VP Vance: A Worthy Successor

17 July 202416 July 2024 The Portly Politico22 Comments

After the usual will-they-won’t-they of the vice presidential selection drama, President Trump delivered yet again, picking Ohio Senator and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance as his running mate.

The Vance pick is symbolic on a number of levels. As a US Senator, he has focused on improving the lives of the forgotten men and women that President Trump champions. He has rejected the siren song of the Establishment Uniparty. He is very clearly the conservative populist in the Senate.

I receive an e-mail newsletter from The New York Times each morning at my work e-mail. I am not fan of The New York Times, but I likely signed up for it because I needed to access some article for my students. Regardless, the Tuesday, 16 July edition of The Morning newsletter makes a claim with which I agree: in picking Vance, Trump was, essentially, picking his successor.

Lazy Sunday CCLXVII: Political Stuff, Part II

16 June 202411 June 2024 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

I’m spinning out a few more of my political posts this Lazy Sunday, one of which goes back to my ancient Blogger site.

“Politics, Locally-Sourced” (and “TBT: Politics, Locally-Sourced“) – A classic post from the old The Portly Politico site on Blogger, in which I discuss the importance of local politics.
“New Criterion on Principles in Politics” – A discussion of principles, which can either be timeless, fixed lodestars of the commonweal—or whatever the victors decide they are.
“Support Culture, Not Political Machines” – Stop giving your money to political parties. Give it to me instead.

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Conversation with My Congressman

8 June 20247 June 2024 The Portly Politico4 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive. To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to sit down with my US Congressman, Russell Fry, to discuss issues and concerns facing my little town. Among the attendees was the mayor and another councilmember, as well as two of the Congressmen’s employees in the district. It was a rare opportunity to sit face-to-face—and I literally sat right across from Congressman Fry—for an hour with a member of Congress to talk about problems and possibilities. It was not a “town hall” or a campaign event or the like, so it was about as unfiltered and direct as a business meeting with a professional acquaintance.

There was definitely some politicking going on, to be sure, but it was of the subtle, “we’re-here-to-help” type. On our end, we wanted to present some of the critical needs of the town in the hopes of getting some guidance on obtaining additional grant funds—and, of course, with the hope that our congressman might someday steer some succulent pork our way. I dislike the sort of rentier system that seems to drive politics in the United States, but with an all-powerful federal government and hamstrung State governments, little municipal governments have to beg like any other interest group, hat in hand.

That said, it was a productive conversation. The gist of Congressman Fry’s advice to us was “apply for grants, and let us know when you are doing so; we can offer support.” Naturally, we already apply for any grant we can, but as he pointed out, small towns like ours don’t have a built-in “professional class” of grant writers and government apparatchiks who can constantly lead us to pools of federal dollars, at which we can subsequently engorge ourselves.

That was the relatively “unsexy” but, arguably, most important part of the meeting, at least as far as the Town of Lamar, South Carolina is concerned. We pointed out our desire to pump and sell our own water again, and to several water and sewage projects that we need to address now. I also pointed out that all the ARPA funds from a few years back essentially just created massive inflation in the construction industry, as contractors realized they could put forward bloated bids. As such, even with that federal funny money slushing around in our coffers, the availability of said money simply priced most projects out of our reach.

Thus, the catch-22 of government: small towns, sadly, depend upon the largesse of the State and federal governments to survive and perform their most basic functions, but that very same largesse inflates projects beyond the towns’ ability to pay. It’s a vicious, inflationary cycle, that is further exacerbated by, well, general inflation.

But what about the sexy part of the meeting? What about when I started to grill my congressman on Ukraine, the J-6 political prisoners, and more?

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more. That said, as this post concerns topics that may be of public interest, please e-mail me if you’d like to receive a PDF of the full piece, free of charge.

TBT^256: End the Income Tax

11 April 20245 April 2024 The Portly Politico5 Comments

It’s that time of year again, when yours portly yells impotently at the clouds and demands the end of the income tax. Unlike prior years, yours portly actually got his taxes done relatively early (if you count early March as “relatively early”), and while I owed both Uncle Sam and the Great State of South Carolina a pound of flesh, I ended up getting away with only paying $54 total—woooooot!

Still, the annual ritual of telling the federal government how many miles I drove to music lessons and what I paid for WordPress is an odious and obnoxious reminder that the federal government dominates our lives and our personal information. I recognize that taxes are a necessary evil, but let’s focus on the “evil” part of that equation.

I don’t know what the solution is, and I think the Republican Party has spent far too much time quibbling over the placement of commas in the tax code instead of fighting the necessary cultural battles in our nation, but tax reform should be a no-brainer. Here’s the Portly Proposal:

Tax all income at 10%
Don’t tax interest earnings in savings accounts

That’s it! Easy. Cheap. Everyone pays the same percentage. Maybe—maybe!—have a carveout for people who earn, say, less than $20,000 a year—they pay, say, 5%, or even just 1%. If people want to withhold from their paycheck, fine. But there are no surprises—if you earn $2000 in March, you withhold $200. At filing time, all that would be done is confirming you’ve paid your amount; if you overpaid on that first $20,000, then you’d get a refund.

Even that is more involved than I’d like, but it gives a bit of relief to the working poor. Otherwise, no deductions, no carveouts, nothing. There’s still an incentive to save, since no one pays for interest earned on savings accounts.

Yeah, yeah—you want to write off your $300,000 mortgage. No. Sorry—let’s not incentivize people to borrow huge amounts of money so they can save forty bucks on their taxes.

With that, here is 13 April 2023’s “TBT^16: End the Income Tax“:

Trumparion Rising II

24 January 202420 January 2024 The Portly Politico5 Comments

Well, well, well… it seems that, despite the best efforts of the Establishment GOP/Uniparty/Boomercons, GEOTUS Donald J. Trump can’t be beaten in a fair fight. At least, he won the Iowa caucuses, and will likely sweep the rest of the primaries as he marches towards the Republican nomination.

What scares the powers-that-be is that Trump still wields tremendous influence. The plethora of headlines screaming that Trump is no longer a viable candidate are the desperate cries of an elite who hope that if they say it enough, it will become true. Their black magic and dark incantations hold no power over the righteous.

SubscribeStar Saturday: Acceptance

18 November 202315 November 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

Readers are likely familiar with the Kübler-Ross model of the five stages of grief. It’s one of those psychological models that has percolated into the popular culture. As is often the case, The Simpsons illustrates it better than I can:

When it comes to the future of our nation, I’ve reached the “Acceptance” phase after many, many years in the other phases.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.

Monday Morning Movie Review: Threads (1984)

2 October 20231 October 2023 The Portly Politico9 Comments

Other than a trip to the Pee Dee State Farmers Market (more on that this Saturday), I spent most of Saturday playing Civilization VI and watching horror movies on Shudder.

Just when I think I’ve exhausted Shudder’s extensive offerings (seriously, I watch it so much, I find myself rewatching movies I’ve already seen, sometimes multiple times), they throw me a total curveball and deliver up something fresh—and genuinely unsettling.

A side effect of watching a ton of horror movies is that one becomes desensitized to them fairly quickly. I’m still not a fan of gore-for-the-sake of gore, but I’m accustomed to it. As such, I like horror that is unsettling, and there’s not much of that these days. A lot of modern horror is snarkily self-referential, and Shudder seems to love to show lots of feminist horror. Some of that is actually okay, but does every horror movie have to be about the loss of personal identity when a mother raises children? Come now.

So it was refreshing to watch the made-for-television film Threads (1984), a stark depiction of the aftermath of a series of atomic detonations in England.

In Defense of the British Monarchy

30 August 20235 August 2023 The Portly Politico19 Comments

As a natural conservative, not merely a political one, I have always felt an affinity for the British monarchy, and never bought into the excessively utilitarian (and inherently radical) arguments that favor the abolition of the monarchy. After weeks of listening to videos from The People Profiles about the monarchy, I am even more convinced in the necessity of the British monarchy as a cultural and political force.

To be clear, I do not advocate for monarchy of any form in the United States. The reader might ask, “if it’s so beneficial to our British cousins, with whom we share quite a bit of history and culture, why isn’t it good for us?” The answer is simple: we’ve never had one! Monarchy is something almost completely foreign to Americans, at least since 1776. Our Founding was explicitly anti-monarchical, even if there were Americans willing to submit to a kingship under George Washington.

The British—and, more specifically, the English—however, have possessed a monarchy for over 1000 years, with the exception of that Cromwellian unpleasantness from 1648-1660, ending with the restoration of the Stuarts with Charles II. That is a great deal of tradition, custom, and ceremony to toss out merely to save a few bucks on maintaining the Royal Family.

Island Living: Vanuatuan Taxes

11 August 202325 July 2023 The Portly PoliticoLeave a comment

The FAIRtax folks, who advocate for replacing income and corporate taxes with a unified national sales tax, posted an interesting piece about the remote Pacific nation of Vanuatu (“FAIRtax in Vanuatu?“). It discusses how the archipelago boasts incredibly low taxes: a 15% value-added tax (“VAT”), and a business license fee of 5% (presumably, 5% of a business’s total annual revenue).

I’m personally agnostic on the adoption of a national sales tax in the United States. I do believe it would be much better than the income tax, which I absolutely loathe, and which requires a complex and oppressive bureaucracy to administer. I also resent sending the IRS all of my personal information every single year, including how many miles I drove and what sheet music I purchased (although those are great for those sweet, sweet tax write-offs). If it were practical, I’d much rather see a national sales tax, or even a return to old-school tariff regimes.

The problem is that, should we ever adopt a national sales tax, it will likely accompany the national income tax. A national sales tax also places a great deal of strain on States and localities. Good luck having a 10% national sales tax and a 6% State sales tax (as we do in South Carolina) and a plethora of local-option sales taxes (about 2% here in Darlington County; higher in neighboring Florence County). Tack on hospitality taxes, and it adds up fast.

For example, in neighboring Florence County, eating out automatically comes with a 10% sales tax: the 6% State sales tax, plus local sales and hospitality taxes, totally 10%. If we had a conservative 10% national sales tax on top, your $5 footlong (already gone—part of America’s mythological past) becomes $6 immediately. 20% sales tax means $1 of taxes for every $5 spent. A $500 item would cost $600.

I still think that’s preferable to the income tax, and instead of creating a disincentive to work, it would create a disincentive to spend.

But I digress. For a small nation like Vanuatu—population of around 300,000—a national sales tax makes sense. It’s a small enough area geographically and demographically that it the national sales tax is, essentially, akin to a State sales tax. As the article from FAIRtax.org notes, the island has something of a clean slate: no welfare, no government pensions, etc. Most people are subsistence farmers, and tourism is the major industry.

Guest Post: The Year Before the Year After Next Year

19 July 202312 July 2023 The Portly Politico2 Comments

This week is unofficially “Ponty Week 2023,” as good old Ponty/Always a Kid for Today sent me three excellent pieces over the long July Fourth week (his third will pop this Friday). It’s great to see one of our most steadfast and lively contributors back on the blog.

It’s interesting to think that The Age of The Virus, which so dominated our lives and thoughts for nearly two years, now seems like a distant memory, a bad dream best forgotten when one wakes up, returning to one’s senses. That is certainly how the worst of the self-proclaimed public health czars and czarinas hope we will regard it: a well-intentioned nightmare that we needn’t talk about any further. They know they eroded civil liberties, wrecked the economy, and made anyone without a diaper on their face feel like crap, all over a highly survivable virus. Better to sweep all that under the rug and let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget, right?

We can forgive individuals—we all had family members who hysterically insisted that flimsy paper masks would save us from ourselves—but we should never forget the heavy toll of our public health tyranny. As Ponty points out, they’re going to try it again, and it’s going to be worse next time.

It is perhaps a bit conspiratorial (and even hysterical on my part), but I sincerely believe The Age of The Virus was a test-run for the End Times Beast system. Just as people willingly lined up for The Vaccine, which was promised to be the ticket to a normal life, people will line up to take the Antichrist’s Mark so they can continue shopping at Niemann Marcus. What is one’s eternal soul when there is a sale on capris?

Even if I am wrong about that particular claim, The Age of The Virus was certainly a trial run to see how obedient we’d all be. The answer, sadly, was, “very.” Sure, we had some ructions after the first month or so of the “two weeks to flatten the curve,” but most Americans went along sheepishly with the dictates. Yours portly wore his mask as little as possible, but even I took two shots of The Vaccine (not because I wanted to be “normal” again, but because I didn’t know any better at the time—and I should have!).

Ponty argues that inquiries into The Age of The Virus in Britain serve no purpose other than to strengthen the regime the next time around. I think he is only missing one point: these inquiries remind us, the sane, about what they did to us. We should never let them get away with it again.

With that, here is Ponty’s “The Year Before the Year After Next Year”:

The Portly Politico

One Southerner's unique, erudite, conservative perspective in a hectic world

Category: Ideas and Policy