Source: Wall Street Journal.

The writers lament that stock buybacks are misunderstood and unfairly criticized. Also, the new tax on stock repurchasing will harm shareholders and the economy.

Stock buybacks are a topic I have never learned anything about. As an investor who has sold parts of my portfolio from time to time, I just assumed that companies repurchasing their own shares merely added to the number of buyers that made it easier for me to sell what I wanted to sell. I found a helpful explainer in Forbes that presents a more sophisticated view of the topic.

Continue reading “The Virtues of Stock Buybacks” →

Source: Wall Street Journal.

I have long been an advocate of Civil Service accountability, as is the writer of this story.

Although he doesn’t mention it, I believe the Senior Executive Service within the Civil Service would be an appropriate focal point for accountability reforms. According to Wikipedia, SES personnel serve “in key positions just below the top presidential appointees as a link between them and the rest of the federal (civil service) workforce.” Thus, they are the people who mentor the political appointees in the operations of the bureaucracies they head, as well as having the authority to compel proper, non-partisan performance within the agencies they serve.

Source: Frontpage Mag.

The writer’s prediction that the republic has ended strikes me as premature, but his substantive analysis will no doubt resonate with many Americans. How, for example, are the powers that be going to square their lack of concern over Hillary Clinton’s improper possession of classified documents with ordering the FBI to raid Donald Trump’s home for the same alleged offense?

I expect the classified documents question will turn out to be a tempest in a teapot. I’ll be watching to see whether it turns into something real, or whether kabuki politics has truly become the last reality of our system.

Source: American Thinker.

This story is perhaps related to the recent post on IRS ammunition procurement, at least on the principle that two points make a line. What is the big plan for the IRS that it needs seven times its current budget?

Source: Wall Street Journal.

In a way, current debates over free speech are really debates over the natural limits on effectiveness of the institutions of government and society. This is because: If you want free speech you must have a culture that tolerates it (you personally must tolerate it; all your neighbors, too). The institutions of government and society can be imbued with that culture, but they cannot realistically create it.

The interviewee in the WSJ piece, Nadine Strossen, seems to be keenly aware of this puzzle, even if she doesn’t say so in exactly that way.

Source: Frontpage Mag.

The great Daniel Greenfield documents recent events in an old KGB project. The labor movement of the early 1900s and the civil rights movement of the mid 1900s were both heavily infiltrated by and influenced by Russian communist/KGB activists. It should be no surprise to anyone that today’s Left is the weird offspring of the same “active measures” program.

Source: A Son of the New American Revolution.

If Nancy Pelosi wants to get herself shot out of the sky, I say let her. She’s not worth going to war against China for.

Source: Washington Examiner.

When Ukraine completes its march to Moscow there will no doubt be more democracy in the world.

Source: The American Conservative.

Douglas Macgregor laments that the Biden administration is out of touch, losing control and self-destructive. Specifically, the administration can’t (or won’t) see our proxy war with Russia is failing, its sanctions are crippling our allies to the point they must eventually abandon us, and our military has become ineffective.

Macgregor’s statement of the problem seems accurate to me. I wish I knew a good solution.