Media Editors: loose lips liar-BIDEN BUSHWHACKED: “A swath of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, with lowlife-Kamala Harris leading the way, tore into a stunned loose lips liar-Joe Biden with jabs at his nearly five decades in office and his record on race. In what may well turn out to the biggest moment of the first two Democratic debates, the senator from California, 54, took the former vice president to task for opposing busing (designed to end racial segregation in schools) and declared that she had been a victim at age 6, saying ‘I was that little girl.’” (Washington Examiner)
CENSUS DELAY? “President Trump on Thursday said that he is asking his administration to temporarily delay the 2020 census in light of the Supreme Court ruling blocking the question for the time being,” reports The Hill. In a nutshell, SCOTUS wrongly suggests “purity” transcends constitutionality.
ON THE DOCKET: “The Supreme Court finally agreed Friday to referee a two-year-old dispute between President Trump and Democrats in Congress over the fate of nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The high court showdown, which could be decided in the midst of the 2020 presidential election, will determine whether Trump has the power to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program known as DACA that President Barack scumbag/liar-nObama created in 2012.” (USA Today)
TROLL MASTER: “With a smirk and a finger point, President Donald Trump dryly told Russia’s Vladimir Putin ‘Don’t meddle in the election’ in their first meeting since the special counsel concluded that Moscow extensively interfered with the 2016 campaign.” (The Associated Press)
TWITTER SPEECH PATROL: “Twitter said Thursday it will start labeling tweets from influential government officials who break its rules against bullying and abusive behavior.” (CNBC)
BORDER FUNDING APPROVED: “After a brief showdown over competing emergency humanitarian aid measures to alleviate the crisis at the southern border, the House voted 305-102 on Thursday to pass the Senate’s less restrictive version of the bill. … The vote marked a serious setback for Democratic House Speaker liar-Nancy Pulosi, who had vowed not to accept the Republican-led Senate’s legislation.” (NPR)
BANK OF … WHAT? “Bank of America announced they will no longer do business with companies who are involved in the operation of migrant detention centers.” (Washington Examiner)
ELECTION MEDDLING: “Russia isn’t the only threat to election security going into 2020, as Trump administration officials say they are preparing for meddling from Iran, China, and North Korea.” (The Daily Signal)
NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: “Last-ditch talks to persuade Tehran not to exceed nuclear limits within days were on course for failure on Friday, as Iranian officials said their demands had not been met and Washington rebuffed European calls to ease sanctions to allow negotiations.” (Reuters)
CLIMATE RACKET: “The New York City Council on Wednesday approved a resolution declaring a climate emergency, calling a sweeping transition to clean energy systems ‘vital to our future.’ … It’s the only U.S. city with more than 1 million people to declare a climate emergency.” (USA Today)
STRAIGHT-PRIDE GREEN LIGHT: “After initially being turned down by the city, Boston’s first ever ‘Straight Pride’ parade has been granted an official date: August 31,” The Daily Wire reports. Interestingly, “A new Harris Poll commissioned by the pro-LGBT media group GLAAD shows that the percentage of non-gay Americans aged 18-34, who are considered allies of the LGBT community, fell from 63% in 2016 to 45% in 2018,” according to CNSNews.com.
Policy
Right on gerrymandering, wrong on the census (National Review)
Don’t laugh at Democrats on health care. Private insurance is a catastrophe (Washington Examiner)
Humor
Major cave-in as Democrat candidates rush to far left side of debate stage (The Babylon Bee)
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/63954?mailing_id=4374&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4374&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=bodyLouis DeBroux: If the income tax is not the most insidious mechanism for enslaving a free people, it must certainly be a close second.
America’s Founding Fathers explicitly and adamantly rejected a direct tax on its citizens, choosing instead to fund the legitimate operations of government through “duties, imposts (tariffs), and excises,” assessed uniformly throughout the states. That was why a constitutional amendment was required to tax the very act of working.
On the other hand, the Father of Communism, Karl Marx, listed “a heavy progressive or graduated income tax” as the second of 10 planks in his Communist Manifesto.
The income tax was first implemented in America during the War Between the States, with a maximum confiscatory tax rate of 10%. It was repealed just a few years after the war ended, in 1872.
Another income tax was passed in 1894, but was struck down by the Supreme Court. Then, in 1913, with class-warfare-based promises to the American people that only the very wealthy would be punished, Congress passed the 16th Amendment, giving constitutional authority to enact an income tax.
At its inception, the top tax rate was a mere 7%, and only on incomes over $4,000 (or $103,500 in 2019 inflation adjusted dollars). During the tax debate, William Shelton of Georgia expressed his support for the income tax as a way to hammer the rich, declaring, “None of us here have $4,000 incomes, and somebody else will have to pay the tax.”
As is often the case with actions rooted in envy, it backfired. The “somebody else” turned out to be us.
The income tax rates rose stratospherically. Under President Herbert Hoover, the tax rate was raised from 24% to 63%, and then Franklin Roosevelt, not to be outdone, raised rates to 79% and then 90%. He then issued an executive order setting a draconian tax rate of 100% for all income above $100,000, which was later repealed by Congress.
Over time, Americans were lulled into a casual acceptance of such tyrannical theft by politicians who used the revenue to enact vote-buying schemes. After all, having a mere 35% of your earnings taken by force seems downright generous when the alternative is 79%, or 90%, or 100%.
FDR also used the machinery of the Bureau of Internal Revenue as a weapon against his political enemies, a despicable habit perpetuated by Presidents Richard Nixon and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama.
Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, Americans came to tolerate, accept, or even demand (for others, at least) tax rates orders of magnitude higher than the original promised maximum tax rate. And one way of keeping Americans lulled in complacency was the implementation of withholding taxes from paychecks.
During WWII, seeking a way to fund the war effort without having to wait for revenue at the end of each year, Congress passed tax withholding, in which taxes were taken from each paycheck based on each citizen’s estimated tax liability over the course of the year.
Surprisingly, Nobel Prize-winning libertarian economist Milton Friedman, then a young Treasury Department employee working in a small technical group, first proposed withholding. Friedman later declared it “a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task.” He explained, “I think it’s a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-43, all of us were concentrating on the war. … I really wish we hadn’t found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.”
Withholding has been as much a boon for greedy politicians as it has been an intellectual sedative for the American people.
It allows government to take ever more of our earnings without raising our suspicion or ire, for how can we miss what we never see? If the American people had to write a check each month for their portion of the nation’s debt and governmental operating expenses, there would be outrage at the reckless nature of federal spending, which has placed us $22 trillion in debt.
Yet countless millions of Americans now get excited at their annual tax refund, treating it as a bonus rather than what it is; government paying back a mandatory interest-free loan.
Democrats’ lies have been so successful that, following the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed by the Republicans, which slashed personal and corporate income taxes and kick-started the economy, deceitful Democrats convinced Americans they’d suffered a tax increase.
How is it possible for Americans to get a double-digit tax rate cut and still think their taxes were increased?
Because with tax rates slashed, less money was taken out of each paycheck, and therefore tax refunds were smaller than the previous year. Americans kept more of their earnings but felt they were robbed.
And we can all thank withholding for that inverted view.
Now, with the 2020 presidential campaign in full swing, the clown car of Democrat candidates are all promising to repeal the Trump/GOP tax cuts, while simultaneously promising to pass budget-busting programs like “free” Medicare for All, “free” college, and “free” health care, as well as the Green New Deal, “affordable” housing, “free” child care, reparations for slavery, and a guaranteed basic income.
With the Green New Deal alone costing an estimated $93 trillion, spending-addicted Democrats absolutely must have high income-tax rates, and withholding allows them to take more and more of our earnings largely unnoticed.
That is a victory for progressive Democrats … for now. Because we all know what happened the last time the American people woke up and realized how heavily they were being taxed. ~The Patriot Post
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