Growth of full-time jobs after one year of Trump has been better than a sharp stick in the eye, but that's about it

American business abandoned America starting in 2000, investing gargantuan sums abroad instead of here at home

This is why we have so much income inequality in 2017.

American business increased investment levels abroad by 282% since the year 2000, chasing cheaper labor and resources and jurisdictions with few regulations (environmental, safety, wage and insurance laws).

But domestically investment is down, almost 18%. This is why incomes are stagnant, GDP is low, and good jobs are scarce in the United States.

Don't let the Republicans do this to us again.

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. 

  

Recent history shows that recipients of lower top marginal income tax rates haven't invested the money . . . here

The top marginal rate averaged 70% from 1960, 73% shown is from 1956. The investment data starts in 1960.

Individuals and businesses need incentives to invest here in the United States. They won't do it naturally.

Recent tax history shows this to be the case. For decades when top marginal income tax rates were very high before 1986, the most successful in our society plowed money into domestic investment to grow businesses through which they could derive income, which was taxed at lower long term rates than ordinary income which was taxed at very high rates. Not only did they themselves benefit handsomely, but the whole country benefited because people found useful employment and government received tax revenue. It was an arrangement which made America great.

After the 1986 tax reform which lowered top marginal rates, this stopped being true. The record shows a steep fall-off in domestic investment, which is one reason why incomes and jobs have been stagnant and deficits have piled up. 

The other reason, of course, is free-trade, euphemistically called globalization, which made it possible for businesses to invest internationally instead of domestically. This has been a boon to the growth of middle classes in other countries, but not in our own.

It's not very patriotic, is it?

What we need now is government policy which rewards domestic investment, and punishes its export. The best way to do this is to abolish taxation on domestic business completely to attract more of it, and heavily tax foreign business. We should also reinstate the correct mix of high top marginal income tax rates to incentivize business investment, coupled with attractive long term capital gains tax rates as a reward to the true risk-takers.

Needless to say, the Republican shift away from worldwide taxation to territorial taxation in the "reform" is about reducing risk to established business. This is simply going to make matters much worse for the American middle class, as is the obsession with making money the easy way through lower top marginal ordinary income tax rates.

The American character and spirit I once knew appears to be truly dead.

Six female senators ask Franken to resign, but not mine, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan

Reported here:

In statements Wednesday, six of Franken's female Democratic colleagues — Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Patty Murray of Washington and Kamala Harris of California — pushed for him to step down. Murray is the third-ranking Senate Democrat and the highest ranking woman.

The list has been updated at about 4:25 PM to include Stabenow and others.

The new giant sucking sound of your jobs going abroad: Republican territorial tax "reform"

Phyliss Schlafly was rightly against a territorial system long ago, and most recently opposed it when the doofus from Texas, Rick Perry, proposed it as a candidate for president in 2015. Schlafly understood that it was anti-American, but she's dead, her voice gone silent. Only some lonely leftists remain who understand how wrong this is. No voices on the right are speaking out against this travesty.

Trump on the other hand thinks this is great, but obviously understands this as little as any other policy issue. He has become the Republicans' biggest chump, with the rest of us in tow.

From the story here:

Today, the United States has what’s known as a worldwide tax system in which all profits—foreign and domestic—are subject to a 35 percent corporate income tax. If a US company wants to return foreign profits to the United States, it pays the 35 percent rate minus what it’s paid to foreign governments. The House and Senate tax bills replace this with a “territorial” system that drops the tax rate to 20 percent for domestic profits and nothing for foreign profits.

The territorial model that the GOP is pushing would create an additional incentive to invest in countries like Ireland where the corporate rate is significantly lower than the United States. Republicans believe the differences won’t be big enough to drive investment abroad. Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, disagrees, saying that’s still “plenty of juice” to encourage companies to shift production to countries with lower tax rates. Kimberly Clausing, an expert in international taxation at Reed College, writes that the shift to a territorial system “makes explicit, and permanent, the preference for foreign income over domestic income.” She estimates that profit shifting already costs the US government more than $100 billion per year. 

Large multinational companies can already play games to avoid paying the full rate, such as transferring intellectual property to tax havens and then stashing those profits abroad to indefinitely put off paying US taxes. Apple, for example, transfers patents and other intangible assets abroad, and then further reduces its tax burden with additional sub-licensing. Through tax schemes with names like the “Double Irish With a Dutch Sandwich,” Apple has been able to amass more more than $128 billion in profits abroad that haven’t been touched by the IRS.

Republicans are proposing a series of guardrails to try to prevent companies shifting intangible assets—such as patents and trademarks—to tax havens. But Rosenthal says those protections are mostly ineffective and in fact create a set of new incentives to invest more abroad. He adds that it’s unclear whether the new status quo would be worse than the current system.

The main guardrail in the tax bills would impose a 10 percent tax on foreign profits that exceed a company’s “routine” return on tangible assets abroad. (Rosenthal’s blog post provides a more detailed explanation of how that works.) In theory, the guardrail would lead to companies paying a 10 percent tax when they shift profits to tax havens, but not when they actually make things abroad. In practice, the guardrail allows companies to shelter more money in tax havens when they build factories and other physical assets abroad—offering new tax incentives for companies to ship jobs overseas.

Either way, 10 percent is still half of what they would have paid if they hadn’t tried to game the system. Clausing argues that’s a clear sign Republicans are favoring foreign profits. Another is that Republicans’ aren’t using a territorial tax model that requires companies to pay a minimum rate in every country they operate in. Instead, the bill only considers whether they pay 10 percent abroad, on average. That’s an easy loophole to exploit. If Ford has a factory in Japan, it pays a corporate tax rate of about 30 percent. Ford could then shift intangible assets from the United States to a tax haven like Bermuda and still be paying more than 10 percent on a global basis. Clausing tells Mother Jones that it’s “well-known that a per-country minimum tax would be more effective and I think that’s why they didn’t do it.” 

Laugh of the Day: Drudge says fighter jets get naked in Korea, or something

Peter Strzok also reportedly responsible for change which said Hillary was "extremely careless" instead of "grossly negligent"

The story is here.

Peter Strzok, doing the work of a Hillary partisan, on the public's dime.

Peter Strzok, removed by Mueller for anti-Trump bias, interviewed Hillary in July 2016 in the e-mail investigation

Now you know how Hillary wasn't prosecuted. The interview, conducted by a friendly, wasn't recorded, and Hillary wasn't reinterviewed multiple times thereafter the way Flynn was to document her in a misstatement the way Flynn was (Comey notably declined to prosecute Flynn, saying that Flynn didn't intend to lie). Days after the interview, Comey spelled out Hillary's misdeeds but declined to prosecute because she didn't intend to mislead when testifying contrary to the physical evidence.

Had both been prosecuted were Special Prosecutor Mueller still in charge of the FBI?

Reported here:

[Strzok] participated in the FBI's fateful interview with Hillary Clinton on July 2, 2016 – just days before then-FBI Director James Comey announced he was declining to recommend prosecution of Mrs. Clinton in connection with her use, as secretary of state, of a private email server. 

As deputy FBI director for counterintelligence, Strzok also enjoyed liaison with various agencies in the intelligence community, including the CIA, then led by Director John Brennan.

I don't remember anyone who complains now about deficits complaining about Obama's then

                          revenues...........outlays............deficits

$7.312 trillion worth!

Mark Levin's excellent rant after the Flynn plea deal points out Comey didn't believe the evidence showed intent to lie

Flynn's plea deal was no doubt, as Levin says, the result of being bullied and bankrupted by the Special Prosecutor.

Isn't anyone upset that the former FBI director Mueller found a process crime where the former FBI director Comey did not? Not even Leon Panetta thinks there was a process crime.

Nevermind there is no underlying crime (collusion). 

We have to endure this arbitrary law enforcement and judiciary in this case because of Trump administration incompetence (Jeff Sessions).

Story here.

The UK Guardian travels all the way to Australia to find dirt on Roy Moore, comes up with bupkis

Here, over and over again.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for November 2017

Grand Rapids, Michigan, climate update for November 2017

Max Temp: Actual 63, Mean 66

Min Temp: Actual 17, Mean 17

Av Temp:   Actual 38.6, Mean 39.1, YTD Actual 52.7, YTD Mean 50.0

Precip:       Actual 2.8, Mean 2.84, YTD Actual 37.47, YTD Mean 32.1

CDD:         Actual 0, Mean 0, YTD Actual 719, YTD Mean 694

HDD:         Actual 784, Mean 770, YTD Actual 1191, YTD Mean (through 2016-17) 1358

Average temperature year to date is running 5.4% ahead of mean to date.

The warmest years on record here in Grand Rapids were considerably warmer at the same penultimate stage.

In the warmest full year on record by average temperature, 2012, average temperature year to date was 54.4, 1.70 ahead of 2017 year to date and 8.8% ahead of 2017 mean to date.

In the second warmest full year on record, 1931, average temperature year to date was 53.7, 1.0 ahead of 2017 year to date and 7.4% ahead of 2017 mean to date.

In the third warmest full year on record, 1921, average temperature year to date was 54.2, 1.5 ahead of 2017 year to date and 8.4% ahead of 2017 mean to date.

The cooling need during the warm season was 3.6% above the mean.

The warming need thus far into the cool season is running 12.3% under the mean. Seasonably cold temperatures are finally predicted to arrive on Tuesday.

Senate Republicans passed their tax plan in the wee hours of this morning, 51-49

The Senate bill and the House bill now go to conference committee to work out a compromise. The product will have to pass both chambers to get to Trump's desk.

Story here.

NYT claims 2010 Obama Paygo law would require mandatory spending cuts under the Republican tax bill

From the story here:

The biggest program affected would be Medicare, the health insurance program for older people and the disabled. But the law allows Medicare to take only a relatively small cut: 4 percent. Other programs have no such protection. ... [Paygo] requires that legislation that adds to the federal deficit be paid for with spending cuts, increases in revenue or other offsets.

Once again Republicans refuse to even THINK of cutting spending in order to cut taxes

Reported here:

The Senate parliamentarian ruled Thursday that a fiscal "trigger," important to winning deficit-wary Sen. Bob Corker's support for the GOP plan, will not work under Senate rules. Republican senators are now looking to find new ways to address the concerns of Corker, a so-called deficit hawk Republican from Tennessee.

"It doesn't look like the trigger is going to work, according to the parliamentarian," Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters, according to Politico. "So we have an alternative, frankly: a tax increase we don't want to do to try to address Sen. Corker's concerns."

Retiring Sen. Bob Corker demands Republicans raise taxes in order to cut them

We had to destroy the village in order to save it.

Bombing is the only way forward.

We had to have a war between the States in order to save them.

Export subsidies are necessary in order to preserve free trade.

I have abandoned free market principles in order to save the free market system.

The London Interbank Overnight Rate system had to be suppressed in order to save the banking system.

We had to bail out the banks so that we could sue them. 

Hypocrite Republican Joe Barton won't run for reelection

Reported here.

How to know the Senate tax bill SUCKS: John McCain now supports it

From the story here:

"After careful thought and consideration, I have decided to support the Senate tax reform bill," McCain said in a statement. "I believe this legislation, though far from perfect, would enhance American competitiveness, boost the economy, and provide long overdue tax relief for middle class families."

Jimmy P has it right: Tax cuts never jazzed core Trump voters the way immigration restriction and The Wall did

Here for The Week:

Remember, the U.S. is in its 101st month of a steady-if-unspectacular economic expansion. The unemployment rate is low. While there are obviously millions upon millions of Americans who continue to struggle, overall the economy simply isn't the priority for voters that it is in times of real economic crisis. What's more, a failed tax cut is unlikely to derail the expansion, since expectations of a fat tax cut aren't responsible for the growing economy and rising stock market. (You can thank a global economic upturn for that.) And tax cuts — much less corporate tax cuts — weren't the motivating factor behind the Trumpopulist surge. Tax cuts never jazzed core Trump voters the way immigration restriction and The Wall did. Trump's diehard supporters won't howl over a failure to slash corporate tax rates. ... [N]o magic tax cut will turn 2 percent GDP growth into sustained 3 percent or 4 percent growth.

Presidents' first nine months of current dollar GDP compared, including LBJ

Typically I present the data for JFK/LBJ as a unit because Kennedy was shot and Johnson finished his first term and then one of his own, making eight years. Same with Nixon/Ford, because Nixon resigned and Ford finished Nixon's second term, making eight years.

But when comparing first time office holders, LBJ really should be included. The key difference is that LBJ was elected in his own right in 1964, while Ford was not in 1972. So LBJ should be included, but not Ford in order to compare apples to apples.

Johnson was like Truman in three respects: For serving out a dead president's term, for being elected in his own right, and for deciding against standing for re-election.

So, the updated chart including Old Guns 'n Butter himself (note that Trump thus ranks 7th out of 12 starts in this update):

Today's second estimate of GDP for 3Q2017 doesn't give Trump much of a bump in the rankings

Trump remains in 6th place among 11 starts since 1948.

Laugh of the Day: Cokie Roberts admits all the women in media knew not to ride in the elevator with Conyers

Once again, feminism bows to party.

It takes CNBC article 13 paragraphs before admitting repeal of Obamacare mandate would result in loss of coverage for millions BY CHOICE

Here:

"Most of the losses [in insurance coverage] are due to the fact that people are not getting pushed into getting coverage," Levitt said.

Shocked, I tell you: HIV cases soar in Europe in 2016 but story never connects them to "refugees"

Reported here by Reuters.

"Forgiving Al Franken: Feminists tighten their grip on the hot stove"

Here.

"Thank God for me"

It's hard to escape the conclusion that US GDP has been highly dependent on fertility

Peak Baby Boom 1952-1957 when births per 1,000 of population averaged 25.17 (graph 1) is probably the simplest explanation for outsized GDP performance during the years when this generation turned 22 from 1974-1979. More babies in the 1950s equaled more GDP come the late 1970s.

We only wish for that GDP now.

Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976, still owns the best 4-year GDP record in the post-war, despite everything you've been told (graph 2). It's nothing special he did really, it's just that in 1975, the year before his election, you had the very peak of the Baby Boom turn 18, those born in 1957 when births per 1,000 hit 25.3 for the second and final time in the post-war. They and the rest of their cohort were ready to consume in numbers never seen before. Their era spanning from Nixon/Ford from 1972 when the first of them turned 20 through Reagan in 1984 when they turned 32 represents the coming of age of America's most powerful economic demographic and the period when America's GDP performance hit its highest levels (average 46.3%).

Their failure to have enough children themselves, however, is also a big part of the explanation for the GDP trend heading south after their time. They consumed, but they did not at all produce children like their parents had. In fact, the nadir of births per 1,000 before the current period occurred from 1972 to 1977, precisely the period exactly 20 years after peak Baby Boom 1952-1957. Births per 1,000 averaged just 14.92 during this period, a rate nearly 41% lower than their parents' era. So the most prolific fruit of the Baby Boom had gone on to become themselves the least prolific, having the fewest children ever.

Not surprisingly, without enough bodies the economy inevitably began to run out of gas starting about two decades after that. Clinton era GDP performance was never as good as Reagan's, and the era was marked by various warnings, not the least of which were the bond debacles of 1994 and 1999. The great Reagan bull market ended in August 2000, a recession ensued in 2001, average S&P 500 return has been reduced to 5.2% per annum over the last 17 years, and the GDP growth rate after Clinton has averaged just half what it averaged before Carter (16% vs. 32%). No wonder the trend is down so dramatically (graph 3).

The solution?

Have LOTS more kids, and wait 20 years, if you want America to still be America, that is. Otherwise, let in even more than the 1 million immigrants we already let in annually, and prepare to kiss your country goodbye.

But don't hold your breath. Births per 1,000 have fallen to an average of just 12.5 for the five year period 2011-2015.

They don't call it the suicide of the West for nothing.

graph 1

graph 2

graph 3

I don't see the problem here: The press is free to lie all it wants, or not, and Trump is free to point it out

As long as you are a good Democrat, like Al Franken, you can get away with molesting women and stay in the US Senate

Methodically executed 77 in Norway, gets only 21 years!

Franken committed unwanted kissing and touching, but he gets to go back to work in the US Senate today.

Just like Norway, it seems Minnesota will go easy on just about everything.

All you have to do is apologize!

Story here.

Hillary and Obama's legacy in Libya: Blacks being sold as slaves in open air markets

From the story here:

Black Africans are being sold in open-air slave markets right now, and it’s Hillary Clinton’s fault. ... Footage from Libya, released last week by CNN, showed young men from sub-Saharan Africa being auctioned off as farm workers in slave markets.

And how did we get to this point? As the BBC reported back in May, “Libya has been beset by chaos since NATO-backed forces overthrew long-serving ruler Col. Moammar Gadhafi in Oct. 2011.” And who was behind that overthrow? None other than then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

If economic growth under Trump feels like it was under Bill Clinton, that's because it is: Trump so far ranks 6th best out of 11 starts

Trump keeps repeating himself about building The Wall: He'd better get started before it's too late

Reid junked judicial filibuster, Grassley junks "blue slip" tradition, Trump to pack the courts

Jake Novak provides the good news, here.

Orange County Register op-ed calls for Al Gore to be put on the Weinstein list

Seems Al Gore's "irresistible animal magnetism" came up a cropper in three separate incidents in 2006, 2007, and 2008. 

John Phillips, here.

I hereby pardon the turkey

What an effing pig is Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, 32 years up there on The Hill, wanking away

TMZ story here.

Dramatic video shows what a parasite-ridden North Korean soldier did to achieve his freedom in the West

Thank God South Korea remains a bastion of freedom, thanks to the freedom-loving people of these United States.

Another True Born Son of Liberty is born.

Video here.

From the story:

While treating the [gunshot] wounds, surgeons removed dozens of parasites from the soldier’s ruptured small intestine, including presumed roundworms that were as long as 27 centimetres, which may reflect poor nutrition and health in North Korea’s military. The soldier is 5 feet, 7 inches tall but weighs just 9.4 stone.

The presidential Trump gets undeserving unlikeable people out of jail in China

Democrat Senator Al Franken copped a feel at Minnesota State Fair in 2010 according to CNBC

The Giant of the Senate, indeed. Giant fraud.

Here:

A second woman has accused Minnesota Sen. Al Franken of improper conduct, saying he put his hand on her bottom as they posed for a picture at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010 — after he had begun his career in the Senate. Lindsay Menz told CNN last week for a report broadcast Monday that the interaction made her feel "gross." She said she immediately told her husband that Franken had "grabbed" her bottom, and she said she posted about it on Facebook. ...

She said as she posed with Franken, he "pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear," Menz said. "It was wrapped tightly around my butt cheek." Menz said she told her husband, Jeremy Menz, and father Mark Brown about it right away. Both men affirmed that to CNN. Menz also said she posted the photo with Franken on Facebook on Aug. 27, and when her sister commented on the photo, she replied: "Dude -- Al Franken TOTALLY molested me! Creeper!"

Germany's Merkel fails to form coalition government after AfD upset in election

From the story here:

Merkel was weakened after an election in September as voters angry with her decision in 2015 to open Germany's borders to more than a million asylum seekers punished her conservatives by voting for the Alternative for Germany (AfD) far-right party.

There is little appetite for a second vote, especially as the main parties fear that the populist AfD would win more than the almost 13 percent of votes it secured in September.

Longtime Nelson stepson of Moore accuser says she never once mentioned this in the family

The video is here.

At the end Darrel Nelson claims his stepmom likes to live pretty high on the hog. He believes she's in this for the money.

Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe suggested Comey's investigation of Hillary wasn't routine but given "special" status

The Hill reported here on the 15th:

Shortly before last year’s election, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wrote an email on his official government account stating that the Hillary Clinton email probe had been given “special” status, according to documents released Wednesday.

McCabe’s Oct. 23, 2016, email to press officials in the FBI said the probe was under the control of a small group of high-ranking people at the FBI’s headquarters in Washington.

“As I now know the decision was made to investigate it at HQ with a small team,” McCabe wrote in the email. He said he had no input when the Clinton email investigation started in summer 2015, while he was serving as assistant director in charge of the FBI's Washington office.

“[The Washington office] provided some personnel for the effort but it was referred to as a ‘special’ and I was not given any details about it,” he wrote.

House tax bill passes 227-205, Senate still working on theirs

From the story here:

[T]he bill would limit state and local deductions and the mortgage interest deduction, eliminate the personal exemption and nearly double the standard deduction. ... The most significant difference between the chambers' plans is the treatment of state and local tax deductions. The Senate plan would eliminate those deductions entirely. The measure could alienate some House Republicans who voted for the chamber's bill that would allow up to $10,000 in property tax deductions.

Meanwhile Democrat Sen. Bob Menendez is actually on trial on corruption charges, not including allegations about underage sex

More Minnesota news: Democrat Sen. Al Franken outed by KABC host for tonguing and groping her

Over 64,000 Minnesotans making less than $50k paid over $30 million in Obamacare penalties in 2015

Nearly 82,000 Minnesotans paid over $38 million in federal penalties in 2015 for not having health insurance.

That's how much repealing the Obamacare mandate would have saved those Minnesotans in 2015, the vast majority of whom made less than the national average wage of $46,000.

The national average penalty in 2015 was $470.

In the dysfunctional marriage between the two political parties, the submissive one has a funny name

Jeff Greenfield is a Democrat political hack forging equivalency between Roy Moore, Donald Trump and Bill Clinton

Here in Politico: 

So what changed? Three people: Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump and Roy Moore.

Actually, nothing's changed.

When blacks like Bill Cosby and Jews like Harvey Weinstein suddenly get outed and become ground zero for sex crime in the popular imagination, Democrats have to act quickly to change the narrative to deflect the attention away from themselves and onto their opponents.

Same old same old.

Why was General Robin Rand promoted and put in charge of our nuclear missiles after he failed to report Texas shooter's crime to FBI?

From the story here in The Chicago Tribune:

The Air Force lapse in the Devin P. Kelley case, which is now under review by the Pentagon's inspector general, made it possible for him to buy guns before his attack Sunday at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. Twenty-six people were killed, including multiple members of some families. About 20 other people were wounded. ...

Federal law prohibited him from buying or possessing firearms after his conviction. But because it was never added to the FBI's database for background checks, Kelley was able to buy his guns.

Air Force records show Kelley initially faced charges of domestic violence for seven alleged incidents in 2011 and 2012. Five were withdrawn as part of a plea agreement, including two involving Kelley pointing a loaded gun at his wife. He pleaded guilty to striking, choking and kicking his wife and hitting his stepson "with a force likely to produce death or grievous bodily harm."

He was sentenced in November 2012 to one year in confinement and reduction in rank to E-1, the lowest enlisted rank. He was given a bad conduct discharge, which was carried out in 2014. The officer overseeing the case was Robin Rand, then a three-star general and now the four-star commander of Air Force Global Strike Command in charge of the service's bomber force and nuclear missiles.

Ninth Circuit temporarily reinstates Trump's travel ban, overruling Hawaii judge

Jonathan Turley reports, here.

GQ's Men of the Year: Sexual predators, wankers, queers, and now a $39 million traitor

I'll entertain the notion of the US Senate's integrity when it repeals Obamacare, builds The Wall, and cuts spending

Until then, STFU.

Wow, teen-tit-film Ted Cruz thinks Roy Moore is guilty until proven innocent

You remember "teen tit film" Ted, dontcha?

The Texas Senator is quoted here on Roy Moore:

“As it stands, I can’t urge the people of Alabama to support a campaign in the face of these charges without serious, persuasive demonstration that the charges are not true,” the Texas Republican told reporters, according to a Texas Tribune reporter.

Judge Roy Moore is no JFK, who when 45 actually boinked 19-year old Mimi Alford in The White House

What, Jewish Jerry Seinfeld gets to rob the cradle but not Bible-thumping Roy Moore?

In 1993 Jerry Seinfeld started dating this very fulsome 17-year old, Shoshanna Lonstein, when he was 39.

How quickly we forget.

Story here.

The weekend help at Drudge can't spell Philippines

I admit it, I still have to look that one up myself even after all these years.

Just in time for the Dec. 12 election in Alabama, WaPo comes up with a sex scandal involving candidate Roy Moore

The story, "Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32", is here.

The judge liked 'em young.

Security Theatre: TSA failure rate to detect weapons and explosives improves from 95% to 80%!

Way to go, Brownie! Or somebody.

From the story here:

When ABC News asked the source familiar with the report if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, “You are in the ballpark.” ... The news of the failure comes two years after ABC News reported that secret teams from DHS found that TSA failed 95 percent of the time to stop inspectors from covertly smuggling weapons or explosive materials through screening.

Duh: Employers are defiantly not raising wages, because they can get away with it when there are 4.6 million missing full-time jobs

Laugh of the Day: "Now there are only 32 states with Republican governors"

Seen in the comments to "Dems win from coast to coast" at The Hill.

The mice that roared.

The new governors of Virginia and New Jersey will be Democrats

Real Clear has called both races even though just 5% of the vote is in in New Jersey.

New Jersey is a flip, having been governed by Republican Chris Christie.

Virginia stays Democrat. Ed Gillespie loses another one, having run unsuccessfully for the US Senate previously and now for governor.

Comey's early FBI draft memos on Hillary in May 2016 called her "grossly negligent"

But by July she was just "extremely careless".

John Solomon for The Hill notes here that 

'The change is significant, since federal law states that gross negligence in handling the nation’s intelligence can be punished criminally with prison time or fines. ... “There is evidence to support a conclusion that Secretary Clinton, and others, used the email server in a manner that was grossly negligent with respect to the handling of classified information,” reads the statement, one of Comey’s earliest drafts from May 2, 2016.'

You know you're living in an upside down world when they're trying to put Flynn where Bergdahl ought to be

Bush 41 has now admitted voting for Hillary

Good thing his parachute jumping days are behind him. Could be more dangerous now.

Joy-Ann Reid is not too bright, except she does correctly intuit that there is no contradiction between economic liberalism and socialism, as Spengler once pointed out

New York Antifa demonstration fizzles on November 4th, only diehard commies show up

And it wasn't even raining.

From the story here:

[A] little more than 300 people showed up, according to NYPD officers tasked with securing it. Many of the signs Refuse Fascism had prepared sat stacked against a metal railing. Organizers handed out leaflets about the Revolutionary Communist Party, an older, radical group with ties to Refuse Fascism. Over a thousand people had previously committed to going to the November 4 protests on Facebook, and roughly five thousand had pledged interest, but when all was said and done, burgeoning leftist groups like Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), protest mainstays like Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the masked anarchists that had captured the imagination of people on the far right failed to attend.

Laugh of the Day: President Copafeel calls President Trump a blowhard

Ruh-roh, in his senile dotage 41 has also taken to feelin' up the ladies at photo-ops, hence the permanent shit-faced grin.

Story here.

How to tax the rich and only the rich as originally intended in 1913, and solve a lot of problems

In 1913 when the average Joe made about $800 a year, the first income tax under the 16th Amendment didn't worry him because he didn't pay it and probably thought he never would. The personal exemption for a married couple in the original tax code was $4,000.

Today that $4,000 personal exemption adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index amounts to about $100,000.

Even in 2016 that kind of income is made by fewer than 10% of individual wage earners. Under the original income tax of 1913, 90% today wouldn't have to worry about paying the dreaded income tax either.

Is there a way to return to this golden age of taxation?

I'm here to tell you that I think so, and I say that as a conservative. We could easily simplify the tax code by returning to the status quo which prevailed before the First World War, pay all the bills, abolish Social Security and Medicare taxes, the corporate income tax and all the other little irritating taxes and reduce income inequality in the process. We'd also save a lot of time and money wasted in complying with the tax code's myriad baroque features.

Here's the math.

In 2016 according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis personal income in the United States was $15.9287 trillion.

Social Security's Office of the Chief Actuary tells us that in 2016 there were 163.5 million individual wage earners. If you exempt the first $100,000 of everybody's individual wage income in 2016, including from the rich, you're talking about $6.213 trillion of individual wage income which would be tax-free.

That leaves $9.7157 trillion of personal income left in 2016 to tax, to pay all the bills.

According to The Tax Policy Center, the bills were the total estimated federal outlays of $3.9513 trillion in 2016.

So, the tax is 40.67% (9.7157 X .4067 = 3.9513) on all personal income in excess of $100,000 a year, no itemized deductions, no credits of any kind (this is where they all came from in the first place, because the rich pissed, moaned and complained and bribed the politicians to carve out privileges for them to escape paying).

The rich, all 14.9 million of them, will still have $7.2544 trillion to play with ($1.49 trillion from their first $100K tax-free, just like everybody else, and $5.7644 trillion left over after taxes from the income in excess of $100K).

The rest of us, 148.6 million, won't pay any federal income tax, Social Security or Medicare tax, gasoline tax, or any other kind of federal tax on our $4.723 trillion. The only taxes we'll have to pay will be State and Local Income Taxes, property taxes, sales taxes and the like. Of course rich people will have to pay those too, but that's a problem for all of us and for a different level of politics.

I summarize:

$15.9287 trillion personal income 2016 (BEA)

-  3.9513 trillion federal taxes, all from those making $100,000+ per year @40.67%

-  7.2544 trillion left over for the 14.9 million making $100,000+ per year (top 10%)

-  4.7230 trillion left over for the 148.6 million making less than $100,000 per year (bottom 90%)

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And the budget balances.   

House Republicans won't allow floor amendments to tax reform, will ram it through instead

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rep. Kevin Brady, quoted here:

He also said that there would be no House floor amendments to the bill, and that changes would be made in his committee and potentially in a conference with the Senate down the road.

In all seriousness, Republican elimination of personal exemptions is just sleight of hand to raise your taxes

In 2017, the personal exemption is $4,050.

If your little tribe is six, mommy, daddy, and four kids, your personal exemptions add up to $24,300.

Add in the standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly of $12,700 and you are up to $37,000 shielded from taxation. (Itemize deductions instead and you might shield even more, but Republicans are proposing new limits on those, too).

The new Republican tax reform, however, eliminates the personal exemptions and caps all this at the new higher standard deduction of $24,000, thus exposing $13,000 to taxation that wouldn't have been exposed before. And you'll pay at a higher rate in the lowest bracket, too, which has been raised from 10% to 12%.

That's what's really going on here. The only way this benefits families is if those families are small. And, of course, small families implies something else: more immigration.

It's anti-American and anti-family, and in fact, it's inhumane. Taxes were always meant to be personal, and by eliminating personal exemptions for the first time in history the libertarians who wrote this bill are showing their purely materialistic hand.

You aren't a human being to them. You're merely capital.

Don't let them get away with this.

Republican elimination of personal exemptions gives me an idea for truly revolutionary tax reform

In 1913 when the income tax began there was no such thing as the standard deduction. That didn't come along until 1944.

The original income tax was a class tax, a tax on the wealthy, just as was the corporate tax instituted in 1909. From the beginning it came with a personal exemption of $3,000 and if you were married $4,000. Dependent exemptions didn't begin to be added until 1917, starting at $200.

Guess what the personal exemption of $4,000 would be in 2016, adjusted for inflation? $100,000. Times all the individual wage earners in America in 2016 $16.3 trillion would be exempt from taxation. In the third quarter of 2017, personal income in the United States wasn't even $16.5 trillion. 

In other words, the original personal exemptions of the tax code adjusted for inflation would exempt all current personal income from taxation, except for maybe $200 billion.

As far as I'm concerned, the government can have that.

Now that's what I call a tax reform.

Most Americans will be hoodwinked by Republican tax reform because they never do their own taxes

56% use a paid preparer, and 34% use tax software, according to figures reported here.

That means 90% of individual filers really have no idea how the numbers have worked in the past, and therefore they are most likely going to have not the slightest idea how the tax reform will change them.

I'm betting Republicans are counting on this as they try to rush this through by Thanksgiving.

Your goose is cooked, sir.

Republican tax reform includes a sneaky tax increase on itemizers, removing the personal exemption privilege

Josh Barro, here:

Currently, you get to take the personal exemption even if you also itemize deductions, but you get to take the standard deduction only if you forego itemized deductions. Combining these provisions into a single, standard deduction would mean itemizers lose their personal exemption and get nothing back — meaning they'll typically pay tax on an extra $4,050 of income if they're single, or $8,100 if they're married.

Total nonfarm jobs grow at the pathetic pace of 167,000 per month y/y in October 2017

PAYEMS

Ron Wyden: Republicans to let corporations deduct state and local income taxes but not individuals

The Democrat Senator is quoted here:

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, said that Republicans were employing a double standard, giving corporations a better deal than individuals. ... “Corporations will still get to deduct their state and local taxes, but individuals and families won’t,” Wyden said.