THE FOUNDATION
“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.” –Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 33, 1788
TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
In February, the U.S. labor market did not lay the foundation for long-term economic growth. Sure, the banner numbers – the U-3 measure of unemployment and the number of jobs added – continued to indicate that the American economy is expanding. Here’s what the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported: “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 295,000 in February, and the unemployment rate edged down to 5.5 percent … Job gains occurred in food services and drinking places, professional and business services, construction, health care, and in transportation and warehousing.” The better measure of unemployment, the U-6, edged down to 11% and the civilian labor force participation rate changed little at 62.8%. But troubling is where most of the job gains occurred. Jobs in the food service and drinking industries don’t contribute to long-term growth – they are as permanent as a burger with a side of fries. More…
The executive director for the Washington office of the Fraternal Order of Police, James Pasco, undermined the Obama administration’s rhetoric in its proposed ban on M855 “green tip” ammunition. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says it wants to ban the popular AR-15 ammo because it can penetrate the bulletproof vests popular with law enforcement. But Pasco blew the cover off the ATF’s insincere concern for police officers. He toldThe Washington Examiner, “Any ammunition is of concern to police in the wrong hands, but this specific round has historically not posed a law enforcement problem.” He continued, “While this round will penetrate soft body armor, it has not historically posed a threat to law enforcement.” Instead, the Obama administration is using law enforcement as a political excuse – even as Obama continues slandering racist policing strategies. Like most of Obama’s executive “tweaks,” this proposal will rewrite laws. The Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb told Fox News, “Almost any hunting rifle bullet will go through body armor, so you could prohibit almost any rifle bullet with this. This is the administration redefining the law on its own.”
Two days after the Justice Department released a report on supposedly racist law enforcement in Ferguson, and just before the 50th anniversary march in Selma this weekend, Barack Obama took the opportunity to repeat his “cops are racist” mantra. A “big chunk” of the remaining civil rights problems, he said, are “dealing with civil rights and civil liberties in respect to law enforcement.” Of Ferguson, Obama asserted, “I don’t think that is typical of what happens across the country but it’s not an isolated incident.” Are police perfect? No. Was there abuse in Ferguson. Probably. But Obama and his race-baiting pals love to talk about “disparate impact” – the idea that blacks face disproportionate enforcement for law-breaking – and they use that false measure to smear cops in general. Yet as Mark Alexander wrote in December, “[W]hen 90% of murders in urban centers are ‘people of color’ and 90% of perpetrators are ‘people of color,’ cops of any color are going to be more cautious with ‘people of color.’ This is not ‘racism,’ this is reality, driven by a desire to make it home safely at the end of one’s shift.” More…
Look at the hypocrisy. Turns out, the State Department forced a U.S. ambassador from his position in 2012 for using – wait for it – a private email account. That’s right: While the head of the department, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ran an illicit email server from her New York home, the State Department berated Ambassador to Kenya Scott Gration for using Gmail. “The inspector general’s report specifically noted that Gration violated State Department policy by using a private, unsanctioned e-mail service for official business,” Sean Davis writes. “In its executive summary listing its key judgments against the U.S. ambassador to Kenya who served under Hillary Clinton, the inspector general stated that Gration’s decision to willfully violate departmental information security policies highlighted Gration’s ‘reluctance to accept clear-cut U.S. Government decisions.’ The report claimed that this reluctance to obey governmental security policies was the former ambassador’s ‘greatest weakness.’” While Gmail has decent security, Clinton’s email account left her information vulnerable to hackers. But she’s Hillary Clinton. Because she’s a master of political spin, she might get away with it scot free to the presidency. More…
Hillary Clinton finally addressed – through a tweet – the ever-growing scandal further tarnishing her tenure at the State Department. “I want the public to see my email,” she said. “I asked State to release them. They said they will review them for release as soon as possible.” That was enough to elicit high praise from Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Cummings exclaimed, “As far as I am aware, no other Cabinet secretary in history has ever called for the release of his or her emails – in their entirety and throughout his or her tenure. I commend Secretary Clinton’s decision.” Of course, we’re wondering how many emails there actually are – much less damning correspondences that haven’t been thoroughly vetted and discarded – and Cummings didn’t mention anything about Clinton’s deplorable practice that prompted an investigation by Congress. Would he lavish such praise on the Bush administration’s Condoleezza Rice if she was being accused of malpractice? Clinton is in damage control, so her only option is to claim she has nothing to hide. And her fellow Democrats will help her every step of the way. More…
For more, visit Right Hooks.
RIGHT ANALYSIS
Republican Senators Mike Lee and Marco Rubio have put forward version 2.0 of their tax reform proposal first released last September. The two men offer a bit more detail to their sweeping plan this time around, and it’s still a strong, pro-growth proposal.
The broad strokes of the Lee-Rubio plan focus on making significant changes to the tax code to right the wrongs that have grown and multiplied over the last several decades. One of the most attractive elements of the plan is that it addresses both the business and the individual side of the tax structure from top to bottom. As National Review’s Yuval Levin points out, “Successful conservative tax reforms have always provided both broad-based relief and better incentives at the margins – not one or the other.”
The current tax code, as Lee and Rubio point out in their latest Wall Street Journal op-ed, has manifold failures – “impeding growth, discouraging investment, and restricting freedom on the business and the individual side – [and] they are all rooted in the same fundamental unfairness and inequity of a government that picks winners and losers.”
It’s one of the reasons recovery from the Great Recession has been more of a long, slow crawl toward a new mediocrity.
The Lee-Rubio plan attempts to balance these wrongs by making some fundamental changes to the tax code. One of the biggest changes is wiping away the seven current individual/family tax brackets and replacing them with two: 15% and 35%. The marriage penalty – so called because it taxes married couples higher than individuals – would be eliminated, along with the Alternative Minimum Tax and a number of deductions that also skew the tax system against working families. A new $2,500-per-child tax credit would be introduced to help offset overtaxed parents.
On the business side, the Lee-Rubio plan reduces the corporate tax rate to a maximum of 25%. It also eliminates double taxation of capital gains and dividends. Firms operating overseas would no longer have to pay tax abroad and at home, but only in the country where the income is generated. Businesses that invest in their own growth through expansion or infrastructure improvements will be able to deduct 100% of those expenses.
Like all ideas that come out of Washington, the senators' proposal is going to be attacked for either going too far or not far enough. Democrats will reject pro-growth tax reform, arguing it will ultimately mean lower revenue. That’s unacceptable to leftists who seek to grow the massive welfare state. Never mind that lower tax rates frequently lead to greater tax revenue because of economic growth.
Democrats from the White House on down like the tax system the way it is – unless they could squeeze even more from taxpayers. Since the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, the government has used the tax system to cajole individuals, families and businesses into certain behaviors bureaucratic elites believe to be conducive to a more progressive nation. The Lee-Rubio plan deliberately rejects that thinking, so the senators are sure to face steep opposition.
On the other side, some believe the proposed rates are not low enough. The top 35% individual bracket under Lee-Rubio is only four-and-a-half points lower than the current top rate under Obama. Additionally, it would be applied to a wider swath of taxpayers, meaning many people would actually face a tax rate increase under the new plan. And there are those who wonder if the corporate tax reforms, generous though they may comparatively be, go far enough.
No plan ever comes out of Washington without being rightfully scrutinized and criticized. But Lee and Rubio make the strongest case thus far for sweeping reform of America’s crippling tax code. Whether there are any other courageous souls on Capitol Hill willing to join the fight is another story.
It didn’t take long for Ben Carson’s nascent 2016 presidential campaign to suffer a self-inflicted wound. Just after launching his “exploratory committee,” Carson spoke to CNN’s Chris Cuomo. When the conversation turned to homosexuality, Carson made the tenuous analogy regarding whether it is genetic or a choice by stating, “A lot of people … go into prison straight, and when they come out they’re gay.” As the great statesman Admiral Gial Ackbar once said, “It’s a trap!”
After conservative heads thumped desks around the country – incredulous at how Carson’s analogy would help to further “Akinize” the Republican Party – Carson tried to walk back the remarks the next day by stating what he said “does not fully reflect my heart on gay issues.” He added, “I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”
But Carson fell into the trap deftly laid for him by a media searching for that “gotcha” moment they can use to paint all conservatives with the same brush. Just as most of the GOP hopefuls had to answer questions last month about Rudy Giuliani’s remarks regarding Barack Obama’s lack of love for America, now each will likely have to endure questions about sexual orientation thanks to Carson’s remarks. Never mind that the lackluster economy and foreign policy are far more pressing issues; if the media can shift the focus to social issues, they can trot out the tired old message about the “war on women” and Republicans being bigots and homophobes.
We know the Leftmedia give Republicans tougher questions – for example, you wouldn’t see Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden face a question on why their policies have consigned minority students to woefully underperforming schools or whether life begins at conception. But Carson then effectively egged on the media horde by declaring he won’t talk about the “gay rights” issue anymore. That insures his campaign will have to deal with this topic front and center for many months to come because the Leftmedia won’t take “no” for an answer – unless it involves information making a liberal look bad.
In Ben Carson, we have a very successful member of a minority group with a compelling story who happens to be conservative. That’s bad news for Democrats that count on the black population to give them 90% or more of their vote, and it’s a reason some observers would rather see Carson run for the suddenly open Senate seat in Maryland, based on his long history there and Maryland’s high minority population.
But the best part of Carson’s appeal is also the biggest problem he faces – the lack of political experience. You have to look back to Dwight Eisenhower to find a president who hadn’t held some sort of political office prior to winning election – and all Ike did was play a major role in winning a world war. Carson was a gifted neurosurgeon and certainly has appealing positions on a number of issues, but running for president presents a very steep learning curve where one won’t get a break because he’s “not a politician.”
All this is somewhat reminiscent of the Herman Cain campaign that caught fire in the fall of 2011 only to crash and burn amidst infidelity allegations a few months later. With an extremely deep and talented GOP field this time around, Carson supporters have to ask whether a neophyte can win. The conservative side won’t get the benefit of the media’s lack of curiosity we saw about Obama and his background, so the 2016 presidential race may be better run by an experienced hand. Otherwise, Ben Carson has to be much more prepared than he showed during his first few days on the trail.
For more, visit Right Analysis.
TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
For more, visit Right Opinion.
OPINION IN BRIEF
British journalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877): “A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.”
Columnist Charles Krauthammer: “Israel has never once asked America to fight for it. Not in 1948 when 650,000 Jews faced 40 million Arabs. Not in 1967 when Israel was being encircled and strangled by three Arab armies. Not in 1973 when Israel was on the brink of destruction. Not in the three Gaza wars or the two Lebanon wars. Compare that to a very partial list of nations for which America has fought and for which so many Americans have fallen: Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Vietnam, Korea, and every West European country beginning with France (twice). Change the [Iran] deal, strengthen the sanctions, give Israel a free hand. Netanyahu offered a different path in his clear, bold and often moving address, Churchillian in its appeal to resist appeasement. This was not Churchill of the 1940s, but Churchill of the 1930s, the wilderness prophet. Which is why for all its sonorous strength, Netanyahu’s speech had a terrible poignancy. After all, Churchill was ignored.”
Columnist Jonah Goldberg: “I could release 99.99 percent of all my emails, and you’d see little more than boring work product, press releases, spam and appeals from Nigerian oil ministers. My incriminating stuff could remain invisible – valuable snowflakes held back from a blizzard of chaff. If you don’t think the Clintons are capable of such legerdemain, I refer you to the Clinton-inspired debate over billing records and the meaning of ‘is.’ This points to another reason why I think Clinton will survive this mess. If there’s a damning email out there, it’s been deleted, and the relevant hard drive would be harder to find than Jimmy Hoffa’s body. So critics are probably left with the task of proving a negative. The real significance of this moment – and a partial explanation of the media firestorm over it – is that time is running out to stop the Clinton freight train. … At some point down the tracks, when yet another fetid cloud of Clintonism erupts into plain view, many smart liberals will look back at this moment as the time when they should have pulled the emergency brake and gotten off the Hillary train. The unease they feel now will be nothing compared to the buyer’s remorse to come.”
Comedian Argus Hamilton: “Hillary Clinton reportedly used private e-mail to run U.S. foreign policy while taking money from foreign nations for the Clinton Foundation. It’s dire. For those of you new to comedy and magic, this is the point where Bill has a sex scandal that lasts just long enough for Hillary to escape unharmed.”
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