Joe Has What For Brains?
Joe’s Name Is Brandon
New revelations about Hunter will hit President Joe Biden's already plummeting popularity
During Obama’s presidency, everyone joked that he selected Biden for VP because Biden’s incompetency insured that Obama would never be impeached. Yes, Obama was bad, but Biden would be worse. Now that Biden’s the president, that joke was 100% correct. Sadly, he’s multiple times worse than anyone imagined. Biden has more failures in one year than most presidents have in a lifetime – the Afghanistan debacle and surrender, huge crime spikes due to Democrat “defund the police” insanity, actively working to destroy the petroleum industry while supporting Russia’s, soaring inflation, open support and deference to China, and his weakness being directly responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine -- to name just a few epic failures. As bad as Biden is as president, it’s obvious he selected Harris for the same reason that Obama selected him -- to insure he’s never removed from office. If you think things can’t possibly get worse, just look at Harris and you instantly realize – yes, they can. She would be multiple times worse than Joe.
Worst president ever? Let's find out
Kakistocracy: noun, government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.
The old saying goes that even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally. So you might think that during a 50-year political career, the odds would dictate that Joe Biden would, once in a blue moon, make a correct decision — just based on the odds. But you'd be mistaken. Biden has stumbled and bumbled from one disastrous decision to the next. Disastrous, that is, for America. Biden himself has prospered handsomely in spite of his glaring incompetence and corruption.
BLOG EDIOR: WORKING WITH JOE AND THEIR BANKSTERS WAS CHINA'S OLD WHORE DIANNE FEINSTEIN, WAR PROFITEER AND ONE OF THE MOST CORRUPT POLS IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY. HARDLY SURPRISING FEINSTEIN WAS FIRST TO ENDORSE OL' JOE FOR THE PRESIDENCY. FEINSTEIN CAN ALWAYS SMELL MONEY DOWN THE HALL.
Biden's long Senate career was based on being the credit card companies' man in Washington. While crowing endlessly about the working class being "his people," Biden sponsored bills allowing bank issuers to charge egregious interest rates and to make it harder for working men to escape the credit trap through bankruptcy.
When Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, he turned the confirmation of Clarence Thomas into a political smear campaign that descended into a degenerate three-ring circus. In his first campaign for president, he failed to garner a single percentage point before having to withdraw when confronted with his past lies and blatant plagiarism. He literally stole a speech detailing a British politician's life story. He ran again in 2008 but again failed to reach even one percent of the vote.
BLOG EDITOR. OBOMB KNEW WHAT HE WAS DOING WHEN HE BROUGHT 'CREDIT CARD' BIDEN ON BOARD HIS BANKSTER REGIME WITH THE BANKSTERS' RENT BOY ERIC HOLDER. IT WAS 8 YEARS OF BANKSTER LOOTING AND PLUNDERING OF THE AMERCAN PEOPLE AND NO PRISON TIME. IT CONTINUES TO THIS DAY!
When Barack Obama took him off the primary trash heap to make him vice president, Biden first made a hash out of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wasting hundreds of billions on boondoggles and giveaways to Democrat cronies. Little of the recovery billions was spent on anything useful to America. Biden went on to manage our relations with China and Ukraine, pocketing untold millions for himself and his family by selling out America's security interests.
By the time he ran for president again in 2020, he was a spent husk of his former corrupt and incompetent self, delivering asinine performances in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. When the Democrat establishment propped him up to once again stop Bernie Sanders, Biden was set up for the strangest presidential campaign in modern history. While Donald Trump barnstormed the nation with packed, enthusiastic rallies, Biden cowered in his basement, occasionally venturing out to speak with a few dozen voters sitting in circles drawn on the floor.
For his vice presidential pick, he chose — if you can believe it — an even more buffoonish candidate than himself.
Had it not been for Mark Zuckerberg buying and staffing government election offices in swing states, and the media and Big Tech's censorship of the Biden family's corruption, Biden would now be enjoying his dotage in Delaware, creeping on unsuspecting children with yarns of Corn Pop and South African arrests.
Instead, the man with one of the most astonishing records of abject failure in Washington was installed in the White House, and he has remained true to form. As one of a hundred senators and then as vice president, there was a limit to how much damage he could do. But as president, the shackles have been removed.
His first agenda item was to throttle our oil and gas sector, offshoring tens of thousands of good paying jobs to Russia and the Middle East — along with our energy independence. He threw open our southern border and encouraged virtually unlimited illegal immigration — during a global pandemic.
He sponsored trillions of dollars in wasteful spending, pushing our national debt to over $31 trillion. Were it not for two Democratic senators who had not yet taken leave of their senses, it would have been even worse. As it is, Biden has sparked the largest one-year increase in inflation in 40 years.
Biden's "defund the police" rhetoric delivered us soaring violent crime in Democrat-run cities, while he sicced federal law enforcement on parents who object too strenuously to their children being indoctrinated with anti-White racism and LGBTQIA+ ideology.
It can truly be said that as president, Biden's record of failure remains unblemished.
But now comes what may be the capstone on Biden's long history of buffoonery and corruption. In Ukraine, we have an armed conflict that threatens to plunge the world into an economic depression and raises the specter of nuclear war. Not only did Biden set the stage for this calamity when, as vice president, he was in charge of Ukraine policy and led Kiev to believe that NATO membership was in Ukraine's future, but on the eve of the Russian invasion, he refused to admit that it was not. Then Biden all but admitted to Vladimir Putin — on live TV, no less — that NATO would not defend Ukraine if Russia chose to invade.
In the aftermath of Russia's invasion, Biden and his administration have crafted sanctions that seem almost designed to boomerang on America's and Europe's fragile post-pandemic economies, while forcing Russia into a deeper alliance with China.
With the U.S. over $31 trillion in debt, Biden seems totally oblivious to the perilous position of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency and the consequences should that privileged position end.
Economists predict that food and gasoline will cost the average U.S. household an additional $3,000 this year, and inflation threatens to push millions of lower-middle income-earners into abject poverty.
And bumbling, corrupt Joe Biden isn't yet halfway through his first — and please God, last — term.
Jim Daws is a recovering talk radio host at jimdaws.com.
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Kamala Proves the Peter Principle
Most of my life, I assumed that we elected serious politicians and appointed competent people to deal with the country’s complex problems -- the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the economy, immigration, terrorism, foreign policy, natural disasters, etc. -- major problems that required competent people, serious about addressing (and fixing) the issues.
That was then, this is now. America is no longer a serious country, and the West is not a serious culture. Proof of how far we’ve fallen -- boys claim they’re girls, girls claim they’re boys and we must accept the new biology or be cancelled; racism is openly taught in public schools under the lie called Critical Race Theory (thank you, teachers unions); schoolchildren are taught to hate the country’s very founding claiming more racism; the military is focused on white rage (not defeating our enemies); and we installed an imbecile (as president) who mumbles the words his handlers put on the teleprompter. Vice President (VP) Kamala Harris is further proof that, as a nation, we’re unserious.
Watching Kamala, Biden, Tony Blinken, Pete Buttigieg, etc. it’s obvious that the Peter Principle is at work. The Peter Principle says that people rise to the level of their incompetence. During Obama’s presidency, everyone joked that he selected Biden for VP because Biden’s incompetency insured that Obama would never be impeached. Yes, Obama was bad, but Biden would be worse. Now that Biden’s the president, that joke was 100% correct. Sadly, he’s multiple times worse than anyone imagined. Biden has more failures in one year than most presidents have in a lifetime – the Afghanistan debacle and surrender, huge crime spikes due to Democrat “defund the police” insanity, actively working to destroy the petroleum industry while supporting Russia’s, soaring inflation, open support and deference to China, and his weakness being directly responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine -- to name just a few epic failures. As bad as Biden is as president, it’s obvious he selected Harris for the same reason that Obama selected him -- to insure he’s never removed from office. If you think things can’t possibly get worse, just look at Harris and you instantly realize – yes, they can. She would be multiple times worse than Joe.
It’s difficult to believe that Biden could find someone less competent than himself, but he did. Among the vast numbers of very unintelligent politicians, VP Kamala is perhaps the least competent and least intelligent of them all. Her diminished mental acuity is Biden’s insurance against replacing him. Kamala’s incoherent statements are legendary. Following are some examples:
- She told us her pronouns are “she, her, and hers.” What should a woman’s pronouns be? Oh, that’s right, in Democrat world, boys can be girls and vice versa. Only Dems and Leftist understand such nonsense.
- Months after Kamala was appointed the immigration/border security czar, she was challenged why she had not visited the Mexican border. Her snarky response, “and I haven’t been to Europe either.” Say what?
- January 2022, Harris was asked if it’s time to change COVID strategy. Kamala responded, “It’s time for us to do what we have been doing, and that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things available to us.” I have no clue what she said. Unfortunately, neither does she.
- Last month, at a NATO conference held to discuss Russia’s massed troops threatening to invade Ukraine, Kamala made the following comment, “Perhaps this is a moment, as life presents us with these moments, that challenge us to ask what is our reason for being? I think we all know the history of NATO and its reason for being. The spirit behind this term we use “the transatlantic community”, the word community meaning a collection, not a collection of individuals who see themselves as a collection, than as one.” Despite such incoherent babble, Putin invaded Ukraine two days later.
- When NBC asked her about sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, Harris said, “As it relates to what we need to do domestically as well as what we need to do in terms of this issue generally, we have, as the president said, reevaluated what we’re doing”
- Finally, further proof that Biden is not serious, he appointed Kamala as point person on Ukraine. Why not Biden, you ask? Good question, but he goes home to Delaware most weekends; perhaps that’s why he delegates war and Ukraine to Kamala. To demonstrate her superior knowledge on Europe (she’s now been once), a radio show asked her to explain the Ukraine situation to its audience. Harris said, “Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically that’s wrong.”
Yes, those were her words. Her condescending answers tell us everything about her. She belittles the audience. She can’t talk normally to people because she thinks we’re too dumb to understand the situation. Then again, who’s surprised? Our elite leftists (Hillary, Obama, NY Times readers, academics, Hollywood, the media, etc.) think we’re beneath them because we haven’t been educated at Harvard or Yale. They demand we defer to their superior education to save us uneducated bumpkins out here in places like rural Georgia. With Kamala, Biden, and his entire administration, the Peter Principle is alive and well. Between Biden’s and Harris’ constant idiotic statements, it’s almost impossible to quantify which one is the least capable.
However, we still have three more years for one or the other to rise (or fall) to their ultimate level of incompetence.
Image: National Archives
Kamala Saves The Day
DESTROYING AMERICA - THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AT WORK
JOE BIDEN = MENTAL ON THE LOSE
President Biden delivered the ‘stumbles of a feeble man’ at SOTU address
Victor Davis Hanson: Biden is the most dangerously radical President in US history
Watters: The Five (CRIME) Families of the Democrat Party
New revelations about Hunter will hit President Joe Biden's already plummeting popularity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILb8RkPTBPg
WHICH IS A GREATER DANGER TO AMERICA? THE GLOBALIST DEMOCRAT PARTY OR THEIR BILLIONAIRE CLASS?
Exclusive— Josh Mandel: ‘Big Tech Oligarchs’ Like Mark Zuckerberg Must Be Criminally Investigated
“Big Tech oligarchs” such as Mark Zuckerberg should be criminally pursued to stop large technology companies’ anti-competitive conduct, Josh Mandel, a Republican candidate running for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Ohio, said on Friday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.
“You’ve got to go after them criminally because they don’t care about paying fines,” he remarked. “For them, it’s just a cost of doing business, but you see what’s going on with Zuckerberg, right now — the fact that he might have tripped Wisconsin bribery laws with the 400-plus million that he spread around the country.”
He continued, “When they violate any criminal laws, they need to be investigated and prosecuted aggressively because that is, at the end of the day, the only thing that will make them wake up and make them listen and make them change their behavior.”
The U.S. must “take on these Big Tech oligarchs and thugs,” he added.
He went on, “I think part of the strategy needs to be just to attack their absolute power from 100 angles at once. It’s like blitzkrieg, and they won’t know where it’s coming from. We’ve got to attack from different angles simultaneously all at once.”
Technology companies such as Facebook and Google should not continue benefiting from liability exemptions provided by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Mandel held.
“We need to push removing their immunity and exemption from liability in Section 230 and on either code, any other parts of the code, there’s no reason whatsoever that they should have any immunity or exemption from liability.”
He urged political observers to read about Wisconsin’s investigation of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s funding of election operations in 2020, ostensibly “to ensure voters could cast their ballots safely and securely.”
Wisconsin state Special Counsel Michael Gableman said $8.8 million worth of funding from Zuckerberg is considered election bribery in the Badger State. He said, “When I started this process, when I started this whole procedure, I had no other goal in mind than to find the truth. And while we don’t have it entirely yet, we’re getting it. One of the important truths that has to be mentioned is recited in Chapter 1 of our report. And that is that the Center for Tech and Civic Life [received] $8,800,000 [from a] Zuckerberg-planned grant with the cities of Milwaukee, Madison, Racine, Kenosha, and Green Bay facially violates the Wisconsin law prohibiting election bribery.”
Mandel concluded by calling for the application of anti-monopoly measures against Big Tech companies. He said, “I think they should be broken up — Facebook, Google, and some of these other companies. They are obviously, I believe, violating monopolistic standards for American commerce, and I think they need to be broken up.”
Breitbart News Daily broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
Richard Wolff | AMERICA'S DEBT SCAM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRIrAqk9gXE
When Billionaires Don’t Pay Taxes, People “Lose Faith in Democracy”
In an interview, Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden described the effect of the tax dodging revealed in “The Secret IRS Files” and argued that his stalled efforts to make the ultrawealthy pay what he calls “their fair share” could still bear fruit.
The Secret IRS Files
Inside the Tax Records of the .001%
Last year, ProPublica began publishing “The Secret IRS Files,” a series that has used a vast trove of never-before-seen tax information on the wealthiest Americans to examine their tax avoidance maneuvers.
Since then, the Biden Administration and Democrats in Congress have been trying to close loopholes in the code and raise taxes on the rich to fund their legislative priorities. But the efforts have stalled, amid claims by Republicans that tax increases on billionaires would “destroy investment in America and punish success in America” and resistance from key Democrats, Sen. Joe Manchin, who called such a plan divisive, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who has opposed tax increases more broadly.
Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, is one of the top experts in Congress on tax matters and an advocate of raising taxes on the rich. He has proposed a bill that would build on his past efforts to tax the wealthiest. The most recent legislation would tax people with $1 billion in assets (or $100 million in income for three years in a row) not just on their income as it is traditionally defined but also on the growth of their wealth each year. It would take a bite out of so-called unrealized gains, taxing a rise in the value of the stocks, bonds and other assets owned by the ultrawealthy — even if they didn’t sell the assets. For assets that are not readily traded, Wyden’s bill would impose a deferred tax, an annual interest charge that would be added to any capital gains tax owed when the wealthy person sells the asset.
Wyden’s bill seeks to counteract a technique that the ultrawealthy can use to avoid income taxes: They hold on to their assets and simply avoid the income — and tax — that comes when they sell them. The rich can live lavishly by employing a technique known as “Buy, Borrow, Die,” in which they buy or build assets, borrow against them and then avoid estate and gift taxes when they die.
We checked in with the senator to ask about his proposal and the prospects for any new laws in the coming year.
The interview that follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.
As you know, we’ve been reporting on how little tax the ultrawealthy in America pay. Our reporting for the first time has put names and faces and specifics on this issue by pointing out that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and the like have paid zero in taxes in recent years. And that the ultrawealthy really pay a low rate when compared to their wealth growth. I’m wondering if seeing these numbers has had an effect on your thinking, and if you think there’s been an effect on colleagues of yours who may not have had this full appreciation the way you did?
The answer is really yes and yes. It has affected me, and it’s affected, I believe, other senators. And the fact is my bill raises $557 billion, and it does so by simply requiring billionaires to pay taxes every year, the way nurses and firefighters do. At the same time, I feel very strongly — and this is the point where I think we’ve made real headway — this is about more than revenue. This is about fixing a thoroughly broken tax code and showing working people in America that billionaires don’t get to play by a different set of rules. My view is the big scandal is what’s legal. When you walk these people through it, it causes people to lose faith in government, lose faith in democracy.
What really causes people to lose faith? I think the fact that billionaires occasionally pay zero in taxes will strike most people as wrong. But are there other things that strike you as really jeopardizing their faith in the system?
The fact is it’s so brazen. Some of the leading conservative publications write articles: “Buy, Borrow, and Die if you want to pay little or nothing. Here is the plan.” I tell people about this at my town hall meetings and everybody starts hollering: “Don’t let people back here get played as suckers by letting billionaires pay little or nothing for years on end while those of us who represent a vast majority of Americans get hammered.”
We’ve been struck that some of the most loyal and closest readers of our stories have been the wealth advisory industry, figuring out a how-to manual. This is not what we intended ...
You have a proposal, which you alluded to, that would raise in your estimate almost $600 billion over 10 years. What are the prospects for that? Because you re-upped a version of that last year and it was quickly shot down by Joe Manchin, as I understand.
A couple of things, first of all, Joe Manchin has always said that he believes that the wealthiest should pay their fair share. And that’s very much in sync with what we say. And I go on to say that paying your fair share and being successful are not incompatible. That’s one of the things that special interests that have opposed my proposal say: “Oh, this is going to keep people from being successful.” Are you kidding me?
We know that there are lots of lobbyists and PR firms working around the clock to protect the status quo. There are terrific organizations like Patriotic Millionaires and Americans For Tax Fairness, but they just don’t have the same resources that the billionaires have. That’s why we’re trying to get the message out and lay out that this is basically a fairness issue. This is fundamentally about fairness so the affluent pay their fair share and it is not going to unravel the American dream of being successful.
The other part about this is the double standard. We had another hearing last week, and some of the conservative Republicans were talking about Earned Income Tax Credit recipients being the problem with tax evasion and noncompliance. The reality is you can be a tax cheater, a wealthy tax cheater. You can have one of these very large passthroughs and you are more likely to get hit by a meteor than you are to get audited.
In another part of our series, we focused on the ways that fortunes can persist from generation to generation. We wrote a story about the Scrippses and Mellons and their heirs getting vast amounts of income from fortunes that were created over 100 years ago. We also wrote about how many of the current 100 wealthiest people in the country are using GRATs [Grantor Retained Annuity Trusts] and other trusts to avoid paying income taxes. Is that on the agenda in DC? I know there was a proposal out of the House with the original version of Build Back Better, but is fixing that on the agenda, still?
I’m glad you asked that question. We get around that and stepped-up basis [the provision that, at the time of a person’s death, wipes out any increases in the value of their holdings for tax purposes, allowing people to pass on assets without paying capital gains tax] and all these things [with my proposal], because the billionaires could pay taxes each year and their heirs no longer get to wipe out billions and billions of dollars worth of gain. And I support proposals to fix GRATs. We’ve worked on them, and the bottom line is the overarching change, which is that billionaires are going to pay taxes every year.
So you’re saying under that proposal all these other fixes like stepped-up basis wouldn’t be as important. But is something like ending stepped-up basis, which was floated earlier this year, still on the table?
I’ll give you an example. I worked for a long time on the idea of making it crystal clear that farms and family-owned small businesses were fully exempt from [my proposal to end] stepped-up basis. But the ultrawealthy just kept saying, “Oh, the sky’s going to fall” once we allow this. Everybody is going to get hit with their farm and their small business and the like, and basically what they do is they play to people’s fears and try to create enough lobbying pressure. The billionaires try to get these small guys out in front to do their bidding for them.
And one quick thing. This is about a billionaires income tax. It’s a very important differentiation. This is about paying every year. They’ve got a stock account, for example, and this year it’s $20 billion and next year it goes up to $23 billion. They pay the capital gains tax on three billion bucks, because we feel that they’re basically evading capital gains taxes. And this is the way we respond with a billionaires income tax. And we chose that word very specifically.
Right. It’s a definition of income. It’s a definition that some economists have embraced. It’s not the orthodox definition. It’s not the definition that is in the current tax system, of course.
It’s particularly important when people say, “Oh, well, what are we going to do if it goes down?” Well, our proposal would account for losses as well.
But the fact is that extra $3 billion that they have this year that they didn’t have last year, they can use for all kinds of things. They can borrow against it. They can have a wonderful lifestyle, they can do all kinds of things. It’s very real to them in terms of how they can use it. And it’s immediate.
Now, I was interested in the counterarguments because one of those is that if they take a loss, how does that get accounted for in the system? The other is that you don’t want to force people into having to sell to raise cash to pay the tax. Another argument is that this will push people into illiquid, hard-to-value assets and out of the public markets. And I’m curious how you address all these objections.
We technically make that unlikely because the hard assets, they pick up interest charges as time goes along.
Washington seems to be very focused on marginal rates, on income tax with the traditional definition of income. I wonder what you think of that, if that’s kind of frustrating to you?
There can be that argument for raising those marginal rates, particularly on, again, wealthy people. But here’s an example of the kind of bizarre reality you get. I went to school on a basketball scholarship, dreaming of playing in the NBA — pretty ridiculous idea because I’m 6-foot-4 and made up for it by being kind of slow. I still kind of follow basketball. And as we heard about the fact that some members wanted to raise marginal rates and weren’t going to do anything on billionaires, it became clear to me that you could have a young basketball player, first one to go to college, get a scholarship. They come out, get a big contract. It’s all income. They’re going to come out under the marginal rate. Meanwhile, the owner of the club who is a billionaire doesn’t pay, themselves. an income tax, gets off scot-free. How is that fair?
That is the other point that you guys are raising.
What could be the basis of some kind of compromise that could shift this dynamic, because it sort of stalled last year?
We have looked at virtually every other approach to ensure a sense of fairness, that billionaires would pay taxes every year, like nurses and firefighters. And a number of the people who are most knowledgeable on the other side have actually committed candor when they said, [your bill] will actually require that we pay something every year, and everything else that’s been put out there can basically be gamed. People in the industry who are the advocates for the billionaires said that it’s going to be hard to avoid.
I’m not sure anything is going to get a perfect solution, but this is the one they’re really worried about because I can explain it pretty straightforwardly. If you make $3 billion between ’22 and ’23, you pay a capital gain rate at 23.8%.
One other point: We had folks say that they were concerned about founders of companies, and so we’ve made some adjustments to allow founders of companies to designate some stock as nontradable.
We’re always listening to members and trying to respond to their concerns.
People would say, “Well, what about philanthropy?” Well, philanthropy is terrific. We encourage it, but you have Medicare and Social Security and these critical needs that need to get addressed. Because if we’re all in this together, philanthropy is not going to take care of Medicare and Social Security.
These proposals, and your proposal in particular, are being blocked by members of your own party. Do you have any understanding of what Joe Manchin would support or what Kyrsten Sinema would support?
I’m not going to speak to the concerns of any one member, but let’s put it this way: No member is saying that they are publicly opposed to the idea of billionaires paying their fair share.
I’m not underestimating the power of the billionaires. You got to get everybody on board, got to hit 50 votes. And that’s what we’re focused on. But nobody has publicly said that billionaires shouldn’t pay their fair share. And the reason why is because this idea has enormous potency with people.
Do you think that anything can be done before the midterm elections?
We’re doing everything we can to come back as soon as possible from what happened in December. It kind of went off the rails. The next round of discussion will be built on health care, particularly holding down the cost of prescription drugs and filling in gaps in the Affordable Care Act like Medicaid coverage, our Clean Energy for America bill, which says for the first time the more you reduce carbon emissions, the bigger your tax savings, and then revenues evaded by tax avoidance and closing loopholes.
Gotcha. And another big problem here is that the IRS is in profound straits with the budget problems and tens of thousands of employees having left. How dire a situation is that, and where is the consensus to fund the IRS adequately?
So, first of all, as the chairman of the finance committee, I have led the effort, the pushback against Republican cuts in the IRS budget for years. Republicans in their big 2017 tax bill didn’t do anything to deal with the IRS budget cuts.
Now, I also want to take this opportunity because people have asked about the ability to administer our bill. There isn’t any issue with the IRS valuation because the value of stocks and the like is easily known and nontradable assets are only taxed when sold, just like today, so that “oh my God, Western civilization is going to end,” the IRS can’t administer it, I think is just contradicted by the facts which I just gave you. And, by the way, when billionaires said it’ll be difficult to comply, they got armies of accountants and lawyers to help them avoid taxes, paying as little as possible. They can just use their accountants and lawyers to comply and pay what they owe.
I’ll just for my closure say that, when you really look at the challenges for democracy, tax fairness is one of the keys and that’s what this is all about. Yes, it’s about raising over $550 billion — no question, it’s the biggest revenue raiser in the package — [but] this is about core issues of fairness.
Scarborough: Zuckerberg, Musk ‘Robber Barons’; Tax Cuts ‘Grotesque’
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16 Dec 20210
MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough blasted Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Tesla founder and space entrepreneur Elon Musk on Thursday.
Scarborough described the two tech giants as “robber barons.” He also lamented the tax cuts from the 1980s and 1990s, which he supported, as well as the GOP’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, arguing they “created the greatest income redistribution in the history of the planet.”
“I don’t know that anybody since John Rockefeller has had as unfeathered power as Mark Zuckerberg has right now where no one stands up to him inside his company, no one stands up to him on the board, no one stands up to him in Congress, no one stands up to him at the White House, no one really stands up to him in the media. He is a robber baron. Elon Musk is a robber baron. These people are robber barons,” Scarborough proclaimed.
“And we have seen the greatest transfer of wealth, which Republicans love to say, ‘Oh, we don’t like to redistribute income.’ Oh, really? Well, the tax policies that I have supported through the ’80s and ’90s and continued to be supported by Republicans in the 21s century have created the greatest income redistribution in the history of this planet from middle-class Americans to the Elon Musks of the world,” he added. “It’s grotesque.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent
‘We’re a Free Market’: Nancy Pelosi Rejects Ban on Lawmakers, Spouses Trading Individual Stocks
16 Dec 20210
2:39
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said members of Congress and their spouses should not be barred from trading individual stocks as part of the STOCK Act, citing a “free market economy.”
During a press briefing on Wednesday, in response to a report from Insider showing that 49 members of Congress (Democrats and Republicans) have failed to disclose their transactions in accordance with Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act of 2012, Pelosi was asked if members of Congress and their spouses should be banned from trading individual stocks, thereby preventing insider trading,
“We’re a free-market economy,” Pelosi explained. “They should be able to participate in that.”
Pelosi did note that members of Congress should be revealing their stock transactions, which would show possible insider trading:
As noted by Insider, the STOCK Act of 2012, legislation Andrew Breitbart heavily backed, was designed to combat possible insider trading and conflicts of interests among members of Congress, forcing “lawmakers to be more transparent about their personal financial dealings”:
A key provision of the law mandates that lawmakers publicly — and quickly — disclose any stock trade made by themselves, a spouse, or a dependent child.
But many members of Congress have not fully complied with the law. They offer excuses including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant. Insider has chronicled this widespread nature of this phenomenon in a new project, “Conflicted Congress.”
Lawmakers who violate the STOCK Act could be fined up to $200, a small penalty that has led several ethics watchdog groups to call for harsher penalties or an all-out ban on lawmakers from trading stocks – a practice by which Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, have become considerably wealthy. This year, for instance, weeks prior to the House Judiciary Committee’s vote on the antitrust legislation aimed at some major Big Tech companies, Paul Pelosi began “exercising call options to acquire 4,000 shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, at a strike price of $1,200,” according to Bloomberg. The trade netted Pelosi a $4.8 million gain.
Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer has been a heavy proponent of the STOCK Act since its inception with his 2011 book Throw Them All Out, which formed the basis for a 60 Minutes report about unethical stock trades in Congress.
THE DEMOCRAT PARTY'S BRIBES SUCKING KLEPTOCRACY
Watters' World' investigates Nancy Pelosi's financial dealings
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M4QZJxb9Dw
Nancy Pelosi, a horrid woman equally as without heart and soul, on Tuesday refused to have the names of the thirteen soldiers killed in Kabul read out on the floor of the House. That should permanently indict her for being the wicked witch she is. She is more devious, more calculating than the irresponsible Biden but every bit as beyond redemption as he is. She will do anything to try to convince the American people, for whom she has only contempt, that whatever she and her party do is righteous no matter how loathsome and totalitarian. PATRICIA McCARTHY
Pelosi Pushes Electric Vehicle Subsidies As Husband’s Tesla Stock Soars
Paul Pelosi owns up to $1 million of Tesla call options
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D., Calif.) husband hit pay dirt on Monday as Tesla's valuation rose to $1 trillion.
The news comes as Pelosi spearheads legislation that doles out tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to the electric vehicle industry, including Tesla, with provisions to build charging stations for cars and incentivize electric car purchases through tax credits.
The financial dealings of Pelosi's husband, Paul, came under scrutiny earlier this year when he purchased as much as $1 million of Tesla call options, one of the largest transactions of Tesla shares disclosed by a member of Congress. At the time, Republicans charged that the House speaker was cashing in on her power.
Members of Congress and their spouses are legally allowed to buy and sell stock, as long as it is not based on insider information. Members are required to disclose their transactions to the House Committee on Ethics, as Pelosi did with the Tesla transaction on Jan. 21.
Pelosi is spearheading negotiations with the White House as Democrats look to pass Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan and a reconciliation bill that includes the electric car incentives. Tesla, a pioneer in the electric car industry, is poised to see a significant boost from the legislation, according to industry watchers.
Democrats are proposing nearly $120 billion to fund various clean energy projects, and another $34.5 billion dedicated to zero-emission vehicles. The reconciliation bill also proposes $42 billion in tax credits for purchases of electric vehicles, which Democrats hope will incentivize new car buyers to purchase electric vehicles instead of gas-powered cars. The bill offers up to $12,500 in credits for each car. It also calls for tens of billions of dollars in spending to build charging stations for electric cars across the country.
Tesla's dramatic rise is likely attributable to several factors beyond the Democrats' spending proposals. Tesla founder Elon Musk recently announced he is moving the company's headquarters from California to Texas, which has no state income tax. Tesla's cars have also gained in popularity without federal incentives.
And while Tesla and other clean energy companies stand to gain with environmentally friendly Democrats in power, the company opposes some aspects of the reconciliation proposal, such as an additional credit for the purchase of electric cars made in unionized factories. Musk has publicly opposed unionization efforts.
Pelosi's office did not respond to requests for comment.
RIDING THE DRAGON: The Bidens' Chinese Secrets (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRmlcEBAiIs
CHINA’S OLD WHORE SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, AMERICA’S BIGGEST WAR PROFITEER, WAS FIRST TO ENDORSE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT. WONDER WHY???
As Glenn Bunting of the Los Angeles Times reported in 1997, Feinstein’s husband Richard Blum “has expanded his private business interests in China – to the point that his firm is now a prominent investor inside the communist nation.” In 1995, Dianne Feinstein became a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “giving her a prominent platform for her efforts to support China’s trade privileges.”
As Ben Weingarten noted in the Federalist in 2018, Feinstein’s husband has “profited handsomely from the greatly expanded China trade she supported.” The senator also “served as a key intermediary between China and the U.S. government, while serving on committees whose work would be of keen interest to the PRC.”
For 20 years, through three election cycles, Feinstein maintained on her staff a Chinese spy who would even attend consular functions for the California Democrat. One wonders what the FBI knew, when they knew it, and what they did about it, if anything.
Other politicians with China business connections include Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi, whose husband has conducted a series of deals in the Communist nation. Recall that Speaker Pelosi kept Eric Swalwell on the House Intelligence Committee even after his “PoonFang” liaisons with a Chinese spy (FEINSTEIN LONG EMPLOYED A CHINESE SPY).
Donald Trump Questions Nancy Pelosi’s Corruption
President Donald Trump questioned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s dubious participation in stock market initial public offering shares, enriching her family.
The president shared a clip Monday highlighting a CBS 60 Minutes report featuring author and Breitbart senior contributor Peter Schweizer’s investigation into Pelosi and her husband participating in at least eight different stock IPOs while in Congress.
"The House gone rogue! I want to remind you a little bit about the ring leader in this whole rogue operation against the President of the United States..." @MarkLevinShow
60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft confronted Pelosi on the topic in 2011, but she denied any impropriety.
The report noted that Pelosi and her husband participated in an initial public offering of Visa in 2008, while credit card regulation was underway in the House of Representatives. The Pelosis bought 5,000 shares at the initial price of $44 and shares were trading at $64 just two days later, according to the report.
“Congress has never done more for consumers nor has the Congress passed more critical reforms of the credit card industry than under the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi,” Pelosi spokesman, Drew Hammill, said in a statement, according to CNN after the 60 Minutes report aired.
The clip was featured on Mark Levin’s Fox News show Life, Liberty and Levin on Sunday.
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