“People Love Meritocracy,” Says Black Republican Burgess Owens
Plus, Biden tries to tax space; Chamber of Commerce misses Trump
Senator Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina who is frequently mentioned as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, has launched a video series featuring himself and four other Black Republican members of Congress.
The first episode of “America’s Starting Five” features Scott and Burgess Owens of Utah, Byron Donalds of Florida, John James of Michigan, and Wesley Hunt of Texas chuckling over a video clip of President Biden telling a voter, “if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t Black.”
“That is funny. … An old white dude telling me I can’t be black if I don’t vote for him,” Scott says.
Another Biden clip featured in the show has him saying, “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”
“The arrogance of these white liberals, condescending, not just to African Americans, but to poor kids in general,” Rep. John James of Michigan said. “Joe Biden has been in Washington since 1972.” James was born in 1981.
Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas noted that all the members had been elected from majority white districts. “How did we get here? It was not affirmative action. A lot of white people had to vote for us,” Hunt said.
“People love meritocracy,” Owens said.
Some commentators have found a way to be grim about polls indicating President Trump gaining traction with Black voters, explaining it as a sign of Trump doing well with voters who lack a college education, a demographic category that includes a lot of Blacks.
Yet the politicians in the video are all college-educated. James and Hunt are graduates of West Point. James has graduate degrees from the University of Michigan and Penn State. Hunt has three masters degrees from Cornell. Owens is a graduate of the University of Miami, and Donalds is a graduate of Florida State University. Scott has a degree from Charleston Southern University.
My point in calling attention to this video isn’t to tell Black people they should vote for Trump. It’s just to say that it’s better for America if people are thinking freely about who to vote for, rather than approaching it in some sort of racially deterministic, if you’re for Trump, “you ain’t Black,” sort of way.
I’m sure some liberals will watch a video like this and say, how sad, these misguided Black guys falling into the Trump trap. No matter how much anyone might dislike Trump, though, how can you not see these Black West Point grads laughing among themselves about how they are sick of being condescended to by white liberals and just kind of enjoy listening in on it?
As West said, “We’ve come a long way as a country.”
Chamber of Commerce makes peace with Trump: The New York Times has an interview with Neil Bradley, “the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a large business lobbying group in Washington.”
“You can look at a Trump administration with a lot more uncertainty, but directionally, the regulatory effort was moving to lighten the regulatory costs,” he said. “Here in the Biden administration, we have a pretty good idea where they’re going to go — it’s just how crushing is it going to be in terms of the regulatory level? And so, interestingly, there’s a lot of people saying, ‘The chaos is better.’”
Interestingly!
Taxing space: Commercial spaceflight is a promising and growing new industry. Naturally, Washington wants a piece of the action. Minho Kim reports in the New York Times that the Biden administration is trying to slap an “aviation” excise tax on space companies to cover the 15 seconds that a rocket flies through air on the way into space. The story quotes a pro-tax advocate from something called the “American Economic Liberties Project,” which seems to have gotten a half-million dollars from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations in 2021 and which seems to have a different definition of “economic liberties” than that of The Editors.
From the Times article:
commercial space companies do not contribute to that fund or share any of the cost that the public bears when rockets are launched, said William J. McGee, a former F.A.A.-licensed aircraft dispatcher and a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties Project, a consumer advocacy group.
“This is a question of fundamental fairness,” Mr. McGee said. “It would be the equivalent of having a toll system on a highway and waving through certain users and not others.”
It’s funny how many of the advocates of higher taxes themselves work for tax-exempt nonprofit organizations funded by grants from tax-exempt charities.
Recent work: “Lieberman Was a Leader for School Choice in the Democratic Party,” is the headline over my latest piece for Education Next, which notes that the Connecticut senator championed D.C. scholarships and federal education savings accounts. If you are interested in Lieberman and school choice, please check out the full piece over at Education Next.
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