Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Republican tax "reform" will make it harder for you to move, eliminating the relocation deduction

Reported here:

Are you thinking of moving across the country for a new career opportunity? If so, the tax bill won't let you deduct the cost of your move.

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.

Tax bill includes an incentive for US companies to invest in foreign manufacturing

Justice: Muslim who beheaded Oklahoma woman sentenced to death by lethal injection

We would have preferred the rope, say two years ago.

From the story here:

Alton Nolen, 33, was convicted of first degree murder in late September for beheading his coworker Colleen Hufford inside Vaughan Foods in September 2014. Following a two-phase trial beginning in mid-September, jurors recommended Nolen be sentenced to death in October. ... In court Friday morning, Judge Lori Walkley accepted the recommendation of the jury, sentencing Nolen to death by lethal injection for beheading Hufford.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

In unfree China, if you disrespect the mass murdering terrorist Genghis Khan you go to jail

Offenses against social stability will not be tolerated!

From the story here:

A Chinese man was sentenced to one year in jail after a video of him stamping on a portrait of Genghis Khan went viral, mainland media reported on Friday. He was charged with affecting social stability by prosecutors in Ordos, a city in Inner Mongolia, news website Thepaper.cn reported. ... Police in Inner Mongolia told the news site that they received complaints from residents in the province and deemed the video had caused disruption to society.

Friday, December 15, 2017

Sometimes Ann Coulter is an idiot, for instance when dissing federal encouragement of having children

You'd think someone who wants America for Americans would want to encourage anything which promotes Americans having more children instead of importing them, but you would be wrong.

Rubio's insistence on a larger child tax credit stops some of the damage being done by Republicans to people with families larger than four.

Abolishing the personal exemption meant parents lost those exemptions for all their children, and the increased standard deduction didn't go far enough to replace them, meaning they'd pay more in taxes just because they have more kids.

Coulter's indignation appears to be purely personal, an ugly intrusion of the irrational into her otherwise often rational positions.

She doesn't realize how libertarian she sounds (she hates them by the way). Americans who have children are making it possible that something like America survives into the future, which is a more sure and lasting contribution than any law which might be passed.

Some of the founders recognized that laws are a mere parchment barrier. When the pirates are attacking, you need a navy, which means sailors, not a bill of rights.



1986 was the last year domestic investment exceeded investment abroad, which is why everything REALLY SUCKS here now

NAFTA began with Canada in 1989, was expanded in 1994, China became a WTO member in 2001, but the 1986 tax reform really started the final leg down

There's been a definite slow down in the growth rate of full-time jobs since 2015, about 25%


As a percentage of population, the broadest measure of unemployment is lower now than in 2006


Thursday, December 14, 2017

Good dog: Battle Beagle has been thinking about Aristotle

The excerpt comes from Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance by Guillaume Faye (Arktos, 2011).

Wednesday, December 13, 2017

Judge Roy Moore loses US Senate bid in Alabama by 20,715 votes, 1.5 points

Judge Roy Moore joins the Todd Akin club.

Republicans got the man they really wanted, Democrat Jones, who will give them the convenient excuse they need for not passing the Trump agenda without having to vote against it.

I sincerely hope more Republicans get what they want in future. They deserve it for not delivering on The Wall, an immigration pause, and tax reform which benefits individuals instead of corporations.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Kirsten Gillibrand's Trump attacks are transparently political, given the company she has happily kept with Democrat sexual creeps


If the economy is on the mend under Trump, why did the number on food stamps go up nearly 800,000 in September?

We're also witnessing a slow down in road travel, in addition to the odd up-tick in the food stamp numbers.

In October 2015 road travel was up 2.2% year over year, in October 2016 2.5%, but in October 2017 just 1.4%.

The climbdown in the rate of growth has been evident all year.

Not good.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Conservative heroine Phyllis Schlafly opposed the territorial tax system the Republicans are about to shove down our throats

Here in November 2011:

Although the Perry plan's most striking feature is its anti-marriage bias, his proposal for corporate income is equally pernicious. Perry would shift businesses to a "territorial" tax system, which means that corporations would be taxed only on the profits they earn inside the United States.

We should do exactly the opposite. We should reduce or eliminate taxes on businesses that employ Americans producing goods and services inside our own country, while increasing taxes on the profits that corporations earn by outsourcing or manufacturing overseas.

Above all, we should eliminate the foreign tax credit, a self-destructive provision that allows corporations to pay China, Venezuela or Saudi Arabia the money they would otherwise owe the U.S. government. Let's also cut out the deductions that U.S. corporations take for hiring foreigners to do work that Americans can do.

Those who support a territorial business tax argue that it will encourage multinational corporations to bring home the profits they earn overseas, but that's unlikely so long as it remains more profitable for them to invest in cheap-labor countries. Of Republican presidential candidates, only Herman Cain and Rick Santorum understand that what corporations need is lower taxes on their operations inside the United States rather than on the profits they earn in other countries.

Gene Sperling: Republican tax reform will shift even more corporate profits and jobs abroad

You'd better pray this reform effort fails, for your kids' sake.

In The Atlantic here:

Now that the bill is advancing, it’s clear that things aren’t as bad as many feared. They’re worse. . . .

[T]he tax plan fails when it comes to incentives to shift profits and operations overseas and to curtail the obsession of major multinational companies with international tax arbitrage that has nothing to do with innovation, productivity or job creation. Indeed, the ability to blend income from intangibles and routine profits, and from investment in higher tax nations with tax havens with zero taxes, leads to a worst of all worlds scenario: an even greater corporate focus on international tax minimization through a careful mixture of shifting profits and operations overseas.

If there was one thing the GOP international tax bill was advertised to accomplish, it was that it would favor locating jobs and profits in the United States. It does just the opposite—expanding the degree our tax system tilts the playing field against American taxpayers and American workers.