TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~
The “Green New Deal” Is a Fiscal Fantasy
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Trump offers immigration compromise to end
partial shutdown; Dems cool to offer
by Adam Shaw
{foxnews.com} ~ President Trump, in a televised White House address Saturday, offered Democrats a compromise package on immigration... in an effort to end the nearly month long partial government shutdown -- although some prominent Democrats were dismissing the olive branch as a "non-starter" before Trump even spoke. Trump announced that he was prepared to back a three-year extension of protections for 700,000 immigrants who came to the country illegally as children and were shielded from deportation under the scumbag/liar-nObama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. This, in exchange for the $5.7 billion he has requested for a barrier on the southern border with Mexico. "Walls are not immoral," he said, adding that a wall "will save many lives and stop drugs from pouring into our country." "This is not a concrete structure from sea to sea," he said, addressing some previously expressed concerns about the so-called "wall." "These are steel barriers in high-priority locations."...dirty cop-Mueller's office pushes back on bombshell
allegations Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress
by Allison Elyse Gualtieri.
Pulosi’s Own House Maj. Leader Just Defied
Her About the Wall on National TV
by BEN MARQUIS
{westernjournal.com} ~ Throughout the still-ongoing partial government shutdown, Democratic Party leader and House Speaker Nancy Pulosi has adamantly refused to grant President Donald Trump’s request for border wall funding... Pulosi and others in her party have referred to the proposed border wall as being “immoral,” “racist” and wholly ineffective at stopping illicit cross-border traffic. However, while Pulosi may remain staunchly opposed to any sort of negotiations with Trump that would include the appropriation of taxpayer funds for border wall construction, there are signs that not everybody in her party may be quite as strong in their resistance against working with Trump on this issue. Reports had already begun to circulate in the past week that some members of the Democratic caucus were signaling an openness to granting Trump the requested funding in exchange for some unspecified liberal priority on immigration — such as a possible trade for legal status for enrollees of the scumbag/liar-nObama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program — if only to bring an end to the lengthy shutdown, and now it appears that even a top House Democrat has undermined Pulosi’s obstinate refusal to negotiate by contradicting her messaging. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer appeared on Fox News‘ “Special Report” with anchor Bret Baier on Wednesday, and proceeded to suggest that border walls were, in fact, not immoral or racist, and were actually quite effective in some locations, even contradicting himself in one instance. Following some dialogue about the dust-up between Pulosi and Trump over the State of the Union address scheduled for Jan. 29, as well as the stalled negotiations over the partial government shutdown, the conversation soon shifted to focus on the proposed border wall. After a few moments, Baier played a clip of Pulosi righteously intoning that a border wall was an “immorality,” but when pressed by Baier if he agreed with that characterization, Hoyer disagreed. Hoyer said, “Look, I don’t think this is an issue of morality, it’s an issue of does it work.” He then cited a few top Republicans who allegedly have said that walls don’t really work... https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/pelosis-house-maj-leader-just-defied-wall-national-tv/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=newsletter-CT&utm_campaign=dailypm&utm_content=conservative-tribune.
Trump’s Not Kidding When He Promises
‘Cutting-Edge’ Missile Defense
by Matthew Kroenig
{thefederalist.com} ~ Thursday at the Pentagon, President Trump released his administration’s long-awaited Missile Defense Review (MDR)... In his announcement, Trump promised “nothing less for our nation than the most effective, cutting-edge missile defense systems.” Indeed, the steps called for in this review will go a long way to toward employing new technologies to address next-generation threats and strengthening U.S. and allied security. The missile threats to the United States and its allies have significantly increased in recent years. North Korea may now be able to reach the continental United States with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile. Despite the curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran’s missile program continues to advance, making it the most sophisticated in the Middle East. Importantly, America’s great power competitors, Russia and China, may have an edge over the United States in developing next-generation hypersonic missiles—missiles that travel at more than five times the speed of sound and are maneuverable, allowing them to defeat legacy missile defense systems. Against this worsening security backdrop, missile defenses contribute to U.S. and allied security in three important ways. First, they can be used for defense in the event of conflict. We have seen U.S. Patriot missile defenses in action in the conflict in Yemen as Saudi Arabia has shot down dozens of Iranian-supplied Houthi missiles headed for Riyadh. Second, missile defenses contribute to deterrence, dissuading an adversary from launching an attack in the first place....
Special Counsel dirty cop-Mueller’s Office DEMOLISHES
BuzzFeed Claim that Trump Told Associate to Lie
by WARNER TODD HUSTON
{godfatherpolitics.com} ~ On Thursday funny cat pic site BuzzFeed published another one of its loosely sourced stories that the media unsurprisingly grabbed with gusto... This story claimed that President Trump had instructed his associate to lie to investigators. BuzzFeed reported that Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, told prosecutors working for Special Counsel dirty cop-Mueller that Trump had told him to lie to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign. Then, all day Friday the usual suspects on TV and in the media went on the attack against Trump saying that the BuzzFeed report was the “proof” that Democrats needed to impeach President Trump. Trump LIED to investigators, they claimed. But late on Friday, dirty cop-Mueller’s office put out a statement that totally destroyed BuzzFeed’s report... https://godfatherpolitics.com/special-counsel-muellers-office-demolishes-buzzfeed-lie-that-trump-told-associate-to-lie/.
Pulosi “Too Busy” to Meet
With Victims of Illegal Alien Violence
{restoreamericanglory.com} ~ The cold-hearted Speaker of the House was “too busy” to meet with a group of Angel Moms who camped out inside her Capitol Hill office on Tuesday... Though some of the Angel Moms – women who have lost children to the violence and crime of illegal aliens – traveled quite far to ask Nancy Pulosi to support building a wall across the U.S. border, the newly-minted Speaker had her staffers tell them that she didn’t have the time to do so. We can only imagine how busy she must be meeting with scumbag-Adam Schiff to discuss which phony investigation to throw at the Trump administration first. “At @SpeakerPulosi office asking for a meeting for Angel Families,” tweeted Julianne Thompson. “She was too busy to meet with them.” “It’s a slap, it’s a stab, it’s a kick in the gut, in the groin,” said Sabine Durden of Pulosi’s refusal to meet. “It’s not a matter of if you’re going to be affected by illegal alien crime, it’s when you are going to be affected,” insisted fellow Angel Mom Mary Ann Mendoza. In a Periscope video, Women for Trump organizer Amy Kremer said that Pulosi’s people went as far as to lie to the victims of violent crime, telling them that the Speaker was not in her office at the time... What is wrong with her. http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/breaking-news/pelosi-too-busy-to-meet-with-victims-of-illegal-alien-violence/
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The “Green New Deal” Is a Fiscal Fantasy
{city-journal.org} ~ Congresswoman commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—AOC, as she’s often now called—claims that her so-called Green New Deal will help end global warming and cure several societal ills. The effort, she concedes, will be expensive, but the dangers we face from climate change and other social problems warrant national mobilization, on the level of the Second World War. Paying for the plan, she suggested, might involve a dramatic hike in the top marginal income-tax rate—up to 70 percent. That figure shocked some, but not Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who considers it “reasonable.” Details remain vague, but some context on the AOC plan, and on the sleight of hand that Krugman uses to support it, is revealing.
So far, the only concrete step commie-Ocasio-Cortez describes to enact the Green New Deal is the formation of a House select committee to formulate specific goals. On the environmental side, these would include, among other things, expanding renewable-energy sources until they provide 100 percent of the nation’s power; building an energy-efficient “smart grid;” upgrading every residence and industrial building in the U.S. for energy efficiency, comfort, and safety; eliminating greenhouse-gas emissions for industry and agriculture; funding “massive” investments to draw down greenhouse-gas levels; and making the United States a leader in the use and export of green technology.
To these ambitious goals, commie-Ocasio-Cortez adds a long list of social objectives: providing training and education for the energy transition, including “job guarantees at a living wage for everyone who wants one”; diversifying the economies of regions dependent on fossil-fuel extraction; helping communities most affected by pollution; protecting the “sovereign rights of tribal nations”; mitigating racial, regional, and gender-based inequalities; developing universal health-care and income-support programs; and ensuring that organized labor has a major role in all these efforts.
Achieving even a small portion of this to-do list would have enormous costs. At last count, there were some 136 million housing units in the United States. Upgrading each unit to high standards of energy efficiency would cost, conservatively, at least $10,000 per home, adding up to a total cost of $1.3 trillion. Doing the same for industrial structures would easily exceed that amount. The single-payer health-care part would cost another $3 trillion or more, annually. Stabilizing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would add another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to the price tag—and all these still only account for three items on AOC’s list.
To be fair to commie-Ocasio-Cortez, she does not downplay the costs. She did, after all, draw a parallel to World War II. She has also acknowledged that a 70 percent marginal tax rate would increase annual federal receipts by only about $225 billion—far short of what would be needed. For the rest of the cost, she would rely on debt, “printing money,” and government willingness to take an equity stake in some of the enterprises involved.
AOC’s proposals to expand government ownership and take on more debt didn’t cause much of a media stir. What did get attention was her suggestion to raise taxes on the wealthy—in part because Krugman has taken up the fight on her behalf. Krugman argues that higher taxes hurt the rich less than they hurt the non-rich, that scholarship has shown that a high marginal rate is “optimal,” and that the U.S. economy has prospered in the past with a 70 percent top rate—and, in fact, in the 1950s and early 1960s, it thrived under an even higher (92 percent) maximum rate. Krugman’s point about relative levels of pain is irrefutable but also beside the point. Of course, the rich can cope better with a higher marginal tax rate—that’s why the United States has a progressive system. The more important issue is what such a high rate would do to work incentives and business expansion and innovation. Krugman denies that higher rates would have a negative impact, but several studies either differ with him or find the answer at least ambiguous.
On the question of an “optimal” tax rate, Krugman quotes two academic studies, one by Nobel laureate Peter Diamond with Emmanuel Saez and another by David Romer and his wife Christina, former head of President scumbag/liar-nObama’s Council of Economic Advisors. The first study puts the optimal tax rate at 73 percent; the Romers say 84 percent. What Krugman fails to mention is that neither figure takes account of state and local taxes. When Diamond and Saez include these taxes in their calculations, they adjust the optimal federal rate down to 48 percent—much closer to the present maximum rate of 37 percent. The Romers don’t offer that adjustment, and their work has other problems. It concentrates on the U.S. interwar period, when a statistically insignificant number of American taxpayers were in the highest tax bracket. The authors admit that this matter may introduce biases into their conclusions, as would the number of other shocks befalling the economy at the time, such as the Great Depression. Krugman fails to mention these points as well.
Krugman and AOC play fast and loose when it comes to the country’s prosperity under high tax rates. It’s true that the United States prospered with a top rate of 70 percent and higher in the mid-twentieth century. But the tax code then included loopholes that drastically reduced the amount of income subject to those rates. All the tax cuts since then have closed those loopholes. One can forgive commie-Ocasio-Cortez for missing the difference, as she has consistently shown economic and historical ignorance, but Krugman should know better.
In the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, for instance, when the 70 percent maximum rate prevailed, taxpayers could write off all state and local taxes, with no limit—including sales taxes, licensing fees, property taxes, and income taxes. They could also write off all interest expenses without limit—on their mortgages (no matter how many), all credit-card debt, auto loans, or home-improvement loans. Imagine the benefits to a plutocrat, buying a third home or a fifth Bentley. His tax would be calculated on net income, reduced by any fees, sales, or transfer tax, as well as all the interest expenses on the mortgages or auto loans over the years. The code included dividend exclusions and generous provisions for capital-gains preferences. Taxpayers back then could shelter unlimited amounts in IRAs. Social Security payouts were tax-free, no matter how high a person’s income. Individuals could write down their taxable income through averaging provisions and transfer as much income as they liked to their children, who paid at lower rates. There was no limit to rental-loss deduction. Business losses counted against all income.
Given these breaks and loopholes, it’s no surprise that few people actually paid those high rates on much of their income. The nonprofit Tax Foundation estimates that in the 1950s, for instance, when the top statutory rate was 92 percent, the top 1 percent of taxpayers wrote off so much income that their effective average federal tax rate was about 17 percent. If our highest earners today were offered the 2019 code or the old one, they might well go for the old rules, even at a 92 percent top rate.
Defending the proposed high marginal tax rate, Krugman displays a graph showing the top tax rate mapped against economic growth—growth being strongest when the top rate was highest. But perhaps that period of high growth was driven by the low effective tax rate on the wealthy during those years of ostensibly high statutory rates. This explanation is as plausible as any other, though Krugman does not discuss how much tax the wealthy actually paid in the 1950s. Nor does he concede that economic growth rates over the last 70 years may have been affected by anything besides the movement in the top statutory tax rate.
Perhaps all the stir over AOC and Krugman matters little. The Green New Deal has no evident support from House Speaker Nancy Pulosi, or even many Democrats. Media coverage, however, has made commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—and her innumerate economics—part of our national conversation.
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