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House passes new tax on concrete companies

The swamp is winning! The Republican House today passed a new law that not only imposes a new tax on concrete industry, it creates a crony Concrete Masonry Products Board to help keep its buddies in that industry in charge.

The bill, introduced by Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky. (F, 45%), would create a Concrete Masonry Products Board composed of 15-25 members appointed by the Department of Commerce after a referendum approval by producers of concrete masonry products. This board will have the power to establish, finance, and carry out a “coordinated research and education program,” ostensibly to “promote masonry products in the domestic market,” according to a legislative bulletin email from the Republican Study Committee. This program will be paid for by a “federally administered assessment.”

This is corruption, pure and simple. We don’t need this. All it accomplishes is to force the public to pay for this fake board whose only real purpose, when you strip it down to its essentials, will be to favor the already established U.S. concrete companies.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • Andrew_W

    ” . . . a Concrete Masonry Products Board”

    Sounds like the sort of thing that should be nailed to framing.

  • Wayne

    Andrew_W–
    yeah…they walked right into that one. (They can’t even get the “optics” right.)
    seismic activity near you?

    Unfortunately, this type of “Board,” isn’t a new concept.
    Highly recommend:
    “The Progressive Era Triple Alliance: Government as Cartellizer”
    From Murray Rothbard’s “20th Century American Economic History” lecture series
    https://mises.org/library/progressive-era-triple-alliance-government-cartellizer
    90 minute audio download available–great revisionist history & gives you a good idea how Crony collusion with the Feds has played out in the past.

    “The progressive period birthed the cancerous growth of the welfare/warfare state, fake capitalism, the “middle way,” neo-mercantilism, and the corporate state. Effective competition was attacked as government attempted to cartelize business.”

  • Andrew_W

    “seismic activity near you?”
    Nothing noticeable.

  • Steve Earle

    John Stossel has written about this. His first book “Give Me a Break” talks about his time at ABC and how as their Consumer Advocate he would call for Government Regulations and Boards like this. Then he slowly saw the actual results of government interference and became the Libertarian we all know today.

    It’s an interesting book and journey from one side to the other. I wish Congress would read it.

  • Ted

    I think my new driveway is gonna be more expensive.

  • wayne

    Steve– Stossel is good.

    Stossel, Amity Shlaes, and Coolidge
    https://youtu.be/MO_Jj3kmrZo
    (5:26)

    Ted– that appears to be the intended outcome!

  • wodun

    Glad to hear you are safe Andrew_W.

  • Brendan

    Concrete.

    Concrete?

    Concrete!!!!

  • wayne

    “Today, House leadership rammed through leadership elections before incoming freshmen even knew where to find the bathrooms and ensured that all the existing honchos were re-elected. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (F, 51%) was re-elected as Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. (F, 35%) as Majority Leaders, Steve Scalise, R-La. (D, 62%) as Whip, and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. (F, 41%) as Conference Chair.
    Conservatives even lost the lower tier leadership races. Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Ohio (F, 32%) was elected as chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRSC) over a more conservative opponent, Rep. Roger Williams, R-Texas (C, 79%). A man who voted more with the Democrats will now be in charge of recruiting candidates for the GOP majority.
    The same people with the same failed modus operandi and the same broken political barometer will be leading the GOP’s governing agenda in the House. (Ditto for the Senate.)”

    https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/11/weakness-failure-cronyism-idiocy-the-gop-is-back-in-dc

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