Op-Eds

Trump: A Joker in the GOP’s Presidential Deck

10 Comments
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in...
English: Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Some people,” as Barry Switzer famously declared (rather oddly for a football coach),  “are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.” And then there’s Donald Trump.

Inheriting a $250 million fortune built by his father on government loans and housing contracts, Trump fell close to the family’s corporate welfare tree. He now claims a net worth in the billions and cultivates the myth that he is a “self-made man.”

His version of the story doesn’t mention the government subsidies, the “too big to fail” debt (continually restructured by bankers who feared going down with him if he defaulted) or the multiple business bankruptcies.

So there stands The Donald on third base, hamming it up for the cameras and periodically awarding himself MVP trophies. Home plate, he’s now decided, is the White House.

I have to hand it to the guy. Anyone who can go bust four times running casinos — casinos, for the love of Pete! — then suggest, with a straight face, that he’s the man to bring fiscal responsibility and business acumen to Washington, deserves credit for sheer chutzpah.

Perhaps his descent into xenophobic rant is an attempt distract attention from the weak “self-made man” narrative. Or maybe he’s a Democratic mole. Either way, he’s bad news for Republican prospects in 2016 and beyond.

Trump’s claim that a disproportionate percentage of Mexican immigrants are “criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” seems custom crafted to cost the Republican ticket double digit vote percentages.

The first problem with his assertion is that it’s flatly false.  As syndicated columnist Steve Chapman points out in Reason magazine, Mexican immigrant populations in the US correlate to lower, not higher, violent crime rates.  “If Trump wants to avoid rapists, here’s some advice: Head for areas with lots of residents who were born in Mexico.”

The second problem is that he’s throwing a bomb, fuse lit and hissing, into the GOP’s attempt to solve its voter demographic problem. White males (the party’s “base”) are a shrinking proportion of the electorate. Hispanic voters, on the other hand, are growing in number.

Smart Republicans understand this. At least three candidates  — Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush — hope to move in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue on the strength of significant Hispanic support.

There’s a tightrope between the GOP’s opportunistic devolution into Know-Nothingism since the days of Reagan and George HW Bush (who competed in 1980 for the title of “most open borders candidate”) and an appeal to immigrant voters and their families.

And there’s Trump, doing unicycle stunts on the tightrope, jostling the other performers’ elbows, forcing the PR choice between supporting him, slamming him or trying to ignore him. It’s a long way down and the ground below is very hard. Choose carefully.

The Republican Party has two possible political futures: In one,  it gets libertarian on immigration. In the other it gives up its hopes for the White House not just in 2016, but for the foreseeable future.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

AUDIO VERSION

 

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

“National Debt” is a Scam. Repudiate It.

6 Comments

rgbstockcutcreditcards

The world’s political elites sound a lot like Chicken Little lately as Greece’s regime heads into what looks like full-scale default and Puerto Rico’s governor publicly mulls bankruptcy proceedings.

Lots of other governments continuously teeter on the edge of that same abyss, not least that of the United States. Given current tax and spending trends, by 2020 the US government’s accrued debt will exceed $23 trillion (more than the country’s annual Gross Domestic Product) and half of all tax revenues will go toward interest on that debt.

Apropos of which, let me quote Friedrich Nietzsche: “Everything the state says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”

The whole idea of “national debt” is poppycock and propaganda.

Suppose I’m perpetually short on cash, and so every week I break into your house and rob you at gunpoint. But I always need $200 and you usually only have $100 on you. So I go to the local loan shark every week and borrow the other $100 from him, on the supposition that I’ll keep on robbing you weekly forever and that sooner or later either you will cough up more money or I will need less,  so the loan shark will get paid back.

Question: Are you in any way morally responsible for my debt?

Answer: Not even a little.

What I just described is government finance in a nutshell, stripped of the propaganda. You’re no more morally responsible for the real debts the politicians run up in your name than you are for the hypothetical debt I ran up in your name in my little story.

If anyone tries to tell you that “we” owe $18 trillion to the US government’s creditors, ask him who this “we” is. Does he have a mouse in his pocket or something?

If anyone tells you that “your share” of the “national debt” is approaching $60k, demand to see the promissory notes proving that you co-signed the politicians’ loans.

In the real world, nobody actually believes that the US national debt will ever be paid off. Today’s politicians and those who loan them money are just hoping you’ll keep picking up their tab until they can retire and stick some future generation with the check.

The politicians can’t be counted upon to repudiate their debts.  But the rest of us can and should do in their stead.  “We” don’t owe them anything.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

“Tax Incentives”: Cut! That’s a Wrap!

Leave a comment
Map of USA highlighting states with no income tax
Map of USA highlighting states with no income tax (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Movie and television producers say they just can’t afford to film in Florida without “tax incentives,” a mix of special tax treatment and outright corporate welfare. And with those welfare checks drying up (Rene Rodriquez, “Florida’s entertainment industry fights for flailing tax-incentive program,” Miami Herald, June 28), they’re reduced to grabbing some quick exterior shots for location flavor, then moving production to states where the legislatures are more willing to be more cavalier with taxpayer funds.

Re-combobulating state policy to spur “economic development” is a losing game. Every time a rent-seeking industry comes along demanding that taxpayers build them a sports stadium, kick back a portion of highly hypothetical “money we’re causing to come here” or cut them special slack on taxes, the eventual outcome turns out to be an economic wash at best.  Native residents and long-established, home-grown businesses pick up the tab for legislators’ mistakes. The only real gains come in the form of fancy lunches and campaign contributions for those legislators.

Fortunately, things are starting to change nationwide. As Rodriguez notes, in recent years “many states downsized or eliminated their incentive programs altogether.” That leaves Florida in great position to compete with Hollywood as a film center and win.

California demands a top state income tax rate of 13.3% from its citizens and residents. Florida takes no income tax at all. Florida also compares favorably with California (and the rest of the US) when it comes to sales and property taxes. The “tax incentives” are already there, no special programs needed!

When it comes to shooting locations, Florida competes well too. Aside from Arctic and mountainous terrain, there’s almost no outdoor environment or terrain type that can’t be either found or cheaply simulated in Florida. We’ve got jungle. We’ve got swamp. We’ve got evergreen and deciduous forest. We’ve got beach. We’ve got ocean. We’ve got island. We’ve got iconic cityscapes and bucolic farmland.

We’ve also got the infrastructure and the population to support as many studios and crews as care to come here, where they can make — and keep! — more money from their work.

We don’t need a bunch of tax jiggery-pokery and lobbyist-fueled legislative favoritism  to bring more television and movie production to Florida. We can get there by hopping off the corporate welfare/special interest merry-go-round and promoting our state as what it is: Hands down, the best place in America to do business.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.