Larry Kudlow is brain dead and he's on the radio

Like Rush Limbaugh, Larry Kudlow doesn't accurately remember the Reagan era.

It's embarrassing coming from these self-appointed spokesmen for Ronald Reagan.

Unlike Limbaugh, however, Kudlow actually served in the Reagan Administration so he really ought to know better, but today on the radio he kept saying that the jobs created in February 2018 (313,000) don't get any better than that.

Flashback to February 1984: jobs added 481,000. Or February 1988: jobs added 453,000.

Need more?

June 1983: +379,000. July 1983: +418,000. September 1983: +1.115 MILLION.

1.115 MILLION!

IN ONE MONTH!

Do I need to go on?

Yes, I think I do.

November 1983: +353,000.

December 1983: +356,000.

January 1984: +446,000.

April 1984: +363,000.

June 1984: +379,000.

July 1984: +313,000.

November 1984: +349,000.

March 1985: +346,000.

July 1986: +318,000.

September 1986: +347,000.

April 1987: +338,000.

July 1987: +347,000.

October 1987: +492,000.

June 1988: +363,000.

September 1988: +339,000.

November 1988: +339,000.

The current jobs boom isn't a boom, not yet, not by a longshot, and is NOTHING like the Reagan era, and Kudlow is doing a disservice to the historical record in which he played a part.

You've become a political hack, Larry.

Let this be a sign unto you: The era of libertarian looting ushered in by Reagan now reaching apogee will be followed by another FDR-like "progressive" era of welfare statism

Bernie tapped into the amorphous socialism clamored for by today's young people who face dim job prospects while saddled by large college debts for degrees incommensurate with what's available in the job marketplace. This is the direct result of the takeover of public education from bottom to top by the left. It never delivers what it promises, except for hope.

As "millennials" replace the Baby Boom at the polls, their vote will transform America, and already has. Obama and Bernie were signs of this. Expect a return to high taxation of the rich, even larger federal government, and the transformation of existing welfare state programs into universal systems.

Like it or not, that's the future. Patriotism will take the form of socialism for Americans instead of for the world.

Now that Republicanism has thoroughly committed itself to globalism, libertarians are advised to take the money and run. 

Taxes are about precise numbers, which means Rush Limbaugh will make you cringe

He just said Ronald Reagan lowered the top marginal rate from 90% in the 1981 tax reform.

He didn't. John F. Kennedy lowered the top rate from 90% to 70%.

Reagan lowered the top rate from 70% to 50%.

Just about everything Rush says about taxes is imprecise, and wrong, including about what he has no excuse for not knowing, namely taxes under his hero Reagan.

But hey, he can't even get the old chestnut "whose ox is gored" correct. Today it's the goose getting gored, or something.

Take another pill, Rush. Just one more hour to go before you're off for two weeks.

Update: My bad. Rush will be back tomorrow, to celebrate the tax bill passing.

HELOC interest deduction goes away under Republican tax "reform": Expect loan consolidation

You know the one, the one you take to help buy a car, fund tuition, or actually fix up the house.

When the credit card interest deduction went away under Ronald Reagan, consumers opened up Home Equity Lines of Credit in response, the interest on which was deductible. Now that HELOC interest deductibility is going away, expect those HELOCs to be refinanced under new first mortgages to recapture that.

Also expect this to impact consumer spending, negatively.

Reported here:

Individuals who take out home equity loans will no longer be able to deduct that interest under the new bill.

Sum Ting Wong: Low top marginal tax rates since 1986 have NOT delivered

Low top marginal tax rates have NOT delivered since 1986.

The average top marginal rate has been 38% for the last thirty years, 49% lower than the average rate of 75% which prevailed from 1956 until the Reagan tax reform of 1986.

After the reform, stocks have done little better than before, but gross public debt has increased at a rate 21% higher than before, growth of current dollar GDP has plunged by 66%, and growth of household net worth has slowed by 48%.

Where did the gains from the Reagan tax cuts go?

You know the answer. The number of US billionaires has exploded from just 41 in 1987 to 536 in 2015, up 1,207%. The money has gone into the pockets of the few, instead of into investment. From 1960 to 1986 net domestic investment grew 846% whereas in the 30 years since 1986 the metric has grown by only 117%, a contraction of 86% under the more favorable personal income tax regime.

The lesson seems clear.

Higher marginal income tax rates force the wealthy to invest in business and derive their income from investments taxed at the preferred lower long term capital rates. Lower marginal personal income tax rates, however, entice them away from going through all the trouble, in turn depriving the economy of growth, employees of growing incomes and wealth, and the government of revenue.

Like the formerly sound public policy which invented the 30-year mortgage to force people to save for the future in the housing piggy bank, the time has come to reincentivize business owners to invest more in their businesses by making the personal income option less attractive.

Neither Republican tax bill does this. 

  

The Reagan GDP miracle is a complete myth: It was all government spending (on defense)

And it set a horrible precedent for the dramatic overspending of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, which has sent us on a course to oblivion. You can argue it was necessary to defeat the USSR, but you can't argue that baseline spending (in black) has done anything but go up, up, up to dangerous new levels as a result (notice the baseline Jimmy Carter inherited from liberal Republicanism, for which he got the blame from Ronald Reagan, which wasn't very nice of the old man who went on to bequeath a similar giant new baseline to his successor, G.H.W. Bush).

No, the real miracle was the pathetic loser in Iran, Jimmy Carter, who spent the least in the post-war for his additional GDP, followed by Bill Clinton.

Of course, the spending is all the prerogative of the Congress. The president proposes but the Congress disposes, as the saying goes.

Beware libertarian politicians preaching balanced budgets, as well as utopian infrastructure spending enthusiasts promising the moon and liberal Republicans selling government spending as security to senior citizens at the expense of younger Americans in a time of protracted war. They have delivered little beyond $20 trillion in debt.

John O'Sullivan still refuses to accept the meaning of "ourselves and our Posterity"

Here:

Notice that Ronald Reagan did not say that the great civil ideas of the West were the property of those Notre Dame graduates who were descended from the Founding Fathers and their generation. Nor did he say that they were the property of white Anglophone Protestants who had fetched up on these shores in the meantime — since that would have excluded the son of an Irish Catholic father like himself. Nor that the children of black slaves or other non-white migrants were excluded from that same moral and intellectual Western inheritance which the black former slave and passionate reader, Frederick Douglass, so cherished and claimed as his own.

Detroit Free Press says Michigan is ground zero for the Muslim clit cutters, girls from MN brought in for secret "operation"

Unfortunately, Ronald Reagan's crazy libertarian Judge Bernard Friedman is presiding over the case. You remember Friedman. He was the judge who overturned Michigan's 2004 Marriage Act in 2014.

From the story here:

[T[he [federal] government estimates that as many as 100 girls may have had their genitals cut at the hands of a local doctor and her cohorts.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sara Woodward disclosed the information while trying to convince a judge to keep a doctor and his wife locked up in the historic case. It involves allegations that two Minnesota girls had their genitals cut at a Livonia clinic in February as part of a religious rite of passage and were told to keep what happened a secret. ...

Against Woodward's wishes, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman granted bond to two other defendants in the case: Dr. Fakhruddin Attar, 53, of Farmington Hills, who is accused of letting Nagarwala use his clinic to perform genital cutting procedures on minor girls; and his wife, Farida Attar, 50, who is accused of holding the girls' hands during the procedure to keep them from squirming and to calm them. ...

The government believes the three defendants, all members of a local Indian-Muslim sect, subjected numerous girls to genital cutting procedures over a 12-year period. ...  [Dr. Attar allegedly admitted] to authorities that he let Nagarwala use his clinic up to six times a year to treat children for genital rashes. ...

The defense has argued that the Attars did not engage in any criminal  act and that the procedure at issue is a protected religious rite-of-passage that involves no cutting, but rather a scraping of genital membrane.

Robert Tracinski skewers some libertarians for the socialism in their heads, but still misses why it's there

Here, chalking it all up to "unexamined collectivist assumptions" and mistakenly allowing "a little dominion of socialism over their thinking" and the left "trying to preserve that territory they own in your head" through various schemes like the estate tax.

In other words, they're insufficiently indoctrinated. You know, like all those intractable Russians who were sent to the Gulag for nothing more than mistakenly expressing incorrect thoughts.

It never dawns on Tracinski that ideology is a coin with socialism on the one side and libertarianism on the other.

The article is amusing because the "conservatives" he skewers for being insufficiently libertarian are or were aligned with the left and leftism: Charles Murray (former labor unionist, six years in the Peace Corps, "rebel"), Ronald Reagan ("I didn't leave the Democratic Party . . ."), Stuart Butler of health mandate infamy (Brookings), Milton Friedman (FDR functionary) and Megan McArdle (self-described former "ultraliberal").

With the example of McArdle on the estate tax before him, one might have hoped that Tracinski had stumbled into the origin of the socialism in our heads, but no, "there is no such collective entity as 'society.'"

The man wishing to leave his estate to that little society called his family might have begged to differ.

Mark Levin won't tell you Ronald Reagan expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit in the 1986 tax reform

Hey Mark, does that make Reagan someone who "sold out his principles" for liberalism?

Well does it?

German leftist critic of Trump's America First policy proclaimed the death of rapacious English and American free markets in 2008

Boltneck shakes hands mit Steinmeier in 2014

It took less than one day after Trump's speech for Germany to wet its pants. First VW kills profits, and now Trump is going to cost Germany a fortune. Steinmeier here went on record almost immediately criticizing Trump's remarks as incoherent.

Here the leftist was prematurely celebrating eight years ago about the death of right-wing economics in the West:

[T]he Social Democrats (SPD) are shifting hard Left to protect their flank. "The rule of the radical market ideology that began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan has ended with a loud bang," said Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany's foreign minister and SPD candidate for chancellor next year. "We need a comprehensive new start, so we can reestablish our society on fresh foundations. People create value, not locusts," he said.

Ann Coulter correctly says Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election because he lost the white vote

Here yesterday:

[Stuart] Stevens says Romney tapped out every last white voter and still lost, so he says Republicans are looking for “the Lost Tribes of the Amazon” hoping to win more white votes: “In 1980, Ronald Reagan won 56 percent of white voters and won a landslide victory of 44 states. In 2012, Mitt Romney won 59 percent of whites and lost with 24 states.”

Apparently, no one’s told Stevens about the 50-state Electoral College. ...

Romney lost the white vote to Obama in five crucial swing states: Maine (42 percent of the white vote), Minnesota (47 percent), New Hampshire (48 percent), Iowa (48 percent) and Wisconsin (49 percent). He only narrowly beat Obama’s white vote in other important swing states — Illinois (51 percent), Colorado (52 percent), Michigan (53 percent), Ohio (54 percent) and Pennsylvania (54 percent).

Increasing the white vote in these states gives Trump any number of paths to victory.

I made similar observations here at the end of February, noting how Romney averaged under 50% of the white vote in 21 states, losing them all to Obama.

Like Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan 36 years ago tomorrow was very unpopular in this country

L.A.Times poll 3/25/80 Favorables:

John Anderson 68% (0 electoral votes in November, Independent party)

Teddy Kennedy 60% (lost primary to less popular Carter even though winning 11 states & DC with 7.3 million popular votes)

Jimmy Carter 51% (49 electoral votes in November)

Ronald Reagan 30% (489 electoral votes in November). 

Donald Trump's little known involvement as a material, early supporter of Ronald Reagan

The UK Daily Mail reported here in May 2015:

'Donald Trump was on the Reagan Finance Committee in 1979-80 when most of the New York financial elite were for George Bush or John Connally,' the former campaign aide told Daily Mail Online, on condition of anonymity.

Trump and his father Fred were in the room when Reagan announced his candidacy in New York City in 1980, he explained, adding that without Trump the 40th president might have been dead in the water.

'When the phone company said it would be 30 to 60 days before they could install our phones at the Reagan for President headquarters on 52nd street,' he recalled, 'I called Donald Trump. They installed the phones the next day.'

'Donald also let us use his helicopter to fly our delegate petitions to Albany, where we filed 15 minutes before closing at the board of elections.'

And Fred Trump 'loaned the campaign some space in a building he owned in Queens,' the Reagan veteran said. 'Donald got us space on 52nd street. They were among a handful of Reagan's earliest New York Supporters.'

1993 World Trade Center bomber got illegal immigrant amnesty from Ronald Reagan in 1986

Germany denied [Mahmud Abouhalima] political asylum and he quickly married Renate Soika, a troubled German woman, which guaranteed he could remain in the country. He divorced Soika three years later, but shortly after he married another woman named Marianne Weber in a Muslim ceremony. He flew to Brooklyn with his new wife and after his American tourist visa expired, applied for amnesty claiming to be an agricultural worker and was accepted as a permanent resident under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

Rush Limbaugh oversleeps and asks "Where's the conservatism?" when it's wherever Trump holds a rally

Here, today:

But there are a lot of people who have been donating to Republicans, and a lot of people who think they've been giving money to conservatives and conservative causes, and they've started asking themselves, what are they getting for it? Where is all this conservatism? People solicit money in Washington to keep conservatism alive, in Washington, in the Republican Party. "We're the guys that can do it. We have the contacts. We help 'em write policy. We help 'em understand policy." Great, great, that's fabulous, but where is it, a lot of people are asking.

Where is all the conservatism? Is it on Fox News? Is it National Review? Is it over at the American Spectator? Where is it? It isn't in the Republican Party. That is for darn sure, and so many people are livid about that. I'm talking about the party establishment. Yes, Ted Cruz. Look, what more do you want me to say? Ted Cruz is the closest living thing to Ronald Reagan we're ever gonna have in our lifetimes. I don't know what more I can say about Ted Cruz.

Fake conservatives Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both voted to confirm Sri Srinivasan AFTER he led the charge against DOMA

Freshman Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio both voted to confirm Sri Srinivasan, the most likely successor to Antonin Scalia, to the DC Circuit in May 2013 JUST TWO MONTHS AFTER Srinivasan helped lead the Obama regime's charge against the Defense of Marriage Act in March 2013 (US v Windsor) as Deputy Solicitor General. Cruz and Rubio are both fake conservatives.

From the discussion here:

As deputy solicitor general, Srinivasan led the Obama administration’s case against the Defense of Marriage Act, which resulted in same-sex marriage becoming constitutional throughout the country, as well as cases in favor of affirmative action policies and opposing restrictive voting laws. ... Srikanth “Sri” Srinivasan would not be the first Supreme Court justice to be nominated in an election year. In 1988, the last year of his second term, President Ronald Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to the court.

And that didn't work out so well, either, did it: Kennedy led the charge overturning sodomy laws in 2003 and wrote for the majority making same sex marriage legal nationwide under Obama in 2015.

Here's Marco Rubio lying in the South Carolina debate about marriage:

If you elect me president, we are going to re-embrace free enterprise so that everyone can go as far as their talent and their work will take them. We are going to be a country that says that, "life begins at conception and life is worthy of the protection of our laws." We're going to be a country that says. "that marriage is between one man and one woman."

And here's Ted Cruz lying:

And today, we saw just how great the stakes are, two branches of government hang in the balance. Not just the presidency but the Supreme Court. If we get this wrong, if we nominate the wrong candidates, the Second Amendment, life, marriage, religious, liberty - everyone of those hangs in the balance.

Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz both voted to advance our enemy, but claim to be on our side.

They're both fakes whom conservatives shouldn't trust as far as they can be thrown.

Larry Kudlow eyes Donald Trump's coattails

From the story here:

'Economist and political pundit Larry Kudlow says he is strongly considering challenging Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) for his Senate seat in 2016. ... Kudlow says he disagrees with Blumenthal on a variety of issues, ranging from the Iran nuclear agreement to the corporate tax rate. “Mr. Blumenthal was wrong on signing the Iran deal. He was wrong on pushing for the U.N. to bring Syrian hostages into the United States,” he said. “And . . . he’s a tax-and-spender. He was in Connecticut, and he’s a tax-and-spender in Washington at a time, frankly, with the economy at two percent [growth] or less, we ought to have a 15 percent corporate tax, not a 40 percent.”'

Kudlow has previously allied himself with Trump without saying so in so many words by coming out against the Iran deal and against letting in the refugee surge, but explicitly has come out in support of Trump's plan to slash the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent. Trump has repeatedly emphasized all three issues mentioned by Kudlow this weekend.

Kudlow clearly sees these as coattail issues on which he could succeed in a Connecticut US Senate run, emphasizing US and Israeli security after a period of increased terrorism as well as a pro-growth supply-side tax policy reminiscent of the era of Ronald Reagan as an answer to the moribund economy's ills.

It works both ways, Larry. Trump as president will need support within the Congress if he hopes to get passed anything he stands for as a candidate.

The legacy of the left's long march through the institutions since the 1960s is . . .

. . . the repudiation of the Bill of Rights, which is why so many Americans fled the Democrat Party and joined the Republican Party, starting with Ronald Reagan ("the Democrat Party left me"). They are just like the Puritans, who preferred to switch rather than to fight.

Unfortunately, there's nowhere left to which to switch, indeed, to retreat.

It's either us, or them.

Rush Limbaugh can't remember shit about taxes under Reagan: Why do we listen to this guy?

Here yesterday, wrong on both years, and forgetting that G. H. W. Bush raised taxes by adding a 31% bracket in 1991, getting himself defeated by Clinton in 1992:

"What did Ronald Reagan do? When Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 the top marginal tax rate was 90%. And the amount of money raised by the tax code was about $500 billion back then. When Reagan left office in 1989, there were three tax rates, essentially two, but there was a 31% bubble in there. But the top 90%, that marginal rate of 90% had been dropped to 28%. And the amount of money generated by the tax code had doubled, almost a billion dollars, by reducing tax rates."

Revenues in 1981 were $599.3 billion nominal, in 1989 $991.1 billion, up 65%, not 100%. Revenues did not double until 1993-1994, after Bush and then Clinton raised marginal rates as high as 39.6%. Revenues did not double again until 2006. The record shows that whether marginal rates were higher or lower, revenues took twelve to thirteen years to double.

What Rush Limbaugh means by "doubled, almost a billion dollars" is anybody's guess. Only his pharmacist knows for sure.

The facts are that Ronald Reagan persuaded Democrats to bring the top marginal rate down from 70% in 1981 to 50% 1982-1986. After the tax reform of 1986 the top marginal rate dropped to 38.5% in 1987. For three years 1988 through 1990 there were just two marginal rates: 15% and 28%. That was the brief golden age of taxation under Reagan, which his successor totally screwed up.

Reagan had NOTHING to do with the introduction of a 31% bracket. That was all on George Herbert Walker Bush, for which the Democrats recently gave him the Profiles in Courage Award.