Taxes, Remember Those?

But it is hard to see why conservatives wouldn’t be excited about what Cruz and Paul have put forward. It’s what tax filers have been waiting decades for:

First, the Cruz/Paul plans would give America the lowest tax rates since the income tax was devised 100 years ago. For this reason, these plans are estimated by the Tax Foundation to grow the economy by a gigantic $2 trillion extra GDP per year after 10 years. That’s exactly the opposite effect of the Clinton and Sanders plans.

Second, both the Cruz and Paul plans eliminate almost all deductions and credits — which is how they get the rate so low. The IRS could be dramatically shrunk in size. Don’t forget, when there are fewer deductions, there are fewer ways to cheat on your taxes. The lower the tax rate, the less incentive to cheat, which means greater voluntary compliance.

Third, because the Cruz and Paul plans are “border adjustable”: Imports are taxed at the flat rate when they are brought into the U.S., but American products sold abroad are not taxed at all. This would level the global playing field for American manufacturers, tech firms and drug companies and bring these jobs scampering back home. Trump’s tariff ideas could be put back on the shelf, and those who want “fair trade” should celebrate.

http://www.investors.com/politics/viewpoint/stephen-moore-which-candidate-has-the-fairest-tax-plan-of-all/

They Matter, Yes, All of Them

Drug was casualties:

Without question, police officers must be constantly retrained in courtesy and respect; too often they develop boorish, callous attitudes towards civilians on the street. Some are unfit to serve. Some are surely racists. And if de-escalation training can safely reduce officer use of force further, it should be widely implemented. But the Black Lives Matter movement’s focus on shootings by police should not distract attention from the most serious use-of-force problem facing black communities: criminal violence. In 2014, there were 6,095 black homicide victims, more than all white and Hispanic homicide victims combined, even though blacks are only 13 percent of the population. The black homicide toll will be even higher in 2015. In over 90 percent of those black deaths, the killer was another black civilian.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/02/08/black-and-unarmed-behind-the-numbers?ref=hp-1-111#.IUm121ijn

Nothing to See Here, Move Along

Of course, nothing happened. Obama Administration Attorney General Loretta Lynchsaid that the U.S. Attorney was using "prosecutorial discretion.” That discretion protected Lerner from the grand jury.

As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized, this sets an ugly precedent. Under the Obama administration, officials are above the law — at least so long as they’re targeting Obama’s political opponents. Accountability? Rule of Law? That’s just for the little people.

And that’s the worst outcome of all. It’s not just that evidence overwhelmingly points to the IRS having been weaponized in an effort to neutralize Obama’s Tea Party opposition. It’s that ordinary Americans can look at this and conclude that there’s no reason to follow the law if they can get away with breaking it since the people in charge of enforcing the law clearly regard it with contempt.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/08/irs-tea-party-targeting-lois-lerner-corruption--obama-glenn-reynolds-column/79967098/

The Futility of it All

How can we not be disgusted by these systems, totally out of control, as we watch the political class talk about "transformation" or so other meaningless gibberish.  Government employees holding us hostage to absurd federal rules about pay, transfers and moving expenses.

We know we needed get upset about this kind of absurdity because no matter the outrage, it will only get worse.

Despite all of the dark whispering the NRA and “dark money,” the right-wing bogeymen mostly are minor players. The two major teachers’ unions are between them the biggest political spender in Washington, with the NEA and the ATF spending a combined $50 million in the 2014 cycle. AFSCME, the government-employees’ union, spent $11 million that cycle, and was the twelfth-largest overall political spender. The NRA, which barely cracks the top-300 list, spent less than $1 million. Beyond spending on (overwhelmingly Democratic) political campaigns, government workers and their unions also show up to vote, to knock on doors, and to bully, harass, and threaten nonconformists. They are the backbone of the Democratic party — and they are thieving, lazy, grasping, thieving, dishonest, thieving, pervy, thieving, detestable, despicable, thieving, thieving thieves with a minor sideline in violence and intimidation.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430537/melissa-click-university-missouri-assault-tenure-veterans-affairs

"What A Muldoon"

In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/430380/al-gore-doomsday-clock-expires-climate-change-fanatics-wrong-again

Trust? Or Subjugation?

But none of that will quickly repair the deep, pervasive damage to the public’s trust in government, say experts and others involved in the crisis.

“People have realized they’ve been lied to, and EPA knew about this, and the state knew about this,” said Virginia Tech engineering professor Marc Edwards, a national authority on municipal water quality whose tests exposed the extent of Flint’s lead contamination. “What you really have as it spun out of control is a total loss of trust in government, which failed [residents] miserably. They don’t believe a word that anyone tells them.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/flints-water-crisis-reveals-government-failures-at-every-level/2016/01/23/03705f0c-c11e-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html

The whole mess occurred because Flint decided against renewing its 30-year contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and switched instead to Karengondi Water Authority (KWA). KWA was planning to build its own hugely expensive pipeline, parallel to DWSD's, to harness water from Lake Huron and service the Genesee County area where Flint is located. This left the city in the lurch for a few years when its contract with DWSD ended but the new facility had not yet gone online, prompting it to reopen a local mothballed facility that relied on the toxic Flint River as its source (more on the rank stupidity of this decision later).

The rationale for the original decision to switch Flint's water providers was that, in the long run, KWA would generate substantial savings for the cash-strapped city. Not only was this false but Snyder had very good reasons at that time to believe that this was false.

The Flint Water Crisis Is the Result of a Stimulus Project Gone Wrong

WSJ: Climate Snow Job

"Surface temperatures are indeed increasing slightly: They’ve been going up, in fits and starts, for more than 150 years, or since a miserably cold and pestilential period known as the Little Ice Age. Before carbon dioxide from economic activity could have warmed us up, temperatures rose three-quarters of a degree Fahrenheit between 1910 and World War II. They then cooled down a bit, only to warm again from the mid-1970s to the late ’90s, about the same amount as earlier in the century.

"Whether temperatures have warmed much since then depends on what you look at. "

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-snow-job-1453664732

Just keep changing the parameters until the stats say what you want them to say.  In other words, figure lie and liars figure.  Or, "liars, damned liars and statistics".