Showing posts with label Koch Brothers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Koch Brothers. Show all posts

Saturday, January 5, 2019

Ann Coulter says she agrees with AOC: Raise taxes on the rich

Ann just wants to punish the Koch Brothers in the process, but there's a better reason to agree.

Good government acts like a curb on a street, steering behavior. That's what taxing the rich used to be all about.

How so?

Once enacted in 1916, high taxation of ordinary income didn't result in high revenues for government. That's why the income tax was extended to almost all earners instead of just the rich when it became clear within a few years that government wouldn't have enough money to play in the international sandbox without more dough. For their part the rich won long term tax concessions through diverting derivation of income from capitalist enterprises, the latter benefiting not just themselves as owners but also individuals with jobs, the country with productivity, and the government with additional multiple streams of revenue. It was an intricate but effective way of benefiting all concerned. 

The mistake with the Reagan Revolution was that it misunderstood human nature. It thought lots of new untaxed ordinary income would end up getting invested just the same way, and turn America into something never before seen. But the money didn't get invested the same way. It fled abroad where the cost of doing business was cheaper. It helped create middle classes wherever it went, but ours withered on the vine. Meanwhile the number of US billionaires mushroomed, the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay went ballistic, and general income inequality increased dramatically. Real incomes for most people have barely moved up since the 1970s.

And now here we are with an America never before seen indeed, where libertarian advocates of this destructive system tell us with a straight face that this is patriotism.

Unfortunately, none of this is in the pea brain of AOC, let alone in Ann Coulter's, Kevin McCarthy's or Donald Trump's.  

Friday, June 15, 2018

Ann Coulter: The rich are like sharks, all appetite and no brains


Trump thought North Korea was hard? With immigration, we have all of the most influential forces in our culture on the same page. Immigration is a great unifier of the rich and powerful. 

The rich are like sharks -- all appetite, no brain. With their cheap labor voting 7-3 for the Democrats, it won't be long until Democrats have a lock on government. What do you think they'll do then, Business Roundtable? Answer: Make it impossible to do business. Google "California." 

With the Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and the Koch brothers' incessant lobbying for more and more cheap labor, we see exactly what Lenin said about the capitalists: They will sell us the rope with which to hang them. 

The rich don't care. They can't think beyond next quarter's earnings. 

Monday, January 29, 2018

Bernie Sanders understands open borders is what the libertarian Koch brothers want, but he doesn't

Here, where he says open borders are harmful to ordinary Americans' wages.

Why is it the only prominent politician who really truly gets it is the socialist Bernie Sanders? Donald Trump, by contrast, has claimed American wages are too high and does not support increases to the minimum wage.

Maybe Bernie's not really a socialist as he claims. True socialists welcome free trade and open borders because they know that equalizing wages globally will hasten the revolution of the proletariat since it widens the gap between rich and poor to the extreme, driving wages down in a race to the bottom, ending in a violent overthrow of the rich capitalist owners.

Instead Bernie believes in the US nation state. If he's a socialist, he's a national socialist. He just can't say it. Instead he calls himself a democratic socialist.

Wednesday, June 1, 2016

Libertarian Koch brothers funded American Action Forum finds cost of deportation to be $67,000 per, ICE only $12,500

What a shock.

Ed Rubenstein, here:

One AAF report put the total cost of removing all 11.3 million illegals living in the U.S. at between $420 billion and $619 billion. That is based on the assumption that 20% of the aliens would leave voluntarily [The Budgetary and Economic Costs of Addressing Unauthorized Immigration: Alternative Strategies, By Ben Gitis and Laura Collins, March 6, 2015].

But let’s do the math. Deducting those who would self-deport we are left with 8.96 million illegals that the U.S. government would have to forcibly deport. Dividing AAF’s low and high cost estimates by these involuntary deportees, we arrive at a per deportee cost ranging from $45,000 to $67,000. By comparison, ICE—the government agency in charge of deportations, estimates that it costs $12,500 to deport an illegal alien. [ ICE reveals cost for deporting each illegal immigrant, By Mizanur Rahman, San Francisco Chronicle,  January 27, 2011]. ...

To understand why AAF inflates its deportation cost estimates, just follow the money. Not the Federal tax money: the donor money. The Koch brothers [have] given millions to the forum as part of the now-familiar quid pro quo: our money for your “research” supporting open borders [The newest dark money power player: American Action Network, By Zachary Roth, MSNBC, March 18, 2014]. The Kochs see illegal aliens as a profit center rather than a problem.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Libertarians routinely play the spoilers in elections, but Rush Limbaugh is surprised the Koch Bros. may support Hillary

Our Big Fat Idiot strikes again.

Today, here:

I mean, the #NeverTrump movement's still there, and I'll treat you to them as the program unfolds. All kinds of major, big Republican donors are saying, "I can't do it! I just can't give my money to Trump."  The Koch brothers are thinking of going with Hillary, for example.  Which really surprises me.  I mean, they are libertarians, and that just blows me away that the Koch brothers would be all-in for Hillary.  But everybody's noses are still out of joint in a lot of ways.  We'll see how people are feeling and thinking a week from now, two weeks from now. 

Friday, August 7, 2015

Fox News didn't want Repubicans to discuss the economy and jobs last night because that didn't fit Fox News' agenda

Jim Tankersley noticed the glaring omission from last night's Republican debate, here:

Polls continue to show that Americans care more about the economy than any other election issue. Fox News moderators noted that they had received more than 3,000 economy-themed questions on Facebook before the debate. Which is why it's so baffling that neither the questioners nor most candidates seemed eager to talk about growth, jobs and - as Republicans have been promising to do all election cycle - America's beleaguered working class. ...

"Way too little discussion" of economic growth, the conservative commentator Larry Kudlow tweeted after the prime-time debate ended. "If you're one of the 65 percent of Americans who think the U.S. is on the wrong track," said James Pethokoukis, a conservative writer for the American Enterprise Institute who has pushed Republican candidates to address worker angst, "what have these debates offered?"

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

Obviously the economy and jobs didn't fit Fox News' agenda last night, which was to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump, who has pledged to end the flood of illegal immigration stealing Americans' jobs, end the farce of free-trade and become the greatest jobs president the country has ever seen.

Fox News, like The Wall Street Journal, is owned by the open borders, free-trade libertarian Rupert Murdoch. It has its marching orders. And every candidate who takes money from the libertarian Koch brothers has his and is similarly beholden to the same ideology which demands the cheapest labor possible in service of the almighty bottom line, not in service of the country's citizens. The involvement of Facebook and Debbie Washerwoman Schultz of the DNC were just the bow around the illegal alien amnesty package.  

And that's why Donald Trump scares the crap out of them and must be destroyed:

He doesn't need their money to run for president, and won't do their bidding when he wins.


Monday, April 20, 2015

Scott Walker receives the kiss of death . . .

. . . the endorsement of the Koch brothers.

That conservatism stuff is just for show. The real Scott Walker is a libertarian.

Story here.

Monday, March 10, 2014

NR's Libertarian Kevin Williamson Helpfully Informs Us The Koch Bros. Support Sodomy

Kevin Williamson of National Review obviously has no imagination when he says "There is no CPAC of the Left" right after almost busting his buttons informing us that Gov. Rick Perry at CPAC and Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the US Senate all support reductions of mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders.

Of course there's a CPAC of the Left. It's called CPAC.

But this was helpful here:

Senator Reid’s recent obsession with denouncing Charles and David Koch from his congressional perch is of a piece with that: Never mind the merits of the things the Kochs endorse politically — from liberalizing energy markets to gay marriage — they are a handy bogeyman. And, given the politics of the situation, Senator Reid surely would prefer to talk about the Koch brothers’ allegedly nefarious plans for world domination (the great “libertarian conspiracy to take over the world and leave you the hell alone”) than about Democrats’ recent meandering energy policies, which would hold hostage U.S. producers in order to appease the Birkenstocks-and-white-boy-dreadlocks set.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

If Harry Reid Is Protesting Unlimited Money In Politics, You Know He Must Mean His Own

Kimberley Strassel for The Wall Street Journal, here:

Mr. Reid was quite agitated on the Senate floor about "unlimited money," by which he must have been referring to the $4.4 billion that unions had spent on politics from 2005 to 2011 alone, according to this newspaper. The Center for Responsive Politics' list of top all-time donors from 1989 to 2014 ranks Koch Industries No. 59. Above Koch were 18 unions, which collectively spent $620,873,623 more than Koch Industries ($18 million). Even factoring in undisclosed personal donations by the Koch brothers, they are a rounding error in union spending. ...

[I]n addition to a system in which organized labor spends "unlimited money" to "rig the system to benefit themselves" and "buy elections," (to quote Mr. Reid)[about the opposition], Mr. Obama's IRS has made sure to shut up anyone who might compete with unions or complain about them.

Democrats: The things they are for and against are the things they are against and for.

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Both Political Parties Are Now Essentially Libertarian, And That's The Problem

Seen here:

John Carr, who now heads the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University, thinks both parties are now essentially defined by their commitment to economic or lifestyle libertarianism. "These libertarian tendencies are reinforced by large campaign contributors and powerful interest groups on the left and right (e.g., Emily's List and the Koch Brothers, Planned Parenthood and the Club for Growth). Who died and left Arianna Huffington and Grover Norquist in charge? Is there any room left for compassionate conservatives and pro-life Democrats?"