[View Article at Source]The British government is wistfully hoping to relitigate Brexit, but it won’t work. The post Labour’s Doomed Pivot Toward Europe appeared first on The American Conservative.…

[View Article at Source]Who now would negotiate away a nuclear weapons program? The post Thanks to the Iran Hawks, Nuclear Nonproliferation Is Dead appeared first on The American Conservative.

Chris Pratt, a die-hard Seattle Seahawks fan, got to be on the sidelines as his favorite team won the Super Bowl this year. But the best...

WHITE CHICKS star Terry Crews and his family had a hard time with his father growing up, but when God taught him to forgive...

OPINION Academics with a background in “queer pedagogies” or “intersectional” approaches are especially wanted to teach English classes at the State University of New York in Geneseo. The public university’s “Adolescence English Education” job opening has several desired characteristics. “We seek someone with a strong commitment to teaching in a liberal arts setting who is prepared… Source

‘An unacceptable affront to the First Amendment,’ free speech attorney says A University of Tennessee Chattanooga policy that restricts the use of Native American artifacts, including taking photos of them, is prompting concerns from a free speech attorney. The public university’s Native American Graves and Repatriation Policy applies to faculty, staff, and students, and has to do with… Source

OPINION/ANALYSIS The College Fix’s Abel Jones and Brady Larkin ask students if they agree with President Trump that U.S. citizens should get priority over foreigners in the country illegally. This video was hosted by Jones and produced, shot and edited by Larkin as part of The College Fix’s video journalism mentorship program. Source

GOP, conservative watchdogs sound alarm on new effort to circumvent California’s longstanding ban on affirmative action Although the California constitution forbids racial preferences, and Golden State voters have twice decided to uphold that ban, Democrat lawmakers are working to carve out exceptions to that law. A proposed constitutional amendment making its way through the Sacramento… Source

Takimag The UK Treasury’s Big New Idea: A Tax On Paying Taxes The British state somehow aims to raise more tax by preventing taxpayers from paying their tax. TakiMag The acerbic American novelist Lionel Shriver, who lived in the UK for over 30 years, recently moved to sunny Portugal to live there instead. For the sand and the sea? No, because she was sick of wasting her entire life filling out endless stupid forms. Writing in the Spectator, Shriver revealed a multitude of reasons for her emigrating from a nation clearly in terminal decline, but the final “straw that broke the camel’s British residency” was something surprisingly mundane: a new tax-reporting system being implemented starting this year by His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the UK equivalent of America’s IRS.    At first sight, this sounds a bit extreme. Is a new method of tax self-assessment really enough to warrant someone fleeing the country? In this particular case, yes it is.  HMRC’s incoming new scheme, applicable from this April, is called Making Tax Digital (MTD) and it is, as Shriver rightly observes, an exercise in “death-by-bureaucracy.” Without going into all the mind-numbing details, MTD commands all self-employed taxpayers earning at least £20,000 per year to cease simply filling in either a simple paper or online form once per year, and instead to file complicated computerized accounts five times per year, together with scanned-in invoices, and much, much more confusing Kafkaesque nonsense besides. Faced with this prospect, Shriver simply upped sticks and sailed for Lisbon—taking all her lovely tax revenue with her.  I thought: that’s the limit. I refuse. You cannot make me, and if you’re intent on imposing this death-by-bureaucracy, I will leave. So, note to HMRC: please mark me down as one of the loads of self-employed workers ensuring your unreasonable new obligations will backfire for the Exchequer. Articles and comment sections are chocka with older entrepreneurs announcing that, thanks to this onerous, complex and laborious regime, they are retiring early and closing shop … An HMRC spokesman assures us, inanely, ‘Making Tax Digital will make it easier for sole traders … to get their tax right by providing a more real-time overview of their finances, freeing up their time to focus on growing their business’. Really? Why not file 10 times a year, then, or every day? Shriver is lucky she got out to Portugal when she did. Rumor has it the Treasury will soon want you to file your returns five times a day, like the government-mandated fruit and vegetable servings. As an example of how byzantine and all-encompassing the new regulations are, consider the case of Tony Pearson, a 71-year-old retiree who, due to insanely obscure reasons no normal mortal can even comprehend, has had his home driveway classed as a small business in the shape of a “dormant limited company” that must file MTD returns regardless of its incomings and outgoings.  Every year, Tony’s driveway makes a net profit of £0, with an income and turnover of £0, and net costs of £0—because it is a home driveway. It is a small, paved piece of land next to his lawn which he and his family use for parking their cars on, not a convenience store, arms manufacturing plant, or leading international advertising agency. But, for daring to own this quite literally common-or-garden facility, HM Government unfathomably consider Tony a small businessman, compelling him to lodge electronic MTD accounts five times per year informing them that he owes them absolutely nothing. Yet the MTD software necessary to tell the taxman this is not, in itself, generally free. Recent estimates are that the initial switchover fee for using such software will be an average £320 per taxpayer, followed by a £110 annual subscription fee—although some experts warn it could rise to up to four times as much.      Tony could always employ an accountant to file his accounts instead; but the average cost of this service to a UK small business is £1,500. And, thanks to the simple laws of supply and demand, with huge numbers of MTD self-employed taxpayers now due to pass responsibility for filing their impenetrable new accounts over to the professionals, accountants are poised to raise their charges per client by 10 percent; so, it would in theory cost Tony £1,650 per annum just for the privilege of informing HMRC he owes them zero. Tony should just dig up his driveway once and for all, and bury the tax inspector under it.  HMRC’s pathetic “rationale” for introducing MTD is that, somehow, it will earn them an extra £780 million per year from the 4 million or so poor souls due ultimately to be forcibly sucked into it. How?  Imagine a self-employed assassin earns £10,000 in each quarter of the financial year. Under MTD, he reports this income four times per year online, then adds it up in his final fifth end-of-year tax return and files that too. The sum total is £40,000, or £10,000 x4. Under the previous, more sensible, system, meanwhile, this same man picks up a pen, once per year, adds up all his earnings, then fills the resultant total in on his paper tax-return. The sum total is £40,000, or £40,000 x1. It’s the same exact amount!  Even professional accountancy firms state MTD will earn the government no additional money whatsoever. So where does HMRC’s claimed extra £780 million of income come from, then? From imposing a series of escalating fines on confused elderly taxpayers who don’t know how to use computers properly, and can’t afford to hire an accountant.   At first, this sounds like a good wheeze on behalf of HMRC; until you stop to consider the simple fact that many taxpayers, angry at what is effectively a new unannounced tax upon paying tax, will, one way or another, simply stop doing so. Lionel Shriver has gone so far as to flee the country entirely, but others will avoid complying in other, less drastic, ways too. It seems blatantly predictable that MTD will cost the Treasury cash, not rake in more. It is estimated that British businesses and self-employed persons will have to waste a sum total of 114 hours dealing with setting up this meaningless farrago, 114 hours they could be spending doing something more useful, like actually turning a profit, or firebombing Downing Street; 1 in 7 affected self-employed taxpayers say they will reduce billable hours in order to cope. The Administrative Burdens Advisory Board watchdog has conducted polling demonstrating that 65 percent of affected taxpayers could see “no benefit” in MTD to them whatsoever—and the other 35 percent were probably all accountants planning to hike their fees to take advantage of the first 65 percent. Is there any way out of this administrative prison? Officially, no, it is compulsory. Unofficially, yes, and the means are laughably obvious to anyone. I accessed a randomly chosen online discussion group for taxpayers who simply refuse to comply, where the following pieces of simple, sweary advice were on offer: “Just do more cash[in-hand] jobs. Fuck them. Their plan is to drive all small independent businesses out of business for big corporations so we all beg for the Universal Basic Income to save us from poverty.” “My work strangely will show 49k, 29k and 19k [turnovers] by 2028, LOL [these being the declining turnover thresholds for having to participate in MTD from 2026 onwards]. Then I’ll throw the towel in until a decent government comes in.” “Nothing. If HMRC won’t accept a bank transfer or cheque, as they have done for the last 20 years without question, then that’s their problem, not mine.” “It pushed me to retire early.” “We’re keeping our gobs shut [about our true earnings] and not getting taxed!”  “Waiting for the Russian invasion.” That’s how bad things are for ordinary taxpayers in Great Britain now: They are actively hoping to be invaded and conquered by Vladimir Putin, because then they will be less unfree. When he came to power in 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the complete merchant banker now pushing all this unnecessary idiocy through, promised the country he would lead a government which would “tread more lightly on your lives.” By repeatedly kicking taxpayers in the head with a slipper rather than a jackboot?  Starmer has already been forced into a prior taxation U-turn after farmers kept on killing themselves in despair at his plans to rob them of their family livelihoods, earning him the nickname of “the Farmer Harmer.” The first few self-employed pensioners to top themselves likewise will soon see him dubbed “the Taxpayer Slayer,” and then it’ll be taxation U-turn number two.    Meanwhile, the reasonable question might be asked: If the Treasury really does reckon it’ll get £780 million per year extra in taxpayer income via Making Tax Digital, what are they actually planning to spend it on? Well, according to the latest estimates, MTD has so far cost the state £850 million to set up, rising to £1.3 billion in coming years. So, the taxman needs to implement MTD to raise enough cash just to be able to implement MTD in the first place. Brilliant. Back in the days when it still at least aimed to be user-friendly, HMRC’s old slogan used to be “Tax Doesn’t Have To Be Taxing.” It does now. The post The UK Treasury’s Big New Idea: A Tax On Paying Taxes appeared first on The American Conservative.

UK Special Coverage Labour’s Doomed Pivot Toward Europe The British government is wistfully hoping to relitigate Brexit, but it won’t work. UK Special Coverage When the British Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves was asked by the Times last week to choose between Donald Trump and Ursula von der Leyen, the head of the European Commission, she replied without a moment’s hesitation: “Ursula von der Leyen.”  “I believe that our future is closely intertwined with Europe,” she added. Take that, MAGA man. You might have expected Reeves to have given a rather more diplomatic answer, given that the American president is the effective boss of NATO and her leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, has been trying to secure a comprehensive trade deal with the United States for the last 18 months. So eager has Starmer been to promote personal ties with Trump that he awarded him an unprecedented second state visit, complete with banquets at Buckingham Palace and flattery from King Charles. But it looks very much as if Britain is now drifting back into the European orbit, 10 years after the referendum vote to leave the EU. Hostility to MAGA among the political classes has been compounded by the Iran war and the recent fallout over the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It has pitched the Labour government, at least rhetorically, in a decidedly European direction. Not that it needed much encouragement. The dream of reentering the European Union, or at least the Single Market, is one of the few issues that unites the right and left of the Labour movement. Reeves may have said repeatedly that reversing Brexit is “not going to happen,” but her actions belie her words. In her annual Mais Lecture on Tuesday, Reeves made the case for ever-closer alignment with Europe as a “strategic imperative,” insisting that Brexit had been “bad for Britain.” Her civil servants are to conduct a major audit of all sectors of the economy to identify industries that could benefit by aligning themselves more closely with European regulations. The UK has already started aligning with EU rules on food and agriculture standards in an effort to remove SPS checks and other red tape. Reeves wants this extended to chemicals, aerospace, and other high-tech areas. Labour’s ambition is to make Britain a global hub for artificial intelligence. But joining the European Union’s dense regulatory environment might not seem the obvious way to do this. For years, Brussels has been placing roadblocks in the path of tech companies like GDPR, the Digital Markets Act, and the like. It is no accident that Europe, despite its highly educated population, has generated no big tech company to rival Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. The European Union prides itself on being a “regulatory superpower.” Many of its rules and laws will prevent the UK from accessing tech markets, however much Labour tries to emulate them. The European Union has always been one of the world’s great protectionist blocs, but it is becoming ever more so. Its current “Made in Europe” agenda requires 70 percent of components in many goods sold in the single market, like wind turbines and electric vehicles, to be of European origin. Reeves seems to think that, by voluntarily shadowing EU regulations, whatever the cost, Brussels will start regarding components made in the UK as essentially European. It assuredly won’t. The EU is firmly against what it calls “cherry-picking,” meaning gaining sectoral access to the single market. It’s all or nothing. If the Brits want friction-free access, they are going to have to pay up or start negotiations to rejoin the trading bloc. Recent attempts at sectoral alignment, such as gaining access to European defense procurement, have come with such a high price tag that the UK had to stop negotiating. But many academics, media organizations, and politicians of all parties dearly wish to reverse Brexit and get back into Europe. So would many multinationals, who used the UK as a means of entry to the Single Market. The EU is one of the great divides between the educated elites, often called the “lanyard classes,” and lower-class Brits who are suspicious of globalization and the loss of sovereignty. Parties like the Greens and the Liberal Democrats are making rejoining Europe a headline policy. But the hard reality is that reentry isn’t going to happen, and not just because Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, which is resolutely anti-Europe, is leading the opinion polls right now. Brussels isn’t ready to make nice. There is no way the UK could be restored to the European Union, or even to the European Economic Area, without accepting conditions that many British voters would find onerous. Before 2016, Britain had a unique deal with Brussels. It had opt-outs from the Single European Currency and from the borderless Schengen zone. It also had a hefty rebate from its contributions to the EU budget. If Britain applied to rejoin it would have to agree to adopt the euro, accept freedom of movement, and make a gross contribution to the EU bureaucracy of £21–£26 billion per year. Britain would also have to abandon or revoke bilateral trade deals with non-EU countries negotiated since Brexit. For example, British membership in the Indo-Pacific trading partnership, the CPTPP, covering countries like Japan, Australia, and Mexico, would be incompatible with renewed membership of the Single Market. Finally, reentry to the EU would surely plunge the UK into another bitter and divisive referendum campaign just when the wounds from the last one were beginning to heal. So why is the Labour government flogging this apparently dead horse? Well, a lot of it is performative. Blaming Brexit has become the number one excuse for the UK’s current economic problems of low growth, high debt, and a lingering cost-of-living crisis. It provides an alternative narrative to divert attention from Reeves’s £80 billion tax increases, which have crucified small and medium-sized businesses, caused job losses, and increased inflation. There is a plausible argument that the British economy has been damaged by Brexit and Europe’s subsequent trade barriers. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimated that the UK’s GDP would be up to 4 percent higher long term had it remained in the single market. Yet this is highly speculative. There have been so many shocks to the system in the last decade—Covid, Ukraine, and successive energy crises—that it is difficult to isolate the Brexit factor. Britain is not alone in experiencing weak GDP growth. In fact it has performed rather better in recent years than European economies like Germany. The global poster-child for growth in the West has been the United States, from which the UK now seems to be content to turn away. The UK government seems to think that the current disruption to the global economy is none of its business, and Starmer is congratulating himself for not getting involved in the Iran war. Nor does the European Union seem to think its wellbeing could be affected by what happens in the Strait of Hormuz. But Britain and Europe are dangerously exposed to international competition, soaring energy prices, and potential coercion from Russia and China as well as Iran. By choosing the EU over the U.S., Rachel Reeves may be backing a loser. The post Labour’s Doomed Pivot Toward Europe appeared first on The American Conservative.