Steve Hilton on the genius of America's founders

image credit: floridatoday.com

We celebrate our Independence Day this coming Wednesday. Steve Hilton published a thoughtful piece on what we love about America entitled “I didn’t get the true genius of America’s founders till I moved here. Here’s what worries me now.” The full article is here, but below are a few excerpts:

It wasn’t until I actually lived in the U.S. that I started to understand the true genius of America’s founders and what they put in place two-and-a-half centuries ago. I saw it in the way that contemporary political debates are conducted with reference to the framers’ intent. I saw it in the huge importance of Supreme Court rulings – reported and debated with a prominence commensurate with the judiciary’s status as a co-equal branch of government – but totally alien to someone familiar with the British system.

And I saw the genius of the Founding Fathers most vividly of all in a family visit to Philadelphia a couple of years ago. While there, I took my two sons to the National Constitution Center, a truly wonderful place that all Americans should visit if they can.

The highlight of the Constitution Center is a regular live performance telling the story of the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, the years leading up to the Constitutional Convention – and then of the momentous deliberations that produced the U.S. Constitution itself.

That performance literally moved me to tears as it brought to life in the most immediate and powerful way the beautiful idea at the heart of America: liberty under the law, an idea that had never before been expressed and guaranteed by any nation.

From that idea, and from those incomparable founding documents, come all the things that are special about America – things that are so different to (and, frankly, so much better than) what you find where I grew up, in England. And of course vastly better than what my parents experienced where they grew up in Communist Hungary.

. . .

The melting pot; decentralized government; a republic of equals; a Constitution enshrining the precious ideal of people power. It is all under threat this Fourth of July – and we need to fight for it.

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Protesting immigration law enforcement

About those protests over immigration on Friday:

message /art via Lucianne.com

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Support ICE and our Border Patrol

Our friend and colleague Arzella reports that there is a “Prayer Walk for Children, Families, and Neighbors at Risk” in Painesville this Friday at 6pm. This march is to bear “witness to the plight of the over 2000 children recently separated from their families through ICE raids...” Click here for the Facebook announcement.

On Friday, June 29, you can join Arzella who

. . .will be standing at 100 Main Street in Painesville at 6:15 P.M. on Friday with a sign in support of ICE and Border Patrol.

Calling all Cleveland Tea Party people who can join Arzella to support law enforcement and legal immigration. Make your sign and head to Painesville on Friday.

Click here for a map (click on the map itself to embiggen).

UPDATE:

If you are planning to join Arzella in Painesville on Friday, I am linking to an article by Judicial Watch at Canada Free Press that reports what the mainstream media is not reporting:

While the mainstream media and much of the nation are preoccupied with sob stories about the shelter accommodations of illegal immigrants, the U.S.-Mexico border remains a cesspool of crime where federal agents have confiscated more than 360,000 pounds of drugs, arrested thousands of individuals with criminal convictions and busted hundreds of violent gangbangers so far this year. The latest statistics issued by the Border Patrol are downright disturbing and illustrate the urgency of properly securing the famously porous southwest border.

The full report is here. 

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Internet Sales Tax: a proposed solution

image credit: blog.dawog.net

Yesterday Scott French and Elizabeth Slattery at The Daily Signal reported further on the horrible SCOTUS decision to permit sales tax on Internet transactions across state lines. They also suggested a solution. Unfortunately, they identify Congress as the branch of government that can legislate that solution. Here’s the gist of it:

Unfortunately, small businesses will suffer the most from the ruling. [Chief Justice John] Roberts explained:

One vitalizing effect of the Internet has been connecting small, even ‘micro’ businesses to potential buyers across the nation. People starting a business selling their embroidered pillowcases or carved decoys can offer their wares throughout the country—but probably not if they have to figure out the tax due on every sale.

Most small businesses are not equipped to handle being subject to every taxing authority in every location where they have a customer. There are more than 10,000 state and local taxing jurisdictions in the country. And these jurisdictions have different tax rates, rules governing tax exemptions, product category definitions, and standards for determining whether an out-of-state seller is subject to sales tax in the first place.

Roberts pointed to a few examples of how confusing state taxes can be:

New Jersey knitters pay sales tax on yarn purchased for art projects, but not on yarn earmarked for sweaters … Texas taxes sales of plain deodorant at 6.25 percent but imposes no tax on deodorant with antiperspirant … Illinois categorizes Twix and Snickers bars—chocolate-and-caramel confections usually displayed side-by-side in the candy aisle—as food and candy, respectively (Twix have flour; Snickers don’t), and taxes them differently.

Further, the cost of compliance is beyond the means of most small businesses. Implementation and integration of software to calculate taxes in all these jurisdictions alone is estimated to cost up to $250,000.

The good news is that, under its authority to regulate interstate commerce, Congress has the power to fix this problem. Congress is the branch of government best able to consider the competing interests at stake, not unelected federal judges.

Congress should codify the physical presence rule to protect small businesses from being subject to mandates from states where they have no physical connection and whose policymakers face no accountability for the tax and regulatory costs that they impose on out-of-state businesses.

If state borders truly do matter, Congress must limit states’ ability to reach beyond their borders to place regulatory burdens on out-of-state businesses.

Sounds feasible on paper. But perhaps so many small businesses will suspend sales that Congress will have to respond to their constituents – for once. We’ll see. (The full report is here.) 

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Amnesty vote this week

Neil Munro at Breitbart has the update on the delayed vote on amnesty:

House Speaker Paul Ryan cancelled the planned Friday vote on his amnesty bill, and will add some business-first and populist concessions to help win votes prior to a debate and vote next week [week of June 25]

. . .

Democrats are expected to unite against the guest-worker program and E-Verify, in part, because they want the 11 million resident illegals to become citizens and vote Democratic.

If the modified bill is passed by the House, the bipartisan cheap-labor caucus in the Senate is expected to strip out Ryan’s modest reductions in immigration numbers because companies want to maximize the inflow of foreign consumers, workers and renters.

Any amendment adding the E-Verify system also will be opposed by Senate Democrats and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because it would penalize roughly 8 million working illegal-migrants.

We’re looking at yet more wrangling amongst Uniparty members of Congress, both –R and –D, and their loyalties to – not their constituents - but their donor masters.

Cleveland Tea Party’s Ralph King posted this on his FB page:

Patriots - it is time to rise up and be loud!

We need to keep President Trump from making any deals on DACA and the Wall! We need to let him know we elected him to stand strong and we will stand with him on NO Deal for DREAMERs!

Besides the left we also have enemies within that would love President Trump to cave and give out backdoor amnesty for DREAMERs in exchange for Wall funding. We know the left is going to fight against it - but we must not forget forces in the Swamp that want the same thing!

The Open Border, illegal immigrant, low-wage loving GOP donor class, the US Chamber & Koch Brothers (American's for Prosperity) all who control Paul Ryan and the Establishment GOP would love and want amnesty for the DACA DREAMERs. They always have.

Exchanging Amnesty for DACA DREAMERs is a trap and sucker bet. Soon as the DREAMERs are allowed to vote they will vote Democrat across the board and there goes any continued funding for building the wall.

We cannot allow President Trump to be swayed by the Establishment Swampers!

We cannot allow President Trump to be fooled, swayed and/or duped like Ronald Reagan was with the Immigration Reform & Control ACt of 1986 (Simpson - Mazzoli Act)! In short - Reagan compromised on immigration and got screwed. We must learn from history!

We need to let President Trump know NO DACA Deal! Do NOT Trade the Wall funding for DACA Nightmares!

You can call or email the White House:

PHONE NUMBERS

Comments: 202-456-1111

Switchboard: 202-456-1414

White House contact page with email option here. 

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SCOTUS internet sales tax ruling

image credit: usatoday.com

This SCOTUS decision will affect all of us. Sparta Report just announced its decision to close down its little sales center at its blogsite:

effective today, the Sparta Report Shop will no longer be in operation due to the disastrous decision by the Supreme Court’s “republican wing” to allow states to charge out of state businesses with sales tax. We are not interested in complying with 2.5 thousand and more localities and states and keeping track of the various stupidities of the corrupt local political tax wrangling.

Investors Business Daily has more:

Taxes: Whatever you think about the issue of taxing internet sales, the simple fact is that the Supreme Court has just guaranteed that people across the country will now be paying more in state taxes. It's hard for us to see how this is good news.

In its 5-4 decision on South Dakota v. Wayfair, the court overturned two previous rulings that prevented states from taxing sales of out-of-state companies. That meant a catalog company based in Maine didn't have to navigate 45 state sales-tax laws to figure out how much each customer owed, and then remit that money to the right states.

Brick-and-mortar stores have been trying to lift this ban for decades, because, they say, it unfairly tilts the playing field in favor of catalog and online retailers. 

According to the Government Accountability Office, this break cost states up to $13.4 billion in lost revenue last year alone. And, retailers say it cost jobs and hurt local economies.

Not surprisingly, Amazon.com  (AMZN), Shopify (SHOP), Etsy (ETSY), Wayfair (W) and other e-commerce stocks dropped on Thursday.

The Supreme Court ruling was notable not just because it did something it rarely does — namely, overturn previous decisions. (The most recent, Quill v North Dakota, was in 1992.) The court also split in a highly unusual way.

On the majority side were rock-ribbed conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, who sided with Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion. 

But so did stalwart liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Kennedy argued that the explosive growth of online retail rendered the court's previous rulings outdated.

Three of the other liberals on the court, Justices Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, sided with Chief Justice Roberts' dissent. Roberts argued that it should be up to Congress to make a change like this.

Whatever the merits of the decision, the Court's ruling means not only higher taxes for consumers, but higher prices.

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More Taxes To Come?

Worse still, the court may have opened the door to letting states impose other taxes on out-of-state firms.

Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform argues that states could use this ruling to impose corporate taxes and even income taxes across state lines.

"If physical nexus is no longer required for sales taxes ,then it is no longer required for personal or corporate income taxes," he said. "Now, California (or any state or city that loses population through exit) can tax people and businesses who do their best to avoid that state or city."

If you think that's a fanciful prediction, you haven't been paying attention. State governments will take every opportunity they can to raise taxes — especially if their own residents aren't the ones paying them.

In the end, it makes Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts' dissent look all the wiser.

Read the rest of the IBD report here.

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USS Cod Birthday gun salute

Really Short video by Pat J Dooley on YouTube