr. Trump was fond of saying, “Sleepy Joe,” in reference to the man who now has succeeded him as our president. Mr. Biden is not sleeping, at least with respect to extending power. He signed scores of executive orders and actions in a few days and continues at a rapid pace. It took (Mr. Authoritarian) Trump, several months to sign as many. Mr. Biden ran as one who reaches across the aisle, one who achieves compromise, and a man who will reduce partisan fighting. This was the reputation he, and the media, cultivated. But, now in the light of scores of actions, will the real authoritarian please stand up?

Perhaps half the country cannot see President Biden as authoritarian. The power of expectation bias is that even compelling facts can be rendered invisible. At least, for a while.

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Sea turtles and insects lay many eggs. This is a trick of nature to ensure that enough of them survive to propagate the species. We have witnessed a flurry of orders that overwhelm the balance-of-powers mechanisms of our constitution, smothering the legislative and judicial branches. President Biden is counting on the legislative branch to support him and likely surmises that the judicial branch is loath to challenge him. Not only has Chief Justice Roberts been remarkably reticent, each order must be challenged and a lower court must review and support the challenger’s position in order for each order to reach the Supreme court. This avalanche of executive power is a clever trick and is likely to succeed on its own. The fourth rail of political balance (and the fifth column?), the media, will do its job of promoting, not challenging, this power play as well as the bipartisan, cooperative stereotype they stamped on the current president. Newlyweds and freshly minted politicians get away with excesses during the honeymoon.

One more thing. When President Biden had an opportunity to act with bipartisanship, he continued his autocratic style by rejecting a generous $600 billion bipartisan Covid relief bill and pushing his partisan $1.9 trillion bill.