John H. Cochrane's Unsolicited Advice is worthwhile reading. It's aimed at Trump's economic team, but even so:
Here’s an agenda. (Mostly, “read the last 10 years of Grumpy Economist,” but I distill.) In big philosophical terms, this is the “growth” “abundance” “efficiency” and “freedom” agenda. That contrasts with some on the right who long for a more protected life, and are willing to accept the stagnation that protected economies suffer, as evident in Europe and Latin America.
But you don’t have to get in a fight. There are so many opportunities in the Trump agenda, that if you spend your time on the bold growth-oriented innovations rather than fighting too much about tariffs, you will get much further.
And excerpt from his "Taxes" section:
The current income tax system is an abomination. Burn it and start over.
The tax code has three functions: Raise revenue for the government, redistribute income, and subsidize this and that. Start by separating the functions.
[…]
To raise revenue for the government with minimal economic cost, the unequivocal answer is to eliminate the personal and corporate income tax, estate tax, all taxes on rates of return (interest, dividends capital gains) and replace them with a consumption tax. The same rate for all goods: don’t transfer income by mucking with prices. No deductions, no exclusions, not even mortgage interest and charitable deductions. Lower the rate, broaden the base. I prefer a VAT for various reasons, but the mechanism doesn’t matter so much. The “fair tax” was already introduced into Congress. Detailed consumption-tax proposals have been around since the 1970s. This could happen.
Could, probably won't. But, hey, I did not think Trump had a shot at the presidency, either.
Also of note:
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I'm waiting patiently for the Contrarian to be anything other than partisan dreck. Jeffrey Blehar is watching too, and his headline is [sarcasm warning in three, two, one…] Andy Borowitz Inspires over at The Contrarian.
One of my favorite catty apocryphal media rumors from the recent internet era is that “humorist” (scare-quotes intended) Andy Borowitz was let go by his longtime employer the New Yorker — that high-minded magazine of culture and political commentary — because its editors were secretly mortified that his sub-mediocre assembly-line dad jokes were always the most popular and high-traffic content on their website.
One of my other favorite catty apocryphal media rumors from the recent internet era is that “columnist” (scare-quotes intended) Jennifer Rubin was unsubtly dared to “quit” a while ago by her longtime employer the Washington Post — that high-minded newspaper of the federal clerisy — because its editors were secretly mortified that her sub-mediocre assembly-line Resistance squawks were always the most popular and high-traffic content on their website.
Who can know what to believe? All I know is that I myself couldn’t believe my excitement when Rubin announced earlier this week that both she and Borowitz — Batman and Superman — would be teaming up and bringing their Super Friends like Laurence Tribe and Sherrilyn Ifill along to the fortress of solitude known as The Contrarian to band together and resist tyranny. “Laughter is one of the most powerful weapons against autocracy,” wrote team waterboy Norm Eisen as he announced the new arsenal of democracy would be stocked by an unarmed man.
That link in the first paragraph above goes to Salon, which is honest enough to admit that Andy Borowitz isn't funny. And (surprise) their article manages to be funny itself in elaborating on that assertion.
But Jeffrey duplicates Borowitz's first effort, and … well, see what you think.
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Never was a metaphor so accurate. Eric Boehm looks back at the past few weeks and despairs: Regulation, prohibition, and litigation: Joe Biden's busy lame-duck period. Example one hasn't gotten a lot of attention:
The latest in that string of last-second executive actions was a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Wednesday against Deere & Company, the manufacturer of John Deere tractors and other farm equipment. The lawsuit alleges that Deere has used proprietary software to ensure that only the company's authorized dealers can conduct repairs on the computer systems that run much of modern farm equipment.
The lawsuit is a potentially big showdown for the so-called right-to-repair movement, which is seeking laws and court opinions that prevent companies from using those sorts of restrictive software components to force consumers into using certain repair services. Despite much of the FTC's track record over the past four years, this might actually be a useful and consumer-friendly development.
But the process matters, and rushing this lawsuit out the door in the final days of the Biden administration is likely to harm its chances of succeeding. As Deere noted in a statement, the lawsuit seems to misrepresent some basic facts about what repair services customers can do on their own. In a dissenting statement, FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson (who will become chairman of the agency after Donald Trump is sworn in) condemned the effort as "the result of brazen partisanship…taken in haste to beat President Trump into office."
In other words, this looks more like a performative final flourish by outgoing FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan rather than a serious attempt at improving consumer welfare.
Equal time for Karl Bode at TechDirt, who predictably cheers this last minute lawfare: FTC Finally Sues John Deere Over Years Of ‘Right To Repair’ Abuses.
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The Summoner's Tale. Jonathan Turley is less than impressed with Biden's version: Biden Again Summons His “Leading Legal Constitutional Scholars” to Support an Absurd Constitutional Claim. Serious legal analysis has judged that claim anywhere from "ludicrous" to "contemptible". So:
So Biden made a familiar call. In the film Casablanca, Captain Renault, played by Claude Reins, famously tells his men to “round up the usual suspects” to make things look good to the public. The Biden White House would often do the same thing when contemplating a clearly unconstitutional action.
The top of that list has always been Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe, who once again was the most cited academic claiming that the 28th amendment was ratified despite the Justice Department, archivists, the courts, and mere logic claiming otherwise.
Jonathan cites Tribe's history of bad legal advice and easily-debunked conspiracism.
And on that note, Ann Althouse uncovers a Tribe quote that (I think) is a classic example of saying the quiet part out loud in NYT article: "In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can."
Ann embeds a classic excerpt from The Odd Couple (the Lemmon/Matthau movie), and if you watched that you can probably guess which scene. But anyway, from that article:
Proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment have long made it clear that their strategy is primarily a political, not a legal one. Their goal is to dare Republicans to challenge the legitimacy of sex equality, and of moving to nullify something as simple as equal rights for women.
“This is a political rather than a legal struggle,” Laurence Tribe, the constitutional scholar and professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, has said. “It would succeed only in a different environment than we have.”
Mr. Tribe argued that the import of Mr. Biden’s move was in the signal it would send to the country.
“The real question is what political message is being sent,” he said. “In a political environment like this, you throw at the wall whatever you can.”
And… now it's garbage.
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