Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

Here.

Here.

Here are highlights from Stage 1 of the Dubai Tour.

There's a silver lining in this news. It's that white male social-justice warriors are screwed. Think of all the leftist boys running around on college campuses, claiming to be feminists. For the rest of their lives, these self-loathing males are going to take a back seat to women. I predict that a great many of them will become women (or try to).

To the editor:

President Trump claims vindication after the release of the memo written by the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), yet the document states the Trump campaign investigation began after an earlier incident involving George Papadopoulos, not because of the infamous Steele dossier or the FBI's purported abuse of its surveillance powers. ("Some GOP lawmakers question Trump's claim of vindication from memo," Feb. 4)

For the sake of saving his own hide, Trump is willing to destroy public trust in vital American institutions.

We've long known the president is happy to lie to serve himself; what his base apparently does not understand is his willingness to drag his supporters to hell with him. Let's hope enough of his supporters catch on in time to help the rest of us stop this slow-rolling tragedy.

Spike Tucker, Lompoc

Note from KBJ: I'm still waiting for someone to prove that Trump lied about something. Either the people saying this are lying or they don't know what a lie is.

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Do leftists not understand the danger of identity politics? Take Hillary Clinton, for example. She's female, and as such she's a member of an oppressed class (by leftist standards), but (1) she's white, (2) she's able-bodied, (3) she's heterosexual, and (4) she's nonMuslim. She's an oppressor four times over! She's also wealthy, which is an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the Left. When she runs up against someone black, disabled, poor, Muslim, or LGBTQ, she loses. The only person she trumps is a wealthy straight able-bodied white Christian male, such as her husband Bill!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our 40th President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan! pic.twitter.com/JtEglBhm4c

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 7, 2018

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The graduated [income] tax is a confiscatory tax. Its effect, and to a large extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level. Many of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that their purpose is to redistribute the nation's wealth. Their aim is an egalitarian society—an objective that does violence both to the charter of the Republic and [to] the laws of Nature. We are all equal in the eyes of God but we are equal in no other respect. Artificial devices for enforcing equality among unequal men must be rejected if we would restore that charter and honor those laws.

(Barry M. Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative, ed. CC Goldwater, The James Madison Library in American Politics, ed. Sean Wilentz [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007 (first published in 1960)], 57 [italics in original])

Note from KBJ: The word "confiscate" means "take or seize (someone's property) with authority." Every tax, from the lowly sales tax to the gasoline tax to the cigarette tax to the estate tax to the property tax to the income tax, is by definition confiscatory in that sense, so what is Goldwater's point in saying that the graduated (i.e., progressive) income tax is confiscatory? He must mean something stronger, namely, completely taken away. But this is absurd. We have had a progressive ("graduated") income tax for generations, and income inequality is at an all-time high. Nobody's income or wealth is being confiscated by the income tax, if by "confiscated" Goldwater means completely taken away. Only in the fevered minds of libertarians (such as Goldwater) is a progressive income tax designed to "bring down all men to a common level." And what's wrong with redistributing wealth? Every law and every public policy redistributes wealth. The question is not whether to redistribute wealth; it's how to do so. Either we redistribute wealth honestly and intelligently or we do so with our heads in the sand. By the way, conservatives, as such, are not opposed to progressive income taxation. Conservatives want people to have good lives, and that may require progressive income taxation. Those who have more than they need (especially those who have not worked for it) are and should be required to provide for those who, through no fault of their own, have less than they need.

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