Categories
Today

Chinese students gather in Tiananmen Square

On April 21, 1989, six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 Chinese students gathered at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative communist government. At an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang, held the next day in Tiananmen’s Great Hall of the People, student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused the meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms. Days later, on April 27, students from more than 40 universities marched to Tiananmen Square and were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants. By mid-May, more than a million people filled the square, the site of communist leader’s Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

Categories
Today

McKinley asks war declaration, Columbine shooting

On April 20, 1898, President William McKinley asked Congress to declare war on Spain, two months after two explosions sank the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba. During those two months, newspaper baron Randolph Hearst and others whipped up public sentiment to go to war to give Cubans their independence and attacked McKinley for weakness in not acting more aggressively.

On April 20, 1999, two teenager students planned and carried out a shooting spree at their Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people, a teacher and 12 fellow students, and wounding 23 others, before committing suicide by shooting themselves.

Categories
tax policy

Regressive Europe

Some folks love to compare the U.S. to Europe unfavorably.

Not me.

Though I’m fine with learning from European states and cultures (hey: I like Switzerland!), I shudder when I hear someone suggest that America should be “more like Europe.”

Obviously, I’m not with our current president on this. He says we should tax the rich more, make them pay “their fair share.” And his left-leaning admirers append the phrase, almost under their breath, “like in Europe.”

Ugh.

But reserve some of that “ugh” not at the proposal, but at the assumption that European states tax the rich with higher “progressivity.” Veronique de Rugy, reporting on a new book by Bruce Bartlett, says that view is off base. European states tend to rely on the VAT, which is heavily regressive. Additionally, Europe’s high income tax rates kick in at lower incomes, so that Europeans lower down on the middle class ladder feel the bite of high taxes.

De Rugy concludes that America is a lot like Europe, on the whole, but that America’s “tax framework may be worse. . . . It disproportionately relies on the top earners to raise revenue, it exempts a large class of taxpayers from paying any income taxes, and it conceals spending in the form of tax breaks.”

This is all very interesting. But my take-away is not to emulate Europe, but — instead — the distinctively American policies we’ve let slip away. Our limited government principles don’t require us to endlessly chase new revenue streams.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Heraclitus

“Deliberate violence is more to be quenched than a fire.”

Categories
Thought

Ralph Waldo Emerson, from “Concord Hymn”

“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”

Categories
Today

Revolution begins with shot heard round the world

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green. The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.

In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

Categories
Accountability insider corruption responsibility

My Favorite Firing

Hooray for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks! Last season, “we” won 11 games, including the Cotton Bowl. We finished No. 5 in the country, losing only to national champion Alabama and No. 2 LSU.

There were wishful whispers of “next year” and “national championship.”

Then, Coach Bobby Petrino had a motorcycle accident. No life-threatening injuries, mind you, just scraped up a bit. But suddenly some non-physical injuries became, well, job-threatening.

Originally, Coach Petrino told reporters that he was alone on that crashed cycle. Turned out he had a passenger: Jessica Dorrell, the team’s recently hired student-athlete development coordinator.

You guessed it: Petrino, 51, and Dorrell, 25, had carried on an “inappropriate relationship.” Petrino also failed to disclose their relationship when he picked Dorrell over 158 other applicants for the job.

He had also not disclosed his personal “gift” to her of $20,000. Quite a bonus for an employee — or a girlfriend . . . or both.

University of Arkansas Athletic Director Jeff Long found that “Coach Petrino abused his authority . . . and . . . jeopardized the integrity of the football program.”

Soon, the hopes of many fans that Coach Petrino, and especially his winning ways, could survive the scandal, were dashed.

“We have high standards,” Long said in a statement announcing Petrino’s termination. “Our expectations of character and integrity in our employees can be no less than what we expect from our students.”

UA student athletes and Razorback fans can’t help but hope things work out on the gridiron. But standing up for principle always works out, one way or another. In this case, the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation just announced a $1 million gift to the Razorback athletic program citing Long’s “courageous leadership.”

Woo Pig Sooie!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture tax policy

Unfuzzying Up the Past

We hear a lot of talk about the disappearing middle class. Sometimes this jabber goes so far as to posit that normal folks — say, the “99 percent” — haven’t really experienced any progress since the ’60 or ’70s.

So blame the rich. And their government.

It’s not an implausible case. Wealthy interests do rent politicians at extravagant rates, changing policy in their favor.

But as economist Russ Roberts and Cornell University’s Richard Burkhauser discussed recently, sloppy statistics feed the hand-wringing over middle-class decline. Considering government transfer payments from rich to poor and plotting income by household rather than individually, the basic “stagnation” thesis doesn’t pass the “smell test.”

For the real stink, however, consult the Internet memes, particularly this goofy contention:

In the 1950s and 1960s when the top tax rate was 70-92%, we laid the interstate system, built the Internet, put a man on the moon, defeated Communism, our education system was the envy of the world, our middle class thriving, our economy unparalleled. You want that back? Raise taxes on the rich.

Forget the obvious nonsense (ARPANET was the Internet only in ovo; Communism collapsed in the ’80s), and concentrate on the main points, as Tom Woods has done: tax evasion was rampant back in the alleged “good ol’ days”; public schools have doubled in per capita spending since then, and not improved; and the stagflationary ’70s followed the booming ’60s, almost certainly as a consequence of the policies being touted, here.

Selective memories help in constructing just-so policy “proofs.” The middle class has received some big hits, I grant you. Still, we’ve seen progress, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Categories
Thought

Clarence Darrow – born April 18, 1857 in Trumbull County, Ohio

“True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.”

Categories
Today

1689 Boston revolt, Yankee stadium opens

On April 18, 1689, after news reached Boston that James II of England had been overthrown, the colonists of Boston rose up against the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, the governor of the Dominion of New England. Andros had angered the local populace by enforcing the restrictive Navigation Acts, denying the validity of existing land titles, restricting town meetings, and appointing unpopular regular officers to lead the colonial militia. He also infuriated Puritans by promoting the Church of England. A well-organized “mob” of provincial militia and citizens took over the city and arrested dominion officials, without any casualties. Leaders of the former Massachusetts Bay Colony then reclaimed control of the government.

On April 18, 1775, as British troops leave Boston to confiscate the arsenal in Concord and to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Minutemen.

On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built,” opened in the Bronx.