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[brid video=”161852″ player=”2077″ title=”‘Begging for War’ Nikki Haley at UN Security Council Briefing on North Korea”]

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said at an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on North Korea that Kim Jong Un was “begging for war.” The meeting comes a day after North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

“We have engaged in numerous direct and multilateral talks with the North Korean regime, and time after time they have not worked,” Ambassador Haley said Sunday. “The time for half measures by the Security Council is over.”

Ambassador Haley said Kim Jong Un has repeatedly demonstrated he doesn’t understand the responsibility that comes with being a nuclear power, adding that his “abusive use of ballistic missiles and his nuclear threats show that he is begging for war.”

In August, the Trump Administration scored a major victory when the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose severe sanctions on Pyongyang. The U.S.-led resolution in response to their intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program will cost the North Korean regime roughly one-third of their exports, totaling more than $1 billion.

But without stronger pressure from China, the North Korean leader hasn’t ended the provocations.

“We cannot kick this can down the road any longer,” Ambassador Halley added.

President Trump indicated on Twitter he was willing and looking into “other options” to ratchet up the economic pressure on nations who can do more, particularly China. He tweeted earlier that the nuclear test was “an embarrassment to China” and should serve as proof to the new South Korean president that their new approach won’t work. He added that time for “appeasement” was over.

“The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea,” President Trump tweeted.

Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the

President Donald Trump walks past Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017, following the president's address to a joint session of Congress. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump walks past Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2017, following the president’s address to a joint session of Congress. (Photo: AP)

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin still tops a generic Republican challenger in the latest West Virginia Senate Poll, though his lead is turning out to be very fragile. In June, the two-term governor and incumbent senator held a 9-point lead, 50% to 41%, over his inevitable Republican candidate.

Now, his lead has shrunk to just 5 points, 49% to 44%.

President Donald Trump trounced Hillary Clinton in the Mountain State 67.9% to 26.2%, making it a must-win race in any Republican plan to win a supermajority in the U.S. Senate. He remains overwhelmingly popular among West Virginia voters, with his approval rating climbing even higher from June to August-September. A whopping 67% of likely voters approve of the job he is doing as president, up from 62% in June.

Only 31% of voters in the state disapprove of the job he’s doing as president.

“President Trump may just hold Sen. Manchin’s fate in his hands,” Rich Baris, editor and head of the PPD Big Data Poll said. “Voters want to see key aspects of his agenda get through Congress. Red State Democrats, particularly those in more conservative states like this, cannot straddle the fence forever.”

PPD did ask about tax reform in the latest West Virginia Senate Poll, the results of which will be revealed on Tuesday. But the big takeaway is that both Sen. Manchin and Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito put themselves at odds with moderate and conservative voters by opposing tax reform. It has at least plurality support in all 5 income brackets surveyed and strong support across 4 of the 5.

Sen. Manchin’s approval rating has taken a hit somewhat since June, when 56% of voters, including a sizable 23% of Republicans and 56% of whites, approved of the job he was doing in the U.S. Senate. Now, 51% of voters overall approve, including just 14% of Republicans and only 50% of whites.

“While he still holds a lead, we’re starting to see some not-so insignificant slippage,” Baris added. “It’s still way too early to know for sure if this is a trend, but it definitely isn’t statistical noise.”

[wpdatatable id=95 table_view=regular]

The PPD Poll follows level 1 AAPOR standards of disclosure and WAPOR/ESOMAR code of conduct. All publicly released surveys are subscriber– and individual reader donations-funded, not sponsored by any other media outlet, partisan or political entity.

The 2018 West Virginia Senate Poll, or PPD Mountain State Battleground Poll, was conducted from August 31 to September 3 and is based on 612 interviews of likely voters participating in the PPD Internet Polling Panel. The Mountain State Battleground Poll, a subsample of the PPD Battleground Senate Poll, or the Generic Senate Ballot, was collected in a separate statewide sample.

The PPD Poll has a 95% confidence interval and is not weighted based on party affiliation (party ID), but rather demographics from the U.S. Census Current Population Survey–i.e. age, gender, race, education and region etc. Partisan affiliation is derived from a proprietary likely voter model following aforementioned demographic weighting, not the other way around.

The sample identified a D/R/I partisan split of 39% Republican, 36% Democrat, and 25% Independent/Other. Read more about methodology here.

View the PPDBD West Virginia Senate Poll Questionnaire

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin still tops a

President Donald J. Trump stands for the colors as he arrives during the commissioning ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Saturday, July, 22, 2017. (Photo: AP)

President Donald J. Trump stands for the colors as he arrives during the commissioning ceremony of the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78) at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., Saturday, July, 22, 2017. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump met with a small group of advisors on Sunday after North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis told reporters after the meeting that threats made by North Korea against the U.S. and its allies will be met with “massive military response.” He added when pressed that President Trump was briefed on “many military options” and, while the U.S. prefers no conflict, “Kim Jong-un should take heed of the United Nations Security Council’s unified voice.”

“Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming,” Secretary Mattis said. “We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so.”

In what was a major victory for the Trump Administration, the U.N. Security Council in August voted unanimously to impose severe sanctions on Pyongyang over their intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program. The U.S.-led resolution will cost the North Korean regime roughly one-third of their exports, totaling more than $1 billion.

President Trump indicated on Twitter he was willing and looking into “other options” to ratchet up the economic pressure on nations who can do more, particularly China. He tweeted earlier that the nuclear test was “an embarrassment to China” and should serve as proof to the new South Korean president that their new approach won’t work. He added that time for “appeasement” was over.

“The United States is considering, in addition to other options, stopping all trade with any country doing business with North Korea,” President Trump tweeted.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who backed up the President’s threat to cut off trade with any nation doing business with the rogue regime, insisted there was “much more” the U.S. can do to apply financial pressure.

“I will submit new sanctions for his strong consideration,” Secretary Mnuchin said. “There’s much more we can do economically.”

President Donald Trump met with a small

Presidents Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sit with first ladies Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan before dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6. (Photo: AP)

Presidents Donald J. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping sit with first ladies Melania Trump and Peng Liyuan before dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 6. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump responded to the latest “major nuclear test” by North Korea, saying it was “an embarrassment to China” and should serve as proof to the new South Korean president that their new approach won’t work.

“North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States,” President Trump tweeted. “North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success.”

He then turned his attention to South Korea, who’s new president was elected on a platform of appeasement and negotiations. Critics previously pounced on Mr. Trump for arguing that diplomatic negotiations shouldn’t be the primary focus of the multilateral strategy between United States, China, South Korea and Japan.

“South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. (Photo: KCNA)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provides guidance on a nuclear weapons program in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) in Pyongyang September 3, 2017. (Photo: KCNA)

On Sunday, North Korea conducted its sixth and most powerful nuclear test, which it claimed was an advanced hydrogen bomb for a long-range missile. The test is a dramatic escalation of the communist regime’s provocation of the United States and its allies.

The White House said President Trump has convened a meeting of his advisers scheduled later on Sunday.

President Trump responded to the latest "major

Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire financier and former Nazi collaborator. (Photo: Reuters)

Soros Fund Management Chairman George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire financier and former Nazi collaborator. (Photo: Reuters)

A White House petition to “declare George Soros a terrorist and seize all of his related organizations’ assets” has reached over 100,000 signatures within 30 days, a threshold requiring a response from the Trump Administration.

The petition claims “Soros has willfully and on an ongoing basis attempted to destabilize and otherwise commit acts of sedition against the United States and its citizens,” adding that he “has created and funded dozens of discrete organizations” which use “terrorist tactics to facilitate the collapse of the systems and Constitutional government of the United States.”

It further states Soros “has developed unhealthy and undue influence over the entire Democrat Party and a large portion of the U.S. Federal government.”

Soros, a leftwing billionaire financier from Hungary has long been an ardent backer of the Democratic Party in the United States (US). He has funded some of the most radical movements the nation has seen including the increasingly violent, so-called Anti-Fascist movement known as Antifa.

The group, which was caught on video attacking journalists and Trump supporters at Berkeley last week, was officially designated a terrorist organization by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Ironically, Soros, who comes from an anti-Semitic Jewish family in Hungary, was himself a Nazi collaborator.

“My mother was quite anti-Semitic, and ashamed of being Jewish,” he told The New Yorker in an interview. “Given the culture in which one lived, being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, disadvantage, a handicap-and, therefore, there was always the desire to transcend it, to escape it.”

In the same interview, Soros flatly admitted he did not feel any remorse “about confiscating property from Jews as a teenager.”

“I don’t deny the Jews their right to a national existence,” he said. “But I don’t want to be part of it.”

His home country has become openly hostile to him as a result of his activities.

In April, Hungarian President János Áder signed into law a bill that detractors claim targets Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, established by Soros after the fall of the Iron Curtain in the 1990s. The bill forces any education institution to close if it does not have a campus in the country of origin.

Central European University said it “strongly disagreed” with President Janos Ader’s decision and vowed to challenge what it called a “premeditated political attack on a free institution.” Critics say Hungary has been targeting non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, which originate in foreign countries to include groups tied to Soros, who has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Eastern Europe pushing civil unrest disguised in the global media as a progressive agenda.

The Media Research Center (MRC) reported in 2011 Soros has ties to more than 30 news outlets in the mainstream media and funded Pro-Publica’s Journalism Advisory Board. It’s little wonder why Big Media refers to Antifa as “counter-protestors” or even “peace activists,” as Reuters outrageously tweeted last week.

CNN in a recent featured story went so far as to openly justify Antifa violence. As Breitbart News underscored, “CNN lays out the narrative that the leftist protesters are driven to violence in an effort to achieve peace.”

The White House petition requests the Trump Administration “immediately declare George Soros and all of his organizations and staff members to be domestic terrorists.” They propose the Justice Department (DOJ) use the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to “have all of his personal and organizational wealth and assets seized” under civil asset forfeiture.

Soros began plotting and funding efforts against President Donald Trump and his agenda in the days immediately following his election last November. He met with top Democrats in Washington D.C. the week after the election on the first of a 3-day conference to discuss how Democrats can stop President Trump during his first 100 days in office.

Most disconcerting, the so-called “Democracy Alliance” meeting at the Mandarin Oriental hotel boasted the attendance of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., among others.

His funding resulted in “private and confidential” plans revealed in a document published by Media Equalizer. It’s a a product of a collaboration between Media Matters, American Bridge, the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Shareblue. It plotted mass protests that turned into violent mob clashes, as well as efforts to impeach President Trump and to discredit non-liberal media outlets.

He also funded the so-called Women’s March movement that was led by radical Islamists Linda Sarsour and Rasmea Yousef Odeh. The former called for “jihad” against President Trump and, most recently, was caught raising funds for a radical leftwing group claiming to be contributing to Hurricane Harvey relief efforts.

The latter is a Palestinian “activist” who was convicted in a 1969 Jerusalem terrorist bombing that left two Israeli men dead. Of the march’s 544 partners, 100 groups received funding from Soros that totaled $246 million. Soros’ Open Society Foundation (OSF) also gave at least $33 million to Black Lives Matter (BLM) groups in one year, according to The Washington Times.

The White House has 60 days to respond to the petition.

A White House petition to "declare George

President Donald Trump, second from left, with Vice President Mike Pence, left, shakes hands with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty., center, before the start of a meeting with House and Senate leaders at the White House. (Photo: AP)

President Donald Trump, second from left, with Vice President Mike Pence, left, shakes hands with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty., center, before the start of a meeting with House and Senate leaders at the White House. (Photo: AP)

Why were the Reagan tax cuts so successful? Why did the economy rebound so dramatically from the malaise of the 1970s?

The easy answer is that we got better tax policy, especially lower marginal tax rates on personal and business income. Those lower rates reduced the “price” of engaging in productive behavior, which led to more work, saving, investment, and entrepreneurship.

That’s right, but there’s a story behind the story. Reagan’s tax policy (especially the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981) was good because the President and his team ignored the class-warfare crowd. They didn’t care whether all income groups got the same degree of tax relief. They didn’t care about static distribution tables. They didn’t care about complaints that “the rich” benefited.

They simply wanted to reduce the onerous barriers that the tax system imposed on the economy. They understood – and this is critically important – that faster growth was the best way to help everyone in America, including the less fortunate.

Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal thinks that Donald Trump may be taking the same approach. Her column today basically argues that the President is making a supply-side case for growth. She starts by taking a shot at self-styled “reform conservatives.”

In May 2014, a broad collection of thinkers and politicians gathered in Washington to celebrate a new conservative “manifesto.” The document called for replacing stodgy old Reaganite economics with warmer, fuzzier handouts to the middle class.

She’s happy Trump isn’t following their advice. and I largely agree.

Donald Trump must have missed the memo. …Mr. Trump wants to make Reagan-style tax reform great again.

The class-warfare crowd is not happy about Trump’s pro-growth message, Kimberley writes.

The left saw this clearly, which explains its furious and frustrated reaction to the speech. …Democratic strategist Robert Shrum railed in a Politico piece that the “plutocrat” Mr. Trump was pitching a tax cut for “corporations and the top 1 percent” yet was getting away with a “perverted populism.” …Mr. Trump is selling pro-growth policies—something his party has forgotten how to do. …The left has defined the tax debate for decades in terms of pure class warfare. Republicans have so often been cast as stooges for the rich that the GOP is scared to make the full-throated case for a freer and fairer tax system. …Mr. Trump isn’t playing this game—and that’s why the left is unhappy. The president wants to reduce business tax rates significantly… He wants to simplify the tax code in a way that will eliminate many cherished carve-outs. …his address was largely a hymn to supply-side economics, stunning Democrats who believed they’d forever dispelled such voodoo. …Mr. Trump busted up the left’s class-warfare model. He didn’t make tax reform about blue-collar workers fighting corporate America. Instead it was a question of “our workers” and “our companies” and “our country” competing against China. He noted that America’s high tax rates force companies to move overseas. He directly and correctly tied corporate rate cuts to prosperity for workers, noting that tax reform would “keep jobs in America, create jobs in America,” and lead to higher wages.

Amen. That’s the point I made last week about investment being the key to prosperity for ordinary people.

Ms. Strassel concludes by putting pressure on Congress to do its job and get a bill to the President’s desk.

His opening salvo has given Republicans the cover to push ahead, as well as valuable pointers on selling growth economics. If they can’t get the job done—with the power they now have in Washington—they’d best admit the Democrats’ class-warfare “populism” has won.

I largely agree with Kimberley’s analysis. Trump’s message of jobs, growth, and competitiveness is spot on. His proposal for a 15% corporate rate would be very good for the economy. And I also agree with her that it’s up to congressional Republicans to move the ball over the goal line.

But I also think she’s giving Trump too much credit. As I point out in this interview, the Administration isn’t really playing a major role in the negotiations. The folks on Capitol Hill are doing the real work while the President is waiting around for a bill to sign.

Moreover, I’ve been repeatedly warning that there are some very difficult issues that Congress needs to decide.

Since big companies will benefit from a lower corporate rate, will there be similar tax relief for small businesses that file using “Schedule C” of the individual income tax? That’s a good idea, but there are big revenue implications.

Since Republicans–and this definitely includes Trump–are weak on spending, will they achieve deficit neutrality (necessary for permanent reform) by eliminating loopholes? That’s a good idea, but interest groups will resist.

Unfortunately, the White House isn’t offering much help on these issues. The President simply wants big tax cuts and is leaving these tough decisions to everyone else.

President Donald Trump is following the Reagan

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (Photo: Courtesy of the Greek Government)

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. (Photo: Courtesy of the Greek Government)

I like the Baltic nations, as illustrated by what I wrote last year.

I’m a big fan of…Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. These three countries emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Empire and they have taken advantage of their independence to become successful market-driven economies. One key to their relative success is tax policy. All three nations have flat taxes. And the Baltic nations all deserve great praise for cutting the burden of government spending in response to the global financial crisis/great recession (an approach that produced much better results than the Keynesian policies and/or tax hikes that were imposed in many other countries).

No wonder the Baltic nations are doing a good job of achieving economic convergence.

baltic cutsI’ve specifically praised Estonia on several occasions.

Estonia’s system is so good (particularly its approach to business taxation) that the Tax Foundation ranks it as the best in the OECD. …Estonia…may be my favorite Baltic nation if for no other reason than the humiliation it caused for Paul Krugman.

Indeed, I strongly recommend this TV program that explored the country’s improbable success. And here’s some data showing that Estonia is leading the Baltics in convergence.

Now I have a new reason to admire Estonia. Having experienced the brutality of both fascism and communism, they have little tolerance for those who make excuses for totalitarianism. And the issue has become newsworthy since Greece decided to boycott a ceremony to remember the victims of communism and fascism.

Estonian Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu responded to his Greek counterpart, Stavros Kontonis following the uproar caused by the decision by Greece to not participate in the recent European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism in Estonia.

The letter sent by Reinsalu is a masterpiece of moral clarity. He unambiguously condemns all ideologies that are contrary to free societies. Let’s look at some excerpts.

Our values are human rights, democracy and the rule of low, to which I see no alternative. This is why I am opposed to any ideology or any political movement that negates these values or which treads upon them once it has assumed power. In this regard there is no difference between Nazism, Fascism or Communism.

Amen. That’s basically what I wrote just a few days ago.

Reinsalu points out that free societies (sometimes called liberal democracies, with “liberal” used in the “classical liberal” sense) don’t oppress people, which is inherent with fascist and communist regimes.

Condemnation of crimes against humanity must be particularly important for us as ministers of justice whose task it is to uphold law and justice. …Every person, irrespective of his or her skin colour, national or ethnic origin, occupation or socio-economic status, has the right to live in dignity within the framework of a democratic state based on the rule of law. All dictatorships – be they Nazi, Fascist or Communist – have robbed millions of their own citizens but also citizens of conquered states and subjugated peoples.

The Estonian Justice Minister refers to the bitter experience of his nation.

Unlike Greece, Estonia has the experience of living under two occupations, under two totalitarian dictatorships. …In light of the experience of my country and people, I strongly dispute your claim that Communism also had positive aspects. ……in 1949, …the communist regime deported nearly 2 percent of the population of Estonia only because they as individual farmers refused to go along with the Communist agricultural experiment and join a collective farm. This was in addition to the tens of thousands who had already been imprisoned in the Gulag prison camps or deported and exiled earlier. Thousands more would follow, taken into prison up to mid-1950.

He points out that communism is incompatible with freedom.

…it is not possible to build freedom, democracy and the rule of law on the foundation of Communist ideology. …this has been attempted… This has always culminated in economic disaster and the gradual destruction of the rule of law…there are also countries and peoples for whom the price of a lesson in Communism has been millions of human lives.

The bottom line, he writes, is that all forms of totalitarianism should be summarily rejected.

…we must condemn all attempts or actions that incite others to destroy peoples or societal groups…there is no need to differentiate. It makes no difference to a victim if he is murdered in the name of a better future for the Aryan race or because he belongs to a social class that has no place in a Communist society. We must remember all of the victims of all totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships.

Kudos for Minister Reinsalu. He doesn’t shrink from telling the truth about communism and other forms of dictatorship.

None of this should be interpreted to mean that western societies are perfect. Heck, I spend most of my time criticizing bad policy in the United States and other western nations. But there’s no moral equivalence.

Here’s Reinsalu’s entire letter, which contains additional points.

I’ll close by elaborating on one of his points. Reinsalu wrote about the miserable track record of communism and made some powerful points.

But I think he was too diplomatic. He should have highlighted the jaw-dropping body count of communist regimes.

He did mention some of the horrid policies of the Soviet Union (perhaps more than 60 million victims), but he also could have listed the incomprehensible misery that communism caused in places such as CubaCambodia, and North Korea. Or China back in the Mao era.

That being said, his letter is a very powerful indictment of the moral bankruptcy of his Greek counterpart (which perhaps isn’t a surprise given the ideology of the Syriza government).

And it’s also an indictment of all of the apologists for communist tyranny.

Estonian Minister of Justice Urmas Reinsalu ripped

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 20: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (C) approaches the microphones before talking with reporters with Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) (L), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) (R) following the weekly GOP policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol June 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Reuters)

WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 20: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) (C) approaches the microphones before talking with reporters with Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) (L), Sen. John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) (R) following the weekly GOP policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol June 20, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Reuters)

While I realize there’s zero hope of ripping up America’s awful tax code and getting a simple and fair flat tax, I’m nonetheless hopeful that there will be some meaningful incremental changes as part of the current effort to achieve some sort of tax reform.

A package that lowers the corporate rate, replaces depreciation with expensing, and ends the death tax would be very good for growth, and those good reforms could be at least partially financed by eliminating the state and local tax deduction and curtailing business interest deductions so that debt and equity are on a level playing field.

All that sounds good, and a package like this should be feasible since Republicans control both Congress and the White House (especially now that the BAT is off the table), but I warn in this interview that there are lots of big obstacles that could cause tax reform to become a disaster akin to the Obamacare repeal effort.

Here’s my list of conflicts that need to be solved in order to get some sort of plan through Congress and on to the President’s desk.

  • Carried interest – Trump wants to impose a higher capital gains tax on a specific type of investment, but this irks many congressional GOPers who have long understood that any capital gains tax is a form of double taxation and should be abolished. The issue apparently has some symbolic importance to the President and it could become a major stumbling block if he digs in his heels.
  • Tax cut or revenue neutrality – Budget rules basically require that tax cuts expire after 10 years. To avoid this outcome (which would undermine the pro-growth impact of any reforms), many lawmakers want a revenue-neutral package that could be permanent. But that means coming up with tax increases to offset tax cuts. That’s okay if undesirable tax preferences are being eliminated to produce more revenue, but defenders of those loopholes will then lobby against the plan.
  • Big business vs small business – Everyone agrees that America’s high corporate tax rate is bad news for competitiveness and should be reduced. The vast majority of small businesses, however, pay taxes through “Schedule C” of the individual income tax, so they want lower personal rates to match lower corporate rates. That’s a good idea, of course, but would have major revenue implications and complicate the effort to achieve revenue neutrality.
  • Budget balance – Republicans have long claimed that a major goal is balancing the budget within 10 years. That’s certainly achievable with a modest amount of spending restraint. And it’s even relatively simple to have a big tax cut and still achieve balance in 10 years with a bit of extra spending discipline. That’s the good news. The bad news is that there’s very little appetite for spending restraint in the White House or Capitol Hill, and this may hinder passage of a tax plan.
  • Middle class tax relief – The main focus of the tax plan is boosting growth and competitiveness by reducing the burden on businesses and investment. That’s laudable, but critics will say “the rich” will get most of the tax relief. And even though the rich already pay most of the taxes and even though the rest of us will benefit from faster growth, Republicans are sensitive to that line of attack. So they will want to include some sort of provision designed for the middle class, but that will have major revenue implications and complicate the effort to achieve revenue neutrality.

There’s another complicating factor. At the risk of understatement, President Trump generates controversy. And this means he doesn’t have much power to use the bully pulpit.

Though I point out in this interview that this doesn’t necessarily cripple tax reform since the President’s most important role is to simply sign the legislation.

Before the 2016 election, I was somewhat optimistic about tax reform. A few months ago, I was very pessimistic. I now think something will happen, if for no other reason than Republicans desperately want to achieve something after botching ObamaCare repeal.

There's reason to be optimistic on tax

I wrote last week about evil of totalitarian ideologies such as communism and fascism and pointed out that both Antifa and Nazis should be treated with complete disdain and ostracism.

And that led me to find common ground with my left-of-center friends, even though I don’t like many of their policies.

I don’t like redistribution…programs are financed with taxes and that the internal revenue code is enforced by coercion…if you catch me in a cranky mood, I’ll be like the stereotypical libertarian at Thanksgiving dinner and wax poetic about what’s wrong with the system. That being said, I much prefer the coercion found in western democracies compared to the totalitarian versions of coercion found in many other parts of the world. At least we have the rule of law, which limits (however imperfectly) capricious abuse by government officials. …our Constitution still protects many personal liberties, things that can’t be taken for granted in some places. Moreover, there is only a trivially small risk of getting abused by the state in western nations because you have unpopular views. And there’s little danger of persecution by government (at least nowadays) based on factors such as race and religion. This is what makes liberal democracy a good form of government (with “liberal” in this case being a reference to classical liberalism rather than the modern version). Unfortunately, there are some people in America that don’t believe in these principles.

Now let’s look at an aspect of this issue from a left-of-center perspective.

Writing for the New Republic, John Judis analyzes the different types of socialism. He starts with some personal history of his time as a socialist activist.

In the early 1970s, I was a founding member of the New American Movement, a socialist group… Five years later, I was finished with…socialist organizing. …nobody seemed to know how socialism—which meant, to me, democratic ownership and control of the “means of production”—would actually work… Would it mean total nationalization of the economy? …wouldn’t that put too much political power in the state? The realization that a nationalized economy might also be profoundly inefficient, and disastrously slow to keep up with global markets, only surfaced later with the Soviet Union’s collapse. But even then, by the mid-1970s, I was wondering what being a socialist really meant in the United States.

He then notes that socialism has made a comeback, at least if some opinion polls (but not others) and the campaign of Bernie Sanders are any indication.

…much to my surprise, socialism is making a comeback. The key event has been the campaign of self-identified democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, who almost won the Democratic nomination and is now reputedly the most popular politician in America. Several opinion polls have also found that young people now think favorably of socialism and ill of capitalism… For the first time since the ‘60s, socialism looks like a politics with a future in the United States.

But Judis notes that it’s unclear what socialism means.

The old nostrums about ownership and control of the means of production simply don’t resonate in 2017. …In the 2016 campaign, however, Sanders began to define a socialism that could grow… I think there is an important place for the kind of democratic socialism that Sanders espoused.

He says there are many flavors of socialism, but ultimately puts them in two camps.

There is no scientific definition of socialism… It’s a political tradition with many different flavors—Marxist, Christian, social-democratic, Fabian, Owenite, Leninist, Maoist. In looking at the choices facing American socialists now, …a choice between a socialism rooted in Marx’s apocalyptical promise of revolution, or the abolition of capitalism and a socialism that works more gradually toward the incorporation of public power and economic equality within capitalism. One could be called “Marxist socialism” and the other “social democratic”—or, to borrow from John Maynard Keynes, “liberal socialism.”

And “liberal socialism” basically means capitalism combined with European-style redistributionism.

In Western Europe, …socialists were forced to define their objectives more clearly. And what has emerged is a liberal conception of socialism. …social democracy has probably reached its acme in the Nordic countries, where the left has ruled governments for most of last half-century. …That’s not Marx’s vision of socialism, or even Debs’s. In Europe, workers have significant say in what companies do. They don’t control or own them. Private property endures. …private capital is given leave to gain profits through higher productivity, even if that results in layoffs and bankruptcies. But the government is able to extract a large share of the economic surplus that these firms create in order to fund a full-blown welfare state.

Which means “liberal socialism” is, well, liberalism (the modern version, i.e., statism, though Thomas Sowell has a more unflattering term to describe it).

By the standards of Marxist socialism, this kind of social democracy appears to be nothing more than an attenuated form of capitalism. …But…As the Soviet experiment with blanket nationalization showed, it can’t adjust to the rapid changes in industry created by the introduction of automation and information technology. …the market is a better indicator of prices than government planning. …the older Marxist model of socialism may not even be compatible with popular democracy. …What’s the difference between this kind of socialist politics and garden-variety liberalism? Not much. …American socialists need to do what the Europeans did after World War II and bid goodbye to the Marxist vision of democratic control and ownership of the means of production. They need to recognize that what is necessary now—and also conceivable—is not to abolish capitalism, but to create socialism within it.

For what it’s worth, the leftists I know are believers in “liberal democracy,” which is good, and they also are believers in “liberal socialism,” which is good, at least when compared to “Marxist socialism.” Sort of like comparing Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to Nicolás Maduro and Kim Jong Un.

Statist Spectrum Socialism Totalitarianism

I disagree with Obama and Clinton, of course, and I would argue that what they want is bad compared to small-government capitalism.

But I utterly despise the totalitarian regimes in Venezuela and North Korea.

Let’s conclude by highlighting a key difference between “liberal socialists” and supporters of small government. My leftist friends are content to allow capitalism so long as they can impose high taxes on “economic surplus” to finance lots of redistribution.

They think that such policies don’t cause significant economic harm. I try to explain to them that punishing success and subsidizing dependency is not a good recipe for long-run prosperity. And I also tell them that demographic changes make their policies very unsustainable.

But at least these decent people on the left are not totalitarians. So when I look at this amusing image from Reddit‘s libertarian page, I agree that everyone who supports big government is a collectivist of sorts. But “Social Democracy” (assuming that’s akin to “liberal socialism”) is not really the same creature as the other forms of collectivism (assuming “social justice” is akin to antifa).

 

Which is why this image is more accurate.

The bottom line is that Nordic-style big government is misguided, but state-über-alles totalitarianism is irredeemably horrible.

Liberal socialism is something to disagree with

An offshore oil platform is seen in Huntington Beach, California September 28, 2014. (Photo: Reuters)

An offshore oil platform is seen in Huntington Beach, California September 28, 2014. (Photo: Reuters)

The Baker Hughes North American Rig Count fell for the week ending September 1 as gains in the United States (US) were easily offset by declines in Canada. For the last 4 weeks, the U.S. has reported fewer rigs as Canada has added, though both had been adding consistently this year.

Rigs increased by 3 in the U.S. and are now 446 higher than the previous year, while rigs in Canada were down 16. Canada is still up 64 rigs from last year.

Rigs classified as oil in the U.S. were flat at 759, while those in Canada were down 13 to 103. U.S. oil rigs are still up 407 and Canadian rigs are up 77 from last year.

Rigs classified as gas were up by 3 in the U.S. to 183, while they were down 3 in Canada to 99. U.S. gas rigs are still up 88 and Canadian rigs are up 60 from last year.

The Baker Hughes North American Rig Count tracks weekly changes in the number of active operating oil & gas rigs. Rigs that are not active are not counted.

The Baker-Hughes North American Rig Count fell

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