Barack Obama Handed a Lethal Deportation Machine to Trump's Gang of White Nationalists
Photo Credit: Gregory Reed / Shutterstock, Inc.
Mr. Trump, don't build those walls!
Donald J. Boudreaux
Millions of words have been written
analyzing Donald Trump's election to be the 45th U.S. president. I join
all sensible people in being grateful that Hillary Clinton was denied
her bid to unleash from the Oval Office her economically destructive
policies. Nothing but ill could have come from her absurd faith in the
power of politicians and bureaucrats to engineer us all to greater
happiness.
Yet I fear Trump's presidency. Although
political realities will ensure he's unable to implement all of his
campaign promises, much of his program will likely be put into place.
Yet too much of it makes no economic sense.
Where Scalia was wrong
George F. Will
WASHINGTON
With an asperity born of exasperation,
Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote, “If you want aspirations, you can
read the Declaration of Independence,” but “there is no such
philosophizing in our Constitution,” which is “a practical and pragmatic
charter of government.”
Scalia was wrong, and much depends on Neil
Gorsuch not resembling Scalia in this regard. Gorsuch can endorse
Scalia's originalism without embracing Scalia's misunderstanding of
this: There is no philosophizing in the Constitution — until the
Founders' philosophy is infused into it by construing the document as a
charter of government for a nation that is, in Lincoln's formulation,
dedicated to a proposition that Scalia implicitly disparaged as
impractical and unpragmatic.
Trump, Reagan & nukes
Ralph R. Reiland
On Dec. 22, Donald Trump tweeted at
10:50 a.m., when throngs were heading to malls: “The United States must
greatly strengthen and expand its nuclear capability until such time as
the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.”
Several hours earlier, Vladimir Putin said he planned to “strengthen the strategic nuclear forces” of Russia.
The morning after his tweet calling for the
U.S. to increase its 4,500 nuclear warheads, Trump expanded on his
statement with “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski: “Let it be an arms
race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
The real cost of protectionism
George F. Will
WASHINGTON
When the president speaks of closed
factories scattered like “tombstones” across America, has he noticed the
shuttered stores in shopping centers and entire malls reduced to
rubble? He promises “protection” to prevent foreigners from “destroying”
manufacturing jobs by exporting to America things that Americans want
to import. Does he know that one American company might be “destroying”
more American jobs than China is? And that this supposed destruction is
beneficial?
Inequality's unpleasant solutions
George F. Will |
WASHINGTON
Tight labor markets shrink income
inequality by causing employers to bid up the price of scarce labor, so
policymakers fretting about income inequality could give an epidemic
disease a try. This might be a bit extreme but if increased equality is
the goal, Stanford's Walter Scheidel should be heard. His scholarship
encompasses many things (classics, history, human biology) and if
current events are insufficiently depressing for you, try his
just-published book “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of
Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.” Judge this
book by its cover, which features Albrecht Durer's woodcut “The Four
Horsemen of the Apocalypse.”
A loss for Americans & Mexicans
Donald J. Boudreaux |
I'm all for cutting taxes. But I oppose
selective tax breaks given to a particular business in exchange for that
business agreeing to act in ways that it would not otherwise. Such
selective tax breaks are merely bribes to entice particular businesses
to do the government's bidding.
Such a bribe was negotiated by
President-elect Donald Trump and Vice-President-elect Mike Pence (still
governor of Indiana) to be paid by Indiana to Carrier's parent company,
United Technologies, in exchange for abandoning plans to move 1,000 jobs
to Mexico.
Matt Drudge: ‘Republican Party should be sued for fraud. No discussion of tax cuts now’
The media mogul says, ‘Back to basics, guys!’
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and a host of other Republicans will likely feel heat from constituents after Mr. Drudge — who rarely tweets — issued a blistering critique of their leadership.
Richard Blumenthal: Judge Gorsuch should condemn Trump publicly
Richard Blumenthal: Judge Gorsuch should condemn Trump publicly
“I absolutely accurately stated what Judge Gorsuch said to me, as confirmed by his own spokesman,” Mr. Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat, said on CNN’s “New Day.”
Private money-like products gain traction amid mistrust of government
As government currencies lose value, interest grows in private money-like products
Money has three functions. The first is to serve as a medium of exchange in order to facilitate transactions, rather than bartering one good for another. The second is to serve as a store of value. The third is to serve as a unit of account, which enables it to serve as a common measure of value of the goods and services being exchanged.
What economists see that most don't
What economists see that most don't
Donald J. Boudreaux
Economists see the world differently
than non-economists. Often, that involves nothing more than our habit of
looking not only at the most obvious facts of reality but also at the
less obvious facts.
For example, when Americans buy more
imported steel, everyone sees that some steelworkers in Pennsylvania and
Ohio lose their jobs. Economists, of course, also see these job losses.
But unlike most non-economists, economists see the jobs that are
created in America as a result of greater imports. Economists see that
foreigners use dollars earned selling steel to us to buy American
exports or to invest in America. Each of these uses creates jobs in
America.
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
Five Things You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Protectionist Trade Policies
Five Things You Need to Know About Donald Trump’s Protectionist Trade Policies
I was recently interviewed on Fox Business Network about Trump’s policies and the economy, and the discussion jumped around from issues such as border-adjustable taxation to energy regulation. Though the central theme of the discussion was whether Trump had good ideas for American jobs and business competitiveness.
Given my schizophrenic views on Trump, this meant I was both supportive and critical, and I hope certain people in the White House paid attention to my comment about there being no need for the “stick” of protectionism if Trump delivers on the “carrot” of tax cuts and deregulation.
Future Mexican Ambassador to US Is a NAFTA Hard-Liner
By: -
“President Trump granted Mr. Gutiérrez’s nomination to be Mexico’s ambassador to the United States,” a White House official said.
Nevertheless, Gutiérrez still has to be approved by the senate of Mexico which must happen in the following days. The diplomat, who could be the new ambassador of the Aztec country in the United States, is a supporter of the National Action Party (PAN). He was the Undersecretary of Foreign Affairs for North America under the government of Vicente Fox and currently serves as the managing director of the Development Bank for North America (NADB), and is also a close friend of the current chancellor, Luis Videgaray.
The Truth About Free Trade, Free Markets and Capitalism
Listening to the presumptive Republican and Democratic candidates for the White House, the average voter would think that international trade and investment is a zero sum game in which there is a “winner” and a “loser.” Their economic policy assumption is that other countries are gaining at the international trade game at the expense of the United States.
The fact is America is economically interconnected and interdependent with the rest of the world. About 20 percent of the American work force is employed in foreign trade and investment related jobs, and represents more than 25 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product.
Government “Free” Trade Deals Don’t Promote Freedom
Truly free trade can only take place in free markets, not in the prevailing mixed economies where governments pick favored trading partners: nations whose companies get a preferred status, whether they are they are the most competitive or not (in terms of price and quality of their products).
“Black Lives Matter” Is Focused on the Wrong Culprit and the Wrong Solution
As an American and
specifically a black American, I am glad that we are having a national
discussion about the devaluation of many black lives.
Unfortunately, the
movement leading this discussion — Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) — is
focused on the wrong culprit and the wrong solution.
“African-Americans
are Americans and we are not treated like that. We’re not treated as if
black lives matter,” president of BLM’s Worcester chapter, states. But who isn’t treating black lives as if they matter?
Experience and data tell
me that the group that most devalues my life is not abusive law
enforcement nor white racism — though these exist and should be fought —
it is black criminals.
There are many forms of devaluing life, but none compares to murder. And here’s the terrifying statistic:
if as a black man I am murdered the chances are 9 out of 10 that my
killer will be a black criminal as against a white, Hispanic, or Asian
criminal. 9 out of 10.
Patrolmen Without Borders
Even as the federal government fails to control the southern border, it sends the Border Patrol farther into the interior, where Americans complain that agents harass people who are already U.S. citizens.
It’s legal. The Supreme Court ruled that the Border Patrol can set up “inland” checkpoints anywhere up to 100 miles from an external border of the United States. That’s what government now considers a “reasonable distance” from the border.
Immigration Is American
“If they want to be in America,” the argument goes, “they ought to return to their own countries and apply for a visa legally. America should not reward law breaking.”
That sounds sensible — but what happens when the immigrant does that, goes to the U.S. embassy and says, I’d like to work in America legally?
He gets paperwork to fill out and is told to go home to wait. And wait. A Forbes investigation found that a computer programmer from India must wait, on average, 11 years. A high school graduate from Mexico must wait an average 130 years!
Documented Irresponsibility
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have left the border with Mexico porous for years — porous not just for Mexicans but for anybody else, including terrorists from the Middle East.
Two very different issues have gotten jumbled together in the political stew called “comprehensive immigration reform.” The first and most fundamental issue is whether we are going to have an immigration policy at all. The second issue is: Just what should that immigration policy be?
If we do not control our own border, then we do not have any immigration policy. We may have immigration laws on the books, but if anybody can cross the border that wants to, those laws are just words on paper and a bad joke.
No comments:
Post a Comment