1:34
On the House floor Thursday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said the way House Democrats were running the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump was “about to push this country to a civil war.”
Gohmert said, “Never in the history of this country have we had such gross unfairness that one party would put armed guards h guns to prevent the duly authorized people from being able to hear the witnesses and see them for themselves. And then, oh, we hear from this resolution today, we’re going to send you the depositions after we get through doctoring and looking at and editing the transcripts, we’ll send you those, so you have the evidence you need. That’s not the kind of evidence that a coup should be based on. If we’re going to have what they’re trying to legalize as a coup, we ought to have a right to see each of those witnesses.”
He added, “You see, they want it to be a one-sided, non-due process, sham court. It’s about to push this country to a civil war if they were to get their wishes. And if there’s one thing I don’t want to see in my lifetime, I don’t want to ever have participation in it’s a civil war. Some historian, I don’t remember who said, guns are only involved in the last phase of a civil war. What’s gone on here is not protected the Constitution. It’s not protected the institutions. It’s not protected this little experiment in self-government. What it has done is put it all at risk.”
Richest 400 Americans paid lower taxes than everyone else in 2018
According to an analysis by noted economists Emmanuel Saez and
Gabriel Zucman, previewed this week by New
York Times columnist David Leonhardt, the wealthiest American households
paid a lower tax rate last year than every other income group for the first
time in the country’s history.
Saez and Zucman, both professors at the University of California
Berkeley, detail the phenomenon of declining taxes for the richest Americans in
their soon-to-be released book, The
Triumph of Injustice .
The pair compiled a historical database composed of the tax
payments of households in various income percentiles spanning all the way back
to 1913, when the federal income tax was first implemented. Their research
uncovered that in the 2018 fiscal year the wealthiest 400 Americans paid a
lower tax rate—accounting for federal, state, and local taxes—than anyone else.
The overall tax rate paid by the richest .01 percent was only 23
percent last year, while the bottom half of the population paid 24.2 percent.
This contrasts starkly with the overall tax rates on the wealthy of 70 percent
in 1950 and 47 percent in 1980.
The taxes on the wealthy have been in precipitous decline since
the latter half of the 20th century as successive presidential administrations
enacted tax cuts for the rich, suggesting that they would result in economic
prosperity for all. Taxes that mostly affect the wealthy, such as the estate
tax and corporate tax, have been drastically cut and lawyers have been hard at
work on the beliefs of their wealthy patrons planning out the best schemes for
tax avoidance, seeking to drive tax rates as close to zero as possible. The
impetus for the historical tipping point was the Trump Administration’s 2017
tax reform, which was a windfall for the super-rich.
Supported by both the Republican and Democratic Parties, the two
parties of Wall Street, Trump’s tax cuts were specifically designed to transfer
massive amounts of wealth from the working class to the ruling elite.
The corporate tax rate was permanently slashed from 35 percent
to 21 percent, potentially increasing corporate revenues by more than $6
trillion in the next decade. The bill also reduced the individual federal
income tax rate for the wealthy and included a number of other provisions to
further ease their tax burden.
The story is different for many middle- and working-class
Americans. According to multiple analyses of the 2017 tax reform, 83 percent of
the tax benefits will go to the top 1 percent by 2027, while 53 percent of the
population, or those making less than $75,000 annually, will pay higher taxes.
At the same time, the reform will sharply increase budget deficits and the
national debt, granting the pretense for the further destruction of domestic
social programs.
Furthermore, a majority of Americans are paying higher payroll
taxes, which cover Medicare and Social Security. The tax increased from 2
percent just after World War II, to 6 percent in 1960, to 15.3 percent in 1990,
where it stands today. It has risen to become the largest tax that 62 percent
of American households pay.
The result of the multitude of changes to the US tax system over
the last three-quarters of a century is one that has become less progressive over
time. The 2017 tax reform effectively set up the foundation for a regressive
tax policy where the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the poor.
The implementation of a regressive tax structure has played a
major role in engineering the redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the
top that has brought social inequality in America to its highest level since
the 1920s.
According to Leonhardt’s preliminary Times review of The Triumph of Injustice,
Saez and Zucman offer a solution to the current unjust tax system in which the
overall tax rate on the top 1 percent of income earners would rise to 60
percent. The pair claim that the tax increase would bring in approximately $750
billion in taxes. Their tax code also includes a wealth tax and a minimum
global corporate tax of 25 percent, requiring corporations to pay taxes on
profits made in the United States, even if their headquarters are overseas.
In an interview with Leonhardt, Zucman states that history shows
that the US has raised tax rates on the wealthy before so therefore it should
be possible to do so now.
However, the last half century of counterrevolution waged
against the working class makes the parasitic nature of the ruling elite
absolutely clear, and underscores the well-known fact that the US is ruled by
an oligarchy that controls the political system. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans, who both represent
this oligarchy and bear responsibility for the tax system, will make any effort
to implement Saez and Zucman’s modest proposal.
California
became a Democratic stronghold not because Californians became
socialists, but because millions of socialists
moved there. Immigration turned California blue,
and immigration
is ultimately to blame for California's high poverty level.
Economists: America’s Elite Pay Lower Tax Rate Than All Other Americans
Getty Images
8
Oct 201918
2:46
The wealthiest Americans are paying a lower tax rate than
all other Americans, groundbreaking analysis from a pair of economists reveals.
For the
first time on record, the wealthiest 400 Americans in 2018 paid a lower tax
rate than all of the income groups in the United States, research highlighted by the New York Times from
University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel
Zucman finds.
The
analysis concludes that the country’s top economic elite are paying lower
federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class.
Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate, which
the Times‘ op-ed columnist David Leonhardt notes is a
combined tax payment of “less than one-quarter of their total income.”
This 23
percent tax rate for the rich means their rate has been slashed by 47
percentage points since 1950 when their tax rate was 70 percent.
(Screenshot
via the New York Times)
The
analysis finds that the 23 percent tax rate for the wealthiest Americans is
less than every other income group in the U.S. — including those earning
working and middle-class incomes, as a Times graphic shows.
Leonhardt
writes:
For
middle-class and poor families, the picture is different. Federal
income taxes have also declined modestly for these families, but they haven’t
benefited much if at all from the decline in the corporate tax or estate tax. And
they now pay more in payroll taxes (which finance Medicare and Social
Security) than in the past. Over all, their taxes have remained fairly flat.
[Emphasis added]
The
report comes as Americans increasingly see a growing divide between the rich
and working class, as the Pew Research Center has found.
Sen. Josh
Hawley (R-MO), the leading economic nationalist in the Senate, has warned
against the Left-Right coalition’s consensus on open trade, open markets, and
open borders, a plan that he has called an economy that works solely for the
elite.
“The same
consensus says that we need to pursue and embrace economic globalization and
economic integration at all costs — open markets, open borders, open trade,
open everything no matter whether it’s actually good for American national
security or for American workers or for American families or for American
principles … this is the elite consensus that has governed our politics
for too long and what it has produced is a politics of elite ambition,”
Hawley said in an August speech in the
Senate.
That
increasing worry of rapid income inequality is only further justified by economic
research showing a rise in servant-class jobs,
strong economic recovery for elite zip codes but not for working-class
regions, and skyrocketing wage growth for the billionaire class at 15 times
the rate of other Americans.
Census Says U.S.
Income Inequality Grew ‘Significantly’ in 2018
(Bloomberg) -- Income
inequality in America widened “significantly” last year, according to a U.S.
Census Bureau report published Thursday.
A measure of inequality
known as the Gini index rose to 0.485 from 0.482 in 2017, according to the
bureau’s survey of household finances. The measure compares incomes at the top
and bottom of the distribution, and a score of 0 is perfect equality.
The 2018 reading is the
first to incorporate
the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-
2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the
wealthy.
the impact of President Donald Trump’s end-
2017 tax bill, which was reckoned by many
economists to be skewed in favor of the
wealthy.
But the distribution of
income and wealth in the U.S. has been worsening for decades, making America
the most unequal country in the developed world. The trend, which has persisted
through recessions and recoveries, and under administrations of both parties,
has put inequality at the center of U.S. politics.
Leading candidates for
the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including senators Elizabeth
Warren and Bernie Sanders, are promising to rectify the tilt toward the rich
with measures such as taxes on wealth or financial transactions.
Just five states --
California, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana and New York, plus the District of
Columbia and Puerto Rico -- had Gini indexes higher than the national level,
while the reading was lower in 36 states.
Nearly 40% Of
Americans Say They’ve Lost Faith In American Democracy
“People’s expressed faith in democracy is
tightly coupled with their partisanship in ways that threaten the system
itself.”
“Concern
about voter fraud peaks among Rs, while worry about hacking by foreigners is
significantly higher among Ds.”
AXIOS Posted
at 4:45 pm on March 11, 2018
axios.com/americans-lose-faith-democracy-754a034d-2a8a-4b20-b1d4-fbd4127385a5.htm
AMERICA’S ROAD TO REVOLUTION:
THE BANKSTER REGIME WILL BE TOPPLED AND
MEXICO PUSHED OUT OF AMERICA’S OPEN BORDERS!
"The report was drafted in conjunction with a survey conducted among nearly 1,000 banking and business executives, government officials and academics, which found that 93 percent of them feared a worsening of confrontations between the major powers in 2018. Fully 79 percent foresaw a heightened threat of a major “state-on-state” military conflict."
Democrats Would Lose the Second Civil War, Too
It’s
obvious that the central tenet of the Democrat Party platform is now hatred and
contempt for Normal Americans. Taking their cue from the elites in Europe and
Canada who are stripping dissenters of their free speech rights and religious
freedoms, the leftist elite is moving to solidify its hold on power here with
the eager assistance of tech companies and the moral support of the Fredocons who
yearn to return to pseudo-relevance as the ruling class’s slobberingly loyal
opposition. In California, the leftist government is practically firing on Fort
Sumter. And nationally, these aspiring fascists are especially eager to disarm
Normal Americans – doing so would be an object lesson in who’s the boss, as
well as solving that frustrating problem of the Normals having the ability to
resist.
Probably
because I’ve spent time where they actually had a civil war, many people ask me
– people whose names you know – whether I think this turmoil will all end in a
Second Civil War. They are seriously concerned, and not without cause – the
left’s hatred for Normal Americans and its dedication to totally stripping the
people who are the backbone of this country of their ability to participate in
their own governance is threatening to rip the country apart.
Do I
think there will be a civil war? No, but there could be. This is the Age of
Black Swans, and anything is possible – we could easily see the country split into red and blue. Civil war is unlikely, but never underestimate Democrat
stupidity and hatred. The Schlichter family learned that lesson a century and
half ago, the last time the Democrats decided to try to impose their hatred of
basic human rights on the rest of the country, when an army of Democrats burned our family hometown.
Oh,
they paid for it. And they would pay again. Democrats are 0-1 in insurrections,
and if they went for another round, they would be 0-2. It’s a matter of
terrain, numbers, and morale.
Democrats,
who think history began when Obama was elected, don’t understand the dangerous
game they are playing when they talk about how they want to impose their brown
shirt vision upon red America. The keyboard commandos of the left seek to hand
wave away the massive strategic challenge of imposing control by force upon a
well-armed, decentralized citizenry occupying the vast majority of the
territory, so they babble about drones and tanks as counterinsurgency trump
cards. But there are no trump cards in war. There are men, with rifles,
standing on patches of dirt, killing the people trying to push them off. That’s
the ugly reality of war. And multiply the usual brutality of war by ten when
it’s a civil war.
There
are two Civil War II scenarios, and the left is poorly positioned to prevail in
either one. The first scenario is that the Democrats take power and violate the
Constitution in order to use the apparatus of the federal government to
suppress and oppress Normal Americans. In that scenario, red Americans are the
insurgents. In the second scenario, which we can even now see the stirrings of
in California’s campaign to nullify federal immigration law, it is the blue
states that are the insurgents.
The
Democrats lose both wars. Big time.
Let’s
talk terrain and numbers. Remember the famous red v.
blue voting map? There is a lot
of red, and in the interior the few blue splotches are all cities like Las
Vegas or Denver. That is a lot of territory for a counter-insurgent force to
control, and this is critical. The red is where the food is grown, the oil
pumped, and through which everything is transported. And that red space is
filled with millions of American citizens with small arms, a fairly large
percentage of whom have military training.
Remember
what two untrained idiots did in Boston with a couple of pistols? They shut a
city down. Now multiply that by several million, with better weapons and
training.
Let’s
look at the counter-insurgent forces in the Democrat oppression scenario should
they attempt to misuse our law enforcement and military in an unconstitutional
manner to take the rights of American citizens. There are a lot of civilian law
enforcement officers, but the vast majority of the agencies are local –
sheriffs, small town police departments. They will not be reliable allies in
supporting unlawful oppression of their friends and neighbors. The major
cities’ police departments are run by Democrat appointees, so the commands
would be loyal. But the rank-and-file? A small percentage would be
ideologically loyal. More would be loyal because that’s their paycheck – they
could be swayed or intimidated to support the rebels. Others would be actively
sympathetic to the insurgents. This is true of federal law enforcement agencies
as well.
And
the military? Well, wouldn’t the military just crush any resistance? Not so
fast. The military would have the combat power to win any major engagement, but
insurgents don’t get into major engagements with forces that have more combat
power. They instead leverage their decentralized ability to strike at the
counter-insurgents’ weak points to eliminate the government’s firepower
advantage. In other words, hit and run, and no stand-up fights.
For
example, how do a bunch of hunters in Wisconsin defeat a company of M1A2 Abrams
tanks? They ambush the fuel and ammo trucks. Oh, and they wait until the gunner
pops the hatch to take a leak and put a .30-06 round in his back from 300
meters. Then they disappear. What do the tanks do then? Go level the nearest
town? Great. Now they just moved the needle in favor of the insurgents among the
population. Pretty soon, they can’t be outside of their armored vehicles in
public. Their forces are spending 90% of their efforts not on actual
counter-insurgency operations but on force protection. Sure, they own their
forward operating bases, and they own a few hundred meters around them wherever
they happen to be standing at the moment, but the rest of the territory is
bright red. As my recent novel illustrates, American guerillas with small arms are a deadly threat to the
forces of a dictatorship.
But
the military is so big it would overwhelm any rebels, right? Well, how big do
you think the military is? And, more importantly, how many actual boots on the
ground can it deploy? Let’s put it in terms of brigade combat teams, which
total about 4,500 troops each. There are about 60 brigades in the Army, active and reserve, here and abroad, and let’s give the
Marines another 10 brigades, for about 70 brigades. Sounds impressive. But
that’s deceptive.
Let’s
put aside a big consideration – the existence of red states that would provide
for an insurgent government structure and possibly attract the loyalty of some
National Guard and even federal brigades. For example, if President Hillary
Clinton put down her chardonnay long enough to sign a ban on privately owned
guns, it’s not unreasonable to expect the governor of Texas to reject federal
authority – after all, California just taught us that this is totally cool. But
in this case, look for several brigades located there to hoist the Lone Star
flag.
So,
now the blue states are facing unconventional and conventional forces.
Let’s
ignore that problem and focus on a different challenge. Even a normal unit has
about 10% non-deployable members. Now, if these troops were assigned to combat
operations against other Americans, you would have significant additional
losses through desertion. Many of the senior leaders would participate – the Obama
generation – and there is a certain type of junior officer only too happy to
curry favor by sucking up in defiance of their oath (which is to the
Constitution, not to some leftist president). You can identify them because
they usually have “strategist” in their Twitter bios. But a lot of key, capable
officer and NCO leaders, and enlisted troops, would vanish. That is proper. It
is a violation of their oath to unconstitutionally oppress fellow Americans;
their duty would be to refuse such unlawful orders.
So,
you have significantly understrength units going in. Now, how many of the
troops in a brigade are actually even front line combat troops? About a third –
the rest are support. So a brigade is really about 1500 riflemen tops before
you count losses. Cut those in half for sleep, training, and refitting at any
one time (which is very generous) and your brigade is really 750 troops on your
best day with everyone showing up. Realistically, it’s 300.
That
holds one mid-sized town. And there are hundreds of
mid-sized towns. Plus there are millions of Normal Americans who would fight
back. Nothing would move without their permission – a few guys shooting up big
rigs along the interstate would shut down the entire trucking industry. Bottom
line: there simply are not enough military forces to clear and hold red
America.
What
about drones and bombers? Both are useful. But the minute a bombing strike
kills some red civilians the families of counter-insurgent drone operators and
pilots will be knocking at the base gates to be let inside. Now you’ll need
many of those brigades to protect the civilians you now need to protect from
retribution.
Civil
wars are harsh. That’s why you avoid them.
How
about the blue insurgency scenario? That goes even worse for the Democrats. You
have the federal government apparatus in the hands of red America, and the
insurgents are the opposite of decentralized and armed. They are conveniently
centered in gun-unfriendly blue cities. In other words, the blue civilian
population is much less of a threat.
A red
counter-insurgency avoids the problem of a decentralized insurgency and
insecure logistical lines. In the case of California, whose secessionist antics are approaching the point where President Trump could
legitimately employ his power to crush insurrections, the tactical problem is
relatively simple. For example, San Francisco is a hotbed of treason, but the
populace is largely unarmed and is trapped in a confined area. You put a
brigade on securing the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, then put a brigade on the
San Francisco Peninsula to cut off the I-280 and US-101 corridors. Next you go to the Crystal Springs Dam and
cut off the water. Then you watch and wait as the tech hipsters run out of
artisanal sushi rice and kombucha.
After
about a week, they surrender. After all, you can’t eat and drink smugness. LA
is just bigger in scope – more corridors to cut off, but in the end the
population concentrations in large liberal urban areas that are their strength
also make them extremely vulnerable to logistical pressure.
Then
there’s another factor, an intangible but a crucial one. It’s commitment. The
Democrat threat to peace is based on its policies designed to deprive Normal
Americans of their right to speak freely, to worship freely, and to defend
themselves and their rights with firearms. Make no mistake – millions of Normal
Americans are willing to risk death to defend those rights. In fact, many swore
to do so when they entered our military and law enforcement. But who is the
leftist big talker willing to die to impose the fascist dream of censorship,
religious oppression, and disarmament on Normal American citizens? Is the
screeching SJW at Yale going to suit up in Kevlar? Is the Vox columnist going to grab a
M4? Is the Hollywood poser going to switch her gyno-beanie for a helmet?
No.
Hell, we just heard our liberal opponents explaining why a cop shouldn’t be
expected to go fight a scumbag murdering kids because it’s scary. America might split apart, but
it’s highly unlikely Team Kale n’ Vinyl would
fight should their big talk finally push Normal America too far.
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