There are some places of agreement between the House and Senate versions of the tax cut bill, but it is the areas of disagreement that could still sink the whole plan.
          The Republicans hold a vote margin in the Senate that leaves little room for error. Only if the GOP works in lock-step are they likely to have a shot at success. Their track record for 2017 has not indicated that this level of cohesion is likely.
          One of the voices of unity is actually Rand Paul. The man who helped sink the first liar-nObamaCare repeal bill because it didn’t go far enough is now calling for Republicans to get on board with the tax plan and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Paul supports the tax bill in large part because it repeals the individual mandate for which he fought. We’re glad he’s come around.
          In some ways, anything that promises to change the nation’s 74,000-page tax code sounds good. Everyone wants to pay lower taxes. However, it’s at moments like this when people actually start throwing out proposals that the backsliding and broken promises begin.
          Paul calls for unity, but other Republican senators have their own plans. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin opposed the House package from the start. He is holding out support in the Senate in exchange for changes to how pass-through entities are handled to help larger small businesses be competitive with corporations.
          RINO-Susan Collins of Maine wants to tinker with the widely agreed-upon 20% corporate tax rate (President Donald Trump claims he will not accept any rate higher than 20%). She wants to bump it up to 22% in order to keep at least a portion of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which she believes will help middle-class earners. The Senate plan calls for repealing SALT completely, a deduction that flows up the tax food chain, not to low or middle-class earners. The Tax Policy Center found “about 10% of tax filers with incomes less than $50,000 claimed the SALT deduction in 2014, compared with about 81% of tax filers with incomes exceeding $100,000.”
          Johnson and RINO-Collins are but two examples of the haggling that is going on right now in Washington. Bob Corker of Tennessee is another. Worried about the federal deficit, Corker reportedly worked out a deal “in principle” for a “trigger” that revokes some tax cuts if revenues dip too low. We have a better idea: How about spending triggers? Corker’s foolish pitch would not only fail to address the spending problem, it would remove the economic incentives provided by tax cuts because those cuts could be gone soon.
          The GOP leadership is desperately in need of a victory to close 2017. To what lengths they will go to achieve it is hard to say. Thanks to the convoluted tax code, virtually every promise made to one constituency cuts another constituency short. That’s not to mention the rules the Senate has made for itself regarding how to “pay for” a tax cut. This does not lead to a cohesive tax package.
          Or a particularly conservative one. For example, there’s the bubble tax proposal — a 6% surcharge for families making between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. After that, they are charged at the top rate of 39.6%. The idea is to earn back what upper income taxpayers save by paying a 12% marginal rate on earlier income. This puts their effective tax rate at 45.6%, or 49.4% if you consider the liar-nObamaCare individual mandate that remains in the House bill.
          Republicans should be embarrassed to be seriously considering a bubble tax bracket, a scheme that is all politics and no substance. In fact, many believe that it will come back to bite them in the future. The Reagan tax cuts of 1986 included a bubble tax bracket for much the same reason — to level out the amount wealthy taxpayers paid by charging more later based on what they saved earlier.
          The outcome, as noted by Investor’s Business Daily, was disastrous. Democrats railed against the supposed unfairness of the bubble tax, and then pushed for a tax increase that used the current bubble rate as a baseline for a top rate hike. That was in 1990, and tax hikes just got bigger and bolder for the next decade.
          There is no reason to think that Democrats won’t go the same route again. The CBO score on the tax package did not bring Republicans any good news. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Democrats immediately started using it as a cudgel to beat the supposedly heartless lackeys of the rich across the aisle. Whether it’s passed or not, Democrats’ rallying cry for the next elections will be to hit the GOP for tax cuts.
          But there’s hope. As The Wall Street Journal notes, “For all the drama, the real news is that the GOP is moving toward the most pro-growth tax reform in 30 years, developed in an open process under regular order. This is no time to go wobbly.”  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52650

by Thomas Gallatin:  On Monday, President Donald Trump botched a joke while honoring famed World War II veterans from the Native American Navajo Code Talkers at a White House ceremony. Trump, as he is wont to do, went ad lib, saying as he looked to the veterans, “And I just want to thank you because you’re very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’” Trump was referencing Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D-MA), who falsely claimed Native American ancestry to secure special treatment in her career at Harvard. dinky-Warren’s joke moniker among conservatives is actually “Fauxcahontas.”

          But it wasn’t the botched punch line that bothered the mainstream media. Trump calling dinky-Warren Pocahontas was somehow “racist.” Like dinky-Warren, the Leftmedia decided to make up a claim out of whole cloth — that the name “Pocahontas” was a racial slur. CNN even sanctimoniously lectured that “Pocahontas was a historical figure from the 17th Century and using her name in an intentionally disparaging way insults native peoples and degrades their cultures.” CNN then pivoted and sought to excuse dinky-Warren’s false claims, reporting, “dinky-Warren says she is, in fact, part Native American, citing ‘family stories’ passed down through generations of her family.” Well then…
          Attempting to whip up more “evidence” for its “Trump is a racist” narrative, the Leftmedia hammered White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over Trump’s use of this “racial slur” — which just happened to be how dinky-Warren herself framed it. Sanders appropriately and pointedly responded, “I think that’s a ridiculous response. … Look, I think that Senator dinky-Warren was very offensive when she lied about something specifically to advance her career. I don’t understand why no one is asking about that question and why that isn’t constantly covered.” Good question. Why isn’t the MSM all over dinky-Warren for her racist “sin” of “cultural appropriation”?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52618

by Business Review Board:  In a little-noticed court decision Monday, King County Superior Court Judge John Ruhl ruled that Seattle’s recent income tax is illegal. We argued it was back in July, so we’re glad Ruhl came to the right conclusion.

          “Today’s ruling is a victory for all taxpayers in Seattle and throughout the state, and for everyone who values the rule of law,” said Brian Hodges, an attorney with Pacific Legal Foundation, on behalf of the Seattle residents challenging the tax. “The court performed a service for all taxpayers, and all property owners, by defeating the city’s strategy to undermine their rights.”
          As we noted in July, Seattle has hiked its minimum wage, hurting low-income workers by reducing jobs and hours. The city likewise wanted to specifically target wealthier people with a 2.25% tax only on people earning more than $240,000, or $500,000 for couples, annually. Of course, the legal challenge was inevitable. Washington state is one of seven states without an income tax, and state law prohibits cities from levying one — especially one that’s “uneven.” Seattle’s tax was in essence a bill of attainder (outlawed in Article I, Section 9) specifically targeting one group of citizens for the “crime” of earning more money than other people.
          The city resorted to some creative rationale to defend the tax. That included arguing it wasn’t an income tax but an “excise tax,” despite the first sentence of the city ordinance calling it … an income tax. But Ruhl wasn’t fooled. “The City’s tax, which is labeled ‘Income Tax,’ is exactly that,” he wrote. “It cannot be restyled as an ‘excise tax’ on the alternate ‘privileges’ of receiving revenue in Seattle or choosing to live in Seattle.”
          We’ll see if the same wisdom wins the day if and when the city appeals to the Washington Supreme Court.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52629

by Nate Jackson:  “Veritas vos Liberabit” — the truth will set you free — has been The Patriot Post’s motto since our inception in 1996. A well-funded group called Project Veritas uses the same Latin word to describe its efforts to expose leftist hypocrisy, bias and lies. Unfortunately, that group failed to live up to its name this week.

          First, some background. Project Veritas’ founder, James O'Keefe, has made a living with undercover “sting” videos. His first claim to fame was cracking the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) in a series of videos revealing that ACORN would help certain patrons skirt the law. ACORN soon lost government funding and went defunct. O'Keefe, however, learned some of the wrong lessons. It wasn’t long before he was arrested for a stunt involving Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu. His shenanigans continued, even if sometimes with rewarding “gotcha” videos against the Left.
          O'Keefe’s latest adventure saw him trying to take down The Washington Post for its politically timed hit job on Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. O'Keefe used a woman to try to plant a false story with the Post so as to discredit the paper’s other reporting. “In a series of interviews over two weeks,” the Post reported, “the woman shared a dramatic story about an alleged sexual relationship with Moore in 1992 that led to an abortion when she was 15.” The Post was already on guard for such attempts to undermine its credibility, however, and easily sniffed out the “inconsistencies in her story.” The game was up when the Post’s reporters saw her entering the offices of Project Veritas.
          O'Keefe’s ill-conceived sting actually makes the Post more credible. Unlike the affair with Rolling Stone, the problem with the Post’s stories on Moore wasn’t the credibility of the paper’s reporting or the accounts of Moore’s accusers — which are largely believable and which the candidate has yet to convincingly deny. The problem with the Post’s blockbuster scoop was the timing. We strongly suspect the Post sat on the story, waiting to release its report until after Moore won the GOP Senate primary. O'Keefe’s attempt to discredit the Post and Moore’s accusers, all while theoretically getting Moore off the hook, doesn’t address the real issue.
          In fact, conservatives shouldn’t mistake the Post’s bias for a lack of professionalism. There’s a reason why the Post is one of the nation’s leading newspapers — its reporters are good at what they do. That’s true even if the paper is a propaganda outlet for the Democrat Party, courtesy of its owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos.  
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52619

          On Tuesday, the House Judiciary is scheduled to consider the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017. Most concealed carry permit holders have long awaited Congress to make a move on this legislation because each state currently has its own standards for issuing conceal carry permits. Some states have much stricter standards than others, and the result has been confusion and misinterpretation of each state’s existing law. Not to mention there have been numerous cases of people traveling through a state while carrying concealed only to be pulled over for routine traffic stops resulting in trouble over the gun.
          The current House Bill would allow travelers to cross state lines with valid conceal carry permits, even if it meant traveling from a state with lax standards to one with strict standards. It would also allow individuals who reside in “permitless carry” states to carry a firearm throughout the country with no permit at all and it would require states to allow their own residents to carry guns with “non-resident permits” that they obtained from another state.
          There are some who would argue that the federal government is overreaching if it passes this legislation, as it would basically make existing state laws on who can carry a concealed firearm null and void. But the counterargument to this is that the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified and agreed to by the states, already protects the individual right to keep and bear arms. So a state law should not supersede what the Constitution protects. In some sense, if a citizen has the right to keep and bear arms, then why is a “permit” or “permission” from the government lawful or necessary in the first place?
          Now for some bad news. Yesterday, the Supreme Court declined to hear two separate cases from firearms advocates, choosing instead to stay out of the intensifying gun debate. The Justices didn’t even comment on the two separate appeals cases, Kolbe v. Hogan in Maryland and Norman v. Florida.
          In Florida, a lower court ruled that no citizen has the right to openly carry a firearm outside their home unless it is concealed. In 2012, Dale Lee Norman was arrested for walking on a sidewalk with a handgun openly in his holster. In Florida, as in South Carolina and Illinois, in order to legally carry a firearm outside of one’s home, it is supposed to be concealed.
          In the Maryland case, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the state’s ban on so-called “assault weapons,” such as the popular AR-15, ruling that these particular guns are not protected by the Second Amendment. The court’s ruling also upheld the ban on detachable ammunition magazines that exceed 10 rounds, a ridiculously low number that includes standard-capacity magazines on numerous firearms.
          It was widely speculated that the court would take on the Fourth Circuit’s decision because the Second, Seventh and DC Circuits have issued similar rulings upholding bans on semi-automatic rifles with certain cosmetic features. But to the dismay of many, the High Court wanted no part of another gun case, leaving in place the lower court rulings. For whatever reason, even Justice Clarence Thomas, who has been very vocal in supporting the Second Amendment, had nothing to say.
          As bad as the Supreme Court’s inaction on the Fourth Circuit decision is, at least we’re not facing what British subjects are — at least not yet.
          In the United Kingdom, the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) recently conducted a new gun surrender program. The reason for this was that NABIS, after reviewing its crime data, saw a 27% increase in “gun crimes” the past year.
          The program is designed to give people the opportunity who have guns and ammunition that they don’t want any more or who happen to possess illegal firearms the ability to turn them over to the UK government with no repercussions. David Jamieson, police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands area, urged citizens to turn over their guns and their family members’ guns. In a statement, he said, “I would urge people to hand in their guns. Any firearm in the wrong hands can have a devastating impact. It is no exaggeration to say that each gun we retrieve has the potential to save a life. If you or a family member possess an illegal or unwanted firearm please hand it in to the police. It might just be the best decision you ever make. Destroying these firearms will make us all safer.”
          Well, at least criminals will be safer. If this program was so effective and produced so many positive results, then why was the same program tried three years earlier followed by an increase in “gun crimes”? It should be noted that Great Britain already has some of the strictest gun laws on the planet, but for gun control freaks, it’s never enough. Yet leftists in our own country tell us that gun confiscation is not something we the people need to worry about when they try to pass more control laws? Tell that to the citizens in the UK.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52621

by Lee Crockett:  “Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But the Marines don’t have that problem.” —Ronald Reagan

         Col. Wesley Lee Fox (USMC Ret.), Medal of Honor recipient for actions in Vietnam, drew his last breath Saturday at age 86. He was born in Herndon, Virginia, in 1931 and died in Blacksburg, Virginia.
          Fox was a Mustang officer, having enlisted in the Marines during the Korean War, then rising through the enlisted and officer ranks to retire as a Colonel after 43 years of service to our nation. He was wounded in Korea but, after recovering, he returned to Korea as a platoon sergeant. After the war, he became a drill instructor, and, after making First Sergeant rank, he completed Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.
          Serving then in Vietnam, on Feb. 22, 1969, during Operation Dewey Canyon, though wounded twice, he refused treatment and led his company against intense enemy fire until the enemy retreated. We invite you to read his Medal of Honor citation.
          On retirement, he became Deputy Commandant of Cadets for the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets in Blacksburg. From there, he devoted much of his time to inspiring the current generation of Patriots in uniform. One of his last speaking engagements was keynote for the Medal of Honor Heritage Center here in Chattanooga.
          He authored three outstanding books on Marine leadership: Marine Rifleman, Six Essential Elements of Leadership and Courage and Fear, a Primer.
          Col. Fox was and will always be, a Marine’s Marine — a legendary warrior. Fair winds and following seas, Sir. Semper Fidelis.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52598 

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by Jordan Candler:  There are plenty of double standards that blemish the Left, and the issue of illegal immigration is one of them. The most recent example comes via The Boston Globe’s Katie Johnston in a piece titled, “For low-wage workers, many obstacles to reporting sexual harassment.” The term “low-wage workers” is ambiguous and interchangeable, as we discover in the content of the piece. Johnston writes:
          The flood of sexual misconduct allegations in recent weeks has come largely from women in white-collar professions, but the problem is thought to be much more prevalent, and hidden, among low-wage workers. These women can’t afford to lose their jobs. Often they don’t speak English and don’t know the procedure for reporting abuse. Undocumented immigrants fear that if they confront their harassers, they will report the workers to immigration authorities. Under the Trump administration, advocates say, these workers have become even more fearful of speaking up. And when they do, even more obstacles await.

          For the record, “undocumented immigrants” is a leftist misnomer for “illegal aliens.” There is absolutely no excuse for sexually harassing anyone, regardless of whether or not that person is here legally. But there’s also no excuse for what The Boston Globe is doing — spinning these assaults on illegals as a reason to … further loosen immigration policies. In truth, this is largely the problem, as Hot Air blogger Jazz Shaw explains:
          These women wouldn’t be in such a perilous predicament if we didn’t still have so many American employers knowingly hiring illegal aliens without fear of serious reprisal. Illegal immigration isn’t just a threat to national security and a persistent, open wound in the rule of law. It’s also feeding a pipeline of potential victims into the waiting arms of serial sexual abusers. And if you’re the type of person with so little respect for our nation’s laws that you would regularly hire illegals, is it such a stretch of the imagination to think that you’d be willing to turn some of them into your personal sex slaves as a bonus?
          Last month, a 17-year-old illegal immigrant was given permission to abort her baby. The Left rejoiced at the court-sanctioned abortion, which in terms of immigration policy put America in uncharted (and unconstitutional) territory. But here’s what The Washington Times reported just after the abortion: “The illegal immigrant teenager who was the subject of a major abortion fight last month is now seeking mental health treatment.” The Left promotes illegal immigration, but with it often comes pain, suffering and regret. In other words: Illegals can avoid being victimized merely by rejecting the Left’s invitation to unlawfully enter the U.S. in the first place.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52617

by Thomas Gallatin:  On Monday, President Donald Trump botched a joke while honoring famed World War II veterans from the Native American Navajo Code Talkers at a White House ceremony. Trump, as he is wont to do, went ad lib, saying as he looked to the veterans, “And I just want to thank you because you’re very, very special people. You were here long before any of us were here, although we have a representative in Congress who, they say, was here a long time ago. They call her ‘Pocahontas.’” Trump was referencing Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren (D-MA), who falsely claimed Native American ancestry to secure special treatment in her career at Harvard. dinky-Warren’s joke moniker among conservatives is actually “Fauxcahontas.”

          But it wasn’t the botched punch line that bothered the mainstream media. Trump calling dinky-Warren Pocahontas was somehow “racist.” Like dinky-Warren, the Leftmedia decided to make up a claim out of whole cloth — that the name “Pocahontas” was a racial slur. CNN even sanctimoniously lectured that “Pocahontas was a historical figure from the 17th Century and using her name in an intentionally disparaging way insults native peoples and degrades their cultures.” CNN then pivoted and sought to excuse dinky-Warren’s false claims, reporting, “dinky-Warren says she is, in fact, part Native American, citing ‘family stories’ passed down through generations of her family.” Well then…
          Attempting to whip up more “evidence” for its “Trump is a racist” narrative, the Leftmedia hammered White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders over Trump’s use of this “racial slur” — which just happened to be how dinky-Warren herself framed it. Sanders appropriately and pointedly responded, “I think that’s a ridiculous response. … Look, I think that Senator dinky-Warren was very offensive when she lied about something specifically to advance her career. I don’t understand why no one is asking about that question and why that isn’t constantly covered.” Good question. Why isn’t the MSM all over dinky-Warren for her racist “sin” of “cultural appropriation”?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52618

by Jordan Candler:  In an op-ed this past weekend, the American Enterprise Institute’s Hoff Sommers warns, “We’re at imminent risk of turning this #metoo moment into a frenzied rush to blame all men.” Sexual assault is a serious problem, no doubt, but the danger, Sommers explains, is that needless panic and a refusal to recognize the facts — like a General Social Survey which found that the percentage of women who claim to have been sexually harassed is actually down from 2002 — “could ruin this #metoo moment.”

          Indeed, the #metoo movement unfairly disparages most men by methodically labeling them as molesters and predators. Not only is this untrue, it also risks covering up the good deed of guys like Johnny Bobbit Jr. The Marine motto is Semper Fidelis, which means “always faithful.” And this homeless ex-Marine in Philadelphia showed what it’s like to be always faithful when recently he sacrificed the precious little he had to ensure a woman named Kate McClure made it home safely. Here’s how McClure described the situation:
          Driving into Philly one night, I made the mistake of thinking that I would be able to make it all the way down I-95 with my gas light on. Needless to say, I was wrong. I never ran out of gas before, and my heart was beating out of my chest. I pulled over as far as I could, and got out of the car to head to the nearest gas station. That’s when I met Johnny. Johnny sits on the side of the road every day, holding a sign. He saw me pull over and knew something was wrong. He told me to get back in the car and lock the doors. A few minutes later, he comes back with a red gas can. Using his last 20 dollars to make sure I could get home safe. [Emphasis hers].
          Bobbit’s benevolence was rewarded more than he could ever imagine. Afterward, McClure organized a Go Fund Me campaign both to express gratitude and to extend a helping hand. The $10,000 she hoped to raise would have been impressive enough, but as of this writing, 13,545 people had contributed a whopping $380,452. The moral of the story? Not all men are boorish louts. In fact, some are willing to sacrifice every tangible thing they possess. Interestingly, it often comes from people who have the least. As Hoff Sommers points out, “Most of the sensational harassment cases in the media involved high-profile men working in unusual environments with little or no accountability. That suggests they are atypical.”
          Bobbit is the personification of a real gentlemen. It goes without saying that you reap what you sow. And when you sow altruism, the rewards are literally off-the-charts good.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52604