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

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).

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.

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.

Whoa Nellie: Bruce Ohr's wife linked to Fusion GPS and Trump dossier

You say "crony capitalism" and I say "crony capitalism", crony, capitalism, crony, capitalism, let's call the whole thing off

No one ever drowned in Roy Moore's car

Jack Cashill, here.

NFL boycott: There was more "white" on the field of the Colts-Bills game than in the stands

Story here.

Hey Drudge he called in the cavalry, not "Calvary"

"Jones Brings in Cavalry to Boost Black Turnout in Alabama Senate Race"

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.

Wow, if this is true USA Today sucks even worse than I thought it did

Reported here:

Consider the experience of writer Ijeoma Oluo, who last week said that USA Today asked her to write a piece arguing a feminist position against due process.

She says an editor there told her, “[...] They want a piece that says that you don’t believe in due process and that if a few innocent men lose their jobs it’s worth it to protect women. Is that something you can do?” 

They were asking her to say feminists are happy to harm individual men for the good of the cause, and not interested in distinguishing innocence from guilt. She refused. That’s not who she is and not who feminists are.

Obama Justice Dept. and FBI implicated in colluding with anti-Trump dossier author

Byron York reports here:

Knowledge of the dossier project, during the campaign, extended into the highest levels of the Obama Justice Department.

The department's Bruce Ohr, a career official, served as associate deputy attorney general at the time of the campaign. That placed him just below the deputy attorney general, Sally Yates, who ran the day-to-day operations of the department. In 2016, Ohr's office was just steps away from Yates, who was later fired for defying President Trump's initial travel ban executive order and still later became a prominent anti-Trump voice upon leaving the Justice Department.

Unbeknownst to investigators until recently, Ohr knew [Christopher] Steele and had repeated contacts with Steele when Steele was working on the dossier. Ohr also met after the election with Glenn Simpson, head of Fusion GPS, the opposition research company that was paid by the Clinton campaign to compile the dossier. ... 

Ohr's contacts with Steele and Simpson were covered by a subpoena [Congressman] Nunes issued to the FBI and the Justice Department on Aug. 24. Yet as recently as Tuesday, when Nunes, along with House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., met with deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, the department said nothing about Ohr's role.

Roy Moore accuser admits writing part of yearbook inscription, had a motive to accuse the Senate hopeful

Reported here:

During her original press conference with Allred in November, in which she made her original accusation, Nelson read aloud and attributed the entire inscription to Moore, including the date and location. ... Moore has denied signing the yearbook and said he did not know Nelson at the time. Moore, who went on to become a judge and then the chief justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court, later ruled against Nelson in a 1999 divorce case.

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.