Salvaging a Future Work Reference

Over at Ask a Manager, Alison Green takes a question (Item 1) from someone who frequently interacts with young employees from another company. He's troubled by the prospect of having to give recommendations for young employees who are picking up bad habits from a dysfunctional workplace.

As part of her reply, Green offers the below script:

This isn't something I plan to bring up again, but I want to give you a heads-up: a lot of people in your role end up asking me for recommendations to go back to school for X, and when I write recommendations I'm asked about things like punctuality and respect for management. I see the tough management situation you're dealing with; I'm not blind to that. But I want to be up-front that if you ever do need a recommendation from me, I'm going to get asked about that stuff and have to be honest, and in some cases haven't felt like I could write the recommendation at all. I never want to be explaining this to someone for the first time when they're asking for a recommendation, and I think it's fairer to say it early on while you can still do something with that information. It's completely up to you what you do with it! I just want it out there so no one is surprised by it later.

I am really impressed by how this accounts for the self-interest of both parties, while also navigating several difficult aspects of the letter-writer's situation.

It also reminds me of a similar (stern) warning I got when I was a sophomore in college. After I looked into what the word professional meant beyond the context of sport, it helped me overcome a blind spot I had due to my blue collar background. From that angle, I can vouch for the soundness of this advice myself!

-- CAV

Magical Thinking on Tariffs in OBBB

Scott Lincicome of Cato gives six reasons the Trump tariffs will fall short of the revenue his "One Big Beautiful Bill" tax-and-spend package would require over the decade.

One needn't be an economist to come up with a good guess for some of these, like the third:

Trump himself will likely change the tariffs' scope and application, as he has already done in recent trade deals with the UK and China and other deals during his first term. As long as tariffs are a bargaining chip, they can't be considered reliable government revenue. [bold added]

A three-year-old fascinated by a light switch would be more predictable than Trump has been as he has played around with taxes on international trade.

Lincicome summarizes the others at the above link, but there is more detail both from links in his post at Cato and his guest opinion piece in The Washington Post.

Newest to me is a loophole called the first sale rule, which has been around for a long time:

Within U.S. customs law, the first sale rule allows U.S. importers to use the price of the first sale in a number of transactions to calculate customs duties.

For instance, a Chinese manufacturer sells a T-shirt to a Hong Kong vendor for $5. That Hong Kong vendor then sells the T-shirt to a U.S. retailer for $10. That U.S. retailer then sells the T-shirt to consumers for $40.

Under the first sale rule, the U.S. retailer can pay the import duty on the initial $5 price of the good, rather than the vendor's inflated $10, thus stripping out the cost associated with the middleman's profit.

"What the rules allow you to do is use that initial sales price from the factory to the vendor to determine the final duty price," Brian Gleicher, senior lawyer and member at Miller & Chevalier Chartered, told CNBC over the phone.

It is fortunate that businessmen will jump through these silly hoops for us, blunting the effects of this stupid policy.

But we'll still get ripped off while the federal budget deficit continues to balloon.

-- CAV

Four Recent Wins

A Friday Hodgepodge

Editor's Note I'll be away from the blog and scarce on Twitter over the Memorial Day weekend. Expect me back here next Wednesday.

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Whenever possible, I list three wins at the end of each day. Here are a few from a recent review of my planner.

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1. When we moved from Florida to the New Orleans area, the kids no longer went to the same school. On top of the separate schools, their starting times were earlier and about an hour apart.

Next year, they'll still be at separate schools, but will have similar starting times. I will enjoy having more uninterrupted time on weekday mornings.

I may be even more excited about the end of the school year than my son.

2. I have known for some time that our parish (Louisiana's equivalent to a county) has a network of biking/walking paths that include paved-over former rail beds.

I finally got around to doing some of my daily walks on one of them nearby, and am quite impressed. Our neighborhood is great for regular walks, but this is a nice change of pace.

Since the network extends into several nearby towns, it might even lend itself to integration with errands or other things we do on weekends.

3. Visiting my mother recently in Mississippi, we went to one of our family's favorite catfish restaurants. I love the fried green tomatoes and fried okra there, and I have yet to find a similar place in Louisiana.

(Oddly enough, I also haven't found a place that sells green tomatoes here, and have had to substitute egg plant on catfish night at home.)

The next time we visit, I plan to stop in Magee on the way. A local restaurant there is supposed to make the best hamburgers in the state.

4. I have finally solved what I have called the Dueling Spaghetti Recipes Problem. For some time, I've been alternating between my own recipe (aka the good stuff) and a simplified recipe evolved from something I hastily threw together for my cheese-hating mother-in-law once when everyone else wanted pizza (aka Grandma's spaghetti).

The big problem has been that only my son likes the meatballs I use in Grandma's spaghetti, and my wife and daughter tolerate them at best.

It finally dawned on me that I could just ... make the good stuff and add meatballs to my son's serving.

So I asked, in case there was something else about Grandma's spaghetti that he liked, and he said That's fine.

Problem solved.

-- CAV

Policy: What's the Opposite of Patronizing?

Yesterday, I learned that the Trump FDA has decided to restrict access to the annual Covid vaccine to adults over 65 and members of certain high-risk groups.

Most striking was the following aspect of the rationale put forward, which sounded vaguely familiar to me:

In the commentary, [Martin] Markary [sic] and [Vinay] Prasad puzzlingly argue that the previous universal access to COVID-19 vaccines was patronizing to Americans. They describe the country's approach to COVID boosters as a "one-size-fits-all" and write that "the US policy has sometimes been justified by arguing that the American people are not sophisticated enough to understand age- and risk-based recommendations. We reject this view." [bold added]

Yes. Basing a policy on the notion that adults can't make their own risk assessments is patronizing. Indeed, it is infantilizing -- just like the whole idea the we need an agency like the FDA to protect us from medications we might decide to take.

I'm on board for a smaller nanny state, but it should be obvious that taking something off the shelf like this isn't the way get there.

I went long enough without catching Covid that I wondered if I could be immune to it, but finally came down with it two summers ago during a trip to Britain.

It was like a mild flu. I am not old enough or at-risk enough (that I know of) for Makary and Prasad's tastes. Nevertheless, after being ill with Covid, I decided I'd get the jab every year when I went in for my flu shot.

Why catch this crud at all if I can avoid it?

If a medical authority warns that there is some risk involved in taking this vaccine for my own convenience, I would weigh that risk and change my practice if necessary -- if only the nanny state would let me do so.

The current Trumpist version of the GOP, obsessed as it is with doing what looks like the opposite of what "the libs" do, has made this exact error before: Florida's Governor, Ron DeSantis did it in Florida when his reaction to government-imposed vaccine mandates (improper, save for government employees) was to prohibit private businesses from insisting that their employees or customers be vaccinated (proper as both freedom of association and part of property rights).

Only in superficial detail is the government recommending that everyone get a shot the opposite of prohibiting almost everyone from getting it; or forcing everyone to get vaccinated the opposite of prohibiting business owners from dealing only with people who choose to get vaccinated. On a fundamental level, these are the same: The government is to some degree coercing a preferred course of action.

The actual opposite would be for the FDA to leave the market for this shot alone, and take other steps towards dismantling itself while private entities assume such roles as testing medications and publishing recommended vaccination schedules.

-- CAV

US Ambassador to Ukraine Resigns

Bridget Brink, the United States ambassador to Ukraine, has just resigned because she "could no longer in good faith carry out the administration's policy" towards Ukraine, which she characterizes as "put[ting] pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia."

While I don't agree with everything she says in her opinion piece, I think she is generally on-target in her assessment that how we conduct ourselves regarding Putin's War communicates (accurately or not) who we are as a nation and it will be taken by the likes of Putin and Xi as a reading on whether it is an opportune time for them to attack our allies.

The below is spot-on:

I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded and children killed with impunity. I believe that the only way to secure U.S. interests is to stand up for democracies and to stand against autocrats. Peace at any price is not peace at all -- it is appeasement. And history has taught us time and again that appeasement does not lead to safety, security or prosperity. It leads to more war and suffering. [bold added]

Later, she elaborates on her warning about appeasement:

Why does Russia's invasion of Ukraine matter to the United States?

It matters because how we handle this war will speak volumes to our friends as well as our foes. If we allow Putin to redraw borders by force, he won't stop with Ukraine. Taken at his word, Putin's ambition is to resurrect an imperial past -- and he can't do that without threatening the security of our NATO allies.

And if Putin succeeds, it sends signals to China that will undermine the security balance in Asia and throughout the world. That will have profound implications for America's safety, security and prosperity.

While Brink veers closer to the idea that America should be the world's policeman than I am comfortable with, standing up for freedom and helping our allies needn't imply such a role.

Even simply offering moral support would be far better than this Administration's policies to date, of which Brink's characterization as appeasement is generous to a fault.

It has been collaboration for all practical purposes, and it is disgraceful.

Donald Trump is quite frankly making me miss the comparatively manly and steadfast presence of Jimmy Carter.

-- CAV

'Big Bill' Threatens Nonprofits

Late last year, the Foundation for Economic Freedom warned that a bill called the "Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act" presented the danger of soft censorship of nonprofits the government does not like.

Peter Jacobsen of FEE noted that the law loudly promised income tax abatements for individuals being held hostage by terrorist organizations -- but quietly included another provision:

But then, we tack on one more thing -- no more tax-exempt status of terrorist-supporting organizations. This part of the bill has earned it a nickname: the "nonprofit killer." [bold added]

Obviously, this measure would have made it easier for the government to abuse the tax system to punish nonprofits the government disapproves of -- something even worse than the Republican Party vehemently objected to the Obama administration doing.

According to Slate, a similar measure is now part of the budget bill before Congress, and it will be much easier to pass under the same budget reconciliation process the Democrats abused to pass ObamaCare.

Supporters claim to be targeting Palestinian rights activists, but the piece warns of abuse:

The tax code already suspends the tax-exempt status of terrorist organizations, and criminal law already prohibits giving "material support" (funding, training, and other resources) to terrorist groups. But this bill needlessly creates a broad new category of "terrorist-supporting organizations" that would also lose their tax-exempt status.

Groups accused of supporting terrorism would have little meaningful opportunity to challenge their designations, especially since the bill lets the government claim they can't release information explaining a designation for reasons of national security.

Worse still, once one group is deemed a terrorist-supporting organization, the bill could be interpreted to allow the government to strip the tax-exemption of other charities that supported that group -- creating a daisy-chain effect that links liability from one group to the next to the next. And unlike the existing criminal law prohibiting material support to terrorist groups, this bill doesn't explicitly require that groups know that the money or services they provide are going to a terrorist organization. [links omitted, bold added]

The piece presents a hypothetical scenario, and then warns that conservative groups could become the targets under a future Democratic administration.

-- CAV

Three Strikes for Tariff Myths

John Stossel addresses three myths about tariffs that Donald Trump and his followers keep repeating.

While this isn't a comprehensive demolition, it is valuable for its efficient marshaling of facts that directly contradict the MAGA pro-tariff narrative. The piece makes memorable short rebuttals for each along the way.

Below is each myth as Stossel describes it in italics, followed by a short rebuttal:

1. Tariffs protect American jobs. Gain a thousand jobs [from steel tariffs], lose 75,000.
2. We need tariffs because America runs trade deficits with other countries.I run a trade deficit with my supermarket. I give them money. They never give me money. ... The economy sorts it out.
3. We need tariffs because global trade hollowed out America's manufacturing base. American industrial output is near an all-time high. Unemployment, now at 4.2 percent, is much lower than it was when I grew up.

I was at first inclined to feel dissatisfied with the piece, but liked it better when I remembered another headline I encountered this morning: One Thing Helping Trump’s Approval Rating: Some People Are Not Paying Attention.

We're not all policy wonks, nor is everyone who thinks Trump is doing a good job a clapping seal. People who haven't the time or inclination to follow the news are reachable, and this is the sort of piece that can reach many of them, either by being a brief read or by being easy to cite by those who have read it.

-- CAV