Links - 27th March 2020 (2)

The Laffer curve for high incomes - "Five countries have higher tax rates than the peak of the Laffer curve."

Estimating Income Responses to Tax Changes: A Dynamic Panel Data Approach - "We use the estimates to simulate the fiscal consequences of a tax reform that reduces the top marginal tax rate by five percentage points. Such a reform turns out to have negligible effects on tax revenues and may even yield a fiscal surplus."

Michelle Obama: George W. Bush is 'my partner in crime'
How times change. It seems like it was only yesterday that Dubya was literally Hitler

Islam’s reformation: an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East | The Spectator - "I’ve noticed a change of mood on my own travels. I regularly meet Egyptians and others who desperately want to normalise relations with Israel and they offer three reasons. First, the events of the Arab Spring exposed the fanaticism of the Muslim Brotherhood and other related Islamists, with the hardliners now being viewed as a threat to both Islam as a faith and Muslims as a people. Isis and other ‘Islamic states’ are, of course, the logical outcome of Islamism. Now that this creed has been tested to destruction, it is being seen for what it is — and rejected.Second, the need to stand firm against Iran is becoming a cause that unites Israel with Sunni Arabs and anti-Tehran Shiite Muslims in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It’s well-known that mullahs in Tehran support Hezbollah, which is dedicated to destroying Israel. But they also meddle in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. So against this menace of Shiite political Islamism, committed to destroying Muslim secular governments and exporting Shiite revolutionary ideology, Israel is coming to be regarded as a benign neighbour.Finally, and most intriguingly, Israel is being seen by moderate Arab governments as a trade and security partner as the West sends mixed signals"

Maajid Nawaz - "White nationalists to Islamists in 2017:‬
‪“Your rhetoric is stoking jihadist terror”‬
‪Islamist reply: ‬
‪“Nothing to do with me guv” 🤷🏽‍♂️‬
‪Islamists to white nationalists in 2019:‬
‪“Your rhetoric is stoking far-right terror”‬
‪White nationalist reply: ‬
‪“Nothing to do with me guv” 🤷🏽‍♂️
‬ ‪Populists to #RegressiveLeft 2017:‬
‪“Tackle Islamist ideology to stop jihadist terror”‬
‪The Regressive Left:‬
‪“No. We must understand their grievances”‬
‪#RegressiveLeft to Populists in 2019:‬
‪“Tackle far-right ideology to stop racist terror”‬
‪Populists:‬
‪“No. We must understand their grievances” 🤦🏽‍♂️‬
‪#RegressiveLeft to Populists 2017:‬
‪“It’s not about ideas. Jihadists are loners with mental health issues”‬
‪Populists in 2017:‬
‪“No. It’s ideology”‬
‪Populists to Regressive Left 2019:‬
‪“It’s not about ideas. Far-Right are loners with mental health issues”‬
‪Regressive Left 2019:‬
‪“No. It’s ideology” 🤦🏽‍♂️
‬ ‪Populists to Islamist 2017:‬
‪“Your leaders & ideologues are responsible for inflammatory rhetoric. Ban Islam!”‬
‪Islamists:‬
‪“Free Speech!”‬
‪Islamists to Populists 2019:‬
‪“Your President & ideologues are responsible for inflammatory rhetoric. Ban neo-Nazis!”‬
‪Populists:‬
‪“Free Speech!” 🤦🏽‍♂️
And round and round and round it goes. Meanwhile, I feel like it’s groundhog day"

Meanwhile in Canada - Posts
So there're people complaining about Christmas trees now. Supposedly they take 12 years to grow, cutting them ruins the boreal forest and you shouldn't cut "lovely things" for a "stupid holiday". People always find something new to complain about. And the slippery slope continues to slide as people invent new problems...

Three year prison sentence for people who damage EU flag, German state proposes - "Anyone who attacks the blue and gold starred cloth displayed in public, rendering it “removed, destroyed, damaged, unusable or unrecognisable” could be slapped with a lengthy jail term or hefty fine. The proposed law will also protect the European anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, according to a report in Saarbrucken Zeitung, a daily newspaper in West Germany... Paragraph 104 of Germany’s criminal code states that anyone who damages the flag or symbol of a foreign nation will be imprisoned or fined"

German police is hiding facts about migrant crime statistics "to preserve civil peace" - "The German newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine recently raised the question if violent crime statistics are tweaked in the country.A state police officer is quoted saying: “There is no lying, nothing is hushed, but things are deliberately left out.”...  “In the case these terms do appear in police reports, from what I have understood, the police chief will make a written note on the report which says: ‘Please review this’.” This is a signal to alert the police officer who wrote the report to remove certain terms which are provocative and could have a negative influence on the statistics. In these statistics you will find the term assault instead of sexual assault without any further specification."

Germany springs to action over hate speech against migrants - The Washington Post - "even leaders on the political left are questioning whether the bid to weed out hate is going too far. Stefan Körner, chairman of Germany’s liberal Pirate Party, argued that democracies “must be able to bear” a measure of xenophobia. He condemned the government’s deal with social media outlets to get tougher on offensive speech, saying that “surely it will lead to too many rather than too few comments being blocked. This is creeping censorship, and we definitely don’t want that.”... The offensive views include an online post of a hangman’s noose as one solution to the refugee crisis, a quip by a right-wing politician about the breeding habits of Africans, as well as a comment made by a controversial speaker at an anti-migrant rally lamenting the closure of World War II-era concentration camps.The surge of incendiary comments online has been so strong that one of Germany’s largest media outlets, Der Spiegel, disabled its readers’ comment function for articles related to refugees."

Sweden Refusing New Study of Migrant Crime Despite Alarming Figures From Norway - "In Norway, all parties are united in the standpoint that it perfectly legitimate to investigate the connection between immigration and crime, despite having different opinions of the results"

Reality Check: Are migrants driving crime in Germany? - "Since 2014, the proportion of non-German suspects in the crime statistics has increased from 24% to just over 30% (when we take out crimes related to immigration and asylum irregularities). Breaking that down even further, in 2017 those classified as "asylum applicants or civil war refugees or illegal immigrants" represented a total of 8.5% of all suspects.  This is despite their population representing just 2% of Germany as a whole. When it comes to violent crime, 10.4% of murder suspects and 11.9% of sexual offence suspects were asylum-seekers and refugees in 2017.  A government-backed analysis of the German state of Lower Saxony, which has taken the fourth-highest number of asylum seekers, showed there was an increase of violent crime by 10.4% between 2014 and 2016.  It analysed the crimes that had been solved, and attributed the overwhelming majority of the rise to migrants."

Booby traps: Man in Maine killed by own device - "A 65-year-old American man who rigged his home with a booby trap to keep out intruders has been killed by the device.Ronald Cyr called police in the town of Van Buren in the state of Maine to say he had been shot.Police found a door had been designed to fire a handgun should anyone attempt to enter. Mr Cyr was taken to hospital but died of his injuries.It is illegal for home-owners to install such traps... It is illegal to set up devices in your home to protect it from intruders, if those devices can cause harm.The legal argument is that life is more valued than property and that the devices have no means of preventing accidental harm or distinguishing between targets.Even if the trap targets a criminal, the trap-setter, though having the right to protect their home, has no right to determine the punishment. Injury can lead to lawsuits. In the 1971 case of Katko v. Briney, in Iowa, two homeowners were held liable for injuries caused by their spring-loaded shotgun to a trespasser intent on stealing from a vacant property.The court ruled the deadly force was not reasonable and awarded the plaintiff $30,000 (£23,000) in damages."
Freedom, fuck yeah!
I thought in some states you have the right to shoot and kill anyone who enters your home illegally

Nazi design exhibition in Netherlands raises fears of glorification - "An exhibition of Nazi design has opened in the Netherlands to protests and a request for visitors to the museum not to take and share photographs for fear of the exhibits being glorified on social media.The Museum of Design in Den Bosch is showcasing sculpture by Adolf Hitler’s favourite artist, Arno Breker, a 1943 VW Beetle, photos and Leni Riefenstahl films from the era, in what is being billed as the first great exposition of the “Design of the Third Reich”.Running for five months, the exhibition has been criticised by the Association of Dutch Anti-fascists, which has called in vain for local authorities to intervene."
People cannot be allowed to think the Wrong Thing. Telling people what to think is good when it's in the name of "anti-Fascism"

Twitter Doesn’t Realize that Protecting Hate Speech Promotes Tolerance - "In the 1830s abolitionists were using the U.S. mail in their campaign to end slavery. In 1835 United States Postmaster Amos Kendall found one bulk mailing to Charleston, South Carolina, to be particularly objectionable. He believed the mailing to be part of “a wicked plan of exciting the negroes to insurrection and to massacre” and conferred President Andrew Jackson on how to handle the mailing, which was characterized by Charleston’s postmaster as “inflammatory and incendiary.”Jackson’s response was to order the mail delivered only to “subscribers” and the names of abolitionists receiving the mail to be “published as supporters of ‘exciting the negroes to insurrection and to massacre.’” The abolitionists deserved, Jackson added, “to atone for this wicked attempt with their lives.”It was the speech of abolitionists that some, including the President, considered offensive. In slaveholding states the speech of abolitionists was criminalized, with their speech considered “treason against slavery.” In Maryland, criminal libel laws were used against abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.Which is more dangerous: “Offensive” words or suppression of speech? Today, particularly on college campuses, many believe that words are the greater danger. Pew Research Center survey data reveals that 40 percent of millennials believe that “government should be able to prevent people publicly making statements that are offensive to minority groups.” Overall, 28 percent of the U.S. population shares that views.  Social media has responded to the call of the minority for censorship. At the urging of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Twitter has recently suspended the accounts of those on the alt-right that they determine to be guilty of hate speech. In October, YouTube restricted access to a video on the First Amendment by Wall Street Journal reporter Kimberley Strassel on the grounds that it was “potentially objectionable.” The restriction was reversed after others exercised their right of free speech to expose YouTube’s decision as ludicrous. This past spring when many in England were in an uproar about Donald Trump, the English author of the Harry Potter series J.K. Rowling offered this defense of the freedom to be offensive: “[Trump’s] freedom to speak protects my freedom to call him a bigot. His freedom guarantees mine.”"

Gorillas, orangutans and chimps die in German zoo fire - "The fire was likely to have been caused by Chinese sky lanterns that were set off amid New Year’s Eve celebrations and landed inside the zoo... 48-year-old Massa, the oldest living silverback gorilla in the European endangered species breeding programme, had perished in the flames. Investigators believe it is highly likely the fire was was caused by Chinese sky lanterns, also known as Kongming lanterns, which had been illegally set off in the city, police said at a press conference on Wednesday.Several witnesses had reported low-flying lanterns in the city on Tuesday night, and three lanterns with handwritten messages had been found near the zoo enclosure, a police spokesperson said. Setting off rockets and firecrackers in the streets is a key part of Germany’s New Year’s Eve ritual, and the law allows citizens to light their own fireworks in public on 31 December and 1 January.In recent years there has been a growing debate about a ban on pyrotechnics, and about 30 German municipalities imposed partial bans on private fireworks this year.The sale of Chinese sky lanterns is already illegal in all German states bar the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, however."
I guess the death of charismatic animals pisses people off more than "racism"