The Road Ahead


Like many of you, I was happy that Donald Trump won the election. Kamala Harris is a committed Marxist, supporter of baby killing, and passionate advocate of the woke ideology. In foreign policy, she would have been guided by the neocons who control brain dead “President” Joe Biden.

But we shouldn’t be complacent. Trump is far from ideal, and we need to do all we can to work against the policies he favors that are inimical to a free society. Beyond that, we need to work for a fully libertarian society, as advocated by Murray Rothbard and Ron Paul.

Let’s first look at Trump’s bad areas, and a good place to start is foreign policy. One bright spot is that he wants to settle the Ukraine war, instead of supplying the pro-Nazi Zelensky regime with billions of dollars and shipping them American missiles. Even here, we need to be alert to the influence of neocon Trump supporters like Lindsey Graham.

But Trump wants to intensify a trade war with China that could easily become a hot war. He has proposed a 60-100 % tariff on Chinese imports. When he was President the last time, he challenged China’s attempt to secure control over the South China Sea. Here is an AP story on Trump’s China tariff policy: “Donald Trump has identified what he sees as an all-purpose fix for what ails America: Slap huge new tariffs on foreign goods entering the United States.

The former president and current Republican nominee asserts that tariffs — basically import taxes — will create more factory jobs, shrink the federal deficit, lower food prices and allow the government to subsidize childcare.

He even says tariffs can promote world peace.

‘Tariffs are the greatest thing ever invented,’ Trump said this month in Flint, Michigan.

As president, Trump imposed tariffs with a flourish — targeting imported solar panels, steel, aluminum and pretty much everything from China.

‘Tariff Man,’ he called himself.

This time, he’s gone much further: He has proposed a 60% tariff on goods from China — and a tariff of up to 20% on everything else the United States imports.”

Even worse, Trump supports “Bibi” Netanyahu’s genocidal devastation of Gaza. He risks embroiling us in a war with Iran, which could quickly escalate into a nuclear holocaust. He said about Netanyahu “Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu in one call this month, ‘Do what you have to do,’ according to six people familiar with the conversation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive and confidential information. Trump has said publicly that the two have spoken at least twice in October, with one call as recently as Oct. 19.

‘He didn’t tell him what to do militarily, but he expressed that he was impressed by the pagers’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), who was on a call this month with Trump and Netanyahu, referring to the Israeli operation that killed Hezbollah leaders with explosive batteries inside pagers. ‘He expressed his awe for their military operations and what they have done.’ Graham added: ‘He told them, do what you have to do to defend yourself, but we’re openly talking about a new Mideast. Trump understands that very much there has to be change with the corrupt Palestinian state.’”

Speaking of foreign policy, we also need to abolish the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI. These agencies have been responsible for military interventions in many foreign countries, and they spy on American citizens.

As the quotes above make clear, Trump strongly supports tariffs generally, not just against China. Tariffs are bad for American consumers. They raise prices on goods consumers want to purchase, and it is no coincidence that practically all economists think they are a bad idea. Perhaps even worse is that Trump does not want to cut government spending. To the contrary, his budget proposals call for more spending than the proposals of the free-spending Democrats. Trump will not end what Dr. Ron Paul aptly calls the “spending mania.” Trump would make our already blown-up budget deficit higher than it now is: “Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s tax and spending plans would produce more than twice as much new debt as the plans from Vice President Kamala Harris, a budget-focused think-tank estimated on Monday.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which advocates reducing federal deficits, released new detailed estimates showing Harris’ tax and spending plans would add $3.5 trillion to deficits over 10 years, while Trump’s would add $7.5 trillion.”

When Trump was President the last time, he pressured the Fed to lower interest rates. The Austrian theory of the business cycle has conclusively proved that this leads to artificial booms and depressions. Instead we need to “End the Fed!,” a call to battle that will always be associated in our minds with the great Ron Paul: “‘Nothing good can come from the Federal Reserve,’ writes Texas Congressman Ron Paul in his latest book hitting shelves this week, titled ‘End the Fed.’

‘It is the biggest taxer of them all. Diluting the value of the dollar by increasing its supply is a vicious, sinister tax on the poor and middle class.’

Paul makes the case that the Fed is the main culprit responsible for the current economic mess the country faces through the destructive policies of cheap credit and excessive money printing.’

‘Prosperity can never be achieved by cheap credit,’ says Paul. ‘If that were so, no one would have to work for a living. Inflated prices only deceive one into believing that real wealth has been created.’

The Federal Reserve, created in 1913, has been acting as the main central bank of the United States for nearly one hundred years. Many Americans are either not sure or not interested in what role the Fed plays in managing the economy. ‘The economic crisis has changed everything,’ writes Congressman Paul.”

One final point. Trump has shown a commendable resistance to the woke ideology. But it has been aptly said that while the Democrats are the evil party, the Republicans are the stupid party. We must be alert to attempts to keep DEI while doing it in a “reasonable way” and favoring “equality of opportunity” not “equality of result” instead of rejecting equality altogether, as Murray Rothbard did: “If mankind is diverse and individuated, then how can anyone propose equality as an ideal? Every year, scholars hold Conferences on Equality and call for greater equality, and no one challenges the basic tenet. But what justification can equality find in the nature of man? If each individual is unique, how else can he be made ‘equal’ to others than by destroying most of what is human in him and reducing human society to the mindless uniformity of the ant heap?”

Originally published at LewRockwell.com.

Image credit: Gage Skidmore via Wikipedia.

 


Originally Posted at https://mises.org/


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    Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

    Chinese Agent Who Tried To Bribe IRS Against Shen Yun Sentenced To 20 Months in Prison

    Authored by Eva Fu and Cara Ding via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A Chinese agent who tried to bribe the IRS and manipulate the agency into advancing Beijing’s transnational repression of a U.S. nonprofit has received a 20-month prison sentence.

    U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York in White Plains on Jov. 19, 2024. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

    U.S. citizen John Chen, 72, was a principal actor in a $50,000 bribery scheme under the direction of a Chinese intelligence official to revoke the nonprofit status of New York-based Shen Yun Performing Arts.

    Shen Yun has long been on the Chinese regime’s target list. Founded in 2006, the company tours around the world to display the ancient Chinese culture that prevailed before the communist takeover of China, while highlighting the human rights abuses under the regime’s rule. It has often drawn attention to the ongoing persecution of the meditation group Falun Gong.

    Chen pleaded guilty in July after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors. He has spent the 16 months since his arrest in May 2023 in detention, and he will spend another four months in federal custody.

    He will also forfeit $50,000 and face three years of supervised release after serving the full prison term.

    For several months in 2023, Chen had been trying to move a fraudulent whistleblower complaint to help the Chinese Communist Party “topple” Falun Gong, according to court documents. Prosecutors said the whistleblower complaint was “facially deficient” and invoked propaganda rhetoric typical of Chinese authorities.

    During those conversations, Chen emphasized that Chinese leadership was “very generous” in financial support for the plan, according to the court filing.

    “After this-this-this thing is done,” the court document quoted Chen as saying, “reward for work will surely be given at that time.”

    Chen and another co-conspirator, Lin Feng, who served 16 months of detention, paid $5,000 cash bribes to an undercover agent posing as an IRS agent. They promised an additional $50,000 for opening an investigation along with 60 percent of any awards from the complaint if it went through.

    It was “a significant bribe,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Lockard said at the sentencing hearing. He noted that the undercover officer didn’t specify an amount.

    John Chen (L) poses for a photo at an event celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in Beijing in 2019. Department of Justice

    “The defendant chose the amount,” he said.

    Both Chen and Lin had traveled to Orange County in upstate New York, where Shen Yun is based, to surveil Falun Gong practitioners there, according to a court filing.

    Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the sentencing was a reminder that “the U.S. justice system will hold accountable those who attempt to engage in malicious transnational repression on American soil.”

    “John Chen aligned himself with the PRC government and its goals to harass and intimidate the Falun Gong, a long-standing target of PRC repression. In doing so, Chen boldly attempted to bribe an individual he believed to be an IRS agent to corrupt the administration of the U.S. tax code and pervert the IRS whistleblower program,” he said in a statement on Nov. 19. “This Office will not tolerate efforts like this to repress free speech by targeting critics of the PRC in the United States.”

    U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams addresses the media in New York City on Nov. 2, 2023. David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

    Both Chen’s son and his lawyer declined to comment after walking out of the courtroom.

    While Chen’s son, three China-based siblings, two ex-wives, and fiancée have all written letters asking for leniency and describing him as a man who loves the United States, the prosecutors disagreed.

    In a Nov. 5 memo, they argued that a 30-month prison sentence—the longest under the sentencing guideline—would be appropriate because of the seriousness of the case and the need to deter criminal conduct, “particularly in cases of a foreign power’s repression of a disfavored group within the borders of the United States.”

    “The defendant has no mitigating motives or external factors justifying his offense,” the prosecutors wrote, noting that Chen was “not motivated by poverty” and that there was no evidence of Chinese officials’ pressure.

    The curtain call for Shen Yun Performing Arts at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center in New York City on Jan 11, 2015. Larry Dai/Epoch Times

    Prosecutors noted that Chen had repeatedly referred to Chinese officials as his “friends” and that during the bribery scheme, he “called them ‘blood brothers,’ and described how ‘we’—Chen and his PRC Government friends—‘started this fight’ against the founder of the Falun Gong ‘twenty, thirty years ago.’”

    The memo displayed photos obtained from Chen’s electronic devices and online accounts showing him at a major military parade in Beijing celebrating the 70th anniversary of Chinese communist rule in 2019. Another photo showed Chen shaking hands with communist leader Xi Jinping.

    “Chen was extraordinarily proud of his history with the PRC Government and, in particular, his meeting with Xi,” the memo states, citing a recorded call in which he bragged that he had “climbed, climbed, climbed to this position,” and that “Uncle Xi” met him “three times in 10 years.”

    Chen had also featured those three meetings, along with a photo, in a 2020 digital rĂŠsumĂŠ, according to the memo.

    Chen was aligned with the Chinese authorities in suppressing Falun Gong and “acted as a full-fledged and enthusiastic participant in the crimes,” the prosecutors said.

    “It was his fight,” Lockard said at the sentencing hearing, adding that Chen had tried to use the freedoms he enjoyed in the United States to undermine the country.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 11/21/2024 – 23:25

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