Sunday, December 10, 2023

Liberal


Pirates’ opening-day payroll was just $46.9 million at the start of last season, according to Cot’s Contracts. That was the second-lowest figure in the major leagues behind the Oakland Athletics at $33.9 million.

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A white female student at the University of Virginia was accused by a black student activist of telling Black Lives Matter protesters that they would “make good speed bumps.” The accused, Morgan Bettinger, faced disciplinary charges for threatening other students’ “health and safety.” She was ultimately expelled in abeyance—even though two separate investigations, one by students and one by the campus civil rights office, concluded there was no evidence she had actually made the offensive comment.--camp

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In Moore v. U.S., the justices focused on the question of whether the 16th Amendment’s authorization of “income” taxes allows for the taxing of unrealized gains. It has long been understood that income taxes apply only to realized gains—those that have been actually received by the taxpayer, or effectively so such that the taxpayer has control over the funds, which is called “constructive realization.” This is a seriously destructive idea, dangerous to investment and the economy. But success will always be the enemy of some.

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Liberal

An interesting topic and article:

“Liberal” from “Libertas” means, at bottom, freedom. In the 19th century, “liberals” were devoted to personal, economic, and increasing social freedom from government restraint. “Conservatives” wanted to maintain aristocratic privileges, and government interventions in the traditional way of doing things. The debate was not so obvious. Conservatives defended their view of aristocratic power in a noblesse-oblige concern for little people that the unfettered free market might leave behind, in a way quite reminiscent of today’s elites who think they should run the government in the name of the downtrodden (or “nudge” them, if I can poke a little fun at Sunstein’s earlier work).

But by the 1970s, the labels had flipped. “Liberals” were advocates of big-state interventionism, in a big tent that included communists and marxists. It became a synonym of “left.” “Conservatives” became a strange alliance of free market economics and social conservatism. The word “classical liberal” or “libertarian” started to be used to refer to heirs of the enlightenment “liberal” tradition, broadly emphasizing individual liberty and limited rule of law government in both economic and social spheres.

But broadly, “liberal” came to mean more government intervention and Democrat, while “conservative” came to mean less state intervention and Republican, at least in rhetoric.

But a new force has come to the fore. The heirs of the far-left marxists and communists are now, .. what shall we call them.. perhaps “censorious totalitarian progressives.” Sunstein calls them “post liberals.” The old alliance between center-left and far left is tearing apart, and Oct 7 was a wake up call for many who had skated over the division.-- Sunstein in, if you can believe it, the nyt

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