Pun Salad

The IRS played partisan politics during the Obama years by targeting taxpayer organizations such “Tea Party” groups. Now the IRS is at it again, this time leaking the tax returns of selected rich people to advance Biden’s class-warfare agenda.

There are two logical responses.

1. Cut the IRS budget so the bureaucrats learn a very important lesson that corruption is bad.
2. Reform the tax code with a simple and fair flat tax so the IRS can be dramatically downsized.

I suspect most Americans would select both options.

I’ve always been an independent sort of person who tries to balance the needs of myself and my family with the needs of the greater community. I think most people in New Hampshire approach life that way too — we don’t put “Live Free or Die” on our license plates for nothing. And a national paid leave program is all about freedom — the freedom not to have to choose between their family and their job at a time of crisis. The freedom to start a small business, on a level playing field with the big corporate types. The freedom to take time you need to be healthy, or to care for your family the way you need to. The freedom to live the kind of life that makes our businesses, our communities, and our state strong.

I should be used to such opportunistic policymaking since the favorite pre-pandemic talking point by those who wanted to implement a federal paid leave program was that the United States doesn't offer paid leave for workers. Yet, this claim is bunk. While the United States government doesn't have a federal paid leave program, government surveys show that some 65 percent of American workers nevertheless have access to some form of paid leave. In fact, the absence of a federal program means we are also a country with a vast and expanding network of companies that provide benefits like paid leave programs that are flexible, accommodating and often more generous than the plan some liberals and conservatives have in mind.

The irony is that this pandemic has forced employers and employees to try new workplace arrangements and use technology in ways that could lead to a major shake-up in the flexibility afforded to parents who must both work and take care of children. Implementing one-size-fits-all government policies now could stop this transformation as employers might feel better able to require employees to work on-site.

U.S.—After the passing of Juneteenth as a federal holiday, the libertarians of the nation are renewing their push for 365 federal holidays a year.

"We're glad the federal government will not be working one more day -- but it's not enough," said local libertarian man Jake Fluglehorn of Idaho. "We will not rest until the federal government has a holiday every single day of the year."