Race to the Bottom and Mulling Hillary

The Progressive Race to the Bottom

by Victor Davis Hanson  at realclearpolitics:   

Abolishing ICE, offering ‘free’ college to all, raising taxes to 70 percent: Will the somnolent GOP take notice?

The old Democratic party championed the working classes, wanted secure borders to protect middle-class union wage earners, and focused generous federal entitlement help on the citizen poor. Civil rights were defined as equality of opportunity for all.

That party is long dead. An updated Hubert Humphrey or even Bill Clinton would not recognize any of the present “Democrats.”

Even the old wing of elite liberals is mostly long gone, with its talk of legal immigration only, opposition to censorship, pro-Israel foreign policy, let-it-hang-out Sixties indulgence, and free speech.

It was superseded by grim progressives who are not so much interested in a square, new, or fair deal for the middle classes, as an entirely different deal that redefines everything from the Bill of Rights and the very way we elect presidents and senators to an embrace of identity politics as its first principle.

Indeed, we are currently witnessing a quite strange series of North Korean–like reeducation confessionals, from repenting erstwhile liberals and now presidential hopefuls such as Joe Biden, Tulsi Gabbard, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand. They and other would-be candidates parade before show cameras to apologize for their prior incorrect heresies, including their erstwhile support for drug laws, tough sentencing, and border enforcement.

NOW WATCH: ‘Hillary Clinton Mulling 2020 Run’

Hillary Clinton Mulling 2020 Run

The subtext of these charades is that 28-year-old socialist Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (who won her Democratic primary with 15,897 votes and with that victory an assured congressional seat in a gerrymandered Democratic district) is the new Robespierre — warning that the earth as we know it will end in twelve years, ICE must be disbanded, all student debt abolished, wealth taxes levied, and Medicare provided for all. And her political guillotine awaits any progressive with lingering stains of the Ancien Régime.

Presidential elections are now to be seen by the Left not as the end of a four-year political cycle. Instead, they are the beginning of an any-means-necessary, existential effort to reverse the proverbial will of the people and to remove or delegitimize the president. From now on, if the Left loses, then everything is in theory on the table: seeking removal of the victor by warping the Electoral College vote; or suing under the Logan Act, the emoluments clause, or the 25th Amendment; or cherry-picking federal judges to block presidential orders; or using the Congress to impeach the president; or unleashing a special counsel for years of investigation.

In other words, we are in a revolutionary cycle in which the old idea of Democrat or liberal is being superseded by progressivism — and then going well beyond even that. The new generation of Democrats no longer resents “socialist” as a right-wing slur, and “Communist” may well go through the same rehabilitation.

The new, new Left questions not the operation of American democracy but the very premise of American democracy. When the selection of the Senate leads to something abhorrent like a counterrevolutionary majority, then the Founders are proven wrong after all, and senators should not be apportioned two to a state but by population at large. The Electoral College should be ended entirely, to reflect the reality that America is the urbanized corridors of the East and West Coasts where the right people live. The Bill of Rights, especially the First and Second Amendments, is considered an impediment to social justice.

What explains this accelerating transformation of so many liberals into progressives, and so many progressives into hard-core leftists, socialists, and who knows what next? The reasons predated Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Money, lots of it, matters.

 

The left-wing approach to billionaires has radically changed. Aside from the rhetorical boilerplate about robber barons and the need for an income-tax rate of 70 percent, in reality the hard Left has partnered with the nation’s richest. The new big fortunes of America are now mostly in high-tech, media, and finance, not in the old conservative and muscular corporations centered in farming, manufacturing, or oil and minerals. And the new zillionaires are left-wing, and they are activist: Bezos, Bloomberg, Buffett, Gates, Zuckerberg, the Google and Apple teams, Soros, Steyer, and a host of others. Through grants, foundations, purchased media, and super PACs, astronomical amounts of money flow into federal, state, and even local midterm election campaigns, and into voter harvesting and issues from global warming and late-term abortion to open borders, gun control, and identity politics. The 2018 midterms were a mere precursor of things to come.

The new mega-wealthy envision an America in a way that satisfies identity politics while exempting their own monopolies, trusts, and billion-dollar fortunes from the ramifications of their own ideology. Unencumbered by personal consequences, they pursue boutique agendas — sort of like a few of the White Russian aristocrats who hoped to continue on by subsidizing and supporting the Bolsheviks, or the Jacobin bigwigs of the French Revolution who thought they could guide the deserving rich people into the national razor. In such a bizarro world, there is nothing wrong with tech employees forced to sleep in their cars near Silicon Valley monopolies -— as long as the owners wear T-shirts and flip-flops and rail at Trump in internal memos.

The media are not just becoming left-wing (they’ve always has been); they’re no longer even a news-gathering operation. Reporting is synonymous with editorializing. Fake news — whether the latest BuzzFeed myth or the Covington charade — is simply a word for thirtysomethings who believe that they have a duty to promote race, class, and gender agendas that they were spoon-fed in college. They too often define accuracy as the higher Truth that transcends the fossilized idea of truth predicated on obsolete ideas such as evidence, facts, and empiricism.

In terms of electronic media, the way the news is delivered through Twitter, Facebook, and Google is itself massaged to censor, aggravate, and impede conservatives and conservative thought. Orwellian selective censorship, the warping of Internet searches, and the banning of political opponents insidiously magnify progressive influence, and to such a degree that leftists are now the biggest defenders of monopolies and trusts, given the power that accrues from them to progressive causes.

We are also reaping the fruits of the new university run by hard-core leftists who have indoctrinated a generation with progressive envy and anger, while offering them little education. The resulting ignorance and arrogance make a lethal combination. Professors now in their late sixties can remember old-fashioned liberals of the 1970s and 1980s whose politics were incidental to their professional expertise, but there is now almost no one left in the academy who recalls such dinosaurs.

Instead, after the early 1980s, now-tenured progressives sought to produce leftists who took over and produced socialists. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a valuable reminder of how university education results in self-importance coupled with witlessness.

The Obama presidency also proved a watershed. It convinced Democrats that a leftist could win and move the nation radically leftward (“fundamentally transforming the nation”) by executive orders, court decisions handed down by activist judges, and the force of popular culture. In a mere eight years, formerly debatable issues such as gay marriage, planet-threatening global warming, and transgenderism in the military became boilerplate requisites of Democratic politics. Obama moved the goal posts far to the left, to such a degree that leftists today now consider the left-wing Obamas almost quaint.

The new socialism is also attributable to ten years of anemic annual economic growth below 3 percent, massive student debt, open borders, changing demography, and radical new approaches to marriage and home ownership that have radicalized the younger electorate.

Young people have the patina of affluence, with an array of electronic appurtenances and lifestyle choices, but not so much else when it comes to finding good jobs, affordable homes, and freedom from debt — especially tragic when so many got so little from the university in exchange for their borrowed money.

As a result, millions of young people have redefined adulthood as prolonged adolescence in “Life of Julia” and “Pajama Boy” style. Urban hipsters, hook-up culture, childlessness, and studio apartments have replaced the traditions of marriage, child-rearing, and home ownership before 30. Among today’s youth, one’s twenties are consumed with student debt and urban sybarite singleness, not changing diapers and patching the roof or refinishing the kitchen table.

Republicanism itself has so often failed to offer a viable economic and culture alternative, as well as a muscular and combative defense of traditional American values and tradition — at a time when globalism rewarded winners and punished losers. At the national level, the top echelons of the Republican party reiterated country-club shibboleths like “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” and marginalized social conservatives and populists as near rubes who objected to the gospel of creative destruction.

Republicanism at the presidential level was caricatured as a silk-stocking, country-club cutout of the 1950s, even as its expanding base at the local and state level was working-class. But even more important, solid presidential candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney campaigned as Marquess of Queensberry Republicans, as if they would rather lose nobly than win ugly. And so they did just that — lose — whether by McCain’s ruling out reference to the virulent anti-Semite and racist Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s inspiration personal pastor, or by Mitt Romney’s allowing moderator Candy Crawley to hijack the second presidential debate and hand it to Obama.

Such laxity was not seen as magnanimity to be reciprocated, but rather as weakness deserving of contempt by the many voters who have no ideology other than wishing to be cool and on the winning side. Progressives brilliantly exploited the idea that a Republican blue blood would say or do almost anything — or sometimes say or do almost nothing — to avoid being libeled as a racist, sexist, homophobe, nativist, or xenophobe.

Mushy Republicanism also did its part in giving us the present-day hard Left and the likes of new congressional representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who apparently believe that anti-Semitism and racist demagoguery have lots of upsides and no real negative consequences. In the Covington farce, all too many conservatives jumped the gun to establish their liberal fides, perhaps out of fear that they’d otherwise be tagged by the Left as abettors of “white privilege.”

The bad news is that conservatives will likely increasingly be outnumbered, outspent, and out-organized unless they are shocked out of their somnolence. The quasi-good news is that the hard Left is unapologetic that it is the hard Left, not just bankrupt in its ideology in a world where socialism has demonstrably wrecked entire countries, but also predictably hypocritical and cynical, given that leftists are now really the party of the rich — and without much empathy for the deplorable and irredeemable middle classes.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/progressive-politics-abolish-ice-tax-increases-free-college/

Increasing Revenues in the Trump Era

Why It Is Good for Trump To Challenge the International Trade Establishment

by E. Jeffrey Ludwig  at  American Thinker:

“Since the election of Pres. Trump, commentators have been asking repeatedly why he seems so cordial or complimentary of leaders of countries many consider to be “enemy countries” – especially the People’s Republics of China and Russia – while being irritated with our neighbors and friends, especially on the economic front.  Early on in his presidency, he indicted NATO members for not paying 2% of GDP for support of NATO.  And in fact, only five of the 28 members are meeting that benchmark.

Then, in a memorable speech from the Rose Garden on June 1, 2017, Trump withdrew the USA from the Paris Climate Accord.  Students of the accord will understand that it is part of the globalist agenda thrusting toward a one-world government.  In addition to presenting a host of specific reasons for leaving based on a lack of equity in the accord, he also stated, “And exiting the agreement protects the United States from future intrusions on the United States’ sovereignty and massive future legal liability.”

Most recently, he left the G7 meeting in Canada early and refused to sign the final communiqué that was issued, citing offense at the comments made by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, which were publicly deemed to be a verbal stab in the back.  The president announced increased tariffs on aluminum and steel from Canada and that there would be a variety of tariff hikes on G7 exports to the U.S.

He also has withdrawn from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was renamed and signed by eleven countries – Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam – in March of this year.  None of these is considered an enemy by our leaders.

Despite these tensions with friendly nations, the USA is still a signatory to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and a member of the World Trade Organization.  We still are a major contributor to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were created, along with the United Nations, at the end of World War II.  Negotiations about NAFTA continue, but we are still in that trade agreement.

We can best understand this pushback by Pres. Trump in light of the world economic picture that has emerged since the end of WWII.   International trade in our world, unlike during the period prior to WWII, is governed by a vast network of rules and regulations, and the products covered from every country are described by a variety of documents in mind-boggling detail as they move in and out of the world’s ports of entry.  Trade is no longer just a buyer finding a seller and vice versa; rather, it entails navigating a maze of rules that permits or denies entry into various ports, guides enforcement of health and safety requirements, requires differences in tariffs that depend on relatively small differences in the products’ descriptions, and allows financing of that trade by daily trading in various currencies.  International trade is a multilateral ship titanic with complex strategies for resolving disputes, assuring payments in different currencies, and evaluating quality.  The rules and regulations for assuring the health and well-being and exchange of goods and services of all peoples defies the understanding of any single individual.

In this vast matrix, Pres. Trump is faced with a real dilemma: how to survive in this elaborate matrix while at the same time regaining some of the U.S. hegemony in world markets that was lost while this matrix evolved during the past 73 years (1945-2018)?  Manufacturers and providers of services, as well as the buyers and sellers of those goods and services, find themselves under incredibly complex constraints.  Unlike the original free-market models of Adam Smith, these free markets have been micro-managed into existence by the post-WWII multilateral agreements.  There is an appearance of freedom, but the free markets so-called have been brought into existence by the regional and world players, both governmental and corporate.  So the key question now is, how free are free markets?  President Trump is trying to restore freedom where there is now too great an overlay of constraints, and this writer believes that Trump perceives that enhanced freedom is profoundly connected with greater U.S. hegemony in world markets.  America’s freedom and economic initiative were the bases for its becoming the world’s strongest economy.

Yet the post-WWII thrust has been to implement the world economic model based on David Ricardo’s Theory of Comparative Advantage, first published in 1817, which can be characterized as an economic version of the utilitarian principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number.”  Briefly, the idea is that every country has some unique efficiencies, which means that certain products will be produced more efficiently there than elsewhere.  Thus, let’s say certain goods and services can be produced more cheaply in other countries.  Then the price of those goods and services will come down; consumers in the U.S. will be able to buy more of those goods and services; and the flow of cash to those countries will generate more worldwide demand for goods and services that we are producing, thereby creating more wealth here.  Under this model, all boats are lifted by the rising (economic) sea.

One can see that as the apparatus of this matrix becomes more complex, as it assumes an international scale, or even a regional scale, managing the day-to-day working of said matrix becomes a herculean task beyond the scope of any national government.  Thus, vast mechanisms have been created to administer this economic panorama.  For example, the European Union is administered by a vast unelected bureaucracy that has its headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and the World Trade Organization has a vast headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

While the U.S. is still at the top of the list of wealthiest countries, hegemony or control in trade has shifted toward these two above-mentioned bureaucracies and other bureaucracies, and away from the U.S.  And all business models must now find a way to function within the regional and world trade matrices.  Individual and corporate initiative is thereby diminished.  Sectors of one’s national economy – think of the coal industry or offshore drilling – become increasingly marginalized or defunct based on decisions of the masters of the matrices, not on our business or political leaders.  Or we find that we rebuilt Japan’s steel industry after WWII and find that in many areas, we became weaker in steel production than Japan.  Self-interest and sovereignty then require that we take steps to resist the matrices that have developed.  That is the underlying reason why Trump is giving some of our friends a so-called hard time, and why it is justified…”

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/why_it_is_good_for_trump_to_challenge_the_international_trade_establishment.html

President Trump Stars in Quebec

TRUMP NAILS TRADE HYPOCRISY

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

President Trump’s participation in the G7 conference in Canada focused on trade. Once again, he made it clear that he wants our trading partners’ tariffs and other barriers to U.S. imports to come down. This gave the American press the vapors, but why? Our president certainly should try to reduce obstacles to sales of American goods.

President Trump gave a press conference this morning in which he expressed his belief in free trade:

Q Mr. President, you said that this was a positive meeting, but from the outside, it seemed quite contentious. Did you get any indication from your interlocutors that they were going to make any concessions to you? And I believe that you raised the idea of a tariff-free G7. Is that —

THE PRESIDENT: I did. Oh, I did. That’s the way it should be. No tariffs, no barriers. That’s the way it should be.

Q How did it go down?

THE PRESIDENT: And no subsidies. I even said no tariffs. In other words, let’s say Canada — where we have tremendous tariffs — the United States pays tremendous tariffs on dairy. As an example, 270 percent. Nobody knows that. We pay nothing. …

We have to — ultimately, that’s what you want. You want a tariff-free, you want no barriers, and you want no subsidies, because you have some cases where countries are subsidizing industries, and that’s not fair. So you go tariff-free, you go barrier-free, you go subsidy-free. That’s the way you learned at the Wharton School of Finance. I mean, that would be the ultimate thing. Now, whether or not that works — but I did suggest it, and people were — I guess, they got to go back to the drawing and check it out, right?

But we can’t have — an example — where we’re paying — the United States is paying 270 percent. Just can’t have it. And when they send things into us, you don’t have that.

Trump is right that most countries protect their agricultural industries with tariff and non-tariff barriers. (The EU’s ban on GMO crops is an example of a non-tariff barrier that is rational only as an act of protectionism.) The U.S. has the most efficient agricultural sector in the world, and since most countries can’t compete with our farmers, they erect trade barriers. How is this any different from our imposing tariffs on steel or automobiles? It isn’t.

Does Canada actually impose a 270% tariff on American dairy products, as Trump keeps saying? Yes, it does, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Company:

Canada levies a tariff of 270 per cent on milk, 245 per cent on cheese and 298 per cent on butter in an effort to keep imports out and tightly control supply.

So Trump is right. A world without tariffs is a desirable goal, but a world in which the U.S. has no tariffs, but other countries erect barriers to our products, is not.

After President Trump departed for Singapore, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave a press conference in which he responded negatively to Trump’s call for reduced tariffs all around. It isn’t clear to me exactly what set Trump off, but he tweeted this: 

“Based on Justin’s false statements at his news conference, and the fact that Canada is charging massive Tariffs to our U.S. farmers, workers and companies, I have instructed our U.S. Reps not to endorse the Communique as we look at Tariffs on automobiles flooding the U.S. Market!”

 and

“PM Justin Trudeau of Canada acted so meek and mild during our @G7 meetings only to give a news conference after I left saying that, “US Tariffs were kind of insulting” and he “will not be pushed around.” Very dishonest & weak. Our Tariffs are in response to his of 270% on dairy!”

We will see where this leads, but my guess is that the president will ultimately succeed in bargaining for reduced trade barriers. The question is one of degree.

Finally, there were a couple of other highlights in Trump’s press conference. Here, he responded to a hostile question:

Q As you were heading into these G7 talks, there was a sense that America’s closest allies were frustrated with you and angry with you, and that you were angry with them and that you were leaving here early to go meet for more friendlier talks with Kim Jong Un in Singapore. And I’m wondering if you —

THE PRESIDENT: It’s well put, I think.

Q — if you view it the same way. And do you view the U.S. alliance system shifting under your presidency, away —

THE PRESIDENT: Who are you with, out of curiosity?

Q CNN.

THE PRESIDENT: I figured. Fake News CNN. The worst. But I could tell by the question. I had no idea you were CNN. After the question, I was just curious as to who you were with. You were CNN.

And Scott had to especially appreciate this moment:

Okay, how about a couple of more? Go ahead in the back.

Q Thanks, Mr. President. Eliana Johnson with Politico.

It was a good day all the way around.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/06/trump-nails-trade-hypocrisy.php

Minnesota’s Dayton Menace

Minnesota’s Mr. Wrong: Gov. Dayton’s Math and Reasons for Vetoing Tax Bill Don’t Hold Water

 by Peter Zeller, Director of Operations at Center of the American Experiment.

(Article sent by Mark Waldeland:

 Mark Haveman, our friend who runs the Minnesota Center for Fiscal Excellence, penned a brilliant op-ed in today’s Star Tribune that blows up Gov. Dayton’s stated main reason for vetoing the 2018 tax bill.

Haveman devastated Dayton’s main criticism that “misguided priorities for corporations” emphasize “tax cuts for corporations over real people.”

For starters, the claim of excessively favorable treatment of corporations doesn’t match the reported numbers. Conforming to the federal government’s broadening of the corporate tax base actually exposes more Minnesota corporate income to the state’s tax rates. According to nonpartisan legislative staff, the vetoed tax bill was projected to increase Minnesota’s corporate franchise tax collections by nearly $50 million in the state’s next two-year budget cycle.

That doesn’t exactly meet the test of a huge giveaway to big corporations.

And what about the phased-in corporate rate reductions?

According to a study by the accounting firm Ernst and Young, even if a state decides not to conform to any of the new provisions imposing a tax on foreign source income, the increase in the state corporate tax base from other federal conformity provisions is likely to average 10 percent. Applying that estimate to Minnesota means that even if we left foreign earnings alone, lowering the corporate tax rate to 8.8 percent would still have kept us revenue-neutral.

Since the tax bill did capture some of these foreign earnings and would have brought the corporate rate down to only 9.1 percent by 2020, there’s an argument to be made that it would have increased state taxes on corporations over the long term.

Dayton wanted to aggressively tax foreign profits to raise an estimated $378 million to permanently expand a government program but the Legislature “unwilling to be as aggressive in laying claim to multinational corporate profits” whose “constitutional authority and legal framework for states to tax these earnings is far from settled.”  The last thing Minnesota needs is to add new permanent spending and then find out the taxes used to pay for it were unconstitutional and must be returned.

Plus corporate income taxes are highly unpredictable, twice as volatile as individual income taxes and almost five times more than general sales taxes.

Haveman closes with more wise advice that Minnesota governors and legislatures should take to heart:

The fiscally irresponsible action would be to march full speed ahead and bank on hundreds of millions of inevitably litigious, uncertain, volatile — and in many cases one-time — revenues to pay for permanent spending increases and individual income tax relief. That would jeopardize the very fiscal stability the governor applaudingly wants to leave as his legacy.  …

Big multinational corporations might always be great villains and foils for politicians, but the income taxes they pay will always be lousy foundations for ensuring state fiscal stability.

 

A Note from My Congressman, Erik Paulsen

Today I wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal responding to Senator Rubio’s recent comments on the tax reform bill.  

From the Wall Street Journal:

Last Friday’s upbeat jobs report was the latest sign that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has strengthened the American economy and helped working families. But this success hasn’t satisfied all the skeptics. My friend and colleague, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, argued in a recent interview that a different approach to tax reform, including a smaller corporate rate cut, would have more directly benefited workers. Based on all the evidence—including the analysis of the Joint Economic Committee, which I chair—I must respectfully disagree.

When House Republicans crafted the tax-reform law last year, our priority was to boost the economy so workers could thrive. Cutting the U.S. corporate tax rate from the highest in the developed world to a competitive 21% wasn’t a luxury. It was a crucial step to prevent the loss of American headquarters and jobs to other nations.

For proof that the gains of tax reform are already flowing to American workers, Sen. Rubio need only ask the nonpartisan analysts who advise Congress on economic matters. The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently reported that real disposable income—workers’ inflation-adjusted earnings, after taxes—rose 3.4% in the first quarter of this year. The bureau specifically credited tax reform for higher wages as well as lower taxes.

Even the Congressional Budget Office, which tends to play down the growth effects of tax relief, estimates the tax law will create nearly one million new jobs over the coming decade, along with higher wages and near-term annual growth of more than 3%. The Joint Committee on Taxation finds that cutting corporate taxes will generate long-term wage growth, and that tax reform will draw foreign investment to the U.S., producing strong benefits for workers.

The good news for workers keeps pouring in, as more than 530 companies have announced bonuses, pay raises and more-generous benefits for employees, as well as utility rate cuts for customers and corporate expansions. Americans for Tax Reform estimates more than four million workers have received bonuses.

In addition to benefits from the business side of tax reform, the tax savings on the personal side mean that a typical family of four earning $75,000 will pay $2,000 less in taxes this year than in 2017.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act wasn’t perfect, and Congress should continue to improve the tax code by adding more individual tax relief and making the current cuts permanent. But no matter how you slice it, working families are benefiting from tax reform. And as the pro-growth effects of the tax cuts continue to work their way through the economy, the best is yet to come.

Sen. Rubio is right to want to ensure that America’s economic policy favors working families—that’s why I supported him during his presidential primary campaign. But as we continue to work on Americans’ behalf, we should recognize the success tax reform has already achieved and use it as a foundation to go further.

Mr. Paulsen, a Republican, is U.S. representative from Minnesota’s Third District and chairman of the Joint Economic Committee.

You can read the article in Wall Street Journal here.

Sincerely,

Eric Paulsen

While the Zuckerbergs Rake In Their Billions, Are American Citizens Going Bankrupt?

Americans Owe More Than $930 Billion In Credit Debt

from the April 22nd New York Post:

“People have been feeling optimistic and, when they do, it is tempting to use credit cards,” said Kimberly Palmer, a NerdWallet card analyst.

Many US consumers have not resisted temptation. Debt levels have been rising for years. US households now owe $13.15 trillion in total debt, about $931 billion of it card debt, according to NerdWallet’s 2017 American Household Credit Card Debt Study along with its newly issued quarterly figures.

The average household card debt is close to $16,000. That comes with hefty interest bills.

https://hotair.com/headlines/archives/2018/04/americans-owe-930-billion-credit-debt/

Trouble, Trouble, Trouble in the Department of Justice?

True The Vote To Trump’s DOJ: “We Will Not Be Silenced”

by Karen Townsend  at Hot Air:

“What is going on with the Department of Justice? Some days it looks the same as the Obama Department of Justice. Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, is as surprised as anyone to find out that little has changed in DOJ’s attitude about the IRS targeting conservative groups to get rid of them. In this case, True the Vote has been in an eight-year-long battle in court with still no end in sight.

You may remember the IRS scandal of the agency targeting conservative groups as the Tea Party movement rose.  IRS Director Lois Lerner lost her job, eventually, over the scandal though she retained her pension and retirement benefits. True the Vote began in 2010 as a citizen-led effort to preserve election integrity. The group filed an application to certify their non-profit status through the IRS, as they wanted to do things “the right way”, as Engelbrecht said.  Unfortunately, the IRS used these application forms as a gateway to bully the conservative groups out of existence.

TRENDING:

Federal Judge: Environmental group has sued others, therefore it can be sued

In the case of Engelbrecht and True the Vote, a total of 23 audits were conducted by various agencies – IRS, DOJ, FBI, etc. – even though the agency claimed in court that this activity had ended in 2013.

So, in an update to supporters and interested citizens, Engelbrecht emailed a recap bringing everyone up to date, along with a short YouTube video.  By the beginning of 2018, the DOJ  appeared ready to strike a deal. The IRS agreed to a laundry list of wrongdoing, legal protection from further abuse, and they would allow True the Vote to petition for attorney fees for the years this mess was tied up in courts. Engelbrecht and True the Vote agreed and signed the decree.  Now, though, the happy headlines have faded and the DOJ has reversed the course and filed a response to the court opposing the True the Vote petition. DOJ denies admitting to anything, stated the consent decree shows that conservative groups had, in fact, lost in court and that in their view the IRS had won. The settlements meant nothing, and not one dime of attorney fees would be awarded.

DOJ now claims that the IRS was right to fight True the Vote. Engelbrecht notes, “The Trump administration is defending the IRS targeting American citizens.” It’s like the Obama DOJ is back in the saddle. True the Vote’s battle continues.

Engelbrecht offers three actions for consideration to President Trump: “End IRS abuse, hold rogue agents accountable and stop DOJ games.”  It is hard to believe that the Trump administration is ok with saying the IRS’s five-year war on conservative groups was justifiable and that abuse can continue, even today.

The short YouTube video is here:

https://hotair.com/archives/2018/03/30/true-vote-trumps-doj-will-not-silenced/

Panama Papers: the Stench of the Criminal Wealthy

Iceland’s leader resigns, first casualty of Panama Papers

LONDON/REYKJAVIK | BY KYLIE MACLELLAN AND RAGNHILDUR SIGURDARDOTTIR

 

“Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson resigned on Tuesday, becoming the first casualty of leaked documents from a Panamanian law firm which have shone a spotlight on the offshore wealth of politicians and public figures worldwide.

The Panama Papers showed the premier’s wife owned an offshore company with big claims on Iceland’s banks, a undeclared conflict of interest for Gunnlaugsson, infuriating many who hurled eggs and bananas in street protests calling for him to step down.

The banks collapsed as the global financial crisis hit in 2008 and many Icelanders blame politicians for not reining in their debt-fueled binge and averting a deep recession.

The more than 11.5 million documents, leaked from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, have caused public outrage over how the world’s rich and powerful are able to stash their wealth and avoid taxes while many people suffer austerity and hardship.

Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in setting up offshore companies, denies any wrongdoing. On Tuesday, the Panamanian government sought to defend the country’s reputation.

Panama President Juan Carlos Varela’s chief of staff told a news conference that the government could retaliate after France announced it would put the Central American country back on its blacklist of uncooperative tax jurisdictions. The official, Alvaro Aleman, said that no Panamanian company had been found to have committed a crime.

He added: “We are not going to allow Panama to be used as a scapegoat by third parties. Each country (implicated) is responsible.” The president had instructed the foreign ministry to contact all of the dozens of countries implicated, Aleman said.

Among those named in the documents are friends of Russian President Vladimir Putin, relatives of the leaders of China, Britain and Pakistan, and the president of Ukraine…..”

Read on.   There’s more:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-panama-tax-idUSKCN0X10C2

Tucker Carlson’s Great Article about Yesterday’s Trump

I am much older than Tucker Carlson of conservative Fox television world fan….That means  if I were publicly aware on our American scene for the past 35 years,  I would know the Donald he writes about for a helluva lot longer than Carlson has even living despite this Minnesota distance from New York City.

Being raised intellectually and religiously German  Protestant, I believe in salvation, even within one’s earthly life.   I suggest the following as an example.   I never voted for a Republican until 1980 when sour, dour, incompetent, confused, isolated  Jimmy Carter was running for re-election.   I have never returned to the Democrat Party, nor ever could I   since its transformation into its Marxist, feminist, atheist, black racist, antiAmerican amalgum it has since become based upon the core values causing man to be civilized, the recognize and follow good in good’s battle against evil.

In  youth I was told to memorize the following ancient Judaic saying:  “There is neither good nor bad.   Only thinking makes it so!”

As flawed in the manner Tucker Carlson has described of Donald’s yesteryears, and a few occasions more recent moments, it is my belief the Donald is experiencing a personal transformation from his past misbehaviors and drives and is attempting to achieve duty honestly, in the best way he can, to serve his country….almost as if he is signing up for the draft…with every intention to fit the rules of behavior commensurate to the office he seeks……because he knows his beloved America is falling apart being destroyed in his view by both Democrat and Republican misbehaviors….many of which from his own experience in business, has has seen up close.

I am sure I see a convert to practicing conservatism in this Donald Trump of New York City.   He’ll be clumsy, hotheaded, and awkward from his years of such habit described probably quite accurately  by Mr. Tucker in his excellent article below….

I see in him today a man WHO TRULY WANTS TO SERVE HIS COUNTRY THE BEST HE CAN.   He will be confused about some of his native conservatism from time to time due to his former bad habits.  HE WANTS TO SAVE HIS COUNTRY, and to do so best, he will want to rebuild it as a CONSERVATIVE….AND I BELIEVE A JUDEOCHRISTIAN KIND, not too dissimilar from the lessons of  the Bible of  his mother and his family’s Presbyterian Church when he was a child….He then by ego  will discover how essential its lessons will be in leading his country back to its promise land  with himself as  its President…..AND WILL JUSTIFIABLY  GET THE CREDIT FOR DOING SO.

Our the Donald is NOT a dumb man, nor an antiAmerican one.  Count on it.  I even suggest his JudeoChristian background……even a Presbyterian one is beginning to penetrate his condition of life and service to family and country.   After all, he knows what a King James Bible and toward the end of ones life often reviews his own worth in life.

Do read the terrific  article below written by Republican Tucker Carlson!   Be forgiving of our Donald , too.   He’s a good American.

 

 

ugh…TERRRORIZED GOP FUNDS OBAMA’S EVIL AGAIN!

THE OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL SELLS OUT AMERICAN WORKERS

“With Republicans in control of both House and Senate, the backroom omnibus spending bill that was unveiled yesterday should have been an opportunity to advance the conservative agenda across a very broad front. No doubt there are a few good aspects to the bill. But, as Paul noted earlier, it strikes a blow against education and against the Constitution by expanding funding for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

Even worse are the bill’s provisions on immigration. The American people overwhelmingly oppose adding still more immigration on top of our already-unprecedented levels, but their views don’t seem to matter. The omnibus bill lends credence to the widespread belief that the vicious attack on American workers and American wages represented by out-of-control immigration is the result of a bipartisan conspiracy.

Jeff Sessions itemizes the immigration provisions that were smuggled into the omnibus bill:

The more than 2,000 page year-end funding bill contains a dramatic change to federal immigration law that would increase by as much as four-fold the number of low-wage foreign workers provided to employers under the controversial H-2B visa program, beyond what is currently allowed. These foreign workers are brought in exclusively to fill blue collar non-farm jobs in hotels, restaurants, construction, truck driving, and many other occupations sought by millions of Americans.

At a time of record immigration – with a full 83% of the electorate wanting immigration frozen or reduced – the GOP-led Congress is about to deliver Obama a four-fold increase to one of the most controversial foreign worker programs. The result? Higher unemployment and lower wages for Americans.” and there is more:

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/12/the-omnibus-spending-bill-sells-out-american-workers.php