by Robin Smith:  “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it,” said President Ronald Reagan. As we see how this fact applies to the GOP tax reform proposal and unpack a bit of the information of the plan that’s still very much under construction, we must agree upon what a tax is to honestly deal with the issue.

          Merriam-Webster notes that a tax is “a charge usually of money imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes.” Investopedia defines a tax as “an involuntary fee levied on individuals or corporations that is enforced by a government entity, whether local, regional or national in order to finance government activities.”
          Items taxed by the federal government — those only relevant to the tax plan being proposed — are predominantly personal income by workers identified by our government as legal citizens, or income as a result of the sale of a product or service through a business or corporation. Fees are also a type of tax collected on transactions or products that may generate a cost to the government through a license, the need for oversight or regulatory action.
          In 2016, the U.S. Treasury collected $3.3 trillion in federal taxes. Of those collections, 47% came from personal income taxes, 37% from Social Security taxes, 11% in corporate taxes, 3% for excise taxes that apply to the purchase of certain products and 1% each for both taxes collected on estates at death and custom duties from international trade.
          It’s pretty obvious that our government spends off the backs off workers, not the poor as alleged by the Left. Sadly, that also means that it’s through the mandatory confiscation of wealth from those who produce that government programs are funded. But, now, what about that Reagan quote? Do we really want less work and less productivity?
          So, what does the GOP tax plan mean, not just to Wall Street, but average workers of the middle class on Main Street, that rely on mortgage deductions and charitable giving write-offs? Is there truly a working-class benefit, as claimed by Republicans?
          In proposing to take seven tax brackets and simplify the system to only four, it does make tax preparation easier, but in examining these tax brackets, the lower two stratifications seem to enjoy real tax relief. Those individual workers making up to $200,000 annually will be in the second lowest bracket of 25% along with those married filers reporting up to $260,000 in income. In the lowest tax bracket of 15%, individuals reporting $45,000 annual income and married filers up to $90,000. These bracket reforms coupled with the doubling of the individual and married standard deductions benefit the working class.
          Even The Washington Post awarded four Pinocchios to Senate Democrats’ fearmongering that the working class would be hit with a tax increase. In their analysis, they note that “you will see that every quintile on average receives a tax cut — not a tax increase.”
          But a system reformed means a system changed. While many have grown to enjoy certain deductions, the GOP plan does include significant changes regarding a couple of very traditional write-offs. The charitable contribution write-off remains unchanged from current law. Those giving to qualified charities and churches will see no change in that reporting — save only that the increased standard deduction means fewer people will itemize their charitable contributions.
          The loudest opponents’ challenge seems to originate from the real estate and mortgage industries. The current deduction of the interest on the first $1 million borrowed for a home is set to be capped at $500,000 for new home purchases and has been completely eliminated for any other homes that are not primary residences. A second point of opposition is the cap of deducting property taxes leveled by one’s state and local government.
          The talking points to dispute these changes are that capping the mortgage interest deduction destroys the American Dream of owning a home. That’s especially true, critics say, with the cost of homes being so high in some regions.
          Yet according to Forbes, “What the Republican Tax Bill Means for the Value of Your Home,” the median price of an American home sold today is $245,000, falling well within the capped limit of $500,000. Again, The Washington Post breaks out some real reporting citing an August 2017 report by United for Homes. Only 6% of new mortgages are valued over $500,000 with an accurate statement that “the rhetoric about middle-class families is largely at odds with the reality of who actually owns half-million-dollar homes in the U.S.
          Addressing the capped deduction for property taxes at $10,000, the data supports that the average family who itemizes their tax returns will be untouched by this change. According to USA Today, "each of the country’s 84 million single-family homeowners paid an average of $3,296 in property taxes.”
          Be advised that those yelping the loudest on this last change find themselves in the bluest of blue states. Residents of New Jersey have the highest average of $8,477 paid annually in property taxes, with New York at $7,013 and Connecticut at $6,963. The moral to this story is that big blue governments have depended on the ability to increase property taxes knowing the federal government would permit a deduction. Those raising property taxes will now need to think again to appreciate they hold more accountability to voters who produce within their states.
          The facts are indisputable, despite the best efforts of the Left whose only tools are protest and fear. If you pay taxes, you’ll likely get a tax cut. If you make more than $1 million, you may not get as large a tax cut, and, because of closing tax loopholes, you may actually pay more overall. But are the Democrats satisfied? NO!
          Why? Their argument comes from their claim that the total sum of workers’ earnings set to be confiscated for the Treasury in the form of taxes and the poor will foot the bill. Let’s return to Reagan.
          First of all, if you don’t pay taxes — the poor — you’re not paying for anything. Tax cuts are for those who pay taxes.
          Further, with the Reagan tax cuts in the 1980s following the Carter economy, the economy doubled, growing at an average of 3.5%, which confounded those who claimed the U.S. Treasury would have revenues depleted. Incoming monies to the Treasury actually doubled due to the economic upturn and expansion.
          Let’s agree that it’s a good thing for the government to have less money to spend. Let’s also agree that taxing the productivity of Americans less is a very good thing. And we must agree, too, that it doesn’t matter what Republicans do, the Left will never approve tax cuts in fear of losing power over the dependents upon subsidized living. Do we want more of that?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52251

          Refuse Fascism’s call to action continues, “You cannot try to ‘wait things out.’ Those who lived through Nazi Germany and sat on the sidelines, looking on as Hitler demonized, criminalized and eventually rounded up one group after another, became shameful collaborators with monstrous crimes.” Who exactly are the ones advocating for violence against those whose speech they disagree with? Trump is no more a Nazi than antifa is pro-free speech.
          One of the group’s organizers posted on Facebook (by the way, if Facebook is serious about combatting “fake news,” it may want to look into eliminating this type of absurd vitriol from its site), “Show this damn Trump and Pence regime that they do not rule over us. Let us stand together, come together and fight this regime on November fourth.” Andy Zee, a member of Refuse Fascism’s advisory board, cites communist propaganda titled “The Coming Civil War” by Bob Avakian, the chairman of the group Revolutionary Communist Party, while Zee demands that “the whole regime [Trump and Pence] must go.”
          So, Americans across the nation may need to brace for an antifa temper tantrum, as these delusional, misguided and supremely stupid neo-fascist thugs stomp and scream and break things while they pathetically claim to fight for “justice.”  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52240

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5634845661001

http://video.foxnews.com/v/5633821986001

by Nate Jackson:  How fixed was the FBI investigation into liar-Hillary Clinton’s email servers? Where to begin? We’ve recounted former FBI Director James Comey’s role many times. But he wasn’t the only one perhaps steering the probe away from charging liar-Clinton.

          As our Louis DeBroux wrote last month, “Tangles upon tangles, we note that the investigation was supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an liar-nObama appointee currently serving as Trump’s deputy AG, as well as Andrew McCabe, who served as assistant FBI director under liar-nObama, and today as Trump’s deputy FBI director. This is the same McCabe who is under investigation for a $675,000 donation given to his wife, a Virginia state senate candidate in 2016, by Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, former DNC Chair and prolific fundraiser for the liar-Clintons, also now under investigation by the FBI.” That $675,000 amounted to about 40% of her campaign war chest.
          Judicial Watch, the tireless watchdog group that penetrates the vaults of government secrecy, revealed Friday, “We uncovered Justice Department records showing that McCabe did not recuse himself from the investigation into former Secretary of State liar-Hillary Clinton’s unsecure, non-government email server until Tuesday, November 1, 2016, just one week prior to the presidential election!”
          McCabe was acting FBI Director for a time after Donald Trump fired Comey. But don’t worry; he was totally impartial.
          Meanwhile, The Hill reports, “The FBI has begun turning over to Senate investigators hundreds of pages of memos regarding the bureau’s probe into liar-Hillary Clinton’s private email server. … The memos detail how and when the bureau’s leadership declined to pursue criminal charges against liar-Clinton for transmitting classified information on her private email server.”
          With all of this stonewalling and politicizing, is it any wonder that Trump would tweet his disappointment in the FBI?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52253

by Michael Swartz:  Moving like greased lightning — at least by congressional standards — House Republicans yesterday released the tax plan that President Donald Trump wanted to call the “Cut Cut Cut Act.” Perhaps that’s just good branding, but after lawmakers backed off a proposal to restrict contributions to 401(k) plans at Trump’s behest and kept many of the cherished ideas that he campaigned on last year, it might make sense to use his pet name. Granted, certain sectors of taxpayers may pay a little bit more, but that name’s offense to the language would pale in comparison to that of the Affordable Care Act.

          While what the House is calling (more sedately) the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did away with the proposed additional tolls on retirement accounts, there are still a number of features sure to raise the ire of specific groups. For one, the reviled top tax rate of 39.6% is unchanged, although the threshold to reach it is increased significantly for married couples — $1 million in annual income. By that same token, there are certain income levels and situations where the tax rate will increase, hitting the extremely poor and upper-middle class in strange ways.
          The proposed rates are 12%, 25%, 35% and 39.6% — four rates instead of the current seven.
          In addition, home builders and realtors hate the bill because it caps the mortgage deduction to loans of $500,000 or less and eliminates the deduction for a second home. The proposal is “a direct assault on the American Dream of home ownership,” complained National Association of Home Builders chief executive Jerry Howard. A compromise to allow up to a $10,000 deduction for property taxes, while effective for most of the nation, wasn’t the restoration of full deductibility of state and local taxes that Republicans who represent high-tax states wanted to preserve.
          Overall, Speaker Paul Ryan is right to tout the plan as one “for the families who are out there living paycheck to paycheck who just keep getting squeezed.” With increases in the amount and scope of the standard deduction (up to $12,000 for individual filers and $24,000 for married couples) and child care credit (up to $1,600 from $1,000) — albeit at the loss of the individual exemption and certain deductions — families may find they benefit greatly. House Ways and Means Committee chair Rep. Kevin Brady termed the package “the beginning of the end of this horrible tax code in America.” Indeed, it’ll make tax time less onerous for most taxpayers.
          The Daily Signal reports, “We estimate that doubling the standard deduction would roughly cut the percentage of taxpayers who itemize their deductions in half — from 30 percent to 15.5 percent — saving about 22 million taxpayers from the headache of keeping track of all their itemized deductions.”
          The bill also has some sweeteners for business owners. Corporate tax rates would plummet from 35% to 20%, while small business owners who earn what’s known as pass-through income would also see a rate decrease to 25% — although for them the devil is in the details. Those who wish to pass on their businesses to their heirs get some immediate help, as the asset exemption from the estate tax would double to over $11 million. But this is another compromise, as the “death tax” would remain on life support through at least 2024.
          Needless to say, Democrats and their media allies are already running hard against the bill. “This bill is like a dead fish — the more it’s in sunlight, the more it stinks,” Sen. Chuck clown-Schumer panned.
          Others are complaining for the oddest of reasons: “The tax reform proposal unveiled today does not … reflect the goals President Trump and I have discussed over the last several months,” claimed West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin. “It puts investors ahead of workers, raises rates on the small businesses who create most of our jobs, and dramatically increases our national debt.” Never mind his inaccurate claims — since when were Democrats concerned about the national debt?
          It’s quite likely the (up to) $1.5 trillion in additional deficits over the next decade would be largely made up for in additional tax revenue based on increased economic activity, just like that which occurred in the 1980s.
          President Trump set the ambitious goal of wrapping up tax reform by the holidays, touting the “big, beautiful Christmas present in the form of a tremendous tax cut, which will be the biggest cut in the history of our country. It will also be tax reform and it’ll create jobs.” That “biggest in history” line is typical Trump overstatement, and “Christmas present” may be overpromising. So far his track record on legislation has been subpar due to GOP defections in the Senate, where they haven’t created a tax cut bill yet. A bill that already has hurdles aplenty in the House may face a more difficult road in the Senate by the time RINO-John McCain, RINO-Susan Collins, RINO-Lisa Murkowski and the other usual suspects get through with it.
          For this bill to be a success to us regular folks, though, it has to do away with many thousands of pages in our nation’s abominable tax code. Simply moving brackets around and removing a few deductions won’t get that done.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52

by Thomas Gallatin:  In what many are describing as a “bombshell” revelation, Donna Brazile, former interim head of the Democratic National Committee, has admitted what we actually knew last July — that the DNC rigged the nomination processes to ensure that liar-Hillary Clinton defeated upstart Bernie Sanders. Brazile wrote in a Politico article Thursday, “I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether  liar-Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process. … By Sept. 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.”

          Democrat darling and favorite American Indian Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren also said she believes the nomination was rigged: “Yes, I think it was. What we have to focus on now as Democrats is, we recognize the process was rigged.” She continued, “And now it is up to Democrats to build a new process, a process that really works and works for everyone.”
          Hold on a minute. Haven’t Democrats and the Left been screaming and moaning for the past year that the election was stolen from liar-Hillary? America has endured months of Demo/MSM insistence of a phony Trump/Russia collusion conspiracy that supposedly swung the election to Donald Trump. And then there’s the oft-repeated refrain that liar-Hillary  deserved to be president because she won the popular vote, followed by calls to abolish the electoral college. Over and over again, the message has been how unfair the system was toward liar-Hillary and that Trump needs to be resisted with the goal of eventually impeaching him.
         Now, suddenly Democrats are turning on liar-Clinton. To borrow a phrase from a certain book title, what happened? It’s certainly not new news that the DNC rigged the nomination process to ensure liar-Clinton was the nominee. Again, we’ve known this for well over a year. It’s the reason that former DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign. So after 25 years of liar-Clinton corruption, why are Democrats only now throwing  liar-Hillary under the bus?
          First, the corruption waters surrounding liar-Hillary are getting too hot for comfort. We learned last week that the liar-Clinton campaign paid for the infamous dossier that started the whole Russia collusion narrative. And it was revealed just yesterday that Team liar-Hillary paid $168,000 to produce it. Like we have been saying for months, the Mueller investigation may turn against Democrats. And if they don’t have “Trump colluded with Russia” to assuage their Trump Derangement Syndrome, they’ve got nothing.
          Second, after 18 months of trashing Trump, the Democrat Party’s approval rating is no better than his, which doesn’t bode well for its mid-term election hopes. Democrats are seen by an increasing number of Americans as a party of the extreme Left and not the mainstream.
          So, it appears that since liar-Clinton not only lost the election but blew up the narrative of how she was cheated out of it, Democrats are no longer willing to put up with her lying and corruption.
          On an interesting and yet not surprising side note, the big three major news networks didn’t even bother to cover Brazile’s accusation in their newscasts last night. Heads in the sand?  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52230

by Brian Mark Weber:  Another day, another opioid death. We’re losing brothers, sisters, children, friends and co-workers at an alarming rate. The numbers are shocking enough that President Donald Trump recently declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency.” Yet politicians have been talking about drugs for decades without any results. So what makes the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis any different?

          The commission, led by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, came up with 56 recommendations, one of which calls for the establishment of drug courts in all federal judicial districts. For those worried about the failed “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” approach, these new courts will emphasize treatment rather than prison sentences. And for those concerned that we’re getting too soft when it comes to opioid distributors and dealers, some states and localities are going after them with charges of murder.
          Other changes proposed by the commission include streamlining the process whereby states can access federal funding, making it easier for first-responders to use naloxone to reverse the effects of opioids (although this is controversial due to the false security it offers), establishing a nationwide media campaign, and creating programs in schools to identify at-risk youth. All of these steps are critical and necessary, but no government program and no amount of funding is going to wipe out the scourge of drug addiction alone.
          The Washington Free Beacon, noting a new report from Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), reports, “Education and marriage are key predictors of opioid abuse. One third of Americans over 25 had at least a bachelor’s degree and that group accounted for only 9 percent of all opioid overdose deaths, according to the report. Forty percent had a high school degree or less, yet represented 68 percent of opioid overdose deaths. The remaining 23 percent of opioid deaths are attributable to the 27 percent of the population with only 'some’ college education.” It’s pretty hard to argue against the numbers on this one.
          But education alone is only one factor. Another is the American family. Leftists hate to hear about this one, but the data increasingly show that the disintegration of families has had far-reaching, negative impacts on our society. Drug addiction is no different.
          The Free Beacon goes on to say, “The division among Americans is also pronounced when comparing married/widowed Americans to their single or divorced peers. Sixty-eight percent of Americans over 25 were married or widowed in 2015, and accounted for only 28 percent of opioid overdose deaths. By contrast, never-married and divorced Americans over 25 are 32 percent of the population, but account for 71 percent of all opioid overdose deaths. In other words, the opioid epidemic hits disproportionately those without access to education or marriage.”
          Repairing or rebuilding the American family will have a noticeable, positive impact on drug abuse and other ills that plague our society. Yet strong families alone will not wipe out this epidemic. Among the thousands who died in recent years due to opioids, many were young men and women who were part of loving, stable families. Children may well be raised in supportive homes, but the lure of these drugs is both deadly and powerful. Still, we must address one of the root causes of so many problems we face: the breakdown of the family.
          David French writes in National Review, “Though an intact family isn’t a foolproof shield against hopelessness, despair, and addiction, it’s still a shield. Do we want to combat the opioid crisis? If so, let’s start in the home. Let’s start with a mom and dad who love each other and stay together — through good times and bad. Let’s start with a culture that celebrates marriage and a community that encourages fidelity. Let’s treat addicts, yes, but let’s not forget that while there’s no way to inoculate any person against addiction, a life of faith, hope, and love is a good start.”
          French raises another interesting point here, and that’s the way we think of addicts in our society. Many assume that addicts are deserving of their condition and that what we really need is to ramp up the drug war. But people addicted to hard drugs are concerned with getting another fix, not whether they’ll sit behind bars. It’s simply not a deterrent, at least not for users.
          In some cases, addicts know that going to jail is the only way they’ll break the cycle of addiction, albeit temporarily. In at least one state, jails are now being considered as potential treatment centers. With tens of thousands of opioid deaths on the horizon for 2018, we can’t afford to categorically dismiss new ideas.
          But sometimes the answers are right in front of our eyes, and we’ve witnessed a precipitous increase in drug abuse (and other social problems) as the number of two-parent families has declined. Mark Alexander  reminds us of “a hard truth for men who have abandoned their families, but a harder truth for their children: Most social problems — crime, drug abuse, unwed pregnancy and abortion, youth suicide, school dropouts and the like — are the direct consequence of fatherless households.”
          So we should embrace President Trump’s latest proclamation about opioids and welcome many of the recommendations made by the commission. What a president says does matter in terms of starting a national conversation, but conversations in the home are even more critical than a national decree or government program. Simply put, a child reared in a loving, supportive home has a better shot than a kid coming from a broken home.
          For too long we’ve looked to the government to solve our problems, while the family unit has fallen into tatters. The essential foundation of our society is cracking, but we keep hoping that politicians will fix what ails us. In some cases, we can plod forward and afford to wait. But the opioid epidemic is sweeping across the country and taking thousands of lives in the process.  This time the price is too high.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52228

by Thomas Gallatin:  “Diversity lottery. Sounds nice. It’s not nice. It’s not good. It hasn’t been good. We’ve been against it,” Donald Trump stated. “We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct,” he continued. On Wednesday, Trump singled out Senate Minority Leader Chuck clown-Schumer (D-NY) for his role in propping up the State Department program known as the Diversity Visa Lottery, which allowed the New York City terrorist to enter the country seven years ago. Trump tweeted, “We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter).”

          Also on Wednesday, several senators took up Trump’s call to end the Diversity Visa Lottery, created in 1990. “We ought to be more focused and more merit-oriented when it comes to our immigration program. There’s always going to have to be a combination of family-based immigration, but we also ought to reward people who we want to see come to this country and help us grow our economy,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) stated. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) echoed his comments, saying, “Count me in for wanting to eliminate the lottery system for merit-based immigration.”
          Even Democrats were scrambling to distance themselves from a law they have long defended. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) sought to shift blame to Republicans for killing “comprehensive” immigration reform: “Of course we would [be open to eliminating the program]. Let me just tell you something: That was part of the [comprehensive immigration] reform [bill].” clown-Schumer, who had his hand in creating the DV program in 1990, blamed Trump for politicizing the terror attack while other top House Democrats blasted Trump for seeking “to further his anti-immigration agenda.” Democrats never have a problem politicizing gun control after a shooting.
          Back in 2010, there were clear warnings that the Diversity Visa Lottery was dangerous due to the fact that it essentially created a loophole through which individuals from terror-watch-list countries could gain entry into the U.S. Several lawmakers at the time warned that the program posed a “serious national threat.” As far back as 2004, the State Department’s Office of the Inspector General deputy inspector testified that the “program contains significant vulnerabilities to national security as hostile intelligence officers, criminals and terrorists attempt to use it to enter the United States as permanent residents.”
          Yet over the years Democrats have repeatedly defended the program. Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) in 2007 argued, “The Diversity Visa Program is the chance for many people of color around the world to immigrate to the United States and pursue the same American dream that many of the ancestors of the members [of Congress] here were able to pursue.” In 2006, clown-Schumer himself said, “This is an excellent program, and nobody has said it has done a bad job. It’s small; only about 50,000 visas a year… As I ride my bike around New York City on the weekends, I see what immigrants do for America and this program has dramatically helped.” The part about riding bikes is grotesquely ironic given the fact that the truck-driving terrorist plowed over bike-riding victims.
          What is clear is that America’s immigration system needs serious reform. Too much of the current system has been designed by Democrats for the sole purpose of building their own party base rather than to establish an immigration system that prioritizes the rights and concerns of American citizens. Too often the idea expressed by lawmakers is that non-citizens have a right to emigrate to America. No non-citizen has a right to live, work or emigrate to the U.S. But every American has a right to demand that our government protect us and our interests first and foremost. The focus of government officials should not be promoting virtues of diversity; instead, they should be committed to protecting and defending the constitutional freedoms and rights of American citizens above all other considerations.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52204

by Jordan Candler:  The proliferation of national anthem protests in the NFL has culminated in falling television ratings and a shrunken fan base. But the political theater on display by athletes has repercussions beyond the field. For seven years, Papa John’s has branded itself around being recognized as the NFL’s official pizza sponsor. That was obviously a boon for business. At least until now.

          Papa John’s CEO John Schnatter has revealed that business is sluggish due to fallout over his company’s ties to the NFL. He minced no words, either, reportedly complaining, “The NFL has hurt us by not resolving the current debacle to the players’ and owners’ satisfaction. NFL leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders.” He added, “Leadership starts at the top, and this is an example of poor leadership.” From Schnatter’s standpoint, “This should have been nipped in the bud a year and a half ago.”
          According to Bloomberg, “Back in 2014, when Papa John’s posted a nearly 10 percent gain in North American same-store sales, the company credited its close relationship with the NFL and [Peyton] Manning for driving its business in the U.S. On Wednesday, the tone was quite different. Papa John’s post-earnings conference call was dominated by negative talk of the NFL. The league’s name came up 44 times during the discussion, compared with 12 mentions in the year-earlier call.”
          The NFL fallout affects Papa John’s in terms of less exposure (not as many eyeballs are seeing ads). And a dwindling base translates into fewer orders. One also could assume that some fans are so fed up with the politics of the NFL that they are boycotting the companies associated with it as well. Of course, Papa John’s is free to take sponsorships elsewhere, and it may come to that. But its lackluster sales are yet more proof that the NFL opened a can of worms when it neglected to quickly and effectively diffuse the situation.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52211