Couldn’t Help But Notice (061807)
Sarkozy’s majority ended up not being as big as his party hoped for. The result is being spun by the media as a fearful response to his “radical agenda.” No way. Here’s why:
The Socialists spent the second-round campaign week fanning fears that Francois Fillon, the Prime Minister, was aiming to raise value added tax by two percentage points.
….. The Socialists, led by Ségolène Royal to presidential defeat last month, were partially saved by hostility to Mr Fillon’s plans for a “social VAT”, which emerged after the first round. The Government is considering raising VAT to finance cuts in payroll taxes designed to give a boost to business.
It’s much more correct to conclude that French voters reacted negatively to shifting the tax burden around, and instead want real tax cuts and reductions in the size and scope of their overbearing government. If Fillon’s proposal reflects Sarko’s thinking, the new administration is setting itself up for a mediocre term.
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A fringe benefit of Sarkozy’s win is that the French public has been spared what might have been a gossip columnist’s dream come true if Socialist Segolene Royal had instead prevailed.
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Star Parker opines on the NAACP’s continuing slide into irrelevance. She correctly cites most of the factors behind it:
The NAACP’s “social justice” agenda today is simply a boilerplate program of the political left.
The crisis in black America is poverty and a growing underclass — about 25 percent of our black population — whose problems largely stem from lifestyle rather than oppression. It is a social and moral crisis.
….. Ironically, one institution that does need dismantling, the NAACP works to defend. And that is our public school system.
Yet, the NAACP fights school choice. For reasons perhaps someone else can explain, the agenda of the political left is more important to the NAACP today than honest scrutiny of the real needs of its own community and serving those needs.
But Parker missed what may very well be seen as the final nail in the NAACP’s coffin if it ever comes to that. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that the organization’s bleeding has accelerated since its embrace of abortion in 2004.
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If you spent the weekend blissfully ignorant of the State of Ohio data theft that took place over the June 9-10 weekend and was first revealed late last week, here’s the latest.
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This exemplifies why so many utilities are cynically embracing globaloney and globalarmism:
Britain’s electricity generators could make windfall profits of about £1.5bn a year from the European Union’s emissions trading scheme, industry estimates suggest, raising further questions about the operation of the programme intended to combat global warming.
Across Europe, the profits could add up to about €20bn (£13.6bn) a year.
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Though it will be an expensive undertaking, the good news is that Susette Kelo’s house will be moved (link requires free registration, and a paid subscription shortly thereafter; HT to Day reporter Elaine Stoll for the link):
The house will be preserved in its entirety and relocated to 36 Franklin St., Institute Senior Attorney Scott Bullock said Thursday. There, he said, it will stand testament to the struggle of Kelo and the neighbors who joined her in a lawsuit — Kelo v. City of New London — that sought to save their homes and prevent future seizures of private property for economic development.
….. in the next few months it will be disassembled “piece by piece,†down to single studs and floor joists, trucked away, and stored in pieces.
The bad news, Connecticut Representative Toni Boucher explains, is that the Nutmeg State’s new eminent domain bill accomplishes very little:
I don’t want people to believe the new law will protect the taking of property for a private development purpose.
….. any eminent domain proceeding is (still) weighted heavily in favor of the government and forbids an independent third party to determine the validity of the property claim.
