Low Taxes Brought Ireland Prosperity. A Global Tax Deal Now Threatens It. - WSJ

Should the G-7 reforms take effect, other, poorer countries would be barred from following Ireland’s path to greater prosperity.

Why We Can’t Move On From Jan. 6 - WSJ Opinion

If you weren’t appalled by what happened that day, you have given up on American democracy.

What an asinine thing to say.

Apple Subpoenas Prompt Democratic Call for William Barr, Jeff Sessions to Testify - WSJ

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff have called for an investigation into the Justice Department’s pursuit of the communications data, first reported by the New York Times. It reported that the records of at least a dozen people connected to the panel in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Mr. Schiff, were seized in the probe.

Geez, where have I heard this story before?

The Hill, reporting in December of 2019:

House Republicans are escalating their feud with Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, accusing the California Democrat of carrying out a “smear campaign” against his GOP counterpart, Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), by publishing his phone records in the panel’s sweeping impeachment report. Collecting the phone data has been strongly defended by Democrats while Republicans have seized on the new controversy as unfair and a bad precedent. (emphasis added)

Cryptocurrency Comes to Retirement Plans as Coinbase Teams Up With 401(k) Provider - WSJ

ForUsAll Inc., a 401(k) provider, announced earlier this month a deal with the institutional arm of Coinbase Global Inc., a leading cryptocurrency exchange, that will allow workers in plans it administers to invest up to 5% of their 401(k) contributions in bitcoin, ether, litecoin, and others.

Looking forward to articles about the class action lawsuits against companies and ForUsAll for breach of fiduciary duty. Retirement plans today that have industry standard investment options are losing in court, so I don’t think gambling in a 401k is going to fare any better.

From the IRS website:

Even if you hire a financial institution or retirement plan professional to manage your plan, you retain some fiduciary responsibility for the decision to select and keep the service provider.

The Ruthless Cyber Gang Behind the Hospital Ransomware Crisis - WSJ

Hospitals now depend heavily on computers after an aggressive push in the last dozen years to digitize patient records and as manufacturers increasingly add features to connect medical devices over computer networks.

Another brilliant regulatory program brought to you by the United States government.

America’s Energy Gift to Dictators - WSJ Opinion

Electric vehicles would have to make up 60% of worldwide car sales by 2030, according to a recent International Energy Agency report. “You have 800 million people who do not have access to electricity. You can’t say that they have to go to net zero [carbon]. They have to develop,” Indian Minister of New and Renewable Energy Raj Kumar Singh said in March.

Glad to see that I’m not alone in my concern.

Progressives want to surrender one of America’s major strategic economic advantages in the name of saving the climate. But banishing fossil fuels in the U.S. won’t eliminate carbon emissions, which will be produced somewhere else. So will the jobs, economic growth and geopolitical leverage.

Making Estimated Tax Payments with IRS DirectPay is really easy. They do a good job of making sure that the payments are credited properly.

Keystone XL Oil Project Abandoned by Developer - WSJ

It is a win for environmentalists who have campaigned to block new pipeline construction as a way to limit oil consumption that contributes to global warming.

We are on a bullet train to human misery with nothing but artist renderings and fanciful government problems to save us from reality.

Natural gas killed coal because of the free market.

Now we’re somehow supposed to use zero fossil fuels in 29 years when almost no cars are full EV, there’s no plan for increasing the stable installed capacity of the power grid, there are no electric trucks, no electric busses, no electric trains, no electric planes, and no electric weapons of war.

Also, where are we going to dispose of all of these fossil fueled vehicles and machines when they’re replaced?

Meanwhile, our stated rivals in Russia and China are all too happy to watch their archenemy and the guarantor of global peace and security voluntarily cripple itself.

SEC Pursuing Broad Review of Stock-Market Structure, Chairman Says - WSJ

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering changing rules that govern how U.S. stocks are traded, including pricing incentives that exchanges and brokers use to attract orders, Chairman Gary Gensler said Wednesday.

Yeah, super messed up that retail investors get the best price and pay no commission for the first time ever. That’s only supposed to be for hedge funds! Someone should look into it and stop this nonsense.

Republicans Propose Vaccination-By-Mail Program - The Babylon Bee

“Everyone will be able to receive the vaccine without having to miss work to travel to a vaccination site where they will wait in line for hours,” McConnell noted. “Best of all, nobody will be subjected to any racist ID checks!”

IRS Is Investigating Release of Tax Information of Wealthy Americans - WSJ

ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, published details about the reported income and tax payments of some of the richest Americans

Very low class.

“The big picture is this data shows that the country’s wealthiest, who profited immensely during the pandemic, have not been paying their fair share,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.), the chairman of the Finance Committee.

Strong disagree.

The big picture is that Congress has cashiered the tax system into a massive benefits transfer program filled with onerous complexity.

So Americans hire attorneys and CPAs to use legal tax strategies to reduce their tax liability.

As a result, Members of Congress are shocked and somehow conclude that by following the rules that Congress wrote, those taxpayers cheated?

Want everyone to pay their “fair share?” Enact a flat tax with a standard deduction high enough to exempt low-income Americans.

One of the defining features of Ancient Greek philosophy is it’s willingness to be challenged, questioned, and explored. Many of the great texts from this school are nothing more than dialogues between two or more characters debating its merits.

The enduring lines of human thought share this characteristic: an openness to engagement.

This isn’t a feature that’s shared by modern woke thought. It’s adherents are overly defensive and even the most cursory of inquiry is refuted with accusations of a wide-range of -isms.

iOS 15 ‘iCloud Private Relay’ Feature Won’t Be Available in China, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and More - MacRumors

Courage!

On the privacy front, it was good to see that Apple is still taking the fight to tracking.

Last year: websites and apps.

This year: email marketers.

Did Louis DeJoy take over for Tim Cook because they really mailed in the updates at WWDC this year.

The odds that Apple will roll in with iOS 15 and have food tracking and mindfulness be on par with LoseIt! or Headspace are about 0%.

Look at how lame sleep tracking is on watchOS. Basically meaningless.

I could not get this salad out of my head on my walk.

G-7 Nations Agree on New Rules for Taxing Global Companies - WSJ

For advocates, a minimum tax rate would end what they say is a “race to the bottom” in recent decades as countries engaged in competitive rounds of tax cuts to draw businesses away from each other.

In other words, high tax nations are upset that they have to lower their rates to be competitive. So, instead of making their country a more hospitable business environment, they changed the rules.

Facebook’s New Trump Rules - WSJ Opinion

This comes the week after Facebook was forced, in embarrassing fashion, to reverse its censorship of commentary about the origins of the coronavirus after the “expert” consensus ruling out a lab leak collapsed.

Still hard to believe that anyone uses the thing.