FATCA
One thing I hope Trump does away with is the FATCA regulation that was intended to hit rich Americans who hide their wealth in foreign banks but which also hits ordinary Americans who simply like living abroad. It does this because it imposes such onerous rules on foreign banks with respect to the accounts of Americans that many now simply refuse to accept any Americans as customers. I thought it was generally understand that this was a bad law, but in an unsigned editorial in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal (entitled "Taming IRS Imperialism"), the American ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago was quoted to the effect that only someone with something to hide could be opposed to it. Incredible.
Supporters?
Here from Power Line is a report about the trial of a couple of the perpetrators of the trafficking scandal in Rotherham. What is horrifying is that the report mentions that they have supporters. And the left keeps telling me that I’m racist for not wanting Muslims here.
Social Justice versus Diversity
I have argued before (here) that the social justice warriors are guilty of ignoring many instances of social injustice (the most egregious being the slavery that still exists in some countries in North Africa). But they are guilty of promoting social injustice, too. Specifically, in their insistence on diversity, some colleges, particularly ones on the east coast, are guilty of excluding Asian-Americans for the sake of including other groups. This is just our era’s version of the way that Jews were excluded in the first half of the twentieth century. But it’s a matter of social injustice to be excluded for any reason when you are deserving of being included.
And do they even need to exclude any group? Not really. In the past, racism excluded various groups, but we’re past that now. Or rather, even if society isn’t, one would think that the enlightened people at our colleges are past that, so why not simply admit whoever is deserving? It’s true that there will be fewer blacks and Latinos, but then the ones who are admitted will definitely deserve to be there, and the ones who don’t get admitted should be told that they need to work harder. I talked yesterday about the phenomenon whereby so many American blacks have decided that studying hard is “acting white.” This is definitely something that needs to be addressed by the left instead of pretending it doesn’t exist or pretending that racism is really the reason why so many blacks end up in grunt jobs. Overcoming this problem would mean that we wouldn’t even need to worry about diversity since enough blacks would naturally be accepted anyway, simply on the basis of their grades and test scores.
Another Global Warming Scandal
See here for the roundup at Power Line (hat tip: Mark Spahn). Although it was intended to refute claims that there was a pause in global warming, I pay so little attention to what these people say that I don’t even remember it.
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