Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recovery

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a lot of speculation about what Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s current absence from the Court means. Is this the beginning of the end for RBG? Or just another bump on a long long road?

Ginsburg had major lung surgery on December 21. That’s about 3 weeks ago. I’ve known several people who had similar surgeries for similar reasons, and they were a lot younger than she is, and they were out of commission for far longer than that. It’s a pretty brutal surgery and the recovery tends to be painful.

I’m not a doctor and I don’t play one on TV, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but I’m basing my opinion on the experience of those friends of mine, plus articles such as this one:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg missed her first oral arguments in more than 25 years on the bench this week as she recovers from a Dec. 21 operation that removed about half of her left lung, including two cancerous growths.

Ginsburg’s absence from the bench…did not surprise cancer surgeons, who say that based on what is known publicly, the 85-year-old’s recovery appears to be proceeding normally.

Top doctors with experience performing pulmonary lobectomies expect Ginsburg to be back on the bench in less than six weeks, with more than enough time to return for the court’s February sitting.

That said, I will add that RBG is 85 years old. People of that age sometimes bounce back from surgery (my mother did well after a hip replacement at 96, for example), but they are obviously at greater risk of complications than a younger person. What’s more, we don’t really know whether RBG’s lung nodules were primary cancers or metastases from previous cancers. The longer-term prognosis is probably much better if it’s the first rather than the second.

We have a few resident doctors and retired doctors here who might be able to weigh in with more knowledge than I have.

Does the president have the legal authority to declare a crisis and build a border wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

Unquestionably, lawyers and law professors can argue on either side of this issue and make a convincing case. But here are some of the arguments Trump’s side will probably use if it comes down to that:

It’s likely that President Trump is looking at 10 U.S.C. § 284 for authority to build the wall. That allows the Department of Defense to support other agencies of the federal government to counter drug activity and transnational organized crime, using such means as “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.”

Another law, 10 U.S.C. § 2808, allows the president to declare a national emergency and direct the U.S. military to undertake military construction projects using appropriated funds for military construction, including family housing, that have not already been obligated.

Ackerman [a Yale law prof who wrote an op-ed in the NY Times saying that Trump lacks the authority] compares declaring an emergency to build a border wall to President Harry Truman’s attempt to nationalize the steel industry in 1952. That effort was struck down by the Supreme Court. This comparison is ridiculous, because that case involved the president seizing control of private property (i.e. privately owned steel mills).

In contrast, the government has already purchased much of the land needed for the border wall.

Much more at the link, including:

My research did not isolate a particular legal standard for “a national emergency,” so it’s possible Trump’s critics could challenge his action in the courts as insufficient on that basis. There’s plenty of violence taking place on both sides of the border in connection with drug smuggling that Trump could cite to invoke the same justification used by Clinton and Bush.

If Trump is wrong, Congress, as Ackerman noted, would have “the right to repudiate it immediately.” Thus, the question of whether the situation at the border is an emergency is probably more of a political issue for the first two branches of government than it is a legal issue for the third branch.

Whether or not it should be a legal issue for the third branch, it probably will be, if Trump ends up deciding that declaring a national emergency is the way to go for building the wall.

Why is this the hill the Democrats have chosen to die on? It’s clear why it’s so important to Trump—it’s the linchpin of his campaign promises and he feels he must deliver. For the Democrats, it’s really a reverse of that same principle. Their biggest goal is to remove Trump now or at the very least to prevent his re-election. In fact, they might be more comfortable with the second than the first, because removing a president means they can’t campaign against him in 2020, and they see anti-Trumpism as a big big motivator for voting Democratic.

But their opposition to the wall is multiply-determined. They think it makes them look compassionate, which will appeal to their constituents, who can then bask in the glow of their own compassion when they vote for Democrats. In addition, the Party sees illegal immigrants as ultimately leading to more Democratic voters.

Who will win the wall funding standoff? Michael Walsh believes it will be Trump:

…[T]he furloughed public servants are merely suffering delayed paychecks thanks to the Democrats’ refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election, and while the public has not been as deliberately inconvenienced as it was during the dog-in-the-manger Obama shutdown, its effects are nevertheless being felt at such points of intersection as the national parks. Still, life has gone on otherwise pretty much as before — and the longer the shutdown rolls on, the more easily the way we were can be forgotten.

So the longer Donald Trump wrangles with his two superannuated cartoon antagonists, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the stronger the president’s position becomes. This despite the Democrat Media’s insistence that the shutdown is a terrible thing, costing the lives of (as usual) untold women, children, and minorities.

He makes a certain point, which is that so far the shutdown has mostly been a non-event, hyped by the press of course, but not affecting most people at all. It will get more visible as time goes on, though, and the government workers start not receiving paychecks.

However, there is a certain “boy who cried wolf” perception that may be starting to operate, which is that people become somewhat bored with these recurrent shutdowns because they seem like old stories. We’ve passed this way too many times before, and the empty theater aspects of the process become more and more apparent.

How many people see the shutdown that way? I don’t know, but I would guess that if I were to poll most of my friends on the subject—which I am not planning to do—the majority of them would start saying how awful it is and how the Republicans are at fault. But whether they are representative of the country at large I do not know.

So far, however, polls indicate that they are:

Nearly half of voters, 47 percent, say Trump is mostly to blame for the shutdown, the poll shows, while another 5 percent point the finger at congressional Republicans. But just a third, 33 percent, blame Democrats in Congress.

The article doesn’t have a link to the poll, so I wasn’t able to see how the questions were phrased, which tends to be highly important in interpreting the meaning of polls. It was also conducted prior to the president’s speech on Tuesday, which makes it even less meaningful than usual.

In a quick search I was unable to find any polls taken after Tuesday. But it’s only over time that this story will play out, and Trump’s only just begun to fight.

Alternative fact-checking from the self-appointed self-annointed truth-tellers of the MSM

The New Neo Posted on by

Even before Trump delivered his short speech Tuesday night, the MSM had decided on its theme/meme of the evening: Trump will lie and we will tell you about his lies and correct them. I discussed the situation prior to the president’s speech here, and shortly after the speech the fact-checkers went to town and did their thing:

The Democrats’ theme for the evening was “facts, not fear.” Many major media also adopted the same theme. The coordinated talking point began hours if not days before the speech even aired, with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota saying yesterday morning, “Fact-checkers are eating their Wheaties and getting extra rest since they will be working overtime tonight to separate fact from fiction on this border situation.”

As soon as the speech ended, White House press corps mascot Jim Acosta recited his rather groan-inducing rehearsed line that Trump’s address “should have come with a Surgeon General’s warning that it was hazardous to the truth.”

But when it came time to back up this talking point about factual inaccuracies, the media whiffed. Most of the alleged “fact” “checks” were instead critiques of opinions. Many critiqued things not included in Trump’s speech. And sometimes the “fact” “checks” dinged Trump for saying completely true things.

Please read the whole thing (also see this and this).

Some of the fact-checking was inadvertently funny in a sad sort of way, such as when “CBS “Fact-Check” Finds That Trump’s Claim About Women Migrants Being Raped Wasn’t Exaggerated But Was Understated, But Then Deletes Its Own Fact-Check as Insufficiently Helpful to the Cause.”

But it all revealed once again—not that we needed any more evidence—that the MSM is now the mouthpiece of the Resistance, and proud of it.

The 2016 election: the crime and the coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

Jed Babbin, writing in the Spectator, notes:

Since Watergate, the Washington wisdom has always held that it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup that sinks a politician. But that’s only the case when the coverup fails.

But what if the coverup succeeds?

It’s horribly simple. The crimes are never uncovered and the perpetrators are never brought to justice no matter how serious their crimes may be. That is precisely what has happened because of the FBI and Justice Department’s coverup of their abuses of power and illegal actions during the 2016 election.

In this case, the FBI and the Justice Department have succeeded in the most significant coverup in American political history. The abuses of power and crimes they have succeeded in covering up are not only against the law: they are crimes against our system of law and government. They were perpetrated by employees of the government, under color of law, with the intention of affecting the outcome of an election.

I disagree, at least somewhat. I think we political junkies on the right do know quite a bit about the crimes and the coverup; the information is out there for those who are interested. But there’s a secondary coverup by the MSM, which is how most Americans still get their news. And there’s another coverup (or rather, minimization) of sorts by Democrats who say it didn’t happen that way and/or it’s been exaggerated and/or you shouldn’t care.

The Spectator article also mentions the stonewalling in which the FBI and DOJ have been engaged, withholding information from multiple Congressional investigations. That’s part of the picture.

But still, we already have enough information to be outraged, and my sense is that most people are not outraged. They don’t care and/or they are partisan Democrats and applaud it and/or they don’t read the information or follow it and/or or they don’t understand what it means.

The article also points out something I was dreading before the midterms when I realized the Democrats were highly likely to win in the House: the investigations mounted by the GOP-controlled Congress have stopped.

[NOTE: A mystery is why Trump never declassified some of the relevant documents, particularly before the 2018 midterms. However, it’s not hard to generate some theories on that—for example, they were just too sensitive. Or they reflected poorly on him or on the GOP in some way. Or he’s saving them for a more important time. None of those seem all that convincing to me.]

Why didn’t the GOP-held Congress fund the wall?

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people on the right would answer that question this way: because the GOP really doesn’t want to.

I wouldn’t answer that way, though. This is how I’d answer—

The GOP is hardly a unitary group. There are plenty of GOP members of Congress who would vote to fund the wall. But the GOP had to go it alone; almost no Democrats were going to agree. That’s where the numbers game comes in.

The House had the votes to do it—in fact, they did vote the funds—but the House can’t do much without the Senate. The GOP only held a single-vote majority there, which effectively meant that if only one GOP senator defected it would be a tie, and Mike Pence could break the tie, but if two defected on a bill that bill would fail.

There was more than one GOP senator who was going to defect on this. And there was little to nothing the others could do about it except exert whatever pressure senators (and particularly Senate leadership) can exert.

But did they try to exert that pressure? That’s the big question, and I don’t know the answer. I know that, if the situation had been reversed, the Democrats would have made that person vote with the group. Exactly what forces they would bring to bear in order to accomplish that I don’t know, but they would be fierce forces if necessary.

Now the GOP has a slightly larger margin in the Senate than before, although far from huge (the grand GOP total is 53). But it’s lost the House. So the situation now is similar but reversed. Trump needs some Democrats in the House to go along in order to get funding for the wall. I predict that he won’t get them. The real question is what he’ll do next.

Pelosi and Schumer: looks count for a lot in politics, but not everything

The New Neo Posted on by

You’ve probably seen the Twitter memes on the appearance of Pelosi and Schumer last night. They’re pretty brutal. Here’s one:

Another:

And the comments! Most of them centered on the fact that they looked embalmed and spooky. Others talked about more of the specifics—Schumer’s asymmetrical eyes and Pelosi’s botox. Some said that the two looked so bad they made Trump look normal.

The whole thing threatened to overshadow the messages.

So, does this hurt the Democrats? I doubt it. I can’t imagine any Democrat I know changing his or her mind because of this appearance, or become of their appearance. Pelosi and Schumer have become institutions and their thing is power within the Party.

If you look at Pelosi’s political beginnings, you’ll see that not only was she very attractive at the time, but she was a Party player first and foremost in an area of the country where to win the Democratic primary (or in her case, to be appointed a successor) was to win it all automatically:

Pelosi represents one of the safest Democratic districts in the country. Democrats have held the seat since 1949 and Republicans, who currently make up only 13 percent of registered voters in the district, have not made a serious bid for the seat since the early 1960s. She won the seat in her own right in 1988 and has been reelected 16 more times with no substantive opposition, winning by an average of 80 percent of the vote. She has not participated in candidates’ debates since her 1987 race against Harriet Ross. The strongest challenge Pelosi has faced was in 2016 when Preston Picus polled 19.1% and Pelosi won with 80.9%

Nevertheless, Pelosi has botoxed herself into facial rigidity because she knows that she’s on the national stage and she doesn’t want to look like an old woman. Well, I’m not sure what she conjures up except a waxwork figure, but when you look at her you don’t immediately think “78-year-old woman,” which is what she is.

Schumer’s ten years younger, and he had a somewhat tougher political road once he decided to take the Senate route, because he had to appeal to the entire state of New York. But it’s not been all that difficult, particularly in recent years.

Looking good is a funny thing. For example, Mitt Romney is the handsomest pol I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen him close up during the 2012 campaign. Really quite incredible, and amazing for his age seemingly without any surgery or botox. But I don’t think it helped him at all. I think it hurt him, actually, contributing to the impression of a kind of falseness and Dudly-Do-Right perfection that excluded any sense of what most people have to deal with in life. Hard to relate to this guy.

No, the best looks for politics is to be handsome or pretty but not too handsome or pretty. Obama. Bill Clinton. I’m not sure about women, but I think the principle is pretty much the same. And age is a double-edged sword, particularly for women, who need some of it (at least, so far—AOC seems to be bucking that trend) to lend some gravitas, but not so much that it reads “decrepit old lady.”

Trump will address the American people tonight on the border situation—now that the MSM has said it will let him

The New Neo Posted on by

[See UPDATE on speech below.]

He’ll be speaking from the Oval Office at 9 PM Eastern time.

The media was hesitant to even broadcast the speech at first, but apparently they have deigned to do so. Kind of them.

After hours of “will they, won’t they” coverage, the broadcast networks and cable news networks decided they will broadcast Trump on Tuesday night. Only CBS confirmed the broadcast by Monday evening.

But they can’t let him go unchallenged:

…[T]heir decision led to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to demand equal airtime…

Schumer and Pelosi wrote in a statement that since “television networks have decided to air the President’s address, which if his past statements are any indication will be full of malice and misinformation, Democrats must immediately be given equal airtime.”

As opposed to the sweetness, light, and strict adherence to facts for which Schumer and Pelosi are known.

CNN wrote yesterday:

Trump’s Monday request for networks to air his speech touched on a number of debates that have been raging in journalism since his ascension to the Oval Office. Among them: Should his fact-free speeches be aired live? What kind of fact-checking methods should networks employ?

There has been a recent debate in journalism circles about whether networks should air Trump’s words in real-time. Several media critics, for instance, told CNN last week that networks should not rush to air Trump’s remarks made during pool sprays and briefings, given how much misinformation he spreads.

“Some advice — demand to see the text in advance and if it is not truthful either don’t air it or fact check it live on lower third,” tweeted Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary under President Bill Clinton. “And cut away if he goes off text and starts lying.”

Either the press doesn’t recognize its own bias and/or realize how often it lies, or the press recognizes and realizes both (my preferred answer) and thinks it’s done all in the noble service of telling too-stupid Americans what they should think and feel.

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

There was also an interesting and acrimonious exchange today between Kellyanne Conway and Jim Acosta. You may recall that, right at the beginning of the Trump administration during an interview with Chuck Todd, Conway used the phrase “alternative facts.” Her phrase was widely mocked and criticized as though she were talking about facts as having no intrinsic truth or falsehood. But it was clear even at the outset what she actually meant—she meant that on certain things such as crowd size where estimates differ, people pick and choose which estimates to use depending on their political bent. In fact, she said as much during the original interview, which aired about 2 years ago (full transcript here; it makes very interesting reading at this point):

I actually don’t think that– maybe this is me as a pollster, Chuck. And you know data well. I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or the other. There’s no way to really quantify crowds. We all know that…

…What’s not right, Chuck, is that the day before, you had people releasing a dossier full of junk and lies and fake news. And why did they release the dossier?…

Here’s what happened today between Conway and Acosta:

UPDATE 9:50 PM

“This is just common sense.” Well, it is, but common sense has become a lot less common these days.

A humanitarian crisis, the wall would pay for itself, heroin overdoses, we should rise above partisan politics, wealthy politicians build gates around their homes not because they hate the people on the outside but because they love the people on the inside—many good arguments here. I didn’t expect him to declare a national emergency (which was the rumor) and he didn’t.

Here’s his well-placed shot at Chuck Schumer:

Senator Chuck Schumer, who you will be hearing from later tonight, has repeatedly supported a physical barrier in the past, along with many other Democrats. They changed their mind only after I was elected president.

I wish he’d shown the video of their prior statements; it would have been very effective. Perhaps they expected that particular line of attack, because Schumer and Pelosi’s rebuttal was mostly about the shutdown rather than the wall itself.

I didn’t watch any of it. I prefer to read speeches, although sometimes I watch them.

Here’s an unexpected angle from a person we haven’t heard from for a while:

I very much doubt that’s a common reaction on the left, however.

ADDENDUM: And Twitter’s having fun with Chuck and Nancy photos.

Charisma in politics, charisma in life

The New Neo Posted on by

I think I may have first heard the word “charisma” in connection with JFK. He had it. I could tell. I recognized it and I even felt it. But of course back then I was a kid. Have I ever been enchanted by political charisma since?

In a single word: no. I’ve liked some politicians (Paul Tsongas comes to mind) very much, but actually I’ve liked very few of them, and none enthralled me with their charisma. Maybe I’m a bit charisma-deaf.

And I guess I’m looking for a Churchill or a Lincoln. And even then, I’m not sure that what they had would be called “charisma.” At least, I wouldn’t call it that; I’d call it eloquence and depth. Do those qualities even correlate with charisma? I don’t think so.

This article tries to explain charisma, and although it really doesn’t either explain it or even describe it very well, it does discuss some interesting research involving how charisma relates to analytical skills:

Scientists have plenty to say about charisma. Individuals with charisma tap our unfettered emotions and can shut down our rational minds. They hypnotize us. But studies show charisma is not just something a person alone possesses. It’s created by our own perceptions, particularly when we are feeling vulnerable in politically tense times…

Jochen Menges, a lecturer in organizational behavior at the University of Cambridge, terms the emotional impact of charisma the “awestruck effect.” He came up with the concept as a doctoral student in 2008, when he traveled to Berlin to hear Barack Obama speak in the hopes he might glean some new insights about how charismatic alchemy worked. When Obama bounded onto the stage and announced he was not just a citizen of the United States, but a citizen of the world, Menges himself was taken in. For a few minutes, Menges forgot why he was there—he was taken out of himself, became a follower…

Afterward, a woman next to Menges gushed that Obama’s speech was “amazing,” “wonderful,” and “awesome.” Yet when Menges asked her to name three things she liked about the speech, she couldn’t…

Menges found that students were far more likely to report they remembered the exact contents of speeches delivered by individuals who used charismatic speaking techniques that evoke emotions, than the content of speeches from individuals using a straightforward, non-charismatic mode of delivery. Yet written tests revealed those exposed to charismatic speakers remembered far less than those exposed to the non-charismatic speakers. Even so, when offered the chance to follow each speaker into a coffee room to discuss the ideas of their talks, the students almost never followed the boring speaker—and almost always followed the charismatic one.

None of this is especially surprising, nor is it (IMHO) especially informative. Of course when a speaker exerts some sort of powerfully emotional and almost hypnotically attractive effect on listeners, their analytical powers and recall for the specifics often fall into a haze. It happens not just in political life, but in personal life as well.

For example, it’s one of the reasons people who fall in love quickly and then have troubles say that the danger signs were initially there in the beloved one, but they ignored them because they were just so very smitten.

Well, I don’t fall in love easily, either, although when I do I’ve been known to ignore a few red flags.

I’ve noticed something I’d call charisma among certain of my acquaintances who make friends effortlessly and easily. It seems that nearly everyone they meet wants to be around them and feed off something exhilarating about them. Is it their energy? Pheromones? I’ve tried and tried to define it, but the closest I can get is that people feel happy around those people.

Why? It’s not that these charismatic people all resemble each other. They don’t—not in most ways, anyway. They’re not even necessarily nice people; often they’re narcissists. That’s a clue, actually, because they do tend to have—and to project—a great deal of self-confidence. But self-confidence is not enough. Nor are they all physically attractive. But whatever charisma is, they’ve got it.

Remember the crisis that was going to occur with of the end of net neutrality?

The New Neo Posted on by

When the left predicts disaster and it doesn’t happen, there’s no accountability. Down the rabbit hole it goes, and on to the next prediction. What matters is the temporary buzz of alarm that gets the juices flowing;

A year ago, “net neutrality” zealots warned that its repeal would spell doom for a “free and open” internet. They could not have been more wrong…

Repealing “net neutrality” regulations “would be the final pillow in (the internet’s) face,” said The New York Times. The ACLU said it “risks erosion of the biggest free-speech platform the world has ever known.” CNET declared that “net neutrality repeal means your internet may never be the same.” CNN labeled repeal the “end of the internet as we know it.”

One of the Democratic commissioners on the FCC claimed that repealing “net neutrality” would “green light to our nation’s largest broadband providers to engage in anti-consumer practices, including blocking, slowing down traffic, and paid prioritization of online applications and services.”

What do we hear now? The sound of crickets chirping rather than the mea culpas we should be hearing.

It reminds me of psychics whose track record for predicting events is close to zero but it doesn’t seem to hurt their following. People tend to remember the few times prognosticators are right rather than the many times they’re wrong. People tend to focus on the concerns (and the stoked-up fears) of the moment.

Not only were the predictions of internet doom wrong, they were the opposite of what actually happened:

In fact, average internet speeds climbed by roughly a third last year. The number of homes with access to fiber internet jumped 23% last year, according to the Fiber Broadband Association.

Oh, and “net neutrality” was a nonissue in the Democratic midterm campaigns. One party official said that Dems didn’t campaign on it because: “It’s not something that people bring up in their top list of concerns.”

And no Democrat was going to remind them of it.

Ted Cruz has another creative idea for funding the Wall

The New Neo Posted on by

Hmmm—maybe Mexico (or some Mexicans) could pay for it, after all. Indirectly:

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today reintroduced the Ensuring Lawful Collection of Hidden Assets to Provide Order (EL CHAPO) Act. The bill would reserve any amounts forfeited to the U.S. Government as a result of the criminal prosecution of “El Chapo” (formally named Joaquin Archivaldo Guzman Lorea) and other drug lords for border security assets and the completion of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border…

Currently the U.S. Government is seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.

Raising the tax rate versus raising the effective tax rate

The New Neo Posted on by

Raising the tax rate is not the same as raising the amount of tax money collected, either in the aggregate or from a selected group such as “the rich.”

Even a non-accountant non-economist like me knows that. Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? (excerpts are from an interview she gave on “60 Minutes”):

Anderson Cooper: You’re talking about zero carbon emissions — no use of fossil fuels within 12 years.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: That is the goal. It’s ambitious. And…

Anderson Cooper: How is that possible? Are you talking about everybody having to drive an electric car?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: It’s going to require a lot of rapid change that we don’t even conceive as possible right now. What is the problem with trying to push our technological capacities to the furthest extent possible?

Anderson Cooper: This would require, though, raising taxes.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: There’s an element where— yeah. There— people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes.

Anderson Cooper: Do you have a specific on the tax rate?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: You know, it— you look at our tax rates back in the ’60s and when you have a progressive tax rate system. Your tax rate, you know, let’s say, from zero to $75,000 may be ten percent or 15 percent, et cetera. But once you get to, like, the tippy tops —- on your 10 millionth dollar -— sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60 or 70 percent. That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate, but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.

At the moment I can’t find a transcript of the entire interview, but my guess is that Cooper didn’t follow up with a question about effective tax rates back then, and the existence of so many loopholes and tax shelters at the time that the actual rate paid was much much lower. Would Ocasio-Cortez support the return of the shelters and loopholes that made it that way? I doubt it; that wouldn’t feed the hungry beast of leftist desire to punish the rich—those “tippy tops” that remain undefined as to the details of what income qualifies and what a “fair share” is.

We do know who will decide those things, though—the left. And human nature being what it is, plenty of people will cheer them on.

Anyone who’s interested in the actual situation that prevailed in the 50s and 60s might want to take a look at this (just one of many such articles):

There is a common misconception that high-income Americans are not paying much in taxes compared to what they used to. Proponents of this view often point to the 1950s, when the top federal income tax rate was 91 percent for most of the decade.[1] However, despite these high marginal rates, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42 percent of their income in taxes. As a result, the tax burden on high-income households today is only slightly lower than what these households faced in the 1950s. [a graph follows]

…The data shows that, between 1950 and 1959, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average of 42.0 percent of their income in federal, state, and local taxes. Since then, the average effective tax rate of the top 1 percent has declined slightly overall. In 2014, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average tax rate of 36.4 percent.

All things considered, this is not a very large change. To put it another way, the average effective tax rate on the 1 percent highest-income households is about 5.6 percentage points lower today than it was in the 1950s. That’s a noticeable change, but not a radical shift.[3]

How could it be that the tax code of the 1950s had a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent, but resulted in an effective tax rate of only 42 percent on the wealthiest taxpayers? In fact, the situation is even stranger. The 42.0 percent tax rate on the top 1 percent takes into account all taxes levied by federal, state, and local governments, including: income, payroll, corporate, excise, property, and estate taxes. When we look at income taxes specifically, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid an average effective rate of only 16.9 percent in income taxes during the 1950s.

There’s more at the link, but I also suggest you read this to get a lot more information on the subject. One of the many points made is that if tax rates are raised to that level on too many people it backfires, and if only a few are effected (one might call them the “tippy tippy tippy top”) it has almost no effect on revenue at all.

Ah, but this is all so hard and complex. It involves math, too. Much better to just ask the rich to pay their fair share—and of course, that won’t include us, right?

[NOTE: See also this from Scott Johnson at Powerline.]

Losing the shutdown standoff, winning the blame game

The New Neo Posted on by

In an article entitled “Why Trump’s Losing the Shutdown Fight—
A simple political rule of thumb: Never hold the government hostage for anything, even if it’s a cherished campaign promise,” Josh Kraushaar writes;

Here’s a simple, time-tested rule of politics: The party that’s divided is the one that’s going to lose a legislative showdown. That lesson should be growing clearer for Republicans…

The GOP has long been more divided than the Democrats, and probably always will be. There are many reasons for that (too numerous to go into in this post), but I think it’s far less of a definitive issue than this one: the party that’s labeled by the MSM as being to blame is most likely to lose a legislative showdown in the minds of the public, because it’s been labeled as being responsible and just plain mean, and that party is the GOP. So whatever the situation and whatever the issue, whichever party controls which branch of government, the GOP is the culprit.

That’s pretty hard to counter—although there’s no question that the divisions in the GOP don’t help at all.

Here’s how I see it. Funding the wall is something Trump must accomplish to save his political life because without it many of his supporters will desert him. Or, alternatively, if he fails to accomplish it, he must at the very least be seen by supporters as having fiercely fought to build the wall and to only have been stopped by the Democrats combined with RINOesque NeverTrumpers.

The Democrats have three big reasons to stand firm as well. The first is the aforementioned support of the MSM and the knowledge that the GOP and/or Trump will be blamed for a shutdown, so the Democrats believe they hold a winning hand even if the partial shutdown continues. Therefore they have no real incentive to end it, just in the tactical sense.

The second is that they really really really don’t want the wall built because they would like as many illegal immigrants to come as possible, because the assumption by Democrats is that the vast majority of the children of those arrivals who are subsequently born in this country will become Democrats (it’s indeed possible that this presumption is correct).

Third but far from least is the fact that the Democrats want Trump to lose not only the shutdown battle but the 2020 election, and they know that keeping him from building the wall is a vital part of that effort. If they can stop him and his base deserts him, they are home free no matter what person they nominate and how far to the left that candidate is.

Or so they believe.