Myths of our time 93

This is a list of beliefs – in no particular order – that are very widely and commonly held, but are untrue:  

Sweden is a happy country. Fact: It is a Muslim-infested misery-state, the rape capital of Europe.   

The BBC is a trustworthy, truthful, unbiased source of news. Fact: It is dishonest, it routinely distorts or suppresses news it doesn’t like, is snobbish, deeply and persistently anti-Semitic, and heavily biased to the Left. 

The Jews seized the state of Palestine, sent most of the Palestinians into exile, and oppress those who remained. Fact: There never was, in all history, an independent state of Palestine. The territory is the historic homeland of the Jews. When Arab armies tried to destroy the modern Jewish state, many Arabs fled, intending to return when their side was victorious, but their side was defeated. Israeli authorities tried to persuade Arab residents not to leave. Those who remained are the freest Arabs in the Middle East, with all citizens’ rights. 

Nazism was a right-wing ideology. Fact: Nazism was National Socialism and as distinctly derived from the tradition of the Left as its rival International Socialism.

Che Guevara was a hero. Fact: Che Guevara was a torturer and mass murderer, and a coward.  

The Mahatma Gandhi was a good man who liberated India from the British Raj. Fact: Gandhi was a cruel man who had little if any influence on the British decision to withdraw from India.

Senator Joe McCarthy was an evil witch-hunter of Communists. Fact: McCarthy did his duty in tracking down potential Communist fifth-columnists, propagandists, and traitors during the Cold War.

President Roosevelt was a liberal who saved America from economic disaster. Fact: President Roosevelt was a Communist sympathizer. His policies prolonged the Depression.

President Obama’s period in office was scandal-free. Fact: President Obamas’ period in office was exceptionally full of scandals, some of them the worst examples of corruption and plain treason in US history. 

Islam is a religion of peace. And its name means “peace”. Fact: Islam is a religion of war and conquest. Its name means “submission”.

Carbon dioxide is a poison. Fact: Carbon dioxide is the food of green plants.

Human beings are changing the climate of the planet for the worse. Fact: The climate of the earth is always changing as vast cosmic forces act upon it. Human beings can make very little difference, if any, to the heating and cooling of the planet.

A baby in the womb is not a living human being. Fact: A fetus with a heartbeat is alive, a living human being.

Government exists to care for and provide for the people. Fact: government robs the people, threatens the people, frightens the people. Whatever government does, it does badly. Government must be kept within bounds to properly perform its only essential duty, the defense of liberty, by enforcing the law and preventing invasion.

President Trump is a racist. Fact: He is not and has never been a racist. He has worked all his adult life with people of many races, never discriminating against any of them on racial grounds.

President Trump is an anti-Semite. Fact: He is the most pro-Jewish pro-Israel US president ever.

President Trump oppresses women. Fact: he honors women, promotes them, behaves towards them as heterosexual gentlemen in our culture customarily do (or did).

President Trump is a liar. Fact: He tells the truth. Like every human being, he can be inaccurate with dates, numbers, recollections, but on all important matters he is consistently truthful.    

The Democratic Party protects minorities. Fact: The Democratic Party is the party of slavery, segregation, secession, and the Jim Crow laws. By keeping millions of blacks on welfare, Democrats have kept them from independence, advancement, and prosperity.

Democrats act in the interests of the working class. Fact: Democrats despise the working class.

The US media report the news. Fact: The US media, in the huge majority, are lackeys of the Left.

American universities encourage free thinking, free and open exchange of opinion, the exploration of ideas. Fact: Most American universities are centers of Leftist indoctrination, dogmatic and intolerant.

Western civilization is grounded in “Judeo-Christian” values. Fact: Western civilization as we inherit it derives its values from, and owes its success to, the Enlightenment, which was an intellectual revolution against the oppressive authority of the Christian churches.

The “white patriarchy” has been bad for non-whites and women. Fact: Almost everything we have that sustains our lives and makes them endurable; almost everything we know;  every comfort, every convenience, every freedom that makes it possible for us to pursue happiness, physically, socially, politically, was given to us and the world by white middle-class men. 

That’s just a starter list.

We invite readers to add to it.

The torch of Donald Trump 58

The Yellow Jacket protestors are out again in France (and Britain) this weekend (January12 and 13, 2019).

President Trump tweeted on December 8 last year. :

The Paris Agreement isn’t working out so well for Paris. Protests and riots all over France. People do not want to pay large sums of money, much to third world countries (that are questionably run), in order to maybe protect the environment. Chanting “We Want Trump!” Love France.

The Trump-hating American media – which is to say most of them – dispute reports of French protestors chanting “We want Trump!” But they cannot know that none did. What is known is that at least some want what can be called “Trumpist” changes to French government policies.

James Delingpole writes at Breitbart:

France’s Gilets Jaunes protestors have jumped on the Trump train with a manifesto that could almost have been written by the Donald himself. The good news is that it contains an awful lot of sense – including demands for lower taxes, reduced migration and Frexit (French exit) from the European Union.

The bad news is that it hasn’t a prayer of coming to fruition because its demands are unrealistic, contradictory and will certainly be stymied by the sclerotic, anti-democratic, rampantly statist French political system – and also by the French people themselves.

We select from a list of the demands – as summarized in English by Delingpole in his article – some that we applaud. (See the yellow-vest picture below to read them all in French.)

Frexit: Leave the EU to regain our economic, monetary and political sovereignty (In other words, respect the 2005 referendum result, when France voted against the EU Constitution Treaty, which was then renamed the Lisbon Treaty and the French people were ignored.)

Constitutional amendments to protect the people’s interests, including binding referenda

Remove all ideology from the ministry of education, ending all destructive education techniques 

Break up media monopolies and end their interference in politics. Make media accessible to citizens and guarantee a plurality of opinions. End editorial propaganda

Guarantee citizens’ liberty by including in the constitution a complete prohibition on state interference in their decisions concerning education, health and family matters

Prevent migratory flows that cannot be accommodated or integrated, given the profound civilizational crisis we are experiencing

We would like to think that the entire Gilets Jaunes protest movement, now spread to other parts of Europe, and to Britain, will achieve the destruction of the EU and stop Muslim immigration. For the present, we must be satisfied that demands for both are incorporated among the protestor’s demands.

To the extent that it is a patriotic nationalist movement, it may be said to have lit its flame from Donald Trump’s torch.

Posted under Environmentalism, Europe, France, immigration, liberty, nationalism, News, Populism, Revolt, Tax, United States by Jillian Becker on Sunday, January 13, 2019

Tagged with , ,

This post has 58 comments.

Permalink

Trump, Trumpism, and THEM 21

It’s altogether too much for THEM to bear! The man is a billionaire who loves life, lives well, and enjoys himself tremendously both at work and at play; has a wife who is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and is also graceful, gentle, intelligent and competent; has handsome successful children and bright charming grandchildren; and, on top of all that, has become the most powerful man in the world. To add a final insult to THEM, he is perfectly healthy at the age 0f 71; immensely energetic and strong; and fully capable of continuing to do what he wants to do.

And then, try as THEY might to find something he has done terribly wrong to blot his intolerably immaculate escutcheon, THEY cannot find anything!

Actually, it is even worse for THEM. Far worse. Because not only is he victorious, THEY are defeated. Probably (with luck) irrecoverably. He has risen to power at a moment when THEY had  almost conquered the world; almost made it poor; almost brought the nations – possibly even including the USA – into universal homogeneity at the lowest level of subsistence in subjection to THEM running a world communist government (in order to “save the planet” from people using cars and making things in factories); almost destroyed Western civilization.

We are enthusiasts for Trumpism because we are warriors against THEM.

As such, do we exaggerate his achievements? If so, by how much? Overlook his flaws? If so, what are they?

As a corrective to our possibly overindulgent judgment of the president, we reproduce an article by Victor Davis Hanson; surely a reasonable and fair assessment of the Trump presidency thus far and prospectively. It is also necessary to know that it appeared at the mostly, persistently, and emphatically anti-Trump National Review:

As President Trump finished his first full year in office, he could look back at an impressive record of achievement of a kind rarely attained by an incoming president — much less by one who arrived in office as a private-sector billionaire without either prior political office or military service.

As unintended proof of his accomplishments, Trump’s many liberal opponents have gone from initially declaring him an incompetent to warning that he has become effective — insanely so — in overturning the Obama progressive agenda. Never Trump Republicans acknowledge that Trump has realized much of what they once only dreamed of — from tax reform and deregulation to a government about-face on climate change, the ending of the Obamacare individual mandate, and expansion of energy production.

Trump so far has not enacted the Never Trump nightmare agenda. The U.S. is not leaving NATO. It is not colluding with Vladimir Putin, but maintaining sanctions against Russia and arming Ukrainians. It is not starting a tariff war with China. The administration is not appointing either liberals or incompetents to the federal courts. A politicized FBI, DOJ, and IRS was Obama’s legacy, not Trump’s doing, as some of the Never Trump circle predicted. Indeed, the Never Trump movement is now mostly calcified, as even some of its formerly staunch adherents concede. It was done in by the Trump record and the monotony of having to redefine a once-welcomed conservative agenda as suddenly unpalatable due to Trump’s crude fingerprints on it.

On the short side, Trump has still not started to build his much-promised border wall, to insist on free but far fairer trade with Asia and Europe, or to enact an infrastructure-rebuilding program. Nonetheless, Trump’s multitude of critics is unable to argue that his record is shoddy and must instead insist that his list of achievements is due mostly to the Republican Congress. Or they claim he is beholden to the legacy of the Obama administration. Or they insist that credit belongs with his own impressive economic and national-security cabinet-level appointments. Or that whatever good came of Trump’s first year is nullified by Trump’s persistent personal odiousness.

At the conclusion of Trump’s first year, the stock market and small-business confidence are at record highs, and consumer confidence has not been higher in 17 years. Trump’s loud campaign promises to lure back capital and industry to the heartland no longer look quixotic, given new tax and deregulatory incentives and far cheaper energy costs than in most of Europe and Japan. Trump has now ended 66 regulations for every one he has added. Few believed a Republican president could cut the corporate-tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent while capping state- and local-tax deductions for mostly high earners to $10,000. Those are the highlights of a comprehensive tax-reform and -reduction agenda that will likely accelerate the economy to an even more rapid growth rate than Trump’s first two full quarters of annualized increases in GDP of more than 3 percent. Dozens of large companies are already passing along some of their anticipated tax cuts to employees through increased wages or bonuses — dismissed as “crumbs” by House minority leader Nancy Pelosi. Rising workers’ wages and anticipated tax credits and savings for the lower and middle classes for now are rendering almost mute the age-old fights about state-mandated minimum-wage laws.

The mostly unheralded nixing of the Obamacare individual mandate — once the great ideological battlefield of the Affordable Care Act — will insidiously recalibrate the ACA into a mostly private-market enterprise.

Domestic oil production is slated to exceed 2017 record levels and soon may hit an astonishing 11 million barrels a day. “Peak oil” for now is an ossified idea, as are massive wind and solar Solyndra-like government subsidies and the mostly unworkable Paris Climate Accord. Gas, oil, and coal production are expected to rise even higher with new Trump initiatives to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge field in Alaska, encourage more fracking on federal lands and offshore, and complete needed pipeline links while encouraging coal exportation.

For all the political horse-trading over extending or ending the Obama executive orders on DACA, illegal immigration has declined according to some metrics by over 60 percent. It is now at the lowest levels in the 21st century — even before the ending of chain migration and enacting of new border-security initiatives. Abroad, the ISIS caliphate is for all purposes now extinct. Its demise is in part due to Trump’s outsourcing of the conflict to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who liberated ground commanders from Obama-administration-era legalistic rules of engagement. Trump’s appointees, such as Mattis, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, have worked in concert to restore U.S. deterrence.

Variously called “principled realism” or a new “Jacksonianism”,  the Trump doctrine has now replaced the “strategic patience” and “lead from behind” recessionals of the prior administration and not emulated the neoconservative nation-building of the George W. Bush administration. New pressures on nuclear North Korea have prompted the toughest U.N. trade sanctions in history on the rogue state. After Trump’s fiery and erratic rhetoric and muscular displays of U.S. naval and air power in the Pacific, Pyongyang has agreed to landmark talks with Seoul. China is slowly beginning to pressure North Korea to stop launching missiles. Beijing’s Asian neighbors are beefing up missile defense and growing closer to the U.S. For now, the bad cop Trump and the good cops Mattis and McMaster have encouraged friends and frightened enemies, although the shelf life of such diplomatic gymnastics is limited.

Trump almost immediately voiced support for mass demonstrations in Iran, in a manner Obama failed to do in 2009. An ironic fallout of the disastrous 2015 Iran deal may be that the theocracy so hyped its cash windfalls from American relaxation of embargoes and sanctions that it inadvertently raised Iranians’ expectations of a rise in the standard of living. Then it dashed just those hopes by squandering hundreds of millions of newfound dollars in subsidizing Hezbollah, conducting a costly expeditionary war to save the genocidal Bashar al-Assad regime, and likely continuing an exorbitantly costly nuclear-weapons program. What is different about Iran’s internal unrest this time around is twofold. The Trump administration is not invested in any “landmark” deal with Tehran that requires ignoring protesters in the street. Trump also does not envision revolutionary and terror-sponsoring Iran as a “very successful regional power” with “legitimate defense concerns”. Rather, he sees Tehran, along with ISIS and al-Qaeda, as the chief source of Middle East unrest and anti-Americanism.

Moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, in line with past congressional mandates, along with threatening to curtail Palestinian aid, only reifies what is now widely accepted. The new Middle East is not the old. There are no longer any ongoing and viable “peace plans”, “road maps”, or “summits”.  America is becoming energy-independent and immune to oil boycotts. There are new and greater threats than Israel to Arab regimes, from nuclear Iran to the scourge of Islamic terrorism in Iraq and Syria. Patience is wearing thin as after 30 years the Palestinians still cannot create transparent and consensual government. Seventy years after the birth of Israel, the Palestinians still insist on being called “refugees” — when most of the world’s millions of displaced persons decades ago moved on.

Yet as Trump heads into the 2018 midterms, his favorability ratings are unimpressive. Because of loud Democratic threats of using impeachment proceedings to undermine the Trump project, the 2018 fight for the House is taking on historic importance. It is not just a referendum on the Trump agenda, but likely a means to seek to discredit or remove Trump himself — even if the prosecution in the Senate would likely never find the necessary 67 votes. In sum, an embattled Trump now finds himself in a war on all fronts. The first and most important conflict is one of favorability. Trump’s actual approval ratings, as in 2016, are probably somewhat higher than the low 40s reported in many polls. But Trump’s image is still astonishingly dismal in relation to his unappreciated achievements. For congressional Republicans to survive the midterms and retain majorities, Trump perhaps has to hope that the economy will grow not just at 3 percent but even more robustly — with marked rises in workers’ take-home wages due to tax cuts and labor shortages. Is it really true that politics can be reduced to “It’s the economy, stupid”? Obama failed to achieve 3 percent growth per annum over his eight years. As a result he may have lost both houses of Congress, but he also was reelected. More likely, no one quite knows the exact political consequences of economic growth. Between November 1983 and November 1984, the economy grew at 7 percent and ipso facto ushered the once “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan into a landslide reelection victory over a previously thought-to-be-far-more-impressive Walter Mondale. Yet this time it may be that 3 percent GDP growth will not mitigate Trump’s personal negatives but 4–5 percent would.

It is said that Trump is also at war with himself, in the sense that his tweeting alienates the key constituencies of women voters and independents. Conventional wisdom assures that Trump’s off-the-cuff invectives only fuel his critics and overshadow his achievements. In the heart of immigration negotiations, Trump was quoted secondhand as having called Haiti and other formerly Third World countries “sh**hole” countries and thus undesirable sources of mass immigration to the U.S. Whatever the reliability of reports of the slur, Trump is certainly not the sort of politician to have said instead, “It would seem wiser to encourage diverse immigration, including immigration from the most developed countries as well as the least developed” — even as many people privately agree with Trump’s earthy assessment that immigration should be far more selective and include a far greater variety of countries of origin.

Both Trump’s spoken and electronic stream-of-consciousness venting can be unorthodox, crude and cruel, and often extraneous. But can anyone measure whether and to what degree his Twitter account energizes and widens his base more than it loses him supporters otherwise sympathetic to his agenda? The orthodox wisdom is that Trump should let his achievements speak for themselves, curb his raucous campaign rallies, and restrict his daily tweets to expansions on his agenda and achievement and leave the feuding to subordinates. When Trump has avoided ad hominem spats, and been filmed conducting policy sessions with his cabinet and congressional enemies and friends, he has looked and acted “presidential”.  How good then must Trump’s record become to overshadow both the prejudices against him and his own inner demons to achieve favorability ratings that will provide coattails for his congressional supporters and fuel an even more ambitious second-year agenda? Again, time is running out, and in the next ten months the economy must boom as never before or Trump must learn to sound more like a Ronald Reagan than a Howard Stern.

Trump is simultaneously at war with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Once again, the critical element is time in the sense of the looming midterm elections. So far, after months of media speculation and press leaks, there is no evidence of Russian–Trump collusion. Robert Mueller’s investigative team has been riddled by charges of conflicts of interest, workplace unprofessionalism, and political bias. The basis of the entire writ against Trump, the Fusion GPS–Steele dossier, is now mostly discredited. The file’s lurid sexual accusations alone likely won it notoriety in 2016 among journalists and Obama-administration enablers. The more that is learned about the Steele opposition-research file — paid for by the Clinton campaign, polluted by Russian rumor-mongering, peddled to the FBI, manipulated by the Obama administration to justify FISA surveillance, likely leaked to pet reporters by Obama-administration and Clinton-campaign officials — the more apparent it may become that Mueller is investigating Russian collusion in entirely the wrong place. Another irony is that pushback against the Mueller fishing expedition may prompt reinvestigations into the earlier election-cycle-aborted inquiries about Clinton email improprieties. The Obama administration also likely acted improperly in ignoring the Clinton–Uranium One connections and Hillary Clinton’s violations of agreements with the Obama administration to report the sources of all private donations to the Clinton Foundation during her tenure. So far resistance at both the Department of Justice and the FBI to releasing documents pertaining to all these avenues of interest has stymied House and Senate inquiries. If the Republicans lose the Congress, these investigations will shut down entirely. Democratic majorities will give Mueller a free hand to do as he pleases without worries about past complaints over the ethical shortcomings of his investigation. Select Intelligence and Judiciary Committee hearings will likely give way in the House to impeachment proceedings. But if within the next nine months there are new explosive revelations about the improper or even illegal uses of the Steele dossier and the Clinton scandals, while the Mueller team settles for face-saving indictments of former Trump subordinates for transgressions that have little to do with the original Mueller mandate to investigate Russian–Trump collusion, then Trump will win the legal war. In that case, Trump finally will not only weather the collusion crisis but find himself a political beneficiary of one of the most scandalous efforts to subvert a political campaign and improperly surveil American citizens in recent American history.

Trump wages a fourth war against the proverbial mainstream media, whose coverage, according to disinterested analyses, runs over 90 percent anti-Trump. Negative Trump news fuels Trump-assassination chic in popular culture, the rants of late-night-television comedians, the political effort to grandstand with impeachment writs, calls to invoke the 25th Amendment, and lawsuits alleging violations of the emoluments clause. The threats of a Madonna, the raving of Representative Maxine Waters, the boasts of the “Resistance,” the efforts of blue states to nullify federal immigration law or to dodge compliance with unwelcome new federal tax statutes, and the conspiracy fables of Representative Adam Schiff are all fueled by media attention and preconceived narratives hostile to Trump. The anti-Trump news is still determined to accomplish what so far the Clinton campaign, Obama holdovers, and deep-state bureaucrats have not: so discredit Trump the messenger that his message becomes irrelevant. Trump apparently fights his war against the media in the fashion in which toxic chemotherapy battles cancer. His personal and electronic rants against “fake news” and “crooked” journalists are intended to exhibit media biases and thus discredit negative coverage just before the public tires of Trump’s own off-putting venom. On the one hand, Trump’s anemic approval ratings might suggest the media are winning in their 24/7 efforts to portray Trump as a Russian colluder, rank profiteer, distracted golfer, tax cheat, sexual predator, trigger-happy warmonger, or senile septuagenarian. On the other hand, the media are polling worse than Trump. And his battle has nearly destroyed the credibility of CNN, which has fired marquee journalists for false anti-Trump narratives, been embarrassed by hosts mouthing scatological venom, suffered employees’ hot-mic wishes for Trump’s death, and seen its anchors and special correspondents reduced to on-air rants. For now, no one knows whether Trump’s war against the media is pyrrhic, in that he may defeat his journalist enemies and even render their entire networks discredited, but at such costs that he is no longer politically viable.

Trump is waging a fifth and final war against Democrats. So far Trump has sucked all the oxygen out of the Democratic atmosphere. Politicians and operatives are so obsessed with proving Trump a liar, a cheat, a pervert, a con artist, or an incompetent that they have offered so far no viable opposition leader or alternative agenda. But will just being not-Trump make Democrats preferable? The centrist Democratic party of the 1990s no longer exists. It has become instead a coalition of patched-together progressive causes. The redistributionism and neo-socialism of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are now Democratic economic mainstays. Barack Obama’s lead-from-behind legacy remains Democratic foreign policy. Identity politics still constitutes the culture of the party establishment.

In more practical terms, for all the animus against Trump the person, his agenda — tax cuts, deterrence, reindustrialization, middle-class job growth, closing the borders, the melting pot — is increasingly polling well. In many cases, Trumpism is more popular than Democratic signature issues such as tax hikes, larger government, more entitlements, open borders, more identity politics, and European Union–like internationalism.

The idea of Oprah Winfrey as the 2020 Democratic nominee and the unwillingness of Democrats to secure the border reveal what can happen when a party is reduced to defining itself as not being the incumbent president. The Republicans learned that lesson in their four-time failure to defeat the hated Roosevelt. Democrats in the 1980s had little to offer the country other than not being the supposed buffoon Ronald Reagan. Shutting down the government is also rarely a winning strategy for an out party — as the Republicans learned in their politically disastrous 1995–96 showdown with Bill Clinton. In 2018, it may be enough for congressional candidates to run on anti-Trump invective without expressing strong views on the issues or identifying with any particular national leader. But it won’t be so in 2020, especially if the Trump agenda grows more popular and Trump allows it rather than himself to become his signature message.

For now, all that is certain about Trump’s first year is the 2016 truism that past prognostications and current polls are irrelevant. The jester candidate, Donald Trump, destroyed, not just beat, his 16 primary rivals. The doomed candidate Trump defeated the most well-financed, experienced, and media-favored Democratic candidate in memory. The inept President Trump’s first year was not liberal or directionless, but marked the most successful and conservative governance since Ronald Reagan’s. Trump’s critics insist that his comeuppance is on the horizon. They assure us that character is destiny. Trump’s supposed hubris will finally earn an appropriately occasioned nemesis. But in the meantime, nearly half the country may be happy that the establishment was not just wrong but nearly discredited in its non-ending, prejudicial dismissal of the Trump agenda and, so far, the successful Trump presidency.

So: HOWL globalists, socialists, warmists, feminists, Muslims, and Democrats.

He is impervious to your insults.

He is charitable and generous. Yes, he is.

He is not a “racist” or “anti-woman”. Certainly not.

He does not take drugs, drink alcohol – or even coffee.

He has not colluded with the Russians, or any other foreign power. (Obama did with the Russians and the Iranians. Hillary Clinton did with anyone who would pay her.)

He flourishes, he laughs, he acts, he wins.

Winning 115

We had a commenter recently on our Facebook page who said that President Trump should “get off his ass” and do something. When we replied that he had achieved more in his first year than any other president in living memory, and against more deliberate hampering, blocking and resistance than any other president – and that he, the commenter,  only did not know this because he read the mainstream media which refused to report President Trump’s accomplishments – his further comment was a long string of hahahas.

As there must be millions who would also laugh at our assertion, it is time to list those accomplishments. And it is also time to name the conservatives who joined the hamperers, blockers and resisters in making it as hard for the president to achieve anything as they possibly could – out of sheer prejudice.

John Nolte has made such a list and named some of the most prominent guilty conservatives.

He writes at Breitbart:

Remember these names: Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, Max Boot, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Joe Scarborough, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Josh Jordan, Tom Nichols, Charles Cooke, Stephen Hayes, Tim Miller, John Podhoretz, Nicole Wallace, Steven Schmidt, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, Leon Wolf, David Brooks, Rick Wilson, Evan McMullin, Stuart Stevens, Red State, National Review, the Weekly Standard 

These are the so-called conservative men, women, and institutions who (among others) fought the hardest to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, all in the unforgivable hope that Hillary Clinton would become president.

These are so-called conservatives who have, for nearly two years now, been promoting themselves and fundraising by smearing Trump as incompetent and “not a real conservative,” as a “Democrat in sheep’s clothing” — when, in fact, all of that best describes #NeverTrump.

These are the so-called conservatives who — after Trump’s first year in office — have now been proven as wrong as wrong can be. If their conservative credentials lost all credibility during a 2016 campaign during which they used whatever residual influence they had to hand the Oval Office to Clinton, the proven results of the past year should mean that they are written off forever as idiots, quacks, mercenaries, and con men.

Trump has had, in my opinion, the most successful first year of any president since Ronald Reagan. And not just a consequential first year that has already built a legacy, but conservative first year. Below, I do my best to list these accomplishments, but there are so many, forgive me if a few are missed:

  • Real, honest-to-goodness tax reform and cuts — the most consequential in 30 years.
  • Opening ANWR for oil exploration, an accomplishment few can appreciate who do not remember the 90s and what a sacred cow this is for the left.
  • Killing the Obamacare mandate that brutalized those making less than $50,000 a year.
  • The Islamic State (ISIS) has been decimated. [We would say obliterated– ed]
  • After a 2016 of just 1.9 percent GDP growth, we have now had two quarters in a row of growth over three percent; predictions for the final quarter of 2017 are as high as four percent.
  • [The appointment of] Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has already proven himself the perfect replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.
  • The Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are a go — which means tens of thousands of jobs.
  • A record number of judicial appointments on the appeals courts.
  • The end of the War on Coal.
  • A surge in coal mining after 2016’s decline.
  • The end of the federal government’s violating the religious conscience through indefensible Obamacare mandates involving birth control and abortion pills.
  • The civil rights movement for school choice is getting the green light throughout the country.
  • Illegal immigration is way down.
  • The stock market hit record highs 70 times in 2017, rising 5,000 points for the first time ever.
  • The long-overdue recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
  • We are free of the awful Paris climate treaty.
  • Regulatory reform that is just getting started, but it has already had a hugely positive effect on our economy.
  • Withdrawal from the Global Compact on Migration, which undercut American sovereignty.
  • Return of nearly two million acres to the state Utah that the federal government had stolen.
  • A $250 billion trade deal with China.
  • Many of our NATO allies are finally paying their dues.
  • Consumer confidence is the best we have seen in more than a decade.
  • Pulled us out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in favor of the American worker and sovereignty.
  • Trump has managed to get China to help rein in North Korea. [To some extent – ed]
  • Black unemployment is at a 17-year low.
  • Hispanic unemployment is at an all-time low.
  • Overall unemployment is at [four point] one percent.
  • Manufacturing jobs boom.
  • Standing up for persecuted Christian minorities in the Middle East. [More needs to be done, but it’s a start – ed]
  • Promoting Christmas.
  • Banning [immigration] or demanding stronger vetting [of immigrants] from [predominantly Muslim] countries most likely to [export] terrorists.
  • Housing sales are at an 11-year high.
  • Ban on transgender military recruits.

Now, you need to close your eyes and imagine what the list above would look like had #NeverTrump won the day and made Hillary Clinton president.

Now, try to imagine any one of the 16 Republicans who competed [with Trump] for the 2016 nomination accomplishing all of this, or even having the courage to stand up to a media onslaught to accomplish all of this, or even being, yes, conservative enough to do things like pull us out of the Paris climate agreement (something the Republican establishment’s failed 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, opposes).

Trump’s conservatism, his competence, his willingness to stand up to gale force media hate to keep his promises, is unlike anything we have seen since 1981.

In the pursuit of only their own grift, personal fame, the gratification of bottomless egos, and a soft place to land among the Beautiful People, #NeverTrump lied to us, took our money, and fought tooth and nail to extend the disastrous Obama presidency into a third term.

And now, just one year into Trump’s presidency, #NeverTrump has once again been exposed for who they truly are — bitter, dishonest saboteurs more interested in their lofty place at the trough than the future of their own country.

All these bitter clingers have left now is to further degrade outlets such as the once-necessary National Review, a once-cherished laboratory of vibrant conservative ideas and thought, which is now a hangout for sore losers to keep rewriting the same column over and over and over again about how pure and virtuous they are, as they scold the rest of us for fighting for and sticking with a president who has delivered in ways they told us was not even within the realm of possibility.

So now the real conservatives can laugh – the longest string of triumphant hahahas they can manage while their breath lasts.

*

Later: WND provides an even longer list: 168 accomplishments.

Less tax, more liberty 56

Taxation is theft.

The government has a monopoly of force, and uses it to extort money from the people.

We complain about it, but we are not anarchists. We know there must be a government, and that it needs money to do its job.

If it only did what only government can do, protect our liberty and property essential to our liberty from domestic crime and foreign invasion, and nothing more, we would not grudge parting with some of our money to pay for that necessary service.

But even the best governments use the people’s money for superfluous ends. They give it to foreign countries! They squander it on art and sport and … The list of unnecessary, and even  positively wicked, recipients of government largesse is very long.

Plainly, the less government does, the better. The less tax it extorts from the people, the better.

So it is very good that a tax-reducing bill has been passed in both the House and the Senate.

President Trump – who promised tax cuts – will sign it, and the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be law. (Here are its details and professional analysis of it.)

It is also an achievement of the Republican Party – not easily won, but finally won.

No Democrat voted for it. Theirs is the party of high taxation for big government, low growth, high unemployment, more dependence on government, less self-determination.

But we doubt if there is one of them (except the extremely rich among them because they aren’t getting a reduction, such as House minority leader Nancy Pelosi) who is not secretly glad he’ll be paying less tax.

They are also, as we often repeat, the Hypocrite Party.

Posted under Tax by Jillian Becker on Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Tagged with , ,

This post has 56 comments.

Permalink

Donald Trump tax hero 59

The Golden Rule for every citizen of a (comparatively speaking) free nation is: “Pay as little tax as you possibly can, preferably none.”

The New York Times – through long years one of the most despicable organs in the world – ILLEGALLY obtained Donald Trump’s tax returns.

What they reveal, and what the NYT is trying to make a scandal out of, is that Donald Trump pays as little tax as possible, preferably none.

For nearly twenty years he managed to make billions and pay no tax. That makes him a tax hero in our eyes. 

The hypocritical New York Times itself tries to pay as little tax as possible, preferably none. 

The Clinton Foundation made false declarations on its tax returns. Broke the law. When found out, hastily refiled “amended” returns. But that doesn’t interest the Clinton-serving, habitually lying, shamelessly thieving – altogether deeply immoral – NYT.

Wayne Allyn Root writes at Breitbart:

The Old Gray Lady (the New York Times, not Hillary Clinton) just attacked Donald Trump for supposedly paying no income taxes.

The New York Times knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s called fraud. It’s also called bait and switch. They are trying to distract you from the real crimes committed by Hillary Clinton.

They know Clinton is a criminal. They know she and her scheming husband Bill have committed terrible crimes against the American people. They know the Clinton Foundation is a charity scam. They know almost none of the money collected ever goes to charity. Any one of us running a charity scam like this would be in prison.

They know that the Clinton Foundation is basically a mafia extortion scheme set up to extort bribes from foreign leaders, foreign companies and foreign countries. They know Hillary put the Secretary of State’s office up for sale to the highest bidders. They know she took those bribes disguised as “donations” and repaid the “donors” with access to government awards, contracts and sweetheart deals. She took in billions of dollars, in a foundation in her name, then used our taxpayer dollars to reward the criminals buying access.

Hillary was running the CCC – the Clinton Crime Cartel.

Give Hillary credit. This scheme was more audacious than any mafia family has ever dreamed of. And more lucrative than even the mafia’s favorite products- drugs, booze, prostitution or pornography. Hillary is the new role model for the Gambinos.

Hillary’s scam was like printing money. No risk. Pay no taxes on the billions she collected – because it’s a “charity”.  Use the money for fancy dinners, 5-star hotels, private jets, big salaries and even penthouses for Chelsea Clinton. And pay no expenses either – because the payoff for the bribe is paid by taxpayers.

The New York Times doesn’t care. They don’t have any interest in investigating or reporting on the CCC – The Clinton Crime Cartel.

They are owned lock, stock and barrel by the CCC. They need Hillary in the White House. Who knows what favors they’ve been promised to keep the spotlight off Hillary’s serious crimes. Her crimes certainly include fraud, extortion, theft of taxpayer money, running a charity scam and income tax evasion.

And don’t forget purposely erasing 32,000 emails after hearing the FBI demanded to see them. You can bet those emails were about The Clinton Foundation and The Clinton Crime Cartel.

So the New York Times needed a cover-up to fool and distract the voters. They chose Donald Trump’s taxes. Their goal was to drown out Hillary’s real crimes by accusing Trump of LEGALLY reducing his taxes according to the letter of the law. The New York Times wants you to believe following tax law and LEGALLY reducing your taxes is a crime.

But what Hillary did … extorting bribes … selling out the country … selling the Secretary of State’s office … stealing our taxpayer money … and running ac charity scam … none of that should be an issue. “Move along sir … nothing to see here.”

Back to Trump’s taxes. The only possible tax issue is, of course, if a candidate cheats on his taxes. Donald Trump has been audited by the IRS for 20 years in a row. Not once has he ever been accused of cheating on his taxes. If he’d EVER had one irregularity, it would have been leaked by Obama and Hillary’s many friends in high places at the IRS.

You know, the same IRS agents who tried to destroy the Tea Party movement and conservative critics of Obama (like me). By the way, the New York Times never investigated the massive IRS scandal involving political targeting, intimidation and persecution. I have direct evidence obtained by Judicial Watch that the IRS targeted me for my political beliefs. But The New York Times had no interest. “Move along sir … nothing to see here.”

Since there has NEVER been even a hint of Trump cheating on his taxes, the desperate New York Times is trying to make LEGAL tax reduction strategies, advised by the smartest tax lawyers in America, into a crime. Donald Trump LEGALLY took advantage of every tax deduction offered by the tax system … and LEGALLY applied tax losses to future gains.

Every American … Republican or Democrat … has a right to take legal deductions and to apply and carry forward tax losses against tax gains. The New York Times knows this.

Last I checked if you lose a billion dollars in real estate (or stocks, or business investment) … then you make a billion … you owe zero. That’s a wash for tax purposes. Every businessman friend I’ve got has used the same math … and same LEGAL tax reduction strategy.

What’s the crime? There is none.

But extorting $2 billion at the Clinton Foundation from foreign countries and foreign companies through “donations” and $250,000 speaker fees … putting the State Department up for sale … and giving out billions in contracts and awards to the very people that donated to you … is a true crime. What the Clintons did is pure fraud upon America and the taxpayers.

LEGALLY taking tax deductions based on business or real estate losses to LEGALLY reduce your taxes is not only kosher … and legal … but it’s as American as apple pie.

Interesting that The New York Times ignores the real crime … and tries to make LEGAL tax reduction strategies a crime.

This is called fraud. This is also called “bait and switch”. …

Oh, one more thing. It turns out Hillary Clinton (in 2015) and the New York Times (in 2014) both used the same legal tax reduction strategy as Donald Trump to avoid paying any taxes.

It turns out these two gray old ladies are birds of a feather – frauds, liars, scam artists and hypocrites too.

Every sane tax-payer so arranges his affairs as to attract a MINIMUM amount of tax. What sort of fool would so arrange his affairs as to attract a MAXIMUM amount of tax?

Not even the evil fools at the New York Times.

Posted under Economics, Tax, United States by Jillian Becker on Monday, October 3, 2016

Tagged with , , , ,

This post has 59 comments.

Permalink

The voter’s choice: richer or poorer 160

Here are our selected details of the tax proposals of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

First: Trump’s plan benefits the individual. It lets you keep more of your income, considerably reduces tax on business, and abolishes estate duty.

That is to say, you will be personally better off with a President Trump; there will be more jobs; and your lifetime’s accumulation of wealth will go to your heirs without the government taking another bite out of your already taxed earnings and capital gains.

The overall result will be more prosperity.

We select our points from the analysis by the Tax Foundation:

Details and Analysis of the Donald Trump Tax Reform Plan, September 2016

Changes to the Individual Income Tax 

Consolidates the current seven tax brackets into three, with rates on ordinary income of 12 percent, 25 percent, and 33 percent.

Adapts the current rates for qualified capital gains and dividends to the new brackets.

Changes to Business Income Taxes

Eliminates the Net Investment Income Tax.

Makes childcare costs deductible from adjusted gross income for most Americans (above-the-line), up to the average cost of care in their state.

Offers credits (“spending rebates”) of up to $1,200 a year for childcare expenses to lower-income families, through the earned income tax credit.

Creates new saving accounts for care for children or elderly parents, or school tuitions, and offers a 50 percent match of contributions.

Reduces the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.

Other Changes 

Eliminates federal estate and gift taxes. 

The Trump plan “will lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax. This rate is available to all businesses, both big and small, that want to retain the profits within the business”. 

Conclusion 

The Trump tax plan as outlined in September 2016 is a large tax cut, mostly on individual and corporate income.

This plan would significantly reduce the cost of capital and reduce the marginal tax rate on labor.

These changes in the incentives to work and invest would increase the U.S. economy’s size in the long run, boost wages, and result in more full-time equivalent jobs.

On a static basis, the plan would reduce federal revenue by between $4.4 trillion and $5.9 trillion, depending on policy assumptions about business tax rates. However, due to the larger economy and the significantly broader tax base, the plan would reduce revenue by between $2.6 trillion and $3.9 trillion over the next decade, depending on those same policy assumptions.

In all cases, it would increase after-tax incomes for all income groups, but reduce revenue to the Treasury.

So as well as being good for the individual and business, which greatly commends it to us, it will also be bad for the government, which also commends it to us. 

*

Hillary Clinton’s tax proposals are intended to benefit the government. They take more of your income, hobble business, and hugely increase estate duty.

Again we select our points from the analysis of the Tax Foundation:

Details and Analysis of Hillary Clinton’s Tax Proposals 

Key Findings; 

Hillary Clinton would enact a number of tax policies that would raise taxes on individual and business income.

When accounting for reduced GDP, after-tax incomes of all taxpayers would fall by at least 0.9 percent.

Over the past few months, former Secretary of State and Senator Hillary Clinton has proposed a number of new and expanded government programs. In order to pay for these new or expanded services, she has proposed raising and enacting a number of new taxes.

Her plan would restore the estate tax to its 2009 parameters and would limit or eliminate other deductions for individuals and corporations.

Our analysis finds that the plan would increase revenue by $498 billion over the next decade.

The plan would also increase marginal tax rates on both labor and capital. As a result, the plan would reduce the size of gross domestic product (GDP) by 1 percent over the long term.

This reduction in GDP would translate into 0.8 percent lower wages and 311,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs.

Accounting for the economic effects of the tax changes, the plan would end up increasing federal tax revenues by $191 billion over the next decade.

Restores the federal estate tax to 2009 levels. This would increase the estate tax rate to 45 percent and reduce the exemption to $3.5 million.

Economic Impact

According to the Tax Foundation’s Taxes and Growth Model, Hillary Clinton’s tax plan would reduce the economy’s size by 1 percent in the long run. The plan would lead to 0.8 percent lower wages, a 2.8 percent smaller capital stock, and 311,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs. The smaller economy results from somewhat higher marginal tax rates on capital and labor income.

Overall, the plan would increase federal revenue on a static basis by $498 billion over the next 10 years. Most of the revenue gain is due to increased individual income tax revenue, which we project to raise approximately $381 billion over the next decade. The changes to the estate tax will raise an additional $106 billion over the next decade. The remaining $11 billion would be raised through increased taxes on corporations.

On a dynamic basis, the plan would reduce after-tax incomes by an average of 1.3 percent. All deciles would see a reduction in after-tax income of at least 0.9 percent over the long-term. Taxpayers that fall in the bottom nine deciles would see their after-tax incomes decline by between 0.9 and 1 percent.

Conclusion 

Hillary Clinton would enact a number of tax policies that would raise tax revenue over the next decade in order to fund new or expanded programs. Most of her policies raise tax revenue as designed, except for her capital gains policy, which would actually end up losing revenue both on a static and a dynamic basis due to the incentives it creates to hold on to assets longer. If enacted, her tax policies would impose slightly higher marginal tax rates on capital and labor income, which would result in a reduction in the size of the U.S. economy in the long run. This would decrease the revenue that the new tax policies would ultimately collect.

The plan would lead to lower after-tax incomes for taxpayers at all income levels, but especially for taxpayers at the top.

In sum, Hillary’s proposals are bad for the individual. She would make everyone poorer.

So the choice is clear:

Vote for Trump if you want to be better off.

Vote for Hillary if you despise money, consider “profit” a dirty word, and enjoy submitting to the power of government.

 

See the full analyses here and here.

Posted under Tax by Jillian Becker on Friday, September 23, 2016

Tagged with ,

This post has 160 comments.

Permalink