More Wisdom from Walter Williams

Bad Men, Good Presidents

By Walter E. Williams | August 22, 2018 5:52 PM EDT

With the continuing hysteria about Donald Trump's presidency, a few questions come to mind. The first: Can a bad man become a good president? The second: Does one's being a good man guarantee he'll be a good president? Third: Does having a good president require a good man? Is there any evidence of Lord Acton's argument that “great men are almost always bad men?”
I think former President Jimmy Carter was a good man who became a weak and bad president, both in domestic matters and in foreign affairs. President Bill Clinton was a bad man who became a reasonably good president in domestic and foreign matters. But then there was that impeachment issue that greatly tarnished his presidency.
What about our current president? I think Trump's personal behavior prior to his presidency is not something we'd call high character. We might put him down as a bad man, but what about his presidency? I think that he'd qualify for this description: a bad man but good president. The average reader might ask, “Williams, what's your evidence?” In a recent letter to me, Stephen Moore, a George Mason University graduate and a distinguished visiting fellow for the Project for Economic Growth at The Heritage Foundation, put together a list of President Trump's achievements. I recognize the possibility that they will be seen as horrible, maybe treasonous, by the nation's leftists.
Trump has appointed Neil Gorsuch and nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court. Both men have stellar judicial qualifications and a deep respect for the U.S. Constitution. In addition, Trump has nominated more than two dozen lower court judges who have similar respect for our Constitution and are not likely to make laws from the bench.
Trump has shepherded through Congress the largest personal and corporate tax cuts since the Reagan administration. His administration has created a 35 percent reduction in regulations. Those reductions, including the rollback of costly Environmental Protection Agency regulations, have led to the biggest energy boom in history, making the U.S. the world's No. 1 energy producer and thus ending our dependence on Middle Eastern oil producers.
The Trump administration has ended the Obamacare mandate and reformed the very costly Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Helping with these economic matters is free marketer Larry Kudlow, whom Trump appointed as director of the National Economic Council. As a result of the gross domestic product's growth spurt, caused by tax cuts and deregulation, unemployment is less than 4 percent. Black unemployment is hovering around the all-time low at 6.6 percent. In fact, it's estimated that there are 6 million more jobs than workers. Also on the domestic front, the Trump administration is trying to push through sweeping prison and sentencing reforms.
President Trump has also made important gains in international affairs. He's gotten us out of the Paris climate accord. Aside from the fact that the agreement imposed costs and special disadvantages on the U.S., the Paris agreement should have been presented as a treaty to the U.S. Senate. Trump also got us out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- the Iranian nuclear deal. Aside from Iran's violation of both the letter and the spirit of the agreement, it, too, should have been presented before the U.S. Senate for approval. President Barack Obama did not present either the Paris climate accord or the Iranian nuclear deal for Senate approval. He knew neither would have passed muster and instead used his executive powers.
Also on the international front, Trump has gotten North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un to the bargaining table to negotiate denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. He's gotten our NATO allies to cough up more money for their own defense. Trump is rebuilding our military strength, which is beginning to put the fear of God into our adversaries.
The bottom line is that President Donald Trump does not have the personal character that we would want our children to imitate but has turned out to be a good president, save his grossly misguided international trade policies.

Trump Tax Cut, Tax Revenue up 1%

Sunday, August 19, 2018

WSJ: Tax Revenues Are Up 1%, Despite Trump Tax Cuts

By Paul Caron

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Wall Street Journal editorial, Tax Revenues Are Higher:

Perhaps you’ve read that the federal budget deficit is rising again, and that’s true. But what you probably haven’t heard is that the main reason is spending, not falling revenue from tax cuts.

The Congressional Budget Office released its budget summary for July this week, and the deficit for the first 10 months of fiscal 2018 reached $682 billion, up $116 billion from a year earlier. Federal spending increased by $143 billion for all the usual reasons—especially Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

But revenues were higher as well—up $26 billion. Corporate income taxes were down substantially as expected in the wake of the tax reform that cut the corporate rate and added 100% expensing. But individual income taxes increased by $104 billion, or 7.9%, despite the cut in individual tax rates.

How could that be? CBO says one reason is that withholding from paychecks increased by $32 billion, which “largely reflects increases in wages and salaries.” In other words, a faster-growing economy employed more people who made more money.

Enough's Enough, by Walter Williams

Enough's Enough

By Walter E. Williams | August 15, 2018 11:57 PM EDT

During the weekend of Aug. 4-5 (and the preceding Friday night), 12 Chicagoans were shot dead, and 62 others were shot and wounded, the Chicago Tribune reported. Before last week's mayhem, 1,718 Chicagoans had been shot since the beginning of the year, and 306 had been murdered. Adding to this tragedy is the fact that Chicago's clearance rate is less than 15 percent. That means that in more than 85 percent of Chicago's homicides, no suspect is charged. Chicago is by no means unique in this lawlessness. Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis and some other major cities share high rates of homicides.
It's not just shootings and homicides that negatively impact the overwhelmingly law-abiding black residents of these cities. In addition, there are sky-high rates of burglaries, rapes and property destruction. The schools are notoriously bad. City budgets face shortfalls. Residents deal with deteriorating city services. All of this causes mass exoduses from these cities by their most capable people.
Ordinary decency demands that something be done to address the horrible conditions under which so many black Americans live. White liberals, black politicians and sports figures focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? According to Washington Post data, as of July 9, 626 people had been shot and killed by police this year. Of that number, 114 were black. Last year, 987 people were shot and killed by police, of which 223 were black. To put police shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chicago alone in 2017, there were 674 homicides, almost 80 percent of whose victims were black. It would appear that if one is truly concerned about black deaths, shootings by police should figure way down on one's list -- which is not to excuse bad behavior by some police officers.
Would getting more blacks and Democrats in political office help? It turns out that of the Chicago City Council's 50 aldermen, only one is Republican. One is an independent. Forty-eight aldermen are Democrats, and 19 are black. In fact, most of the cities where large segments of their black citizenry live under horrible conditions have been controlled by Democrats for nearly a half-century, and there are many blacks on the instruments of control, such as chiefs of police, superintendents of schools and members of city councils. If Democratic and black control meant anything, these cities would be paradises.
How helpful to these desperate black communities are the efforts of so many black politicians to focus on allegations about President Donald Trump's ties to Russia? The leader of the movement to impeach Trump is Rep. Maxine Waters. Her congressional district suffers from high crime rates and failing schools. She, like most other black politicians, claims that she is helping her constituency by doing all she can to fight to get more taxpayer money to her district.
More money from taxpayers could not fix the problems of these communities. Over the past 50 years, more than $16 trillion has been spent on poverty programs. The majority of those programs have simply made poverty more comfortable by giving poor people more food, health care, housing, etc. What's needed most is to get poor people to change their behavior. Chief among the modifications is reducing female-headed households. Female-headed households produce most of our prison inmates, the highest crime rates and disproportionate numbers of high school dropouts and suicides. These devastating factors are far beyond the capacity of Washington to fix.
The only people who can fix these problems are black people themselves. Black athletes could be far more productive by going to schools and community centers to encourage constructive behavior and shaming self-destructive behavior. Support should be given to police to stop criminals from preying on communities. Nongovernmental local groups should be encouraged to play greater roles.
It's a challenge, but keep in mind that black people had the intestinal fortitude to lead the world's greatest civil rights movement through some very dark days from 1865 to 1965. I believe that we're up to the challenge.
If we wait for Washington to solve our problems, we'll be waiting for a long time.

Bob Hope says it all.