http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324326504578466782757594240.html?mod=hp_opinion Act now against Assad or risk chemical weapons falling into terrorist hands. THIS OPINION IS MOOT NOW THAT IT HAS BEEN DISCLOSED THAT THE ‘RESISTANCE” TERRORISTS ALREADY HAVE CHEMICAL WEAPONS…..RSK ‘There are no good options in Syria.” From this truism, endlessly repeated by people who think they’re clever, comes this non sequitur: The U.S. […]
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ (The following is an adaptation of a talk that I recently gave.) Every act of violence has two sides. The side of those who carry it and the side of those who let it happen. When a burglar breaks into a home and kills two people, we don’t just discuss what made him do […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/347500/governor-pence’s-indiana-tax-win
He persuades reluctant lawmakers to cut taxes — does he have out-of-state ambitions?
As Indiana governor, Mike Pence has been flying under the radar. While other Republican governors, such as Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker, have taken advantage of their platform to speak out nationally, Pence has stuck close to his state and focused on the concerns of Hoosiers. Pence — who attracted buzz as a potential 2012 contender when he was still a congressman in 2011 — has instead been working diligently to rack up accomplishments during his first term as governor.
Pence’s top accomplishment this session was cutting Indiana taxes. Initially, he had proposed slashing the income-tax rate, currently at 3.4 percent, by 10 percent. Well aware of the burden put on citizens by the federal tax hike on January 1 and by the looming costs of Obamacare, Pence was determined to do what he could to ease the pain for Hoosiers. “He felt pretty strongly that what he could do as governor was to reduce the price of living and working in our state,” explains Ryan Streeter, a top Pence adviser.
Legislators balked at a cut this large. “While we appreciated the governor’s proposal to cut our income tax, our income tax is rated the best and lowest in the nation among the 41 states that have an income tax,” says Indiana House speaker Brian Bosma, a Republican, referring to the Tax Foundation’s ratings. Bosma was concerned less about the income tax than Indiana’s death tax, which was rated number 43 (or the seventh highest) in the country by the Tax Foundation.
Bosma speculates that Pence’s original proposal differed from the legislators’ goals because Pence lacked familiarity with the state legislature and its policy goals. “In Governor Pence’s defense,” Bosma remarks, “he and his team have not had the decades of experience with our state tax system and the well-thought-out reduction-and-cut plan that we had implemented” in recent years.
Ultimately, Indiana lawmakers axed the death tax completely and cut the income tax by 5 percent (rather than the 10 percent Pence wanted), reducing the rate to 3.3 percent in 2015, then to 3.23 percent in 2017. “What we ended up doing was putting together a collective tax package that results in the largest tax cut in our state’s history, about $1.1 billion dollars” over the next four years, Bosma notes.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/347408/people-who-gave-us-miranda-miranda-never-enough Does anything tug at your heartstrings quite like the plight of Ropel Phillipos, the 19-year-old “adolescent” arrested and charged with lying to agents investigating the bombing of the Boston Marathon by his sometime pal, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev? Fox News reports that, besides describing as “refutable” the allegation that he gave investigators conflicting accounts about the effort […]
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/ Currently, a series of ads labeling Israel an “apartheid state” (featured below) are running in New York City subway stations. To provide a counterbalance and tell Americans “the truth about sharia law,” The American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) is planning to launch its own series of New York metro and D.C. diorama ads featuring […]
http://www.romirowsky.com/13255/specter-of-islamist-terror In the immediate hours and days after September 11, 2001 it became clear to most Americans that the values of tolerance and democracy – cornerstones of the “American dream ” – for which countless immigrants have journeyed to this land are at risk. In the 12 years since 9/11, and in the wake of […]
http://www.prudenpolitics.com/newsletter?utm_source=P&P%20Auto%201&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=7144 The noise in the hen house this morning is the flutter and cackle of the chickens from Benghazi, scuttling home to roost. The House committee opening hearings Wednesday on what happened there is likely to serve up chicken surprise. The four whistleblowing witnesses scheduled to testify to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3700/european-union-unpopularity Even in Southern Europe, at the receiving end of the financial transfers, people realize that the euro and the EU’s authoritarian and vainglorious project of molding the various peoples of Europe into a single state is leading to disaster. Even in the South, people realize that it is better to have a job. “This […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3689/north-korea-nuclear-threat The North is making progress in its goal of being able to deliver a nuclear warhead surreptitiously to the U.S., probably in an EMP mode, an existential threat to our survival. Missiles and nuclear warheads are the emerging weapons of choice, the modern battering ram, to remove US security guarantees from the Western Pacific […]
