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Bribe Not Needed

Budgets, Politics

So The Donald wants to give us $5,000 after the November midterm elections:

“If the Republicans win the House of Representatives and the United States Senate, both of them, because of our… tremendous economic success, like in history we’ve never had anything like what’s happening, but because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America for $5,000,” Trump said on night one of the convention, comparing the move to “a successful company” that does a “cash distribution to its shareholders.”

I know what I’d do if I were a shareholder in a company drowning in debt and unfulfilled obligations and the CEO stated that he wanted to pay a cash dividend because of a recent short-term upturn in sales.  I’d tell him to do something better with the company’s money, like retire some of the debt the company has been incurring under his stewardship — firstly, from 2015 to 2019, and likewise from 2025 until today.

Failing that I have a question:  how, exactly, is he going to fund this so-called “dividend”?

Look, it’s all very well to dress up this little bit of voter bribery in corporate-speak, but the fact remains that it’s essentially a political action, and therefore it’s going to be paid by the Treasury.

Memo to the President:  what you really need to do, Mr. President, if you want to offer us a bribe, is not offer us cash — cash which, by the way, we’ll have to pay taxes on — but instead promise us to pass a permanent cut in the tax rates (all brackets) after the mid-terms.  Drop the top rate (37%) to 25%, and by similar percentages all the way down the line.  (The DSA Communists want to increase our taxes; make the Republican point of difference to lower taxes.  See which one works better come election time.)

If you thought the economy was doing well before, see what happens after that.

And when the tax revenues increase hugely as a result — and they will, of course —  use that growth in income to pay down the debt, buy back T-bills from foreign investors (like China), or use at least some of it to fund the terminations of federal employees.  (I know you’ve been doing okay so far in terms of the latter activity, but you need to do better.  Try to get the non-Defense federal workforce to fall to the equivalent levels of, say, the Coolidge Administration.

On that topic, feel free to get rid of the busybody government departments — you know, the ones that have crippled industry and innovation by adding more and more federal regulations.  (And on that topic:  FFS, why are the Dept of Education and ATF still in existence?)

Anyway, to return to the main point:

Don’t give us a cheap “dividend” that is only valuable until it’s spent;  give us lasting relief through lower taxes.

We’ve been doing our bit to help you by eliminating ur-Democrats and RINOs like that Cornyn weasel in the Republican primaries.  When Ken Paxton gets to D.C., he’s going to be on your side, I promise you.  He’s not the best we Texans might have done, by the way, but he sure as hell is going to be a better MAGA Senator than Cornyn.  And he sure as hell will be a “yes” vote on lower tax rates when that legislation come up for a vote in the Senate.

We’ll do our best in November to get you the Congressmen and Senators that you’ll need in 2027 and onwards;  do your best to lower taxes and get government off our backs.

That would be a real dividend for us.

Things I’m Going To Miss

Gratuitous Chick Pics

….following my decision to stop posting tottypics:

Kelly Brook

And her feelings about herself:

“I love my facials, massage, I have a little Botox because I frown a lot. I do do things, but when it comes to my body, I’m really precious about my body.

“I love my body, I absolutely love my body. I did a marathon this year.

“My body has got me through so many things, and I just love my curves, my husband loves my curves.

“I just think it’s unfortunate that women feel the need to change who they are.”

(This may become an ongoing feature…)

Hidden Motive, Hidden Enemy

Foreign Affairs

Over among the Big Brains at American Thinker, John DiLeo has a take on the current trade blowup with Canuckistan that I hadn’t considered:

A more important fact to remember, though, is that Canada is far more dependent upon American goods than the USA is on Canadian goods. The USA is the origin of somewhere between a third and a half of Canada’s global imports. Canada cannot win a trade war with the USA. By having a trade war with us at all, Canada loses, no matter what.

So the question would seem to be, why did Carney start this?

We know where Carney is getting his advice. A longtime central banker who was not in electoral politics before being selected as Canada’s PM last year, he has hired American Democrat activists (yes, that’s USA Democrats) as key advisors, including as his chief of staff, to assist him in planning policies that will hurt President Trump and the Republican party in the midterms this fall.

That much, I’d figured out already.  Then this:

In his first year and a half on the job, Carney has signed new deals with Mainland China, committing to increase Canada’s already considerable linkage with the CCP economy. He’s basically committing Canada to be a willing vassal in China’s notorious “Belt and Road Initiative.”

So the old law-and-order question comes:  “Cui bono?”  (who benefits) from this rather unnecessary trade war?  Why would “the Canadians walk away from a trade agreement to which their negotiators had already agreed, when Prime Minister Mark Carney recalled them specifically to create a fight”?

DiLeo spells it out:

Trump Administration trade negotiations are designed not just to get more manufacturing here in the USA, but also to get more manufacturing in Canada, and more in Mexico, and more in the UK, and more in the EU.

As we watch these battles, we see that the governments of some of those countries are kicking and screaming at the prospect. Amazingly, they don’t want to protect the jobs of their own citizens; they want to leave the status quo in place, watching their own manufacturing sectors continue to be hollowed out, watching China continue to fill the vacuum.

And:

The Chinese remain what they have been for decades: a dishonest partner, practicing every trade crime from Uyghur slave labor to currency manipulation, from material dumping to intellectual property theft.

Yup.  China is asshoe, and worse:  they’ve become our sworn enemy, just as much as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.

And they have more allies in the West than we do.

Sufficiency

Guy Stuff, Lifestyle, Toys

I was watching this podcast, and one of the statements (made at about the 41-minute mark) resonated with me.  It was this:

“For me, cars and watches are a similar thing, because at a very early accessible price point, they both fulfill their brief.  So telling the time and getting from A to B, happens with an Apple watch and a Dacia Sandero.  If you’re concerned about the functionality of a car, anything after that is led by the heart.”  [And the ego.]

It’s been a constant struggle for me and I think, for many.

I know I’m always going on about luxury stuff, and I think almost every argument on this website has revolved around where your own limits are on the price : quality scale — because in almost every case, we’ve established the functionality of the thing early on.

Hence cars:  functionality is achieved with, say, a Honda Civic.  Then, if you want a little more speed to go with your functionality, you move on to the excellent Civic Si or even to the Civic R.  But you also have a desire for a little more luxury than a standard Honda’s offering, so you look at… an Acura Integra Model S?  (Same car as the Civic, more or less the same performance, but with a tad more luxury and a higher price point.)  But come on, you say, an Acura?  Why not (say) a Mercedes CLA 35 AMG at pretty much the same price point, but with Merc luxury (better than any Acura’s)?  (Here’s a comparison.)  And then on and on you go, until you start getting serious about all those things that make your parts tingle until you end up looking at stupid money for a product that is completely over the top by any standards (hello Ferrari or similar).  (And in SUVs, you start off with a Toyota RAV4 and end up with a Maybach 600.)

Then watches.  Functionality is simple:  Casio F91-W ($30).  Okay, you don’t want a digital watch, so a more manly Invicta Pro Diver ($60).  You all know where this is going:  up the scale with Timex, Tissot, Seiko, Grand Seiko, Longines, Omega… until you get to Rolex, Ulysse Nardin, Audemars Piguet and thence to the stratosphere where you can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars… on a watch that is functionally little better than that Casio, Invicta or Timex.

With watches, I have my Tissot Heritage and I really don’t feel the need for any other.  Maybe if I had some budget I’d consider a Longines Master or even an Omega Railmaster (which makes me tingle, bigly) but beyond that it’s more ego than I care to indulge myself.  Unless I went all eclectic on y’all.  As with cars with manual transmissions, my timepiece choices are somewhat narrowed by my insistence on manually-wound actions, but there ya go.

Of course, there are guns.  Confining ourselves to double-barrel over/under shotguns, we start off with Gforce (never heard of them) for under $400, and while this may be a piece of junk — not judging, just acknowledging that to produce this kind of gun at that particular price point, compromises must be made — there’s no doubt that it’s at least a Timex shotgun, so to speak.  Then I guess you’d go on to the Turkish-made CZ Drake, then up the food chain to Browning Cynergy,  Beretta Silver Pigeon, Rizzini BR110… and we all know where this ends, don’t we?

I have to confess that my mood swings wildly when it comes to this stuff.  On the one hand, I’m perfectly comfortable driving my 150,000-mile Tiguan.  But if I had to get a new car and had any kind of budget, given my circumstances, I’d probably consider that Honda Si (decent reliability, performance and above all, manual transmission).  After that, I’d need more budget, maybe a great deal more budget to get a car I’d really like to drive for pretty much the rest of my life.  While I’m not really brand-conscious (in terms of impressing others), I’d rather drive something that has some kind of heritage — but forget the boutique stuff like Ferrari, no matter how much budget I have.  And whatever, it has to have a stick shift.

I’m pretty sure you all know where I stand on guns.  I carry either Springfield or Colt 1911s, wouldn’t dream of carrying a Nighthawk or Ed Brown 1911, hate plastic guns of any caliber, and prefer shooting revolvers anyway.  And that’s just handguns.  Rifles?  I’m a Mauser man — actual Mausers as opposed to John Rigby’s exotic Mausers — and while I might be tempted on occasion to look at a custom rifle (purely based on its appearance), I’m just as happy shooting a .30-30 lever action.  And finally, when it comes to shotguns I prefer the old-fashioned — that is to say, side-by-side barrels and double triggers — and regard pump-actions as I would hammers or drills:  pure tools, nothing more.

Lifestyle choices:  budgets, compromises, ego, practicality, dreams… we all have them.