Those poor, poor people

 Palestinians Describe Beatings, Stress Positions, Other Abuses in Israeli Detention...

 

The horror: Share paying no income taxes spikes from 44% in 2019 to 61% in 2020

 Stereotypical story here.

No one ever talks about how little Americans make.

In 2019, you'll be happy to know, 61% of individual wage earners in the US made less than $45,000. 

44% made less than $30k.

I'd like to see our legislators live on $30k, since so many of the people they claim to represent must. Maybe they'd be less inclined to rob us blind year in and year out with their trillion$ in spending.

Congressional salaries, incidentally, put the 435 members of the US House in the top 3.5% of individual wage earners.

IT'S WHY THEY RUN.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's something horribly wrong with a Rube Goldberg tax code which allows:

the rich to avoid taking "ordinary income" and pay little or zero tax on their fabulous capital returns;

more than the bottom half also to pay little to nothing (don't forget that they do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes);

and the people in-between to get squeezed to death.

Given that deficits no longer matter, why do taxes continue to matter? Just end them. We borrow the money anyway.

smdh

Condescending racism, NYT's style: People in black face can go back to being white, but not black people!

OMG! Black people have to be black ALL THE TIME. The horror, the horror.

Yep, you guessed it, the inventor of sliced bread was white . . . and German-American . . . and from Iowa

Ve haf vays ov makinck your lunch qvicker.

The horror. The horror.

Otto Frederick Rohwedder (1880-1960)

Ben Shapiro hated on Pat Buchanan as early as 2003, said he was yesterday's news, embraced neoconservatism as mainstream

A guy named Shapiro said all that? Color me shocked!

After Iraq, attack Pat Buchanan:

The conservative movement has progressed beyond the ideology of Pat Buchanan. But if the conservative movement continues to tolerate him, even as a fringe character, it endangers the gains it has made. 

And fifteen years later some people think Pat Buchanan's doppelgänger currently occupies the White House even as the neoconservative flagship The Weekly Standard is about to close its doors.

The horror . . . the horror.

Rick Santorum is suddenly doing robocalls for Sandy Pensler for US Senate here in Michigan, which sounds like desperation

Just got the call a few minutes ago.

Turns out the race is now deadlocked after some time with Pensler in the lead.

Pensler has been advertising vigorously in Rush Limbaugh's timeslot on the radio as well.

His opponent John James has been relying on direct mail to reach his voters.

Pensler is spending an awful lot of money to win when he went out of his way in January to alienate voters by stating for the record that the Polish people were complicit in the Holocaust in World War II.

That's hardly how to win friends and influence people in Macomb and Wayne counties if you really want to be elected to the US Senate in 2018! 

'The Polish legislature yesterday, with particularly insensitive timing, hammered home humanities [sic] dangerous proclivity to insulate ourselves against others. It passed legislation outlawing calling Polish based concentration camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzic and others as “Polish concentration camps” rather they must now be called . [sic] “Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland”. This attempt to whitewash and deny complicity in the horrors of the Holocaust is dangerous.'

Ross Douthat might as well write for The New Republic instead of The New York Times

Here, sounding just like Brian Beutler:

[R]ight now [Trump's] presidency is in danger of being very swiftly Carterized — ending up so unpopular, ineffectual and fractious that even with Congress controlled by its own party, it can’t get anything of substance done. ... [T]he more the Trump White House remains mired in its own melodramas, the more plausible it becomes that the Trump-era House and Senate set a record for risk avoidance and legislative inactivity.

Yeah, 23 days in and he's already a failure because there's no . . . wait for it . . . [infrastructure] spending bill and a tax cut bill, the two great incompatibles which Gallup says most people want.

Isn't The New York Times supposed to be wiser than that, admonishing that you can't have your cake and eat it too? Well, its so-called conservatives at least should be so wise.

The fact of the matter is the Gallup poll result, which is the same as the Douthat wish list, reveals the bipartisan nature of Trump's support. The people who support increased spending and the people who want tax cuts populate two different political parties. Perhaps Douthat has heard of them? Getting them to agree on this stuff is going to take a lot more time than 23 days. It took Barack Obama over four years to come up with his tax cut. Unfortunately for Obama it was Bush's tax cut, not delivered by Dingy Harry and San Fran Nan but by John Boehner at the dawn of 2013. What Harry and Nancy did immediately deliver was jacked up "infrastructure" spending within a month of 44's inauguration, adding a $700 billion increase to Bush 2009 fiscal year spending, making the one time stimulus a permanent part of the budget.

It is the biggest untold scandal since the Fed secretly lent trillions and trillions of dollars to the world at rock bottom prices on questionable collateral during the financial crisis from 2008-2010.

Because Republicans took the House in 2010, that additional $700 billion got no higher, but what do we have to show for it after increasing outlays $700 billion in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016?

Where's the infrastructure after eight years and $5.6 trillion in increased spending?

Another trillion dollars will accomplish nothing.

Meanwhile Trump is delivering to his base, which is the first thing he must do, rescinding Obama executive orders, undercutting the ObamaCare mandate as Congress prepares its repeal, actually laying the groundwork to build The Wall (infrastructure!), rounding up criminal aliens (the horror) and trying to reduce terrorism threats which exist because of a chaotic immigration system, except the courts the enemy is trying to stop him.

He's also vilifying the media whom we also hate every chance he gets, and now the judiciary, the tag team which advances liberalism against the will of the people who overwhelmingly support Trump 2600 counties to 500 counties for the enemy.

And most of all, he's not being Hillary.

It's been a great 23 days. 

Tina Brown asks us to imagine the agony experienced by Hillary Clinton having to endure 15 months of "grandstanding and gladhanding"

The horror. The horror.

Here.

Wikileaks' "ORCA100" has been trying to wake-up John Podesta and Hillary Clinton to the horrors of Muslim immigration: They won't be able to say they weren't warned

Multikultistan: A house of horrors for ordinary Germans

What's the difference between a German and a shopping cart? A shopping cart has got a mind of its own

While most centrist & leftwing politicians lie liberally about (esp. Continental) Europe's Immigration Disaster, Angela Merkel & Wouter Bos once blurted out the terrible truth, thereby sounding just like Pim Fortuyn

ORCA100 also has some other interesting e-mail contacts in addition to John Podesta's:

sbrown@politico.eu,

cwinneker@politico.eu,

jplucinska@politico.eu,

bsurk@politico.eu,

jbarigazzi@politico.eu,

ehananoki@mediamatters.org,

pdallison@politico.eu,

abernath@law.georgetown.edu,

podesta@law.georgetown.edu,

tyler.kingkade@huffingtonpost.com,

antonia.blumberg@huffingtonpost.com,

roy.sekoff@gmail.com,

whitney@huffingtonpost.com,

stuart@huffingtonpost.com,

maygers@huffingtonpost.com,

david@huffingtonpost.com,

cindy.vanegas@huffingtonpost.com,

louise.ridley@huffingtonpost.com,

aubrey.allegretti@huffingtonpost.com,

eamonn@helprefugees.org.uk,

nharvey@doctorsoftheworld.org.uk,

kate.sheppard@huffingtonpost.com,

igor.bobic@huffingtonpost.com,

stephen.hull@huffingtonpost.com.

Oh the horror: The French might actually get angry and do something, disturbing effetes everywhere

From the story here:

I wish I could say this was just hysterical exaggeration. But the evidence does not support complacency. Just down the road from me on the outskirts of Montpellier on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, there's long been a gun club where enthusiastic game hunters can polish their skills during the off-season. Unlike in Britain, it is perfectly legal for members of such clubs to own pistols and semi-automatic rifles.

In the last few months, since the wave of terrorism has intensified, the membership of the gun club has quadrupled, from 200 to 800 members. The new members are not all motivated by the love of shooting sports. Benoit, a local olive farmer who owns more than a dozen rifles, pistols and shotguns, as well as an AK-47 assault rifle, admitted to me this weekend something much darker. 

"They're getting ready for a war," he said.

Now that fascist Trump has kids pledging to HIM never to take drugs or smoke cigs, and go easy on the alcohol

The horror.

Here.

Foolish French soccer star imagines that the horror they've just experienced "has no religion"

Seen here:

'The France midfielder Lassana Diarra has revealed that his cousin, Asta Diakité, was killed during Friday night’s attack. Diarra played 80 minutes of the match against Germany. In a statement posted on twitter, he said his cousin was like “a big sister to me … In this climate of terror, it is important for all of us who are representatives of our country and its diversity to speak and remain united against a horror that has no colour, no religion.”'

Yeah, that religion that just attacked you atheists once again wasn't real. It was just in your imagination.

It's not just religious people who are ideologues.

Libertarian Ben Domenech, like every sick liberal does, descends into the politics of personal destruction

Libertarian Ben Domenech, here, sensing his own marginality, states quite seriously that deporting law-breakers and enforcing the constitutional concept of jurisdictional citizenship is nothing short of racism and despotism:

"The idea that America is going to endure the blood and moral outrage over the deportation of 11 million people, including young children of illegals born here who are constitutionally American citizens, is absurd. Even one of the most prominent immigration hawks, Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, dismissed this mass deportation as impossible on my radio show this week. But Donald Trump has proposed this, and loudly insisted he will do it. And the faction of the country that believes not in freedom but identity politics for white people adores it."

Sprinkled throughout he calls Trump supporters a bunch of narrow-minded, disaffected, angry street thugs who are motivated by an unprincipled and frankly anti-constitutional emotionalism to support a dangerous man who is only too willing to rule in a dictatorial and autocratic manner in the style of Obama but for the "right" reasons. Why, they'll even abolish the US Senate!

It's that simple you see. You knuckle-dragging conservatives have an insufficient concept of freedom. How dare you have a border and stop other people from exercising their right to be free by crossing it! How dare you successfully deport over a million illegal aliens in 1954 with just 750 agents!

The outrage! The horror!

Winter 2015 temperatures were above average in the lower 48

The first quarter of 2015 was a lot warmer than last year.

For 2014 minimum temperature January through March ranked 25th going back to 1895, meaning there were 24 winters that had colder minimum temperature, 41st for average temperature, so obviously below normal, and 104th for heating degree days (the coldest year ranked 120th, meaning 2014 was the 16th coldest first quarter since 1895 in terms of the energy needed to keep comfortable).

2015, despite the horror stories heard from places like Boston, was overall much warmer. For minimum temperature the first quarter ranked 96th, for average temperature 98th, and for heating degree days, above average at 75th. An average winter involves 2317 heating degree days. 2015 came in at 2370, not very much higher at all. The worst winter on record was in 1912, with 2761 heating degree days.

Consider yourself armed when the wusses blame the weather for the bad economy.

You know who to blame . . . the gutsy one.

Oh the horror: Did you know the personal savings rate INCLUDES IRA and 401(k) contributions?

The annual average of the rate is shown.

Then how come the personal saving rate has been in steady decline since 1974 when IRAs were first passed into law? And how come saving didn't improve after 1978 when 401(k) plans were first created? Or after 1997 when Roth IRAs were legislated? The current monthly reading of personal saving is a measly 4.4%.

A rich country saves, a poor one spends.

"Notice that NIPA’s [National Income and Product Accounts] treatment of IRAs and 401(k) plan contributions, for example, is perfectly consistent: Because these defined contributions are not part of personal outlays (and, therefore, must be included in the difference between personal income and personal outlays), they are correctly included in national saving computations."

-- Massimo Guidolin and Elizabeth A. La Jeunesse, "The Decline in the U.S. Personal Saving Rate: Is It Real and Is It a Puzzle?" in Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis REVIEW, November/December 2007, p. 499, footnote 13 (here)

Memo To Larry Kudlow And Other Defenders Of GM/TARP Bailouts: Free Market Capitalism This Is Not

General Motors, bailed out at a loss to the American people in 2009, has now had to recall approximately 2.6 million vehicles according to this story, many built well after the fact:

General Motors is boosting by 971,000 the number of small cars being recalled worldwide for a defective ignition switch, saying cars from the model years 2008-2011 may have gotten the part as a replacement.

The latest move brings the total number of cars affected to 2.6 million. The questionable handling of the problem, including GM's admission that it knew the switches were possibly defective as early as 2001, has embarrassed the nation's largest automaker. The recalls — which are under investigation by Congress and federal regulators — have overshadowed the improved quality of GM's newer cars.

---------------------------------------------------

Improved quality? You mean like the Volt which catches on fire? The Cruze whose steering wheel comes off? If this were a free market capitalist economy, Larry, GM would have been allowed to fail instead of being allowed to keep on selling this garbage to the American people.

GM should have gone through bankruptcy instead of being bailed out. It might have been reorganized as a result, but not as a worthless union shop. Otherwise its assets would have been acquired by the highest bidders who know how to build cars. Unfortunately GM's still here making crummy cars with shitty parts, some of which could kill more people, all thanks to the taxpayers, some of whom are still dumb enough to keep buying the things. Just Google the forums and read the horror stories. I'll bet they're the same ones who don't know Monday is the deadline to sign up for ObamaCare.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: no more GM cars for me, ever. The bailout was a bridge too far.

Ditto Chrysler.

Tax Equality Would Expose The True Horror Of Federal Spending

The true horror of federal spending in America would be understood by everyone if we actually had tax equality, by which I mean if everyone paid the same rate of taxation on all income, regardless of source.

SocialSecurity.gov reports that there were 151,380,749 people in America in 2011 with net compensation of about $6.2 trillion. However, personal income was actually more like $12.95 trillion from all sources according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. This total probably was distributed to more individuals than the above referenced 151.4 million workers, but that number will be close enough to illustrate the horror I am describing.

Let us assume we tax each person earning income individually, which we do not do presently for conservative reasons, and grant to each person earning income a poverty exception to taxation of the first $11,170, which is the federal poverty guideline for a one person household in 2012. Times the 151. 4 million workers or so, this exempts $1.7 trillion from taxation, leaving $11.25 trillion of personal income in 2011 to be taxed.

In order to generate the $3.8 trillion or so we spent at the federal level in the last year, everyone earning income from whatever source would have to pay a tax rate of 33.8% on that $11.25 trillion in order to have a balanced budget for the year.

I seriously doubt the 47% who pay next to nothing in taxes would be too happy to get that tax bill, but maybe they should, if we truly want to cut government down to size.

Besides, it's only fair.

Democrat Joe Manchin Fires Rifle at Cap and Trade Bill in Ad Last Fall

Oh dear, oh my, the horrors! Those needlessly inflammatory Democrats! Those NRA-endorsed troglodytes! Why, somebody might pick up a gun and shoot a politician or something! How dare they?!

ANOTHER ATTEMPTED END RUN AROUND THE CONSTITUTION

People who think one state, Florida, jammed an unwanted president down the throats of the American people in the year 2000 now want to make sure this happens more frequently, but on a broader scale. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. It's called the National Popular Vote (NPV) campaign, an innovation of recent provenance whose latest progress is in Massachusetts, reported here.

I think these people are motivated by a vendetta against George Bush. They still can't get over the guy, and it makes absolutely no difference to them that the country ratified Florida's decision in 2000 by re-electing George Bush decisively in 2004. 

Massachusetts is about to join five other states in what is really an attempted power grab for the Democrat party. I say they are a pestilence on the body politic, and it's time to stop them before more states join Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts and attempt to sully a presidential election and throw the country into another constitutional crisis.

Imagine what would happen if enough states with 270 electoral votes got together to agree to this, and tried to force their will on the rest of us because their states individually voted to do so. Can you imagine your president elected by just 11 states? That's all it would take under their proposal: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina and Georgia, the eleven most populous states with 271 electoral college votes in all. Do you want them deciding who your president should be?

In 2008, only Texas and Georgia went Republican, giving the Democrats 222 electoral votes. Of the next ten most populous states, Virginia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Missouri, Washington, Indiana, Minnesota, Arizona, Maryland and Wisconsin, only Tennessee, Missouri and Arizona went Republican, giving the Democrats another 77 electoral college votes, more than enough to win.

So in any given election, just 21 of the 50 states could control the outcome of the election, with Democrats highly favored to win the White House every time, by a margin of 299 to 81 in those states. The supporters of the NPV complain that under the present arrangement where it's "winner takes all electoral votes," more or less, in 48 states, elections get determined by battleground states, where candidates actually have to compete for votes. The horror. Their solution? Eliminate the battle.

These five, and now six, states don't want to award their electoral college votes based on who won the election in their respective states, but rather to the winner of the most votes nationally, so that not only can the will of the people of their own states be subverted if necessary, but the will of other states as well, for that is what this revolution of elections would accomplish. It marginalizes the 29 states with fewer than 10 electoral votes by telling them their votes for president don't matter.

And it is easy to imagine a situation where the voters in a state are told that even though they voted for president X the electors of their state are going to vote for president Y because their state is a party to the NPV sponsored law which requires them to cast their votes for the overall winner. It is amusing to imagine electors attempting to hide behind the skirts of this law in this way and pointing the finger at voters in another state exclaiming "They made me do it!"  

The constitution is deliberately arranged as it is to protect the smaller states by population from being lorded over by the states with the larger. That is why even the smallest states have two senators, same as the largest do, to act as a counterweight to the power and interests of the larger states. That is also why changes to the constitution must be approved by states, 75% of them, not popular majorities. The NPV is an end run around this amendment process, which stands in the way of changing the electoral college system, the real enemy of the NPV. On those grounds alone it should be challenged in court as an extra-constitutional attempt to change the constitution. 

Can you imagine a country where a minority of states vote to ignore the electoral college system and try to force their president on the majority? To do so really would be to create two countries, because what the NPV campaign does in actuality is create a rival electoral college. If that isn't seditious, I don't know what is. 

Peter at Bayou Renaissance Man frames the issue helpfully:

The fourth and most worrying element of the NPV campaign, in my eyes, is that it's a blatant attempt to bypass the Constitution of the United States. The provision of an Electoral College is a federal, constitutional matter, not determined by each individual State. You'll find it in Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, as modified by the 12th, 20th and 25th Amendments. If we want to change that (or any other) part of the Constitution, there's a mechanism provided to do so (Article 5). The NPV campaign ignores this altogether, and seeks to alter the way in which individual States allocate their electoral college votes without modifying the Constitution itself.

Appropriately quoted in the Boston Globe article, linked above, is Massachusetts Senate minority leader Richard Tisei, who says: "The thing about this that bothers me the most is it's so sneaky. This is the way that liberals do things a lot of times, very sneaky. This is sort of an end run around the Constitution."

Truer words were never spoken.