Garner Arrest About Revenue, Not Racism

The Eric Garner arrest was about revenue. It was a cigarette tax enforcement crackdown. The outcome had nothing to do with race and everything to do with big expensive nanny state government. Liberals want big expensive government and want the police to enforce tax collection. However, they also need to play the race card whenever they can because that's all they have left as far as getting votes. Liberal results for minorities are bad schools and crime ridden neighborhoods. Bankrupt Detroit is the Liberal endgame, the end result of a generation of one party control of city government. Minority voters need to be distracted from the bad outcomes by constant racism allegations. The police are tired of being ordered to enforce tax laws and then being thrown under the bus when they do. The supervising police sergeant on the scene of the Garner arrest was a black woman. This is ignored because of the Liberal need to see racism everywhere. Liberals were quick to blame the Gabby Giffords shooting on Sarah Palin, but are outraged when New York police blame the murder of two cops on Mayor Bill de Blasio using the same logic with a lot more justification. Liberals are being destroyed by their own internal inconsistencies.

Yucky Lunches Will Yield Next Generation of Republicans

Michelle Obama's nutritious but unappetizing lunch program guarantees a generation of young Republicans in the near future. These kids are not going to forget who gave them a choice between yuck and hunger. They will want to get even and could spend a lifetime doing it in the voting booth.

An Obvious Answer and the Hard Truth of Charlie Hebdo

There is one obvious answer to terrorism in support of censorship. We have to deny the terrorists what they want. The terrorists wanted to limit the distribution of cartoons that make fun of Jihadists. We can deny the terrorists their goal by distributing the cartoons to as wide an audience as possible. I think Charlie Hebdo should put out a collection of translated anti Jihad cartoons in electronic editions in various languages and sell them on a web site. I would buy one in English. I am sure many other customers would buy them in their languages as well. I apologize that my French is too rusty to be useful anymore. Charlie Hebdo can raise funds to help the families of the victims and make a statement about freedom of the press at the same time.  If every time terrorists attack to limit cartoon distribution, the cartoons just go viral on the web, it will tend to discourage them.

The only real solution to Jihadist terrorism is to kill the Jihadists wherever they are until there are none.  Jihadists are rabid dogs and there is no other solution.  They have declared total war on everybody who does not worship exactly the way they do, including Muslims who are not sufficiently strict in their observances.  Jihadists have claimed a divine license to kill every man, woman and child who does not meet their requirements.  Jihadists have repeatedly engaged in mass slaughter, demonstrating that they really mean exactly what they say about killing anyone who doesn't measure up.  Hash tags and "Je suis Charlie" signs are not going to stop these killers.  Only rigor mortis is an effective cure for what's wrong with Jihadists.  That's the hard truth.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/show-the-cartoons-charlie-hebdo-sony-attack/384304/

Economic Policy: What Should We Have Done In 2009?

Government spending does not stimulate the economy because government is far less efficient than private enterprise. Tax rate cuts would stimulate the economy because they would reward productive investment with a better rate of return and ultimately put more resources in private hands. The crash of 2007-2008 was due to over leveraging. To unwind it, a lot of debt needed to be converted into equity. A couple of changes would encourage that. First would be to lower the capital gains tax rate to encourage more equity investment. Another thing that would be to make dividends tax deductible to corporations, just as interest payments are. This would remove the bias in favor of debt financing for private firms. The way to prevent too big to fail banks is to force them to have bigger capital reserves than small enough to fail banks. Dodd-Frank could be replaced by a simple rule that says that if the bank is larger than 1% or 2% of the overall banking assets of the United States it needs to have a 10% capital reserve. To make this a little easier, the law could allow banks to sell a special class of bonds that are convertible to equity in the event of regular capital reserves falling to zero. Regular capital reserves for big banks could be 5%, with the additional 5% coming from the convertible bonds. None of the banks that failed or were bailed out would have needed federal help if their capital reserves were this high. Big banks will dismantle themselves quickly to get away from high reserve requirements and the problem will be solved. Republicans should remember who Wall Street backs with political contributions and do the right thing on requiring big reserves from big banks.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/395775/debating-economics-james-c-capretta