Disrupting the Narrative of the New Left, its allies in Academia, Hollywood and the Establishment Media, and examining with honesty the goals of cultural Marxism and the dangers of reactionary and abusive political correctness.
THE NARRATIVE AND POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
“Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.”-George Orwell
Want to know why so many European countries have managed to keep their marginal income tax rates lower than ours while still collecting far more revenue to fund far bigger government than we have? Because they levy value-added taxes (VATs), which are national sales taxes that don't show up on a retail bill but are instead hidden from consumers in intermediate stages.
Both Ted Cruz and Rand Paul have aVAT-like mechanism as part of their tax-reform plans. Both are misguided, to say the least. Even if they were able to get their plans enacted intact in the short run, in the long run what we'd end up with is a new, costly federal sales tax plus a continuing, problematic income tax. In other words, we'd end up like much of Europe...
Obama drops plan to tax 529 plans. A policy must be pretty awful for the guy forcing nuns to provide birth control to concede the point.
— Casey Mattox (@CaseyMattoxADF) January 28, 2015
Did the 529 furor happen because journalists are exactly the kind of upper-middle class people who use 529s? pic.twitter.com/zFWJR6f3eL
— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) January 28, 2015
THE KOCH BROS WILL SET THE WORLD ON FIRE AND THEN RETREAT TO THEIR COLONY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GALAXY. MUAHAHAHA https://t.co/nECAmcNPTd
— Matthew (@Matthops82) January 28, 2015
BELGIUM: Young Jewish girl looks on as a paratrooper stands guard at a building in the Jewish area in Antwerp. pic.twitter.com/Vd7twOaEYg
— Israel News Flash (@ILNewsFlash) January 18, 2015
The google doodle for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was created by Boston-based painter/collage artist Ekua Holmes. pic.twitter.com/ycUOE3RUBs
— okayafrica (@okayafrica) January 19, 2015
I hope Google don't think they did something with this MLK Jr. doodle.
-_- killing folks and turning them into puppets. Not today, Satan
— Negrosexual (@JizzyG1217) January 19, 2015
So all the snipers? Got it. This coward can't even stand up for his own words.>>> @MMFlint@FOX2News
— AW (@ArtbyAWOHS) January 19, 2015
Sorry, @MMFlint, but my takeaway is not only didn't you support the wars, but you're okay with our troops being killed. NOT okay.
— Laurie (@TherapyDogsRock) January 19, 2015
So ppl want me 2tweet something bout American Sniper? Great acting! Powerful message. Sad ending. There. My FB post: https://t.co/By4leT6b67
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) January 19, 2015
Too late, jackass. "@Sethrogen: I just said something "kinda reminded" me of something else. I actually liked American Sniper..."
— Sean Agnew (@seanagnew) January 19, 2015
I wasn't comparing the two. Big difference between comparing and reminding. Apples remind me of oranges. Can't compare them, though.
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 19, 2015
@Sethrogen God just grow up and admit what you meant. Backtracking is 10 times worse
— Bill Conlin (@Bill_Conlin) January 19, 2015
Non fat latte all over my yoga pants, I so can't even... RT @moody: I don't think this Daily Kos guy is joking... pic.twitter.com/bVgN9ULLJw
— To Write Brodigan... (@brodigan) January 19, 2015
Obama just announced he wants tax increases on investments. I wish he went after jihadists w the same fury he uses on successful Americans
— Andrea Tantaros (@AndreaTantaros) January 18, 2015
Apparently @thehill and the Left don't know the story of Robin Hood. He stole from the gov't and gave it to the overtaxed peeps.
— Chris Field (@ChrisMField) January 19, 2015
But maybe "Robin Hood Tax" is just "tax on people I don't like"
— Kevin W. Glass (@KevinWGlass) January 19, 2015
At times, one can only sit back and marvel at the fact that this man successfully marketed himself to the electorate as a pragmatist at heart and a would-be healer of sundry societal and political divisions. Barack Obama's background, associations and voting record (such as it existed at the time) clearly demonstrated that he'd lived his adult life as an entrenched ideologue -- the type of person of whom voters are typically suspicious. So he molded his message to elide and disguise his core character. He did so with the complicity of much of the media and has proceeded to allowed the mask to slip further and further as his presidency wears on. As the president prepares to address the nation in his first State of the Union Address since the midterms' landslide Republican victories, White House sources say he'll adopt a "defiant" posture:
President Barack Obama will strike a defiant tone for dealing with the new Republican-led Congress when he addresses Americans next week in his State of the Union speech, laying out areas for potential compromise but ceding little ground to his opponents. Obama's speech at 9 p.m. EST next Tuesday will be the clearest statement yet of his vision for his final two years in office, with both houses of Congress controlled by Republicans for the first time since he took power six years ago...But much like a White House meeting Obama held on Tuesday with congressional leaders, he is not expected to offer major concessions, in keeping with his pledge to act where he can on his own through executive actions and identify areas where the two sides can work together."
The GOP won a sweeping victory in November following a heated campaign in which Obama played a starring role...as the antagonist.The president has reacted to the people's decisive verdict by inaccurately suggesting that the election results don't reflect broader public sentiment, and by telling aides that he finally feels "liberated" to aggressively pursue the liberal agenda explicitly rejected by voters. So a combative national address is par for the course. Obama will reportedly roll out a series of tax increases on "the rich" in order to redistribute their wealth via tax credits and "free" programs for others.
The president has raised taxes throughout his presidency (with Obamacare acting as a key vehicle); in 2013, he exploited the prospect of automatic and massive across-the-board increases to corner Republicans into agreeing to $600 billion in tax hikes on wealthy Americans as part of the fiscal cliff deal. Now he's coming back for more,hyping gimmicks such as the expansion of the death tax on certain families, as well as taxing college savings accounts. Americans for Tax Reform tabulates the total of this round of requested tax increases at $320 billion.
The White House knows full well that these ideas stand zero chance of passage. Republicans didn't just get elected en masse to raise taxes and play along with Obama's cynical class warfare games -- which is precisely what they are:
The Republican Party of Iowa's governing board will vote on [the Ames Straw Poll's] future at 11 a.m. Saturday, but GOP insiders said the decision will almost certainly be to proceed with planning for an event in August as usual.
Just think, Republican aspiring presidents, with enough time, money, and effort, you can follow the path of past Ames Straw Poll winner Michele Bachmann, who went on to spend $15 million and finish with 5 percent in the Iowa caucuses! Or 2007 winner Mitt Romney! Or 1995 co-winner Phil Gramm! Or 1987 winner Pat Robertson! Or 1979 winner George H. W. Bush!
(You may have noticed that none of those figures went on to win the nomination, nor even the Iowa caucus the following year.)
Okay, every once in a while, the straw-poll winner goes on to win the nomination: co-winner Bob Dole in 1995, George W. Bush in 1999.
The straw poll, in fact, proved to be a substantial drain on candidates' finances. In addition to the fees paid to the party, candidates spent big bucks on food, entertainment and transportation. Pawlenty dropped nearly $27,000 on Famous Dave's barbecue to feed the straw poll crowd before finishing third and exiting the race the next day. Bachmann spent more than $40,000 renting buses to transport supporters to the poll — and another $7,000 on golf carts to shuttle folks around the grounds.
Comrades, there are wreckers in our midst. The industrialist reactionaries at Burger King have declared their intention to abandon the struggle and join the ranks of the enemy in rightist Canada.
That's right. The traitorous corporation Burger King plans to take advantage of the fact that America's English-speaking neighbor to the north maintains the second-lowest corporate tax rate of any G-7 nation. How dare they?
"The iconic American fast-food brand is in talks to buy coffee-and-donuts chain Tim Hortons and move its headquarters to Canada," Forbes reported. If concluded, this deal would create the world's third-largest restaurant company and allow Burger King to take advantage of a tax inversion deal and relocate their headquarters to Canada.
Earlier this summer, the Obama administration threatened to use the power of executive action to limit the ability of American companies to avoid paying America's corporate tax rate by, as the president said, "renouncing their citizenship."According to Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal, Burger King's move is a direct challenge to the White House...
CNSNews.com reports that IRS statistics for 2011 show there were 145,370,240 individual income tax returns filed. Among those returns, 125,914,418 or 86.6 percent belonged to taxpayers earning a salary less than $100,000. The remaining 19,455,822 returns were for people earning more than $100,000.
While those top earners, earning six figures or more, represented only 13.4 percent of the total number of individual returns, they contributed nearly three-fourths of the total amount of federal tax revenue from individual filers reported for that year.
In 2011, the IRS collected $1.1 trillion based on taxpayers' taxable income. From that total, 71.6 percent, or $779.5 billion, came from people earning six figures or more. Only 28.4 percent, or $308.9 billion, came from those earning less than $100,000.
The IRS has been posting this data online since 1996, when the share of the nation's tax burden on six-figure earners was 51 percent.
Rich States, Poor Statesis an annual economic competiveness study authored by Dr. Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, and Jonathan Williams, Director of the Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force at the American Legislative Exchange Council.
In an article published last week, the economist Walter Williams explains the difference between price and cost. Understanding the difference is necessary to grasp the importance to our economy of keeping taxes as low as reasonably possible.
Suppose you buy a gallon of gas for $3. How much did it cost you? You say, "Williams, that's a silly question. It cost $3." That's where you're mistaken, because there's a difference between price and cost. To prove that price and cost are not the same, consider the following. Suppose you live and work in New York City and routinely pay $15 for a haircut. Imagine you were told that there's a barber in Boise, Idaho, who can give you the identical haircut for just $5. Would you start going to the Boise barber? I'm betting you'd answer no because even though the price is cheaper, the cost is greater.
We might think of price as the money that's actually given in exchange for the transfer of ownership. When you purchased the gallon of gas, you simply transferred your ownership of $3. What the gas cost you is a different matter. One way to determine the cost of a gallon of gas is to ask yourself what sacrifice you had to make in order to have $3 to buy it. Say that your annual salary is $75,000. Your total federal income tax, state income tax, local taxes and Social Security and Medicare taxes come to about 35 percent of your salary. That means that in order to purchase the $3 gallon of gas required that you earned about $4.60 in order to have $3 after taxes. That means a gallon of gas costs you $4.60 worth of sacrifice. But that's not so costly as it is to a richer person — for example, someone earning a yearly salary of $500,000. He has to earn more than $5 before taxes in order to have $3 after taxes to purchase gas.
If taxes only concealed hidden costs of what we buy, we'd be lucky, but taxes are destructive in another hidden way. Suppose I want to hire you to repair my computer. Having the work done is worth $200 to me, and performing the work is worth $200 to you. The transaction occurs because we have a meeting of the minds. Suppose Congress imposes a 30 percent income tax on you. That means that if you repaired my computer, you would receive not $200, what it was worth to you to do the job, but instead $140 after taxes. You might say the heck with repairing my computer; spending time with your family is worth more than $140.
You might then offer that you'd do the job if I paid you $283. That way, your after-tax earnings would be $200 — what doing the job is worth to you. There's a problem. The repair job was worth $200 to me, not $283. So it's my turn to say the heck with it.
This simple example demonstrates that one effect of taxes is that of destroying transactions and hence jobs. But politicians have what economists call a zero-elasticity vision of the world. In other words, they're fool enough to believe that people will behave after taxes are levied just as they behaved before and that the only effect of a tax is to bring in more revenue. Of course, a more flattering assessment is that politicians are not fools and know that their actions destroy transactions and hence jobs but they don’t give a damn and only care about revenue.
Here's a question: Would you and I, as well as our nation, be better off if you repaired my computer and I gave you $200 in cash and we agreed not to report the transaction to the agents of Congress? I'd answer yes and no. Yes, because there'd be more transactions, more jobs and greater wealth. No, because we'd be criminals.
Taxes are necessary to fund the constitutionally mandated functions of the federal government. If Congress spent according to its authority under Article 1, Section 8 of our Constitution, taxes wouldn't be any more than 5 percent of the gross domestic product, as it was between 1787 and 1920, as opposed to today's 20 percent.
And here is an Econ 101 video from 2011 that further explains why higher taxes do more harm than good.
