James Comey Sent Packing

Ex-FBI Director James Comey received notice from the White House today that he was no longer fit to serve as the director of the FBI and would be terminated from his position immediately. There are many angles to this story, and I hope to analyze a few from both sides of the political spectrum. To start, a brief timeline of Comey’s actions should be given:

To begin, Comey was criticized heavily by members of the right for the way he handled not only the investigation in the Clinton Email Scandal, but also his announcement that he did not recommend an indictment; the announcement was ill-timed which led to scrutiny by many conservative pundits. This seemed to be strike one for Comey in the eyes of republicans, yet he remained in good status with the democrats through this period. This, however, shifted quite quickly when Comey abruptly announced, only a couple weeks before the election, that the FBI would be potentially re-opening its case into the Clinton email debacle. To this day, Hillary still blames her loss in part on this announcement by Comey, and he received a relative amount of heat from the democrats. This was strike 2. Fast forward to the now Trump Presidency and Comey testifies in a public hearing again, this time announcing that the FBI would be investigating claims of a Russian connection to the Trump Campaign; this sparked outraged among conservatives, because Comey had now lent some credibility to the Trump-Russia Collusion claims. This was strike 3 for Comey. Normally, this would mean Comey stroke out; however, it took one more partisan fluff up on the part of Comey to put the final nail in his coffin. When giving more public testimony, Comey mentioned that the FBI had evidence the Huma Abedin had classified emails tied to Hillary Clinton on Anthony Weiner’s computer. Both democrats and republicans were outraged by this; the former because it once again shed light on the Clinton Scandal, and the latter because Comey took absolutely no action against Huma. This was presumably Comey’s piece of hay that broke his camel’s back, and his immediate termination should not come to a surprise. One concern, however, is the odd timing of this event. Comey is set to testify in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee in a few days, so to fire him this close to the hearing is bound to raise suspicion. That being said, it is important to note that we do not know the exact reasons the White House decided to handle this in the way it did; it is always possible that Comey put himself into this position through some questionable, partisan-charged actions.

The Trump Administration needs to find an extremely qualified candidate to replace Comey relatively hastily so to assist in quelling suspicions about their motivations. I personally believe that the timing is due to Trump’s lack of planning and often seemingly sporadic-type behavior, or maybe he simply was unaware Comey was testifying so soon. There are hundreds if not thousands of explanations for why this was handled the way it was, and jumping to claims of a Trump Tyranny will do no good until all the facts are presented. I believe it is defensible and rational to not support Trump; however, we should not enter with a mind set that just because Trump did it, it has to be a bad thing. Let’s give Trump a few days on this one, realistically it will turn out much like the other attempts by the Mass Media to connect Trump to some nefarious actions: that is, smoke but not fire. The up-shot is that Comey had caused problems for both political sides by playing politcs, and his termination seemed long overdue because of this.

Solar Energy

I have recently been curious about the logistics of relying on solar energy more, and will investigate this claim at a basic level in this post. Recent studies by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (3) showed that Solar panels pay off their investment with energy in just over 2 years, and will gather large returns if stationed for around ten years. Now the first problem with this number is that it requires individuals to have a stationary home that they must stay in for at least 2 years, usually up to 10, for solar panels to be worth the investment. Home ownership, however, has been dropping in recent years, presumably due to factors such as cheaper condominiums and city living arrangements (US Census Bureau: Homeownership Rates by Race and Ethnicity). Solar panels simply do not seem like a practical investment for the majority of Americans because of their style of living and the frequency of relocation; however, this does not eliminate solar panels as a viable option due to the potential for businesses to place panels or large cities to participate in projects to include panels on skyscrapers and other public buildings. It may in fact be worth it for a business to invest in solar panels if they know their business will stay put for an extended period of time. The dilemma presented here, though, is the large cost of resources and energy that producing solar panels actually creates.

Solar panels are constructed most often from a crystalline-silicon material, as this material serves as an effective semiconductor (1). This material is created using two techniques, the Czochralski process and the Bridgman-Stockbarger Technique (1). Both techniques involve heating and cooling a silicon material placed within a metal crucible. The key component of this process is that the material must be heated to around 1425 degrees Celsius in order for the process to produce a crystalline silicon material (2). Now, the question should be asked: how does the scientist heat the apparatus to such a heat? The answer is obvious: electrical energy. So where is this electrical energy produced? Well, in coal factories most likely, with non-renewable energy. The point is that solar panels are created from a non-natural material that requires intense preparation just to create one piece of the solar panel; if one also factors in the time spent undergoing production within factories, the overall carbon footprint of one solar panel is probably far more than the National Renewable Energy Laboratory lets on. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the vast amounts of energy required to produce solar panels could be satisfied without the use of non-renewable resources. The fact is we simply do not know whether we could continue our current means of production without the use of the most important discovery in human history: fossil fuels.

(1)https://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/ise/de/documents/publications/studies/Photovoltaics-Report.pdf

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czochralski_process

(3) http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf

The Tax Code

A recent article written by the Tax Foundation (and found here: https://taxfoundation.org/2017-tax-brackets/) gave a table of the estimated tax brackets in 2017. The 7 category bracket system is rather shocking once analyzed more deeply. Of particular concern is the bracket ranging from $191,650 to $416,700, in which household must pay 33%, or 1/3, of their income to the government. The first appalling fact of this obscure bracket is the fact that it ranges nearly $200,000; this is 100,000 dollars more than the next largest, and also problematic, bracket of $91,900 to $191,650. The reason such a wide ranging bracket is problematic is that it undermines the essence of a progressive tax. If one wants to support a progressive tax (which I hope to argue against later), then one should not support a flat tax that covers such a wide range of upper-middle class families. Furthermore, it should not matter whether or not the majority of Americans do not fall into this bracket, but rather that those who do are usually hard working individuals who create jobs and produce goods and services that the public needs and wants; it is not productive or moral to take 1/3 of someone’s hard earned income. What is even further mystifying is that these individuals are not the millionaires that Sanders and other progressives tend to make them out to be. This is simply households that make over 191k a year, which includes combined incomes of married couples. I do not mean to claim that these families are not well off, but instead bring attention to the fact that they begin every year losing 1/3 of their income to a government that they usually perceive as inept. I think it would also be faulty to presume a higher percentage tax for a higher income is fair; though it intuitively appears more fair than a flat tax, there does not appear to be any rational argument for such a taxes fairness. That is, fairness presumes that each would pay the same price for a particular good. For instance, if you and your friend order a pizza to split, you both pay for 50 percent of the pizza. This 50 percent should never change unless your friend eats more pizza than you. The same should stand for taxes. We all band together and pay a price for a particular good that we all partake in; be it roads, law enforcement, or firefighters. Just because one individuals earns (and yes, they do earn it) more than another does not mean the more wealthy individual should have to pay a higher percent for the same goods. My friend does not inquire into how much I make when we pay for the pizza, because we both receive the same amount of pizza. If the government is really giving out goods and services fairly, then each taxed individual should pay the same percentage for these goods. Richer people will still pay more in taxes because that is how percentages work. If you make $10,000 and are taxed at 10 percent, you pay 1,000 dollars; if you make $100,000 and are taxed at 10 percent, you pay 10,000 dollars. Instead, the more ambitious members of society are rewarded with a government that is 20 trillion dollars in debt and still takes away 1/3 of their income each year. I see no consolation in the refutation that the government is justified in doing this because they are assisting those who are less well off in society; it should never be okay to take away someone else’s property and give it to another just because that other person was less well off. This type of Robin Hood thievery is no moral argument for a progressive tax, but instead a condemnation of the policies that must be implemented to achieve such a tax’s goals: namely, stealing.

A flat tax may never be realized, however it seems paramount to target those that are actually causing the issues. For example, the progressive tax halts after $418k at 39.6 percent. This does not even come close to targeting those who are actually living in a gross amount of wealth, such as millionaires and billionaires. I do not mean to say that these are the people who deserve to be taxed more, bur rather point to the hypocrisy of someone like Bernie Sanders yelling about millionaires when the tax code is primarily aimed to hinder middle class, upper-middle class, and lower-upper class members of society. These people may technically be the one percent, but they usually earn their money by working large amounts each year with little breaks. These are not the wall street hot shots who shoot a million dollars into a stock and watch their money grow as they vacation on their yachts, but instead hard working Americans who produce valuable jobs and services. To tax 1/3 of the income they earn from this work is simply immoral, and it should be lowered to a more reasonable percentage. Let’s start incentivizing hard work again and stop pampering to cultures that will not assimilate and generations that want to be coddled.

Personal Liberty

My recent essay on free speech stressed the importance I place on the rights granted by the first amendment. Beyond this, however, individuals must begin to realize others’ personal values as equal to their own. That is, one must understand that many hold particular beliefs for particular reasons, and allowing them to articulate these reasons is essential to the progression of ideas. This short segment will focus particularly on abortion rights, and what the governments role should be in regulating this. I have switched consistently back and forth in my own personal moral stance on abortion. An individuals has every right to do what he or she may wish to their own body, as enumerated by the natural rights of humans; however, there is a fundamental problem in forcing those who do not agree with this stance to pay for something they view as immoral. If an evangelical christian views abortion as a sin, why should the government have a right to fund abortion programs with the evangelical’s tax dollars. This seems a tricky situation, and it battles a line between infringing on some individual rights — namely, women’s right to an abortion — and other individual rights — namely, a pro-lifers choice not to support it. Furthermore, there should be nobody who vehemently and passionately supports the death of an unborn child; that is, regardless of one’s stance on whether it should be allowed, it should persist to be considered morally questionable. Even if there is a certain point where the fetus is not conscious, the fact that it has some potential to be a human makes the moral dilemma extremely vivid for some. The solution is not to shut these views down with passionate, pro-choice protests, but rather to communicate with the other side and understand their problems with your own views. The exchange of arguments and ideas is essential for human progression away from fascism. To shut down ideas with violence sows the seeds for authoritarian radical groups with vengeful motivations.

The First Amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

The rights granted by the first amendment are quite explicit: freedom of religion, speech, press, and the rights to peacefully protest and petition. It is often pointed out, usually by classical liberals, that a more fundamental right underlies these: namely, freedom of thought. Without the ability to think freely, one can never exercise any other freedom granted to them by the first amendment. Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report, often makes it clear that we have to be able to have bad ideas and have those ideas critiqued in order to progress in our personal ideology. If we cannot even venture into realms of thought foreign to certain political parties, how are we to critically analyze any idea as good or bad? I bring this to attention specifically because I feel that not only is our right to freedom of speech being threatened by groups such as Anti-Fa, but so to is our right to free thought through methods of self-censorship and social annexing. In other words, many still feel the need to completely shut out thoughts they perceive as politically incorrect, including thoughts about Islam, social justice, immigration, and, more recently, even political ideology. Self-censorship can be seen from the outrage following the Muhammad cartoon publications in Sweden, to the current Trump-shaming that took place before the election; that is, if one admitted support for Trump they were often berated, which is a speculative explanation, among many, for the egregious polling errors before the election. Without an ability to explore thoughts apart from our own ideology, we never have an opportunity to challenge, and thus improve, our own ideas.

This leads to a second point: once our ideas are formulated and self-critiqued through an extensive revision process, we must have the freedom to express these ideas in an open forum; this includes all ideas, even bad ones. In fact, most ideas usually are not crafted that well the first time they are spoken, which is why the freedom to express ideas and revise them once they are challenged is so crucial. This is why we often complete rough drafts of important essays and have them revised countless times; our own ideas are often too trapped within a personal, biased microcosm without other readers peer-reviewing them. If we all ignore opposing viewpoints, we not only build our ideological house out of cards, but we also place this house in a vacuum where it will never be challenged. To argue that an individual’s ideology is too righteous to be debated by language is a classic authoritarian move: no individual ideology holds more weight than any other person’s ideology. This is not to claim that racist ideology is equal to multicultural ideology, but instead that we must allow those who are racist to voice their ideas in order to point out how idiotic they really are. The same goes for the Anti-Fa activists who place their ideology in a metal box, safe from free speech; it is necessary for all ideas to be critiqued and not blindly accepted.

Now this is not limited to left ideology, it seems even more crucial to critique the ideology of individuals such as Ann Coulter. Coulter sparks riots at college campuses when she gives talks, and is often silenced for holding a particularly conservative, anti-immigration platform. To silence her, however, just adds more fuel to the flame: how are we even to critique her seemingly ill-thought immigration policy if we do not allow her to articulate it? It is time for the left to admit that there are citizens of America, even younger citizens in college, who do not support immigration. Regardless of what all our individual ideologies line up to be, we have to recognize the rights and rationality of every American voter. To claim most voters ‘rational’ is not meant to mean every American voter is an educated voter, but just a recognition of the fact that these are real humans with a real ability to think and express this thought. This right is inalienable to these people, and, being in a democratic nation, we must recognize their sovereign right to cast a vote and express their ideology — even if we think it is not correct.

To clarify, I do not support Coulter’s viewpoints, just her right to express these in an open forum. There is no other way to debate ideas unless someone is allowed to express them. To shutdown the speaker is not only a violation of their right, but it takes away an opportunity for others to hear those ideas and critically analyze them with his or her own method of thought and expression. This process is what helps humans demarcate good ideas from bad ideas; the Ben Shapiro’s from the Milo Yiannopoulos’s.

In closing, the first amendment guarantees our right to think freely and express these thoughts freely, among many other extremely important freedoms; however, recently this rights seems to be under-fire from radical left groups and self-censorship due to social annexation and other factors. Ending this trend is crucial in order to keep America the leader of the free world and the only remaining country which supports the true principles of individual freedoms: life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.