Here’s an article from Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute, published with Forbes magazine. Cato economists are libertarians, so they are good at fiscal policy, but terrible at moral and social issues.
It says:
But here’s the part of Cruz’s plan that raises a red flag. He says he wants a “business flat tax,” but what he’s really proposing is a value-added tax.
His proposal is a VAT because wages are nondeductible. And that basically means a 16 percent withholding tax on the wages and salaries of all American workers (for tax geeks, this part of Cruz’s plan is technically a subtraction-method VAT).
Normally, I start foaming at the mouth when politicians talking about value-added taxes. But Senator Cruz obviously isn’t proposing a VAT for the purpose of financing a bigger welfare state.
Instead, he’s doing a swap, imposing a VAT while also getting rid of the corporate income tax and the payroll tax.
And that’s theoretically a good deal because the corporate income tax is so senselessly destructive(swapping the payroll tax for the VAT, as I explained a few days ago in another context, is basically a wash).
But it’s still a red flag because I worry about what might happen in the future. If the Cruz plan is adopted, we’ll still have the structure of an income tax (albeit a far-less-destructive income tax). And we’ll also have a VAT.
So what happens 10 years from now or 25 years from now if statists control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and they decide to reinstate the bad features of the income tax while retaining the VAT? They now have a relatively simple way of getting more revenue to finance European-style big government.
And also don’t forget that it would be relatively simple to reinstate the bad features of the corporate income tax by tweaking Cruz’s business flat tax/VAT.
[…]Notwithstanding my concern about the VAT, Senator Cruz has put forth a plan that would be enormously beneficial to the American economy.
Instead of being a vehicle for punitive class warfare and corrupt cronyism, the tax code would simply be the method by which revenue was collected to fund government.
Rubio ignored all of those details during the debate, and instead accused Cruz of bringing in a VAT tax that is the same as those in Europe, with no other taxes being lowered or eliminated to compensate. It’s dishonest, but he was probably hoping that Cruz would not have time to respond.
Here’s Cruz’s response from the debate last night:
In Rubio’s question, he deliberately misrepresented Cruz’s proposal by neglecting to mention all the taxes that Cruz would eliminate. Dan Mitchell mentioned them. I don’t understand why Rubio is smearing a fellow conservative with such attacks. Unless maybe Rubio is not a fellow conservative at all? I’ll be looking at that more next week.
This is not the first time that Rubio has tried to distort facts in order to smear Ted Cruz. Honestly, I used to have Rubio listed as my 5th choice, but he keeps smearing Cruz with dishonest attacks that are easily cleared up with a little knowledge from experts. I have therefore removed Rubio from my list of candidates.
Debate evaluations
Google Trends shows that the debate was essentially a showdown between Trump and Cruz, based on search engine traffic during the debate:
Google Trends analysis of search terms during Fox Business GOP primary debate
There are some reports out now on who did well in last night’s debate.
The New York Times reported that Ted Cruz borrowed money from his Goldman Sachs investment account to finance his Senate campaign, then didn’t disclose it. Is their story correct? Let’s see.
The New York Times “broke” a story yesterday about a Goldman Sachs loan that Ted and Heidi Cruz obtained during his run for U.S. Senate that wasn’t reported properly on an FEC filing. I’vedefended Marco Rubio when New York Times fired garbage at him, and I’ll do the same with Cruz.
This story was one *discovered* from public disclosure forms, and it is a story that alreadyran in 2013. So the New York Times didn’t run any new news here. All they did was run some opposition research that a rival campaign gave them. *Great* journalism.
This is a non-story. Beyond the fact it is rehashed news taken from public records here are a couple reasons why there’s nothing there.
First, The loan was disclosed. It may not have been on the right FEC form at the right time, but it was made public and it was made public before Cruz’s runoff election against then Texas Lt. Governor Dewey Dewhurst.
The Caffeinated Thoughts article has a public, federal reporting document filed on July 9th, 2012, that has the following entry: “Goldman Sachs Margin Loan”. So this loan was not hidden and undisclosed and secret and scandalous. Cruz simply made an error and didn’t disclose it on another public form.
Newsflash: borrowing on margin is normal
For those of you who invest, like me, you’ll know that anyone can borrow money on margin from their investment brokerage account, although it is not recommended. Goldman Sachs is an investment broker, and you can borrow money on margin if you have a brokerage account with them. You can do the same thing with E-Trade, Ameritrade, ScottTrade, etc. This is not some great mystery. This is a margin loan given to you by your investment brokerage firm, with collateral provided by your investment securities.
Anyway, let’s see Cruz explain it in his own words.
First, on CNN:
Second, here is Cruz’s 2-minute answer from last night
Now, that’s a simple answer that anyone can understand, but the left wants to make it seem sinister and sneaky. There is no question that the left, including the mainstream media, has it in for Cruz. The radically leftist New Republic entitled this story “Ted Cruz Defends His Undisclosed Loan from Goldman Sachs”. The radically leftist New York Times called it “Ted Cruz Didn’t Report Goldman Sachs Loan in a Senate Race”. Associated Press “Cruz Failed To Disclose Goldman Loan On Reports”. Secular Talk “Ted Cruz Took $500k From Goldman Sachs & Didn’t Disclose it”. They don’t have time to report on any of the scandals of the Obama administration – especially Hillary Clinton. But they do have time to make a mountain out of a mole hill about a simple thing like borrowing on margin.
I feel bad for Cruz in the way that he has to answer these deceptive attacks from the leftist media, and then again from Marco Rubio and Donald Trump, who parrot the stories they read in the leftist media. These things are easily explained, but you have to actually understand how real life works. It just depresses me when I think about how hard it is for an honest man to run for office in a world like this. You can’t fight back against these smears… the minute you respond to one, there’s another dozen lies to answer. It’s just depressing.
The best part of the debate
However, I will end this post on a high note. The highlight of the debate last night was that Cruz finally defended himself from Trump’s attacks.
Here is their entire exchange on Trump’s birther argument against Cruz:
Cruz graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law. He clerked for J. Michael Luttig in the 4th District Court of Appeals, then Chief Justice Earl Rehnquist at the U.S. Supreme Court. Two conservative justices. As Solicitor General of Texas, he defended religious liberty, gun rights and other conservative issues in front of the Supreme Court. The man understands Constitutional law.
Here is Frank Luntz’s focus group responding to the exchange:
You can read an assessment of the exchange in the radically leftist New York Times, of all places – which actually gets it right for a change. Headline is “Ted Cruz, Once Dismissed, Emerges as a Slashing Debater”. I’m not kidding.
Normally in my 6 PM post I like to write about something related to apologetics, because that’s when people are done with their work and have time to think about the big questions. Today, I want to say something this article about lambs in Scotland, written by Sheila Walsh in the The Stream.
She writes:
I am very fond of sheep. I grew up on the west coast of Scotland with sheep all around me, field after field of white wool and incessant crying when things seemed a little off.
[…]Of all the lessons I have learned from these defenseless, gentle animals, the most profound is the most painful. Every now and then, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and immediately reject it. Sometimes the lamb is rejected because they are one of twins and the mother doesn’t have enough milk or she is old and frankly quite tired of the whole business. They call those lambs, bummer lambs.
Unless the shepherd intervenes, that lamb will die. So the shepherd will take that little lost one into his home and hand feed it from a bottle and keep it warm by the fire. He will wrap it up warm and hold it close enough to hear a heartbeat. When the lamb is strong the shepherd will place it back in the field with the rest of the flock.
“Off you go now, you can do this, I’m right here.”
The most beautiful sight to see is when the shepherd approaches his flock in the morning and calls them out, “Sheep, sheep, sheep!”
The first to run to him are the bummer lambs because they know his voice. It’s not that they are more loved — it’s just that they believe it.
I am so grateful that Christ calls himself the Good Shepherd.
“He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. After he has gathered his own flock, he walks ahead of them, and they follow him because they know his voice.” (John 10:3-4 NLT)
My older brother and I grew up with a mother who was very much focused on her career and earning and saving money for her retirement. We were both stuck in daycare very early after being born, so that she could go back to work right away. My older brother has shown the ill effects of our parents (especially our mother) not having any plan for us, especially morally and spiritually. He dropped out of college after failing his first year, never had a career. Although he has normal intelligence and mental health, he never could stick in any real job.
Although there were early warning signs when his grades started to drop in Grade 5, my parents never took responsibility to make a plan to solve it. Oh, they would yell and scream at him at report card time, but just for a day or two, and after that, nothing constructive. My brother decided that he could just ride out the flak my parents gave him on report card night, and keep going with his plan of having fun and being popular. My parents just forgot about it until the next report card day, because they did not want to be distracted from their careers, hobbies and retirement planning.
I had the exact same upbringing as my older brother. He actually did pretty well until Grade 5 just like me, but then our paths diverged. From Grade 5 on, his grades deterioriated. He got tired of having to study and he was more interested in the opinions of his peers and conforming to pop culture. In my case, from Grade 5 on, my grades were always high-90s. I remember taking the same classes as he did, in the same high school, with the same teachers. He got a 44 in data processing, I got a 96 with the same teacher and won the award for the entire grade. Every class I went to, the teachers would speak fondly of my older brother – he was a nice guy, very popular with his peers, good at sports, but not a very good student. How was it that I was winning awards when he had scored so poorly. Was I really his brother? How could we be so different?
The difference is that in Grade 5, he got a Gideon’s New Testament and he read it and he didn’t put it into practice, and in Grade 5, I got a Gideon’s New Testament and I read it twice and I did put it into practice. That was the difference. I had the awareness of the moral law (i.e.- wisdom) that allowed me to judge my parents and judge my peers and judge my teachers and stand alone. When you cannot rely on anyone to lead you, judging others is critical. That is what allows you to maintain appropriate boundaries and minimize the influence of friends and family who do not have any plan to grow you. Awareness of the moral law is what allows you to stop trying to please people who do not want what is best for you. On the other hand, God is always willing to give you wisdom, and you can find out all about him because he has left plenty of evidence concerning his existence and character for you to find. It is in knowing God as he really is that you can find your sense of value, purpose and meaning.
For me, Christianity was a simple matter of being willing to go along with what was true, and not insisting having fun or conforming to peer expectations. The essential characteristic of my faith, in contrast to my older brother’s lack of faith, was this – I did not mind being different, so long as I never lost a debate about what was true. My obedience to Christ has never been conditional on things going my way, on being liked, or anything like that. The only thing that mattered was being factually correct. It never bothered me what other people were doing, or what other people expected me to do, so long as as I was acting on what I knew to be true. And God helped me to find out what was true my motivating me to study, and leading me to him with good evidence, and good mentors.
How has this affected me? Well, this is the second thing I wanted to say about the bummer lamb analogy. Since I was a victim of this hands-off, me-first style of parenting, it’s caused me to be extra sensitive about being a good spiritual leader to others in the same predicament.The people I mentor can see it in the way that I treat them the exact opposite of the way that my older brother and I were treated. I care what people read. I care what courses they choose. I care what they eat. I care how they feel. I care about their finances. I care about their plans to serve God. I care about their romantic relationships. I care whether they get recognition for doing good. I care whether their life is going in the right direction. One person I mentored who once considered taking her own life wrote to me when she graduated from a STEM program, and she said this: “I wish you could have been here at my graduation. My parents only paid for this degree. You were the one who got me through it”. We have never met in person, but she is going to continue to make a huge difference for Christ and His Kingdom going forward.
I think when you have been a bummer lamb, you are extra careful to make decisions that will enable you to be a good shepherd to other lambs. Being a good shepherd does not mean being pious, spiritual, mystical, etc. Being a good shepherd does not mean making the lambs feel good about making bad decisions. Being a good shepherd means understanding what God has done to lead you, and then reflecting that love back to others in practical, self-sacrificial actions that solve actual real-world problems for other people who want to know and serve God. If you are about to jump off a cliff, the last thing you need is someone with no wisdom or experience telling you that God is OK with you doing whatever feels good to you. What you need is someone practical and competent to give you good advice, however much that advice may make you feel bad, or block your pursuit of fun.
One of my friends proof-read the draft of this post told me that it made her think of 2 Cor 1:3-5:
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
4 who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
5 For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.“
Nothing else I do in life matters to me as much as taking care of the people I mentor, especially the ones who are lost and lacking guidance and care. I have good health, good education, good career, and great finances. But by far the most important thing I do is following the example of the Shepherd by caring for other lambs.
WINTERY KNIGHT 