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Trump’s Wall Protectionism

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President Trump has now come up with a plan to make Mexico pay for his much-ballyhooed wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. One big problem, however, is that his plan doesn’t make Mexico pay for the wall. Instead, it makes Americans pay for his wall. Trump’s proposal is to impose a 20 percent tariff on goods imported from Mexico. In Trump’s mind, that would mean that Mexicans are paying for his wall because the tax will be on items that are being produced in Mexico. In actuality though, the tariff is just like a sales tax that Americans are required to pay when they purchase goods at a local level. The difference is that this is a sales tax on goods produced in Mexico. But it is Americans who are paying the tax, not Mexicans. Isn’t that interesting? Among the first things that a conservative president does when he comes into office is to force another tax onto hard-pressed American taxpayers. Here’s another interesting ...

Iraqi Refugees and Quislings

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During this past weekend’s immigration-ban chaos, the stories of two immigrant refugees, Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Fuad Shareef, struck me. Both of them were from Iraq and both of them were fleeing to the United States in fear of their lives if forced to return to Iraq. According to the New York Times, “After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mr. Shareef worked as a translator with American officials, and he received death threats” and Darweesh “worked with the United States military and government for a decade at great personal risk.” My immediate reaction was: Isn’t Iraq the country that the Pentagon and CIA invaded and occupied for some 11 years? Wasn’t that the land of Operation Iraqi Freedom? Don’t Americans still profusely thank American servicemen for their service in Iraq? Why would two Iraqi immigrants be fleeing to the United States from a country that the U.S. government had invaded and occupied and in which it had successfully installed a ...

Rule by Brute Force

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“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”—Ayn Rand The torch has been passed to a new president. All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any ...