The New York Times accused FedEx on Sunday of essentially having lobbied President Donald Trump to sign tax cuts into law with the promise of businesses using the saved money to reinvest in and further grow their companies, and then failing to invest the billions of dollars that it reportedly saved as a result of the tax cuts.
&#8220;In the 2017 fiscal year, FedEx owed more than $1.5 billion in taxes. The next year, it owed nothing. What changed was the Trump administration’s tax cut – for which the company had lobbied hard,&#8221; The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/business/how-fedex-cut-its-tax-bill-to-0.html">reported</a> on Sunday. &#8220;The public face of its lobbying effort, which included a tax proposal of its own, was FedEx’s founder and chief executive, Frederick Smith, who repeatedly took to the airwaves to champion the power of tax cuts.&#8221;
&#8220;Four months later, President Trump signed into law the $1.5 trillion tax cut that became his signature legislative achievement. FedEx reaped big savings, bringing its effective tax rate from 34 percent in fiscal year 2017 to less than zero in fiscal year 2018, meaning that, overall, the government technically owed it money. But it did not increase investment in new equipment and other assets in the fiscal year that followed, as Mr. Smith said businesses like his would,&#8221; the Times added. &#8220;Nearly two years after the tax law passed, the windfall to corporations like FedEx is becoming clear. A New York Times analysis of data compiled by Capital IQ shows no statistically meaningful relationship between the size of the tax cut that companies and industries received and the investments they made.&#8221;
Late on Sunday, FedEx CEO Frederick Smith <a href="https://about.van.fedex.com/newsroom/statement-from-frederick-w-smith-chairman-and-ceo-of-fedex-corporation/">responded</a> to The New York Times&#8217; story by calling it factually incorrect, claiming that The New York Times is the company that does not pay federal income taxes, and challenging the publisher of The New York Times to a debate on tax policy.
&#8220;The New York Times published a distorted and factually incorrect story on the front page of the Sunday, November 17 edition concerning FedEx and our billions of dollars of tax payments and billions of dollars of investments in the U.S. economy,&#8221; Smith wrote. &#8220;Pertinent to this outrageous distortion of the truth is the fact that unlike FedEx, the New York Times paid zero federal income tax in 2017 on earnings of $111 million, and only $30 million in 2018 – 18% of their pretax book income.  Also in 2018 the New York Times cut their capital investments nearly in half to $57 million, which equates to a rounding error when compared to the $6 billion of capital that FedEx invested in the U.S. economy during that same year.&#8221;
&#8220;I hereby challenge A.G. Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times and the business section editor to a public debate in Washington, DC with me and the FedEx corporate vice president of tax,&#8221; Smith continued. &#8220;The focus of the debate should be federal tax policy and the relative societal benefits of business investments and the enormous intended benefits to the United States economy, especially lower and middle class wage earners.&#8221;
Smith concluded, &#8220;I look forward to promptly hearing from Mr. Sulzberger and scheduling this open event to bring further public awareness of the facts related to these important issues.&#8221;

FedEx

New York Times Accuses FedEx Of Not Paying Taxes. FedEx’s Response Is Priceless.

New York Times

Taxes

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has released her tax plan that an analysis has found would result in a tax rate of over 100% for some billionaires and millionaires.
The Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warrens-tax-plan-would-bring-rates-over-100-for-some-11573819200">reports</a>:
<blockquote>Potential tax rates over 100% could result from the combination of tax increases the Massachusetts senator proposes for the very top tier of investors. She wants to return the top income-tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, impose a new 14.8% tax for Social Security, add an annual tax of up to 6% on accumulated wealth and require rich investors to pay capital-gains taxes at the same rates as other income even if they don’t sell their assets.
Consider a billionaire with a $1,000 investment who earns a 6% return, or $60, received as a capital gain, dividend or interest. If all of Ms. Warren’s taxes are implemented, he could owe 58.2% of that, or $35 in federal tax. Plus, his entire investment would incur a 6% wealth tax, i.e., at least $60. The result: taxes as high as $95 on income of $60 for a combined tax rate of 158%.</blockquote>
Warren&#8217;s economic plan was recently harshly criticized by former Obama administration adviser Steven Rattner, who <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/msnbc-panel-shreds-warren-far-more-extreme-than-bernie-disastrous-for-economy">said</a>, “I would say it’d be disastrous for the American economy.”
“The fundamental different view she has of what capitalism is – she says she’s a capitalist, but she’s not a capitalist,” Rattner said, adding that Warren is essentially a socialist who “wants to fundamentally change the role of an American company, how an American company is governed, what it’s supposed to do, in ways that I think at least would be disastrous for the American economy.”
Rattner concluded, “I think you could make an argument that her plans and policies are far more extreme than Bernie Sanders’ in terms of its impact on the American economy and the fundamental way in which we do our business here.”
The Wall Street Journal noted that a tax rate of over 100% &#8220;would be typical, especially for billionaires,&#8221; and is what Warren is banking on to pay for her massive government programs which include &#8220;health care, child care, housing and education programs.&#8221;
&#8220;Ms. Warren has talked most about her plan, announced in January, to impose a 2% annual tax on wealth above $50 million and 3% above $1 billion, which she doubled to 6% this month to pay for Medicare for All,&#8221; The Journal added. &#8220;Economists generally think taxes on profits, capital gains and dividends discourage investment and hurt economic growth.&#8221;
Warren&#8217;s proposals are extreme and would likely devastate the American economy.
In September, Warren <a href="https://www.atr.org/elizabeth-warren-endorses-carbon-tax-and-climate-adjustment-fee">endorsed</a> a carbon tax without hesitation during a town hall event on CNN:
<blockquote>CNN’s Chris Cuomo: &#8220;Yes to a carbon tax?&#8221;
Warren: &#8220;Yes.&#8221;</blockquote>
Carbon taxes would be disastrous for the American economy as Heritage Foundation Labor Markets and Trade expert David Kreutzer noted in 2014 when analyzing a carbon tax bill that was proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and then-Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
&#8220;The tax started at $20 per metric ton and would rise by 5.6 percent per year, reaching $50 per metric ton by 2030 (the endpoint for the Heritage analysis),&#8221; Kreutzer <a href="https://www.heritage.org/testimony/impacts-carbon-taxes-the-us-economy">wrote</a>. &#8220;Using the Heritage Energy Model (HEM), a derivative of the Energy Information Administration’s National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), Heritage projected what the economic impacts would have been had the bill become law.&#8221;
The impacts of the propose carbon tax included:
<ul>
<li>
<blockquote>GDP loss of $146 billion in 2030</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>A family of four losing more than $1,000 of income per year</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Over 400,000 lost jobs by 2016</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Coal production dropping by 60 percent and coal employment dropping by more than 40 percent by 2030</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Gasoline prices rising $0.20 by 2016 and $0.30 before 2030</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>Electricity prices rising 20 percent by 2017 and more than 30 percent by 2030.</blockquote>
</li>
</ul>
In July, CNN business reporter Cristina Alesci <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/warren-warns-coming-economic-crash-cnn-warns-ryan-saavedra">reported</a> that Warren&#8217;s plans could actually trigger serious economic problems in the United States.
Warren is “proposing some solutions that actually might create another crisis,” Alesci said. “Warren is shaping this conversation in a way that is politically convenient for her. As far as her policy proposals, she is recommending lowering rents, offering affordable childcare, offering free tuition at colleges, all of that costs money, and the American public should be asking, ‘how do you pay for it?&#8217;”
“One way would be to increase taxes, another way is to increase government debt,” Alesci continued. “This is the issue that the American people should be actually focused on because many experts say if we don’t get control of our debt over the next 10 years, we could be facing a fiscal crisis.”

Elizabeth Warren

Democrat Elizabeth Warren’s Tax Plan Would Hit Some With Rates Over 100%

There has been a discussion this week about how much of Bill Gates&#8217; money Bill Gates should be allowed to keep. Gates himself has said, I think reasonably, that he doesn&#8217;t mind paying taxes but he&#8217;d prefer if the majority of his own money stayed with him. Elizabeth Warren has generously <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/politics/bill-gates-elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax.html">promised</a> not to appropriate all of it, though she would skim a healthy sum off the top. But Bernie Sanders asks us to at least entertain the notion of levying a near 100% tax on billionaires like Gates.
&#8220;Say Bill Gates was actually taxed $100 billion,&#8221; Sanders <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1192478435693780992">tweeted</a>. &#8220;We could end homelessness and provide safe drinking water to everyone in this country. Bill would still be a multibillionaire. Our message: The billionaire class cannot have it all when so many have so little.&#8221;
This may not have been a serious proposal (then again, none of Sanders&#8217; proposals are serious), but he certainly does believe that taking lots of money from rich people can solve nearly every societal problem. Here he says we could &#8220;end homelessness&#8221; and &#8220;provide safe drinking water to everyone&#8221; with a mere $100 billion confiscated from a dastardly billionaire. I&#8217;m not sure where he gets that figure, but it doesn&#8217;t matter. Let&#8217;s think about this.
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If $100 billion would enable the government to establish a utopia with 0% homelessness and clean water for everyone, why aren&#8217;t we living in that utopia already? After all, <a href="https://www.thebalance.com/current-u-s-federal-government-tax-revenue-3305762">annual federal tax revenue</a> is approaching $4 trillion. Let&#8217;s call it $3 trillion, because what&#8217;s a trillion dollars between friends? So, the government already brings in $3 trillion. In the last decade, they&#8217;ve earned (well, taken by force) over $30 trillion in taxes. We should note that all of the physical money in the world <a href="https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/how-much-money-is-there-in-the-world.html">adds up</a> to about $36 trillion. Since the beginning of Obama&#8217;s first term, therefore, the U.S. government has raked in more money than exists on Earth.
Sanders swears that homelessness could be utterly and completely solved with just 1/30th of what the government makes in a year. Why isn&#8217;t it solved, then? Are you really telling me that the government has confiscated more money than exists on Earth — and that&#8217;s still not enough? If you were to build a giant tower out of $3 trillion, it would nearly <a href="https://www.ehd.org/science_technology_largenumbers.php">reach the Moon</a>. A pile of cash over 200,000 miles high isn&#8217;t sufficient? They need more? Can Bernie and his friends not find a way to peel a measly $100 billion out of that galactic stack of tax money to solve the homelessness problem?
Here, <a href="https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/commentary/these-wasteful-government-programs-need-go">let me help</a>. The Maritime Administration costs us almost $1 billion a year. The Appalachian Regional Commission runs $100 million or so. The Justice Department&#8217;s Community Oriented Policing Services sucks up another $300 million. I could <a href="https://www.cagw.org/reporting/pig-book">list</a> dozens of other programs, agencies, departments, and projects that are redundant, pointless, inefficient, ineffective, and yet cost us hundreds of millions of dollars a year. What do you say — should we end homelessness or keep the Appalachian Regional Commission going? Which is more important?
And we haven&#8217;t even scratched the surface. The major waste in our government comes in the form of entitlements and defense spending. We sink trillions into both. Do you think these two behemoths could spare $50 billion a piece? I mean, we&#8217;re ending homelessness here. And giving everyone clean water. I&#8217;m sure the twin beasts of defense and entitlements would love to chip in. If they don&#8217;t, take it anyway. These aren&#8217;t private citizens. A phrase like &#8220;they cannot have it all when so many have so little&#8221; actually applies and makes sense in reference to governmental entities.
What about foreign aid? We give about $50 billion a year to countries around the globe. According to Sanders&#8217; figures, we could put an end to homelessness and thirst, and save thousands of lives, if we just redirected that money from the pockets of foreign bureaucrats back into our own country. Cut off foreign aid to everyone for two years and homelessness goes away, according to Bernie Sanders. Why aren&#8217;t we doing that? Why hasn&#8217;t he suggested it?
Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and all the rest of the Democrats, insist that more money — more and more and more and more money — is needed to solve our problems. They look at the $4 trillion already available to them and scoff. That&#8217;s because these people have no interest in solving any problems. And they know that problems like homelessness can&#8217;t be solved with money anyway. Most homeless people are homeless because of drug addiction or mental disorder. Give them a bag of cash and they&#8217;ll be dead by morning. Give them a free house and they&#8217;ll be on the street again in a week. I&#8217;m not saying we shouldn&#8217;t help the homeless. I&#8217;m saying that we can only treat homelessness by addressing what causes it — and you need more than money to do that. Sanders knows this. So does Warren. They all do. But, for them, homeless people, sick people, poor people, college students in debt, etc., are just pawns to be used in pursuit of more control and more power.

Bernie Sanders

WALSH: The Government Rakes In Over $3 Trillion Dollars A Year In Tax Revenue. That&#8217;s More Than Enough, Bernie Sanders.

In Tacoma, Washington, a showdown is coming because the city is considering taxing gun sales.
The councilman proposing the measure to be brought up on Tuesday at the city council, Ryan Mello, stated, “I can’t ban assault rifles in the city of Tacoma. I can’t ban certain types of ammo in the city of Tacoma. I can’t require safe storage. There’s a lot I can’t do. The one thing I am not pre-empted from doing is reasonable taxation on firearms and ammunition,” as <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/proposed-tax-on-gun-sales-faces-opposition-in-tacoma-wash-11572255002?mod=djemwhatsnews">The Wall Street Journal</a> reported.
The legislation would require a $25 per gun sale to fund violence prevention programs.
The Journal noted, “Opponents of the proposal, which would also collect taxes on ammunition, have said it would force gun shops out of the industrial port city of 215,000. In Seattle, lawmakers projected $300,000 to $500,000 a year in gun taxes, but last year received only $77,642 because gun stores moved away.”
Dan Davies, the owner of Mary’s Pistols in Tacoma, told the Journal, “It’ll put us out of business; there’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. They’re punishing innocent people for the deeds of criminals.”
Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of government relations and public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, expressed the worries of gun rights advocates, asserting, “Are we concerned that politicians will try to seek their antigun agenda through taxation? Yes, that’s what this is about.”
Despite the fact that gun stores and gun parts makers have warned they will have to leave Tacoma if the tax is implemented, Mello enthused that the new tax would raise between $30,000 and $40,000 annually each year.
The Journal noted that Cook County in Illinois passed a gun tax in 2013, and Seattle followed in 2015. The Cook County government <a href="https://www.cookcountyil.gov/service/firearm-and-firearm-ammunition-tax">wrote in 2013</a>:
<blockquote>Effective April 1, 2013, as provided in Sections 74-665 thru 74-675, Firearm Tax Ordinance, a tax is imposed on the retail purchase of a firearm in the amount of $25.00 for each firearm purchased … It shall be the duty of every retail dealer to remit and report the tax due on sales of firearms purchased in Cook County on forms prescribed by the Department. After April 1, 2013, the first tax return and payment, if applicable, is due by May 20, 2013. Subsequent returns and payments are due on the 20th day of each month. Returns must be submitted even if no tax is due.</blockquote>
The city of Seattle <a href="http://clerk.seattle.gov/~scripts/nph-brs.exe?s3=&amp;s4=124833&amp;s5=&amp;s1=&amp;s2=&amp;S6=&amp;Sect4=AND&amp;l=0&amp;Sect2=THESON&amp;Sect3=PLURON&amp;Sect5=CBORY&amp;Sect6=HITOFF&amp;d=ORDF&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2F~public%2Fcbor1.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G">wrote in 2015</a>,
<blockquote>The City finds and declares that gun violence directly affects the City and its residents. Therefore, the City intends to exercise its taxing authority, as granted by the Washington State Constitution and as authorized by the Washington State Legislature, to raise general revenue for the City and to use that revenue to provide broad-based public benefits for residents of Seattle related to gun violence by funding programs that promote public safety, prevent gun violence and address in part the cost of gun violence in the City.</blockquote>
The city added, &#8220;The tax rate shall be $25 per firearm sold at retail, $.02 per round of ammunition that contains a single projectile that measures .22 caliber or less sold at retail, and $.05 per round of ammunition for all other ammunition sold at retail.&#8221;

Blue Ridge Arsenal Gun Store

Showdown In Washington State: City Considers Taxing Gun Sales

Guns

Washington

On Wednesday’s episode of “The Andrew Klavan Show,” Klavan talks about Joe Biden’s weird debate answer about raising the capital gains tax. Video and partial transcript below: 
So the MSM narrative about this debate is “Biden&#8217;s Falling, Warren’s Rising.” So everybody turned on Warren, and everybody was mean to Warren. It&#8217;s her turn in the barrel, and the media judges are kind of trying to decide: Warren is the best, but who else is good? They&#8217;re saying maybe Joe Biden won, or maybe Amy Klobuchar [won] &#8230;
But I have a completely different take on what happened. I thought the whole thing was just embarrassing. Maybe I&#8217;m so against socialist ideas — maybe life is so prejudiced against socialist ideas — that I can&#8217;t see [how] people are going to fall for this &#8230; These people just look like they are sinking into the floor. Let me just show you this clip of Joe Biden&#8217;s tax plan as he talks about why he&#8217;s going to raise taxes on the rich.
<blockquote>BIDEN: What I&#8217;ve talked about is how you get things done. And the way to get things done is, take a look at the tax code right now. The idea [is that] we have to start rewarding work, not just wealth. I would eliminate the capital gains tax — I would raise the capital gains tax to the highest rate of 39.5%. I would double it because, guess what? Why in God&#8217;s name should someone who&#8217;s clipping coupons in the stock market make, in fact, pay a lower tax rate than someone who in fact, is, like I said, a schoolteacher and a firefighter? It&#8217;s ridiculous, and they pay a lower tax. </blockquote>
Huh? What the [expletive] did he just say? I mean, that&#8217;s their candidate? That&#8217;s their tied-for-the-leading-guy candidate? It’s absurd. He&#8217;s fixing his dentures all the time, it&#8217;s incredible. The guy makes no sense. 
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Basically, he says — I think what he said — was he wanted to double the capital gains tax. Remember, the capital gains tax is a double tax. This is money that you already made and already get taxed, and then you take that money and you invest it in somebody else&#8217;s business. What does that do? It creates jobs, it creates wealth, it creates new businesses. It does all that stuff. And so if it works — you risk your money — [and] if it works, you get a profit. And then they tax you again, they already tax[ed] that money. There shouldn&#8217;t be any capital gains tax. It&#8217;s ridiculous.
Whenever they tell you that corporations don&#8217;t get taxed, everybody in the corporation gets taxed, and then they get taxed again for capital gains. 
How does that help the economy? So what are you going to do? They&#8217;re going to tax your investments. You don&#8217;t have to do that, go out and buy a boat. And then he says, well, look at him, he&#8217;s got a yacht, he&#8217;s not contributing anything to society. Well, you would be contributing to society if they hadn&#8217;t taken your money away. So you&#8217;re going to protect it. You&#8217;re going to take it away from them, take it away from these things — the work that it is doing for the country — and use it for yourself so you won&#8217;t get taxed on it. It&#8217;s just dumb, it is absolutely dumb.
<a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-andrew-klavan-show/id1045171376?mt=2">Listen to full episodes of “The Andrew Klavan Show” on iTunes</a>
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Joe Biden

KLAVAN: Joe Biden Stumbles Through His Nonsense Tax Plan

2020 Election

Democratic Party

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said “billionaires should not exist” as he released his latest tax proposal Tuesday, which would apply additional taxes on Americans based on their net worth.
CNBC <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/09/24/bernie-sanders-proposes-wealth-tax-after-plan-from-elizabeth-warren.html">reported</a> that Sanders’ plan was designed to be more aggressive than his 2020 primary opponent Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA). Sanders’ plan would create additional rates for married couples with a high net worth. Here are the rates, from CNBC:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>A 1% tax on net worth above $32 million</li>
<li>A 2% tax on net worth of $50 million to $250 million</li>
<li>A 3% tax on net worth of $250 million to $500 million</li>
<li>A 4% tax on net worth of $500 million to $1 billion</li>
<li>A 5% tax on net worth of $1 billion to $2.5 billion</li>
<li>A 6% tax on net worth of $2.5 billion to $5 billion</li>
<li>A 7% tax on net worth of $5 billion to $10 billion</li>
<li>An 8% tax on net worth above $10 billion</li>
<li>All of those brackets would be cut in half for single filers</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Warren’s plan, by comparison, would levy a 2% annual tax on net worth exceeding $50 million and a 3% tax on net worth over $1 billion, CNBC reported.
Sanders’ campaign expects the new taxes to raise $4.35 trillion in the next 10 years, which the candidate claimed would cover the cost of his “Medicare for All” plan, affordable housing plan, and universal childcare. He also expected the tax would cut billionaires’ wealth in half over the next 15 years.
Medicare for All alone would cost $32 trillion over the next 10 years, meaning Sanders wealth grab wouldn’t even come close to covering the cost of just one of his expensive proposals.
Even cutting billionaires’ wealth in half isn’t enough to cover Sanders’ government expansion. He has repeatedly admitted that taxes would have to go up on the middle class in order to cover the costs.
Still, Sanders, a self-described socialist who has a net worth of $2.5 million and owns three houses, <a href="https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1176481898685710337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fd-23247570231664893107.ampproject.net%2F1909181902540%2Fframe.html">stated on Twitter</a> that “Billionaires should not exist.”
“There should be no billionaires,” Sanders wrote in another tweet. “We are going to tax their extreme wealth and invest in working people.”
Sanders’ attitudes toward the wealthy have shifted over time. In 2015, he decried the suggestion of giving “tax breaks to millionaires.” In 2016, he asked if Americans were “comfortable to see a huge increase in millionaires and billionaires but have more people living in poverty than ever?” He added that he was not. Sanders tweeted the same question in 2017 but did not include the part about him not being okay with the disconnect.
Sanders became a millionaire in 2016 thanks to book sales and has an estimated net worth of $2.5 million. Now in 2019, he appears to be more negative toward billionaires than millionaires.
Opponents to taxes levied only against those of a specific wealth suggest such a tax is unconstitutional because it is discriminatory. The American Bar Association, however, has <a href="https://www.americanbar.org/groups/taxation/publications/abataxtimes_home/19aug/19aug-pp-johnson-a-wealth-tax-is-constitutional/">argued</a> it would not be unconstitutional. That certainly doesn’t mean such a tax could and would be challenged, potentially making its way to the Supreme Court.

Millionaire Bernie Sanders: ‘Billionaires Should Not Exist’

On &#8220;The Ben Shapiro Show&#8221; Thursday, Shapiro discusses Democratic front-runner Joe Biden&#8217;s performance at the CNN town hall on climate change Wednesday. Video and partial transcript below: 
So Joe Biden, last night, said the Green New Deal, as in AOC&#8217;s Green New Deal — you know, the Green New Deal that was supported by zero senators, including co-sponsors of the Green New Deal. [Well, Joe Biden] says that that doesn&#8217;t go too far. You know, AOC&#8217;s $93 trillion plan for the United States economy. Biden says that doesn&#8217;t go too far.
Now the reason he&#8217;s saying this, of course, is because he is trying to force Republicans into a position of saying that they don&#8217;t care at all about climate change. He&#8217;s trying to do with climate change what Democrats are doing with guns right now, which is: We disagree on the solutions to the problem, but [according to the Left], that means I&#8217;m denying the problem. So according to Joe Biden and the Left, if I say that your stupid solutions are not in fact solutions — that they&#8217;re just dummy garbage — then that&#8217;s because I&#8217;m a denier. That&#8217;s Joe Biden&#8217;s shtick here.
<blockquote>COOPER: You&#8217;re not saying that you support everything in the original Green New Deal. Do you think it goes too far? Is it unrealistic or is it too much?
BIDEN: No, it&#8217;s not. But here&#8217;s what it is. It doesn&#8217;t have a lot of specifics. But the reason — I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m not opposed to the Green New Deal. What I did was what I thought beyond, at least in more detail, what the Green New Deal is calling for. How to do the things we need to do, when they have to be done, how quickly we should move how much we should invest etc.</blockquote>
Okay, except that he doesn&#8217;t actually call for any specificity. He just wants to say that the Green New Deal is a good idea. Because when we get specific, here&#8217;s where all the attack ads for Trump start. Last night was a fantastic night for President Trump. Listen to Joe Biden say he&#8217;s going to shut down every coal plant in the country. Think that’s going to go well? And the thing is, he&#8217;s not going to invest in advanced carbon-capture technology for coal plants. He is not going to talk really about how to move those jobs. Instead, we&#8217;re just gonna have to shut down all the coal plants in the United States.
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Now the United States is responsible on a global level for about 15 percent of all carbon emissions. So he&#8217;s now talking about wiping an entire sector off the face of the American economy. And that sector, by the way, is already in trouble largely because of technological advances. But he&#8217;s talking about forcibly killing that sector from above — to [save] what? Maybe 3 percent of total carbon emissions on planet earth? That would be a high, a real high-end, estimate. Here&#8217;s Joe Biden:
<blockquote>BIDEN: We set out the rules for what kind of plant and all coal burning plants. No one is going to build another coal burning [plant]. We&#8217;ve got to shut the ones down we have. But no one is going to build a new one. Guess what? They&#8217;re not efficient.</blockquote>
Ok, well he is right that the coal plants are not efficient, that you&#8217;d be better off building natural gas plants — and nuclear plants probably. One problem: The same Democrats who are talking about getting rid of coal plants are also avoiding the talk about how exactly they&#8217;re gonna build a new plant.
You&#8217;re not building a wind farm to replace those coal plants. It is just not happening. And then Biden says, &#8220;You know what? We&#8217;d like to reach a point where everyone drives electric cars. That&#8217;s my plan. Electric cars, electric cars.&#8221; There&#8217;s only one problem with that, which is that electric cars ain&#8217;t going to do the job. Here&#8217;s a study from <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2014/02/140225-electric-cars-alone-wont-cut-us-emissions-study-says/">National Geographic</a> circa 2014:
<blockquote>Electric cars can help limit reliance on imported oil and take a bite out of air pollution from urban traffic jams. But as sure-fire ammunition against climate change, a new study finds, they come up short… The team modeled 108 scenarios… The team reported that even in scenarios that yield the highest levels of EV deployment (high oil prices, low battery costs), plug-ins and hybrids would make up no more than 42 percent of all U.S. passenger vehicles in 2050 and would reduce overall emissions by a slim margin.</blockquote>
But good news: Joe Biden wants to force you to drive one of these newfangled smart cars.
<blockquote>COOPER: Will there be a point or would you&#8217;d like there to be a point — and if so, when — that everybody drives an electric car or has to drive an electric car?
BIDEN: Well, I think, look, that&#8217;s going to be based upon whether or not we can make it economically feasible. And it is economically feasible. Because guess what? Everybody knows where the world&#8217;s going. We have to take combustion engine vehicles off the road as rapidly as we can. But that also could create a significant number of jobs and opportunities for people.</blockquote>
No actually, it&#8217;s going to take away a significant number of jobs because it turns out that American-heavy industry and car companies are generally in the business of building light trucks. The manufacturing in the United States is disproportionately not in the electric vehicle industry. It also happens to be the case that, as we already referred to, only about 15 percent of household emissions in the United States come courtesy of your car. So that actually doesn&#8217;t solve the problem. So what does solve the problem, according to Joe Biden? A carbon tax.
Now the truth is that if you had a global carbon tax to artificially raise the price of carbon emissions, then that would be an effective way, presumably, of lowering carbon emissions. There is one small problem with that. Do you think that China and India are going to sign onto a global carbon tax? Do you think developing countries are going to be into this? You think this is a thing that&#8217;s going to happen?
There are a lot of people who advocate for this, including William Nordhaus who I talked about earlier, this global carbon tax. It does not work if it&#8217;s regional. If the United States taxes our own citizens on carbon, and destroys our economy in the process — and presumably hurts other economies in the process also, preventing their upward mobility, because the world economy is dependent on the United States economy — do you think that those economies are more or less likely to rely more on carbon-based fuels in order to spur their economy? A regional tax will not work. You need a global tax. Guess what? The thing that is not happening is any of this.
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SHAPIRO: Joe Biden Ignores Reality To Stop Climate Change

Anderson Cooper

Climate Change

Following Tuesday night&#8217;s Democratic primary debate hosted by CNN, far-left MSNBC host Chris Matthews questioned presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) about the costs of her &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; policy proposal.
Matthews repeatedly asked Warren how much the plan would cost taxpayers, though he never did receive an answer from the senator. Clearly frustrated with Warren&#8217;s refusal, Matthews later knocked the progressive lawmaker on-air. &#8220;Warren wouldn&#8217;t answer that question,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1156401216164941827">complained</a>.
&#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; will cost taxpayers more money, Matthews told Warren. &#8220;You guys dodged that tonight. … How much will your taxes go up?&#8221;
Warren refused to answer, suggesting the real question is, &#8220;How much are your costs going to go up?&#8221;
&#8220;I know that argument, but you&#8217;re covering it,&#8221; pressed Matthews.
&#8220;&#8216;Medicare for All&#8217; is cheaper than our current system — that&#8217;s the Republicans&#8217; version,&#8221; Warren said.
&#8220;I know the argument,&#8221; answered Matthews, &#8220;that you put it all together and you reduce the cost of healthcare premiums, and you get more benefits, therefore you come out ahead, but will you pay more in taxes? Why don&#8217;t you want to answer that question?&#8221;
&#8220;It’s a question about where people are gonna come out economically,&#8221; contended Warren.
&#8220;That&#8217;s not my question,&#8221; Matthews said. &#8220;That&#8217;s not my question. That&#8217;s not my question. My question is how much will taxes go up.&#8221;
Warren, again, refused to answer. &#8220;The question is about costs,&#8221; she said, about how much you&#8217;re &#8220;digging in your pocket&#8221; to pay healthcare costs.
&#8220;Will your taxes go up?&#8221; the MSNBC host asked, again. &#8220;Will your taxes go up? &#8230; There is no answer to the question, will your taxes go up.&#8221;
Matthews then moved on with the interview.
Warren and presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) both support a radical universal &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; program that would end private insurance and cost an estimated $32 trillion, $10 trillion more than the current national debt.
&#8220;Look at the business model of an insurance company,&#8221; Warren has argued, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/27/elizabeth-warrens-shift-puts-health-insurers-in-2020-crossfire.html">according</a> to CNBC. &#8220;It’s to bring in as many dollars as they can in premiums and to pay out as few dollars as possible for your health care. That leaves families with rising premiums, rising co-pays, and fighting with insurance companies to try to get the health care that their doctors say that they and their children need. Medicare for All solves that problem.&#8221;
Not all Democrats are on board with the controversial plan, however. Former congressman John Delaney, for example, has called the proposal &#8220;political suicide.&#8221;
During Tuesday night&#8217;s debate, Delaney bluntly told Sen. Sanders that his &#8220;math is wrong.&#8221;
&#8220;It&#8217;s been well-documented that if all the bills were paid at a Medicare rate, which is specifically — I think it&#8217;s in section 1,200 of their bill — many hospitals in this country would close,&#8221; said the businessman and presidential hopeful.
&#8220;We don&#8217;t have to go around and be the party of subtraction … telling half the country who have private health insurance that their insurance is illegal,” Delaney suggested, adding, &#8220;The question is, why do we have to be extreme? I&#8217;m starting to think this isn&#8217;t about health care, this is about an anti-private sector strategy.&#8221;
As <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447515-sweeping-plans-from-2020-contenders-come-with-trillion-dollar-price-tags">reported</a> by The Hill, Warren’s proposal to erase student loan debt and eliminate tuition at public colleges could cost $1.25 trillion, while her environmental spending plan comes with a $2 trillion price tag.
WATCH (relevant comments begin at the 1:30-mark):
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RlHik6YAPns" width="790" height="444" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div>

WATCH: Chris Matthews Battles Elizabeth Warren: ‘Answer That Question’

Chris Matthews

Health Care

Jake Tapper

Media

Medicare

MSNBC

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) seems to be embracing a new tactic in his speeches, now that he seems to be falling behind in the primary polls: radical honesty.
Speaking to a crowd in New Hampshire, which he won handily in the 2016 primary, Sanders admitted that, in order to pay for his expansive &#8220;Medicare-for-all&#8221; plan, he&#8217;s going to have to raise taxes, and not just on the &#8220;rich&#8221; and the &#8220;1%&#8221; &#8212; on everybody.
And, even then, it may not be enough.
Fox News reports that <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-says-hell-probably-raise-payroll-income-taxes-to-pay-for-medicare-for-all">Bernie Sanders&#8217; plan</a> to pay for universal health care would first involve an increase in payroll taxes alongside an increase in federal income taxes on &#8220;high-income earners&#8221; to fund the project, which some economists anticipate could <a href="https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-will-medicare-all-cost">cost as much as $32 trillion</a> to implement over the course of the next decade (assuming that there would be no steep cuts to service).
If that&#8217;s not enough, though, Sanders anticipates digging deeper into taxpayers&#8217; pockets, upping income taxes on &#8220;ordinary people.&#8221; But he ultimately excuses his money grab by claiming that taxpayers will, in turn, save thousands on health care costs.
&#8220;It would cost you and ordinary Americans a lot less than you are currently spending on average,&#8221; he told the crowd. &#8220;What it will probably end up looking like is a payroll tax on employers, an increase in income tax in a progressive way for ordinary people &#8212; with a significant deductible for low-income people who pay nothing for it.&#8221;
His campaign refused to put out a more detailed explanation of the plan, claiming that releasing information about &#8220;Medicare-for-all&#8221; would &#8220;engender enormous debate.&#8221;
It certainly would. As it stands, Sanders&#8217; plan would replace all existing health care &#8212; including private plans &#8212; with a single-payer system that features no deductibles or copayments and, theoretically, no change in service for most health care consumers (at least according to Sanders and other members of the Congressional &#8220;Medicare-for-all&#8221; caucus).
But such a project would cost trillions, and even with an expansive tax increase, Sanders&#8217; can only anticipate covering about one third to one half the cost of the program, according to the <a href="https://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-will-medicare-all-cost">Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget</a>. Even if Sanders were able to raise $10 trillion without economic consequence, at least $17 trillion of the program&#8217;s cost would remain unfunded, leading to either further tax increases or major cuts in service.
But those numbers are just the cost to the federal government. It&#8217;s not clear how much Americans would continue to spend on health care, though CRFB anticipates that consumer health care spending wouldn&#8217;t actually decrease by any marked amount.
At least Bernie&#8217;s finally being honest, though. For years, Sanders and his progressive colleagues have touted the magical &#8220;Medicare for all&#8221; plan as a way to solve all the problems of the existing health care system &#8212; in a way that&#8217;s &#8220;free&#8221; to all Americans. But nothing is really ever free, especially for Bernie Sanders.

Bernie Sanders Embraces Honesty, Admits He&#8217;s Definitely Going To Raise Your Taxes (But It Won&#8217;t Be Enough)

The citizens of Philadelphia have been rocked by a tax on sugary drinks like soda, although the hike was intended to improve their health.
As <a href="https://hotair.com/archives/2019/05/18/philadelphias-soda-tax-bombed-predicted/">outlined</a> by Hotair on Saturday, the &#8220;soda tax&#8221; has actually led to Philadelphia residents traveling outside the city to buy their soda (and likely other goods), decreased the city&#8217;s revenue, and led to layoffs in the local beverage industry and cut hours for employees at small markets. It did not, however, lead to an increase in healthier beverage purchases in the city.
When the soda tax was first announced, workers at Pepsi took a hit. &#8220;With sales slumping because of the new Philadelphia sweetened beverage tax, Pepsi said Wednesday that it will lay off 80 to 100 workers at three distribution plants that serve the city,&#8221; <a href="http://philly.com">philly.com</a> <a href="https://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/Pepsi-announces-80-100-layoffs-blames-soda-tax.html">reported</a> in March of 2017.
And last month, the local outlet <a href="https://www.philly.com/opinion/acme-soda-tax-hurting-businesses-20190418.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIjZ6_kuaq4gIVjZyzCh23owhTEAAYAiAAEgJkwPD_BwE">reported</a> that the owner of Acme Markets, who has 16 stores in Philadelphia, had to cut employees&#8217; hours because of the tax: &#8220;The beverage tax fell on about 4,000 items. In Acme city stores, soda sales dropped as much as 80 percent. Sales of other items covered by the tax, such as juices, creamers and energy drinks, were down 30 percent, and the number of customers declined by 5 percent. Philly stores cut an average of 150 to 200 employee hours per week, resulting in lighter paychecks for employees.&#8221;
But the hit the employees took did not equate to a win for the &#8220;health&#8221; of its citizens. As noted by Hotair, Philadelphia residents were traveling outside the city to avoid the tax hike on their drinks.
A CNN report on a study from medical journal <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2733208?guestAccessKey=86610f39-a0eb-46d4-a30a-3ddef0036408&amp;utm_source=For_The_Media&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=ftm_links&amp;utm_content=tfl&amp;utm_term=051419">JAMA</a> focused in on the 51% drop in city soda purchases, but <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/15/health/philadelphia-soda-tax-sales-decrease/index.html?utm_content=2019-05-18T09:00:14&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_term=link&amp;utm_source=twCNN">admitted</a>: &#8220;While researchers found that sales of sugary beverages fell in Philadelphia after the tax, beverage sales in nearby towns and counties without the tax went up. That suggests people may have been traveling to get their soda at a reduced price.&#8221;
&#8220;People stopped buying their soda in the city (and almost undoubtedly a lot of other shopping list items) and decided to shop where prices were lower,&#8221; Hotair noted.
So was there at least an uptick in healthier beverage purchases because of the tax? Nope. &#8220;Philadelphia did not see an increase in sales of untaxed beverages such as bottled water,&#8221; CNN reported.
CNN did not discuss the revenue hit Philadelphia took, but Hotair did: &#8220;The tax on soda increased by 17%, but the sales fell by 51%. So, let&#8217;s look at this assuming one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax went into effect. If sales had remained the same, the city would have realized $62,400.00 in revenue instead of $54,300.00. But with the volume cut in half, they managed to slash their revenue to $31,200.00.&#8221;

BACKFIRE: Philadelphia Implemented Soda Tax, But It Didn&#8217;t Go As Planned

Pennsylvania

On Tuesday, Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Braun (R-IN) introduced three <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/21/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Rick+scott%22%5D%7D&amp;r=2&amp;s=7">amendments</a> to the United States Constitution that would term-limit congressmen, give the president line-item veto power, and require a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Congress to raise taxes.
The term limits portion of the &#8220;Make Washington Work plan,&#8221; or <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/21/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Rick+scott%22%5D%7D&amp;r=2&amp;s=7">S.J. Res. 21</a>, states in part:
<blockquote>
No person who has served 6 terms as a Representative shall be eligible for election to the House of Representatives. For purposes of this section, the election of a person to fill a vacancy in the House of Representatives shall be included as 1 term in determining the number of terms that such person has served as a Representative if the person fills the vacancy for more than 1 year&#8230;
No person who has served 2 terms as a Senator shall be eligible for election or appointment to the Senate. For purposes of this section, the election or appointment of a person to fill a vacancy in the Senate shall be included as 1 term in determining the number of terms that such person has served as a Senator if the person fills the vacancy for more than 3 years.
</blockquote>
According to the text, the proposed amendment would not count as term-limited any elected service prior to ratification.
The taxes and fees portion of the plan <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/21/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Rick+scott%22%5D%7D&amp;r=2&amp;s=7">states</a> in part:
<blockquote>
Legislation imposing or authorizing a new tax or fee may only be agreed to by a House of Congress if such legislation contains no other subject and is agreed to upon an affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of the Members of such House of Congress, duly chosen and sworn&#8230;
Legislation raising any tax or fee, including any increase in a rate of tax or fee imposed on a percentage basis, any increase in an amount of a tax or fee imposed on a flat or fixed basis, or any decrease in or elimination of an exemption, waiver, credit, or deduction with respect to a tax or fee, may only be agreed to by a House of Congress if such legislation contains no other subject and is agreed to upon an affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of the Members of such House of Congress, duly chosen and sworn.
</blockquote>
As for the line-item veto portion, the text <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-joint-resolution/21/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22Rick+scott%22%5D%7D&amp;r=2&amp;s=7">states</a> that under Article I, section 7 of the United States Constitution, the president &#8220;may reduce or disapprove any appropriation in any bill or joint resolution that is presented to&#8221; him.
In the 1998 case Clinton v. City of New York, the Supreme Court <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-1/section-7/clause-1%E2%80%933/the-line-item-veto">struck down</a> as unconstitutional the &#8220;Line Item Veto Act&#8221; that was passed by Congress two years earlier. However, as this would be itself a constitutional amendment and not a bill from Congress, this situation would be quite different.
On Thursday, The Daily Wire spoke with Sen. Scott about the proposed amendments:
<blockquote>
DW: What was your thought process on these proposed amendments?
SCOTT: We have term limits in Florida &#8211; eight years for the House and eight years for the Senate, and then two four-year terms for the statewide offices.
When I started the job as governor, we had a $4 billion budget deficit that year; the state had increased its debt every year for 20 years by over a billion dollars. In eight years, I paid off a third of the state debt, I think like two and a half billion dollars; I cut over ten billion dollars in taxes. We went from being in possible credit default and being downgraded to the highest credit rating in the country.
The things that I&#8217;m proposing, we already have in our state, which are working. I got a constitutional amendment on the ballot and passed my last year requiring a super-majority to raise taxes and fees; I believe I cut like 97 taxes and fees while I was governor; I had a line-item veto and I vetoed, I believe it was, about $2.5 billion.
[Sen. Scott added that when he was governor of Florida, he would go &#8220;line by line&#8221; through the budget, and veto what he considered irresponsible spending.]
DW: This is obviously the mirror for what you&#8217;re now proposing in the Senate. Can you walk through each of the amendments, and explain why you think we need them on the federal level?
SCOTT: On the requirement of the super-majority to raise taxes, if you think about it, what happens is, the easiest thing in a downturn is for people to say, &#8220;Well, let&#8217;s raise taxes.&#8221; I grew up in a very poor family; I lived in public housing growing up; I never met my dad; my mom had a very tough time. So, $25 or $50 here or there was devastating to them &#8211; and people act like it&#8217;s just a little bit of money. There&#8217;s conversation up here now about raising the gas tax. That is so regressive, and it impacts the poorest families so much. So, I think we ought to have to think long and hard about raising taxes.
As our economy grows, our tax revenues are growing. We don&#8217;t have a revenue problem in this country, but we have a spending problem. So let&#8217;s make it very difficult for people to raise our taxes and raise our fees.
As for term limits, our country was not set up for people to be career politicians. We brought people up for a period of their lives, they came and served, and they went home. That&#8217;s what we should have. We did in Florida, and we should be doing it up here.
The line-item veto, somebody&#8217;s got to be responsible ultimately for the budget, and the only person that can do at the state level is the governor. The only person that can do it at the federal level is the president. They were elected, you know, statewide as the governor, and countrywide as the president. Give them the ability to say, &#8220;You know what? That&#8217;s not a good return on investment.&#8221;
DW: Would Congress have the power to overrule any of those line-item vetoes?
SCOTT: The way it&#8217;s set up in Florida, they can do it with a two-thirds majority, so that would be the logical thing, is you give a line-item veto to the president, and then if it&#8217;s a two-thirds majority, [Congress would] be able to override.
DW: Let&#8217;s talk about the potential success of this. What are you doing, or what are you going to do, in order to make this successful?
SCOTT: Here&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve seen in my years as governor. You&#8217;ve got to get your ideas out there, you&#8217;ve got to drum up support, and then you take advantage [the] times where things are more interesting to people, and that&#8217;s what we did. I mean, I believed in the super-majority my entire time as governor, but my last year in office was a time that I thought I could get it done, and so I did it.
I look at my job up here as just chipping away every day and moving the ball down the court, and there will be a day, I don&#8217;t know whether it&#8217;s in six months or six years, that we can get these things accomplished.
</blockquote>
The Daily Wire would like to thank Sen. Scott for speaking with us about his proposed amendments.

Sen. Rick Scott Speaks With The Daily Wire About His Proposed Amendments On ‘Term Limits,’ Tax Hikes, And The ‘Line-Item Veto’

Republican Party

Rick Scott

On Wednesday&#8217;s episode of &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show,&#8221; the host breaks down The New York Times&#8217; release of President Donald Trump&#8217;s tax information from over a decade ago. Knowles argues that while the media treated it like an exclusive, nothing new was revealed in the documents. Transcript and video below.
What are the conclusions of the documents? The conclusions are that for a little under a decade, Donald Trump paid a low tax rate. When you take into account losses, deductions and all these sorts of things he didn&#8217;t have a tax liability. The charitable view of that is that Donald Trump took major business losses. We know there was a huge downturn in New York real estate at that time. We know that the tax code was favorable toward real estate developers, toward people who were building things, so that seems pretty fair. The uncharitable read of that document is that Donald Trump cheated on his taxes, that he paid a rate that was too low. But this one is kind of hard to believe because Donald Trump is under audit currently, I believe, and he certainly was under audit two years ago. This is a very wealthy guy with a lot of business interests who has been audited. If he really underpaid on taxes one would expect that that would already be discovered by now.
Another takeaway is that Donald Trump had less money than he said he did for many years. Duh. Yeah of course, where have you been? This has always been the knock on Trump is that he brags about having more money than he does. Is that news?
The New York Times thinks this is a big story. They&#8217;ve been lobbying this attack on him for much more than three years. Then, you&#8217;ve got to wonder what do the Democrats get out of this? First of all, nobody cares about Donald Trump&#8217;s taxes, nobody cares about any politician&#8217;s taxes. This is just an attack that has come up over the past few decades for opposition research firms to launch more assaults on other candidates. Nobody cares. Public opinion shows this. People care about immigration, they care about jobs, they care about the economy. They do not care about the tax returns of some politician from 10 years ago. We got too much on our minds, this does not really matter.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PfqBsAPwmRQ?start=908" width="560"></iframe></div>
Now, what else do Democrats get from this? They now get to highlight how Donald Trump fought his way back from a billion dollars of debt. A billion dollars of losses. Is that bad?
Democrats get now to push the narrative that Trump has tried to push for 30 years. People like that. It exposes a lot of the elitism of the mainstream media. When this came out one of the trends that was going on Twitter said Donald Trump shouldn&#8217;t have hosted The Apprentice, he should have hosted The Biggest Loser. They&#8217;re making fun of Trump because he took some big risks in business and had some big losses and then made a lot of his money back. First of all, does anyone actually believe Donald Trump is not a wealthy man right now? I know some people try to say that and say he&#8217;s not as rich as he says he is. Okay fine. Certainly, we all can agree that Donald Trump is a very wealthy man right now and has been for at least the last 15 years.
The New York Times, they say, &#8220;Ha ha, he wasn&#8217;t a billionaire for ten years. Oh, Jeeves pour me a little more port, please. We&#8217;re making fun of how Donald from Queens &#8212; you know he has that outer burrow accent; he wasn&#8217;t even a billionaire for the early 90s. This is how we&#8217;re going to win votes from those plebeians in New York City.&#8221; They&#8217;re portraying themselves as rich uncle penny bags over here. They&#8217;re portraying themselves as the guy on the Monopoly box. That&#8217;s not a good way to connect to the American people. Totally botched hit. Whoever leaked it really does seem to have backfired here.
I&#8217;d like to think that it was Republicans who leaked this document because it&#8217;s a great troll and you know at this moment in time Republicans are really good at trolling the media and Democrats. If it wasn&#8217;t the Republicans, who leaked this if it wasn&#8217;t Trump himself if it wasn&#8217;t like kind of a media dirty hit &#8212; if this actually was leaked from the government, this is a major crime. To leak someone&#8217;s private tax return information is a very serious crime. Certainly, an investigation should take place and whoever is responsible for it should be held to account, unless it was Trump himself. Whoever actually committed a crime of stealing this information should be held to account. This is really bad.
We attack Wikileaks for hacking into the government and releasing information that should not be released and rightly so. How is this that much different? You have somebody going into our federal government stealing information, leaking it to the media and publishing it to damage not only a politician, not only a candidate, but the President of the United States. That&#8217;s a big deal. That&#8217;s a very big deal.
<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-michael-knowles-show/id1266577963?mt=2">Listen to &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on iTunes.</a>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/show/michael-knowles-show">Subscribe to watch &#8220;The Michael Knowles Show&#8221; on-demand.</a>

KNOWLES: The NYT&#8217;s Trump Tax Document Release Revealed Nothing

Conservatism

Donald Trump

Michael Knowles

New York

New York City

Trump Administration

Democrats are falling over themselves to tell the American people they want to raise their taxes.
The latest example comes from former Vice President Joe Biden, who <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaWym5mHKAk&amp;feature=youtu.be">said during a campaign stop</a> in <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/joe-biden-test-waters-voters-south-carolina/story?id=62814047">South Carolina</a> that part of the way he would pay for all his policy proposals would be to &#8220;repeal those Trump tax cuts.&#8221;
Biden actually said this would be the &#8220;first thing&#8221; he&#8217;d do, to great applause from an audience that would see their taxes go up if the former vice president really were to repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a right-leaning advocacy group run by Grover Norquist, <a href="https://www.atr.org/biden-first-thing-i-d-do-repeal-those-trump-tax-cuts?amp">wrote</a> that repealing the TCJA would &#8220;impose a large tax increase on the American people.&#8221;
&#8220;Thanks to the tax cuts, a typical family of four earning the median family income of $73,000 saw a tax cut of over $2,000 &#8211; a 58% reduction in federal taxes. A single parent with one child with annual income of $41,000 saw a tax cut of $1,304 &#8211; a 73% reduction in federal taxes,&#8221; ATR wrote.
ATR also pointed out that The New York Times admitted the TCJA resulted in a tax cut for &#8220;most people.&#8221;
&#8220;To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained &#8212; and misleading &#8212; effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase,&#8221; the Times wrote, without admitting to its own role in spreading the false propaganda.
ATR noted that when Walter Mondale promised to raise taxes on the American people if he were elected, he lost the election in a landslide, &#8220;winning only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.&#8221;
Biden isn&#8217;t the only Democrat running for president saying they would raise taxes on the middle class. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) said recently that she would repeal the TCJA for everyone and replace it with her own plan, which may or may not result in higher taxes on the middle class, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/46926/kamala-harris-wants-repeal-trump-tax-cuts-everyone-ashe-schow">depending on who you ask</a>.
Ryan Ellis, a tax expert who used to work for ATR, told The Daily Wire that a family of four making $90,000 would see a $2,600 tax hike from repealing the TCJA, but only a $1,500 corresponding tax reduction from Harris&#8217; plan.
Kyle Pomerleau, chief economist and a vice president of the Tax Foundation, told the Wire middle-class tax payers would see their after-tax income boosted more under Harris&#8217; plan than the TCJA, but due to other incentives in Harris&#8217; plan, economic output would be significantly reduced.
It&#8217;s incredible to watch Democrats run on raising your taxes. It&#8217;s even more incredible to listen to crowds cheer this. Do they not realize that means their taxes would go up?
Imagine hating President Donald Trump so much that you&#8217;re willing to give the government more of your money to get him out of office. And yet, whoever ends up with the Democrat nomination, even if they lose to Trump, will win more states than Mondale.

Joe Biden’s Plan To Help Ordinary Americans: ‘The First Thing I’d Do Is Repeal Those Trump Tax Cuts’

Kamala Harris

It&#8217;s not at all surprising that a Democrat would call for higher taxes and spending while campaigning.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), who is running for president, said recently she wants to repeal the entire 2017 tax law that cut taxes for the majority of Americans and replace it with a tax cut that doesn&#8217;t look like it will help many people. Also, she uses some fuzzy math to explain how repealing the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will pay for her education plan even though she has her own tax plan that would replace them.
While campaigning in Detroit, Michigan, Harris said she&#8217;d &#8220;get rid of the whole thing,&#8221; referring to Trump&#8217;s tax cuts, which gave most Americans a bigger paycheck after they went into effect. Harris&#8217; campaign spokesman, Ian Sams, told Bloomberg that Harris would replace Trump&#8217;s tax cuts with her own plan, which would help fewer people. Harris&#8217; plan, called the Livable Incomes For Families Today (LIFT) Act, would ostensibly help low income and middle-class earners by providing them tax credits of up to $6,000 a year. From Bloomberg:
<blockquote>
The credit would apply to households earning less than $100,000 annually. Single filers earning under $50,000 a year would get $3,000. The credit could be accessed monthly or in one lump sum at the end of the year. It would begin to phase out for single taxpayers without children earning at least $30,000, single taxpayers with children earning at least $80,000, and married taxpayers earning at least $60,000.
</blockquote>
Perhaps this sounds good to people who don&#8217;t live in large cities, but as someone who built their career in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area I struggle to see how this would have helped me.
Ryan Ellis, an expert in tax policy who worked for Grover Norquist for a decade, told me that Harris&#8217; plan, combined with the tax hikes that would hit middle- and lower-income Americans from repealing the Trump tax cuts, would end up raising taxes on net for many families.
&#8220;For example, a family of four with two small kids making $90,000 per year would see a TCJA tax increase of $2600,&#8221; Ellis said. &#8220;But they would only get an offsetting LIFT credit of $1500. Interact the two, and it&#8217;s a tax hike of $1100 on this four-figure family.&#8221;
Kyle Pomerleau, chief economist and vice president of economic analysis at the Tax Foundation, differed in his assessment of whether individual families would see a tax hike, but said Harris&#8217; plan would end up hurting the economy by discouraging labor force participation.
&#8220;The TCJA did reduce taxes for the middle class. We estimated that the law boosted after-tax income by about 1.6 percent for middle-income taxpayers,&#8221; Pomerleau told The Daily Wire in an email. &#8220;In contrast, we estimate that LIFT would boost this same groups after-tax income by 5.6 percent. Thus the swap would mean the middle class would be a net beneficiary.&#8221;
Pomerleau warned, however, that the tax hikes from repealing the TCJA would result in problems for the economy.
&#8220;We estimated that the TCJA would boost economic output, wages, and jobs. For example, we think GDP would be about 1.7 percent larger in the long-run due to the TCJA,&#8221; Pomerleau wrote. &#8220;In contrast, the LIFT credit, due to discouraging labor force participation, would reduce output by about 0.8 percent. Overall, the swap would mean lower economic output.&#8221;
Harris has another problem with the plan she discussed before the American Federation of Teachers: Math. Harris told the teachers she had a $315 billion plan that would raise the wages of public school teachers.
Sahil Kapur, one of the authors of the Bloomberg article mentioned above, said on Twitter there was a &#8220;math imbalance in Harri&#8217;s trio of proposals.&#8221;
&#8220;She says she&#8217;ll repeal the GOP tax law (+$1.9T) and enact the LIFT Act (-$2.8T) plus her teacher pay plan (-$315B),&#8221; he tweeted. &#8220;That&#8217;s still $1.2 trillion in the red.&#8221;
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
There&#8217;s a math imbalance in Harris&#8217;s trio of proposals here. She says she&#8217;ll repeal the GOP tax law (+$1.9T) and enact the LIFT Act (-$2.8T) plus her teacher pay plan (-$315B).
That&#8217;s still $1.2 trillion in the red.<a href="https://t.co/xsC5R7IKKd">https://t.co/xsC5R7IKKd</a>
&#8212; Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) <a href="https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1125763675762167808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 7, 2019</a></blockquote>
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He followed up that tweet with information from Harris&#8217; blueprint for her education plan, which said it would strengthen &#8220;the estate tax&#8221; and crack &#8220;down on loopholes that let the very wealthiest, with estates worth multiple millions or billions of dollars, avoid paying their fair share.&#8221;
A quick reminder of what the estate tax is: Someone with an estate, who has paid their taxes, dies. In order to collect their inheritance, an heir must pay additional taxes on what is left to them. It&#8217;s essentially a double tax scheme.

Kamala Harris Wants To Repeal Trump Tax Cuts For EVERYONE. Her Replacement Plan Would Likely Hurt Middle Class, Economy.

Illinois&#8217; new governor, Democrat J.B. Pritzker, has only been in office a few months, but he&#8217;s already following the proud Illinois gubernatorial tradition of being investigated by the federal government. This time, though, it&#8217;s not a public corruption investigation &#8212; it&#8217;s a probe into whether Pritzker and his wife deliberately removed toilets from their Chicago mansion to avoid paying around $300,000 in property taxes.
<a href="https://wgntv.com/2019/04/24/report-feds-investigating-claims-pritzkers-removed-mansions-toilets-to-get-tax-break/">WGN News reports</a> that the Feds are looking into claims, which surfaced during the Illinois gubernatorial campaign last year, that Pritzker&#8217;s wife, MK, directed contractors to remove all of the toilets from a mansion the pair were remodeling in Chicago&#8217;s tony Gold Coast neighborhood so that the mansion could be declared &#8220;uninhabitable.&#8221; The move allegedly reduced the value of the home by $5 million and the Pritzkers&#8217; tax burden by $331,000.
&#8220;The report also found that [Pritzker aide Christine] Lovely and the governor&#8217;s brother-in-law, Thomas J. Muenster, made &#8216;false representations&#8217; on tax appeal documents,&#8221; <a href="https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/source-feds-probe-illinois-gov-jb-pritzker-first-lady-for-property-tax-appeals-on-gold-coast-mansion/afb5e34e-e7f5-4113-a110-ac8ec98bca63">WBEZ adds</a>. The pair reportedly declared to the county that that the home had no working bathrooms for the two years prior to the toilet removal project, which allowed the Pritzkers to reclaim around $132,000 in taxes they&#8217;d already paid to Cook County.
The Cook County IG that issued the report called the incident a &#8220;scheme to defraud taxpayers,&#8221; and suggested that the Pritzkers could be guilty not just of lying to tax assessors, but of perjury and mail fraud.
When the reports surfaced in the form of an <a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/toilet-watchdog-pritzkers-property-tax-break-scheme-defraud-blanchard/">inspector general&#8217;s report</a> released in October, Pritzker, an heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune with a net worth of approximately $3.2 billion, cut Cook County a check for the missing money, with a note that said the &#8220;gift&#8221; was &#8220;in no way an admission of any wrongdoing.&#8221;
The Pritzkers also said at the time that they did have at least one working toilet in the home.
Simply repaying the county $331,000 doesn&#8217;t absolve Prtizker or his wife of attempting to commit tax fraud, and, shortly after the IG report surfaced in October, the federal government began an official inquiry into what, precisely, the Pritzkers were trying to do.
Pritzker wrote off the tax fraud claims during the campaign as &#8220;politically motivated.&#8221; Through a spokesperson, Pritzker told media that he does not believe he or his wife engaged in any wrongdoing.
&#8220;Neither the Governor nor the First Lady have been contacted by law enforcement regarding the property tax appeal,&#8221; the spokesperson, a high-powered attorney whose firm worked with Pritzker during the campaign, told WBEZ. &#8220;We are confident that any further review of the matter will show that the appropriate rules were followed.&#8221;
Pritzker himself told media that he has &#8220;no concerns at all&#8221; about the probe and that he knows as much about the federal government&#8217;s investigation as reporters do: &#8220;what I know is what you all know from the reporting that was done this week.&#8221;
The news of an Illinois governor under federal investigation may not be very novel &#8212; many of the state&#8217;s former governors often live out their &#8220;retirement&#8221; behind bars &#8212; but this one comes at a particularly fraught time for Illinois and for the governor, who is trying to convince Illinois residents that a significant tax hike is needed in order to address the state&#8217;s overwhelming financial issues.
Pritzker is proposing changing the state&#8217;s &#8220;flat&#8221; income tax to a graduated income tax in order to ensure that the state&#8217;s rich pay their &#8220;fair share.&#8221; His Republican opposition have already pointed out &#8212; quite cleverly &#8212; that even given the opportunity, it appears Pritzker &#8212; one of the state&#8217;s wealthiest businessman &#8212; may have resorted to breaking the law in order to avoid paying his own fair share to the citizens of Cook County.

Feds Probing Illinois Governor&#8217;s Finances Over Alleged &#8216;Missing Toilet&#8217; Tax Scam

Illinois

California, which already has the highest taxes in the nation, has finally decided to just go all in and tax drinking water.
We&#8217;ll repeat that: Drinking water in California could soon be taxed.
Lawmakers in the state of Californistan have proposed more than $6.2 billion worth of tax increases, according to the California Tax Foundation (CTF). Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has submitted a $209 billion budget that would set aside nearly $20 billion in a reserve fund.
Newsom says the state lacks access to clean drinking water, calling the situation a &#8220;disgrace.&#8221;
A new bill in the state legislature would establish &#8220;the Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund in the State Treasury, and is expected to be amended to include a tax-like &#8216;fee&#8217; on drinking water to raise funds for State Water Resources Control Board to administer programs intended to provide safe drinking water for all Californians,&#8221; the CTF reported. The Foundation added that in 2018, a similar bill &#8220;was estimated to cost taxpayers $100 million annually, according to the Assembly Appropriations Committee.&#8221;
If passed, residents would be charged anywhere from $1 to $10 a month on their water bills, depending on usage. Unlike many other tax bills &#8212; which require support from two-thirds of lawmakers &#8212; the new water tax requires a simple majority.
Some critics argue that California would set a precedent if it taxes water.
&#8220;A state-imposed tax would not only be an outlier from a national perspective, it would be for California as well,&#8221; John Coupal, president of the <a href="https://www.hjta.org/california-commentary/new-tax-proposals-are-unnecessary/">Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association</a> (HJTA), wrote in January. &#8220;Moreover, there are other ways to fund the one-time $150 million cost of necessary water system improvements. Not only is there federal funding specifically available for this purpose, California has passed several statewide bonds that have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for clean water infrastructure improvements.&#8221;
&#8220;The only conceivable reason for imposing higher taxes is to establish new, permanent sources of revenue,&#8221; Coupal wrote.
The list of new taxes is long and include some truly wacky ideas, the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-sac-skelton-soda-tax-20190408-story.html">Los Angeles Times</a> reports. &#8220;Here&#8217;s an eye-roller: A bill that would authorize San Francisco to turn its crooked Lombard Street &#8212; a tourist attraction after so many movie appearances &#8212; into a toll road, maybe even requiring reservations. Think they have a traffic jam now on weekends? Wait until cars are lined up behind a tollgate.&#8221;
<blockquote>
There are a whole bunch of taxing ideas in the Capitol: on new tires, firearms, water, prescription painkillers, lawyers, car batteries, corporations based on their CEO pay, estates worth more than $3.5 million, oil and gas extraction. The list goes on.
</blockquote>
California state regulators had earlier proposed a new charge for cell phone users on text messaging as a means of collecting taxpayer money to pay for programs to make phone service cheaper to low-income residents, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
No fee was ever set, but the News said the fee &#8220;likely would be billed as a flat surcharge per customer &#8212; one of those irksome fees at the bottom of your wireless bill &#8212; not a fee per text.&#8221; And cell phone users might have had to retroactively pay the fee for the last five years, the News said, noting that the new fees could bring in upwards of $50 million a year.
But the California Public Utilities Commission scrubbed a scheduled vote from its January meeting agenda after the Federal Communications Commission ruled that such messaging is not taxable.

DEATH BY TAXES: Lawmakers In California Propose Taxing Drinking Water

California

Who are you going to believe: the mainstream media or your lying bank account? According to a new NBC/WSJ poll, just 17% of Americans believe their taxes will decrease as a result of President Trump&#8217;s 2018 tax cut. An additional 28% believe they will pay more, while 27% think they will pay the same, and 28% don&#8217;t know enough to say. The vast majority of Republicans do not believe they will receive a tax cut. Just 33% of Republicans, 10% of independents, and 7% of Democrats expect to keep more of their money. Worse yet, even among core Trump supporters, nearly two-thirds do not expect to save on taxes.
No wonder the tax law remains unpopular. A Pew Research Center poll conducted last month found that just 36% of Americans approve of the law, compared to 49% who disapprove.
Beyond the realm of public opinion, reality tells a different story: a full 80% of Americans will receive a tax cut under the Republican tax law, according to a report by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.
So how did so many Americans miss their tax cut? Such is the power of the mainstream media, which amplified ad nauseum the lies of left-wing politicians and activists. Leftist commentator Matthew Yglesias admitted as much on Twitter. &#8220;Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success,&#8221; he wrote. &#8220;But progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut.&#8221; Yglesias deserves credit for honest dishonesty.
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Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut. <a href="https://t.co/tcZFr8l9Ck">https://t.co/tcZFr8l9Ck</a>
&#8212; Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1115402932093095937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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New York Times columnist Charles Blow <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/12/29/media-reactions/978580001/">warned</a> that the tax bill would &#8220;appease the rich on the front end; punish the poor on the back. Feed the weak to the strong.&#8221; A front page New York Times editorial declared, &#8220;It is not aimed at the middle class. It is at every turn carefully engineered to deliver a kiss to the donor class.&#8221; The bill amounted to nothing more than &#8220;a return to trickle-down economics, an enduring line in which the wealthy are supposed to spend and invest their tax breaks, creating jobs and commercial opportunities for everyone else.&#8221; Who would fund this &#8220;big tax cut for the rich&#8221;? Why the poor, of course, &#8220;with random increases in taxes for various constituencies.&#8221;
The Washington Post lamented how the &#8220;tax bill [went] from worse to bad.&#8221; Forbes explained it would &#8220;blow up Medicare.&#8221; NPR reported it &#8220;could hurt graduate students.&#8221; Media as local as the Kansas City Star blared in a headline, &#8220;Kansas Republicans claim tax bill will be good for the middle class. It won&#8217;t be.&#8221; Just about everyone, it seemed, would suffer from tax cuts. Who knew keeping more of your own money could be so painful?
According to a Media Research Center survey, network news outlets paint Presidents Trump in a negative light 92% of the time. During debate on the tax cut, Trump&#8217;s signature legislative achievement, that might have been a low-end estimate.
Jonathan Swift observed that &#8220;falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late.&#8221; Through story after story, from tax returns to Russian conspiracies, the mainstream media have peddled baseless lies to the public. Sometimes, years later, the truth manages to come limping along. How many more times will Americans let themselves be fooled?

The Media’s Terrible Power Summed Up In One Statistic

Media Bias

On Monday, a well-known leftist writer lauded &#8220;progressives&#8221; for deceiving the American people in order to convince them that the tax cuts implemented by the Trump administration had in reality raised their taxes.
Matthew Yglesias, who co-founded the news website Vox, for which he writes and edits, previously worked at The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Slate. On Monday, in response to the news that a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showed only 17% of Americans believed that their 2018 taxes will be cut as a result of the GOP&#8217;s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and that a huge majority of Americans don&#8217;t think they got a tax cut from the bill, Yglesias tweeted:
<blockquote>
Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut.
</blockquote>
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Nobody likes to give themselves credit for this kind of messaging success, but progressive groups did a really good job of convincing people that Trump raised their taxes when the facts say a clear majority got a tax cut. <a href="https://t.co/tcZFr8l9Ck">https://t.co/tcZFr8l9Ck</a>
&#8212; Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1115402932093095937?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
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CNBC<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/few-americans-think-theyre-getting-a-trump-tax-cut-nbcwsj-poll.html"> reported</a>, &#8220;Pew Research polling last month found that the tax cut remains underwater politically, with 36% of Americans expressing approval and 49% disapproval. In reality, 8 in 10 Americans stood to receive tax cuts in 2018 under the law, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.&#8221;
<a href="https://taxfoundation.org/tax-refunds-tax-cuts/?utm_content=buffer18d01&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_campaign=buffer">The Tax Foundation</a> noted, &#8220;The new tax code lowered tax rates, doubled the standard deduction, doubled the child tax credit and expanded eligibility, and limited the alternative minimum tax. It also limited several deductions, such as for state and local taxes paid and mortgage interest &#8230; Approximately <a href="https://taxfoundation.org/tcja-one-year-later/">80 percent of filers</a> had their taxes cut by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, while only 5 percent saw their taxes increase.&#8221;
As <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/vox-writer-praises-progressives-for-misleading-americans-on-tax-cuts/">The Washington Free Beacon</a> pointed out, at the time the 2017 bill was passed, Democrats did their best to disparage it:
<blockquote>
At the time, Democratic Party messaging insisted the bill was a catastrophe for the middle class. Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.) <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/andrew-cuomo-tax-reform-middle-class-crumbs-table/">said</a> &#8220;the middle class got the crumbs from the table.&#8221; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) <a href="https://freebeacon.com/issues/schumer-republican-tax-plan-socks-middle-class/">claimed</a> the proposal &#8220;socks it to the middle class.&#8221; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said &#8220;[e]ighty-six million middle-class families will see a tax increase.&#8221; In February, Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/fact-checker-slams-kamala-harris-for-nonsensical-and-misleading-tax-claim/">called</a> the tax change &#8220;a middle-class tax hike.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/tax-cuts-jobs-act-generating-economic-resurgence-communities-across-country/">reported</a> last week that as a result of the 2017 bill, &#8220;For the first time in more than a decade, the economy reached 3 percent growth over the 4 quarters of 2018. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew by 3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2017 to the fourth quarter of 2018 &#8230; In 2018, companies repatriated over half a trillion dollars held overseas.&#8221;
Oddly enough, just two days before Yglesias tweeted his glee at the success of &#8220;progressives&#8221; in bamboozling the American people, he admitted on Twitter that he himself had gotten a tax cut from the GOP&#8217;s bill, writing, &#8220;It happened to me: Got a tax cut on net thanks to Trump but for various reasons instead of a small refund I now owe the IRS $1,200 and I&#8217;m mad.&#8221;
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It happened to me:
Got a tax cut on net thanks to Trump but for various reasons instead of a small refund I now owe the IRS $1,200 and I&#8217;m mad.
&#8212; Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1114514332493201410?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 6, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Yglesias&#8217; chortling over the success of the campaign by &#8220;progressives&#8221; was ripped on Twitter:
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Matt&#8217;s right, we really don&#8217;t give enough credit to people who successfully message blatantly untrue narratives. Has the Nobel Committee closed submissions? <a href="https://t.co/R9vuqT9lGo">https://t.co/R9vuqT9lGo</a>
&#8212; Ben (@BenHowe) <a href="https://twitter.com/BenHowe/status/1115623239349407744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
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At least you are honest about being dishonest. <a href="https://t.co/801UltbRaj">https://t.co/801UltbRaj</a>
&#8212; The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) <a href="https://twitter.com/ReaganBattalion/status/1115616033275035659?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Messaging success = lying to the American people. <a href="https://t.co/Frqi4Ox3Sv">https://t.co/Frqi4Ox3Sv</a>
&#8212; Andrew Wagner (@andrewwagner) <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewwagner/status/1115411894783873024?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Hooray for the media lying. <a href="https://t.co/Y6aT6K480x">https://t.co/Y6aT6K480x</a>
&#8212; Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) <a href="https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1115411880514916352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Hooray for lying! <a href="https://t.co/AsjMqpTrMe">https://t.co/AsjMqpTrMe</a>
&#8212; Patterico (@Patterico) <a href="https://twitter.com/Patterico/status/1115493464244797440?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 9, 2019</a></blockquote>
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Leftist Vox Co-Founder Chortles Over &#8216;Progressives&#8217; Deceiving Americans On GOP Tax Cut Bill

Matt Yglesias

Sure, public restrooms &#8212; especially those in public parks &#8212; are gross, but should taxpayers really be on the hook for expensive bathroom projects?
The City, a nonprofit New York news outlet partnered with New York Magazine, <a href="https://thecity.nyc/2019/04/pricey-parks-bathrooms-putting-pressure-on-taxpayers.html">reported</a> that New York City completed a $4.7 million bathroom facility at the Bronx&#8217;s Ferry Point Park West. The City wrote that it was the &#8220;most expensive park bathroom ever.&#8221;
Further, the outlet found that the average park restroom was costing taxpayers a little under $3.6 million, which is nearly triple what the Parks Department spent in 2011.
Republican City Council Member Joe Borelli told the outlet that these costs were &#8220;borderline astronomical.&#8221;
Prices for these park bathrooms have been steadily climbing in recent years. A $6 million public bathroom is slated for Staten Island&#8217;s Seaside Wildlife Nature Park. Borelli told The City the cost was high due to flood-zone requirements adopted after Hurricane Sandy, but said he supported the costly bathroom since his constituents have paid for other expensive projects.
But cost isn&#8217;t the only problem with these restrooms, The City reported. That $4.7 million Ferry Point bathroom took 12 years to build.
&#8220;A contract for the $4.7 million structure shows the bills added up quickly, with the metal roofing alone running over $460,000. A five-wave bike rack, installed nearby, was listed in the document as running $6,000. Similar racks retail online for $450,&#8221; The City reported.
Leave it to the government to spend 13 times more on an item than can be bought in the private sector.
The City even included a side-by-side photo comparing the $6,000 bike rack to a $1,500 one at the Aqueduct Walk in Fordham Heights. They look exactly the same.
The news outlet noted that the price of public bathrooms varies widely across the five boroughs, with one in the Bronx costing &#8220;just&#8221; $1 million (it is at the same park as the cheaper bike rack). A former Parks Department commissioner told the outlet that bathrooms were the &#8220;bane&#8221; of his existence because Parks contracts were reviewed by five separate government agencies, which causes constant delays.
These delays incentivize contractors to greatly increase the price of their bids on such projects. Geoffrey Croft, who works with NYC Parks Advocates, told the outlet how the racket works.
&#8220;There&#8217;s no way to explain it. It&#8217;s not inflation. It&#8217;s not cost of materials. The word is out that you can charge these guys exorbitant prices,&#8221; Croft said.
And to add insult to injury, the restrooms aren&#8217;t even open year-round, meaning taxpayers are paying millions of dollars for seasonal restrooms.
If New York is wondering why people are fleeing the state, this is a perfect example.

Guess How Much Taxpayers Paid For These New York Park Bathrooms

Democrats are making good on their promise to investigate President Donald Trump&#8217;s finances, despite Special Counsel Robert Mueller&#8217;s finding that the Trump 2016 presidential campaign did not collude with Russian officials to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.
Late Wednesday, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA) announced that he has formally requested that the IRS turn over at least six years worth of Donald Trump&#8217;s personal tax returns &#8212; those returns filed between 2013 and 2018. <a href="http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2019/images/04/03/neal.letter.to.rettig.signed.2019.04.03.pdf">According to his official letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin</a> made public Thursday morning, Neal has also requested financial documents related to Trump&#8217;s trusts, holding and acquisition companies, and his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club.
Neal has apparently done his research; he made the request under a little-known statute, Internal Revenue Code 6103(f), that allows the Chair of the House Committee on Ways and Means (or the chair of any finance committee in Congress), specifically, to request the personal tax records of any individual, provided that, once produced, they are kept secret and confidential.
There&#8217;s a catch on the confidentiality, too: if the records make their way to regular members of Congress, who end up reviewing them, the seal of confidentiality is broken, and Trump&#8217;s records could then be made public, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-andrew-napolitano-democrats-can-legally-obtain-and-publicize-trumps-tax-returns">according to Fox News</a> legal expert, Judge Andrew Napolitano.
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/04/politics/donald-trump-tax-returns-unseen-secret/index.html">Even CNN describes the request</a> as &#8220;rooted in a legal technicality.&#8221;
Trump brushed off the request Thursday, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/04/03/politics/trump-tax-returns-house-democrats-request/index.html">telling reporters</a>, &#8220;Is that all? Oh, usually it&#8217;s 10 so I guess they&#8217;re giving up.&#8221;
He added that he does not believe the Treasury Secretary or the IRS has to provide Congress with his tax returns so long as he is under audit, as he currently claims to be.
&#8220;Now, we&#8217;re under audit, despite what people said. We&#8217;re working that out as &#8212; I&#8217;m always under audit it seems. But I&#8217;ve been under audit because the numbers are big and I guess when you have a name you&#8217;re audited. But until such time as I&#8217;m not under audit I would not be inclined to do that,&#8221; Trump added.
Neal told CNN that he believes his request will be fulfilled, though perhaps not without a fight.
&#8220;I am certain we are within our legitimate legislative, legal and oversight rights,&#8221; Neal said in a statement emailed to news outlets, adding that his request is about &#8220;policy not politics.&#8221;
&#8220;My preparations were made on my own track and timeline, entirely independent of other activities in Congress and the administration,&#8221; Neal added. &#8220;My actions reflect an abiding reverence for our democracy and our institutions, and are in no way based on emotion of the moment or partisanship. I trust that in this spirit, the IRS will comply with federal law and furnish me with the requested documents in a timely manner.&#8221;
Of course, such a suggestion &#8212; that Neal&#8217;s motivation has nothing to do with partisanship &#8212; seems patently false. Democrats have been promising a full investigation into Donald Trump&#8217;s finances since Trump first took office, and activist groups have only clamored more forcefully for Trump&#8217;s tax returns in the wake of the Mueller report, which dashed their hopes of a quick and easy impeachment.
Democrats in the House have made multiple requests for Trump&#8217;s taxes as well, and both Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) have said they will issue subpoenas not just to the IRS but to various banks that had dealings with Trump and his companies.

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Guess How Much Taxpayers Paid For These New York Park Bathrooms

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