Bring the pressure. The Trump administration put North Korea back on the United States' list of state sponsors of terrorism. That makes sense because North Korea is a state sponsor of terrorism, as Bruce Klingner explains:
Since being dropped from the terrorism list, Pyongyang has conducted repeated cyberattacks against government agencies, businesses, banks, and media organizations. It has also engaged in: threats of "9/11-type attacks" against U.S. theaters and theatergoers; assassination attempts against North Korea defectors, human rights advocates, and South Korea intelligence agents; and numerous shipments of conventional arms bound for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. Earlier this year, North Korean agents used VX, the most deadly nerve agent, to kill Kim's half-brother in a crowded civilian airport.
Returning North Korea to the terrorist list enables Washington to invoke stronger financial transaction licensing requirements under 31 CFR Part 596 and remove North Korea's sovereign immunity from civil liability for terrorist acts. Re-designation also requires the U.S. government to oppose loans to North Korea by international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Asian Development Bank.
Moreover, the designation adds to the moral suasion of international efforts to further isolate North Korea—diplomatically as well as economically. In recent years, a growing list of countries, banks, and companies have curtailed their business relationships due to North Korea's violations of U.N. resolutions, the abysmal working conditions imposed on its overseas laborers, and its human rights violations, which the U.N. says constitute "crimes against humanity."
Klingner writes that "a comprehensive, rigorous, and sustained international pressure campaign" will make it more difficult for North Korea to obtain components for its nuclear program and can bring the regime back to the bargaining table. [The Daily Signal]
Dropping net neutrality will make the internet truly open. Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, has proposed dropping net neutrality rules. Such a move, writes Jeffrey Tucker, will serve consumers far better than the old system:
Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers.
So what are the costs to the rest of us? It meant no price reductions in internet service. It could mean the opposite. Your bills went up and there was very little competition. It also meant a slowing down in the pace of technological development due to the reduction in competition that followed the imposition of this rule. In other words, it was like all government regulation: most of the costs were unseen, and the benefits were concentrated in the hands of the ruling class.
There was an additional threat: the FCC had reclassified the internet as a public utility. It meant a blank check for government control across the board. Think of the medical marketplace, which is now entirely owned by a non-competitive cartel of industry insiders. This was the future of the internet under net neutrality.
Good riddance, then. No more government-managed control of the industry. No more price fixing. No more of the largest players using government power to protect their monopoly structure. [Foundation for Economic Education]
If you don't believe in handouts, then you're not Hispanic, says the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. By rejecting Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo's "quixotic mission to join the Congressional Hispanic Caucus," the organization has merely ratified it's "ideologically-driven definition of 'Hispanic'," writes Mike Gonzalez:
From the beginning in the 1960s, when radical Chicano activists, federal career officials and the Ford Foundation began to strategize on how to synthetically create this now federally recognized group out many different ethnicities, it was clear that a definition of "Hispanic" would be hard to come by. […]
According to University of California Berkeley sociologist Cristina Mora, "Ambiguity was important because it allowed stakeholders to bend the definition of Hispanic panethnicity and use the notion instrumentally, as a means to an end."
Mora, a sympathizer of the creation of the ethnicity but whose book "Making Hispanics" nonetheless renders a pretty accurate rundown of the events back then, wrote, "Activists thus described hispanics as a disadvantaged and underrepresented minority group that stretched from coast to coast, a wide framing that best allowed them to procure grants from public and private institutions." […]
[I]t also dawned on the coalition promoting this issue that the grants and the votes in Congress would not come if this was seen strictly as a Southwestern issue. Puerto Ricans were then added, and later the conservative Cuban-Americans, reluctantly, over the opposition of activists.
La Raza, created in 1968 by the Ford Foundation, soon took the leading role in pushing federal agencies to concoct the group category, and the census to ratify it. It had "found that it could best secure more resources from state and private grantmaking agencies if it could frame its constituency as a sizable national, rather than regional minority group."
If you're a conservative, however, accepting a status as a separate and disadvantaged minority group is likely not your thing. So, ergo, you're not Hispanic. [The Hill]
An opportunity for high-tax states. If the state and local income tax deduction (SALT) is eliminated—which tax reform plans currently before Congress do—taxpayers in high-tax states could face higher tax bills despite lower federal rates. Illinois is one of those high-tax states, and the solution, says the Illinois Policy Institute, is for state lawmakers to lower taxes:
Illinois is already experiencing capital flight. According to Internal Revenue Service data, Illinois is already losing higher-earning residents to out-migration. A consequence of these outflows of labor and capital is state tax revenues suffer as the tax base shrinks. This exodus has had disastrous effects on the state's budget. Eliminating the SALT deduction would only make this trend worse – as the full effect of Illinois' high state and local taxes is truly felt.
But if state lawmakers pre-empt the possible elimination of the SALT deduction with tax cuts that improve Illinois' competitiveness relative to other states, the president's plan can trigger large inflows of capital to Illinois that would grow the state's economy.
Competitive tax cuts grow the tax base, raising additional public funds without further harm to the average household. As a result, government programs that help the less fortunate can be better funded in a more competitive low-tax regime.
Fiscal solvency is a symptom of tax competitiveness while insolvency – as in Illinois' current fiscal state – indicates a lack thereof. The bulk of evidence suggests tax hikes shrink the tax base while tax cuts grow the tax base and improve economic conditions for everyone. [Illinois Policy Institute]
The middle class is the clear winner of the Senate tax cut plan. In the media, the narrative that Republican tax cut plans disproportionately benefit the wealthy has taken hold. That narrative is based on a comparison of how much taxpayers at different income levels will save in total. A familiarity with basic math should lead one to suspect that those with larger tax bills are likely to receive a larger tax cut. A better comparison, however, is the size of a tax cut relative to current tax liability. Here the middle class, as Chris Edwards points out, are clearly the winners of the Senate tax cut plan:
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