Steve Bannon Demands Joe Biden Release Tax Returns To Prove He’s Not Compromised By China

Two can play the tax return game

President Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said Sunday that former Vice President Joe Biden must release his tax returns to prove that he’s not benefiting economically from China.

“We have to see Joe Biden’s tax returns because we have to see if Joe Biden was a financial consultant to [the fund] or an adviser. Biden has got to answer some basic questions: if he’s been compromised by the Chinese Communist Party? What was his involvement during the Obama administration?” Bannon told John Catsimatidis on 970 AM in New York.

The New York Post Reports:

The fund Bannon was referring to was Bohai Harvest RST, which was started by Biden’s son Hunter. Hunter Biden struck a deal with the state-owned Bank of China in 2013 to create the fund, which coincided with a trip Hunter Biden took to the country with his father, then the vice president.

“The Bank of China is the Chinese Communist Party’s piggy bank,” Bannon stated.

The timing and ability for such a small firm to win the business has raised eyebrows since.

“Biden has got to be the worst,” Bannon said Sunday. “He’s got this private equity fund his son runs. I believe most of the net worth of his family is tied up in that.”

Bannon pointed to a remark Biden made in early May, just days into his 2020 bid, in which the ex-veep downplayed any threat posed by China.

“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man,” Biden said, pointing to some of China’s problems, including corruption. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not, they’re not competition for us.”

“Biden has got a lot to answer for,” Bannon went on. “And he continues to kind of laugh it off.

He continues to say, ‘Hey, [China is] not really a strategic competitor to us.’ Even people on the Democratic left, even Bernie Sanders, Nancy Pelosi, everybody says they’re a totalitarian, mercantilist, surveillance state.”

Bannon also noted that China will be an important issue in the 2020 campaign because “the centerpiece of President Trump’s economic program” is bringing American jobs back from China.

When Biden was running for vice president in 2008 he released a decade’s worth of tax returns and subsequently released his taxes for every year he served in office. He has yet to publicly release his returns from his years outside of government.

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Why Conservatives Should Take Heart Despite Socialist Upsurge

Socialism is the zombie ideology of our era: It fails everywhere, and yet it keeps rising back from the dead.

Despite embarrassing socialist failures in China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, and now Venezuela, the true believers march onward. Good intentions are unassailable. The revolution must go on.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., arguably has done more than any other living American to market socialism to the next generation. And with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., following closely in his wake, rest assured we’ll be contending with socialism for years to come.

A recent Gallup survey shows that their message is resonating with more and more Americans.

While 51% say socialism would be bad for America, 43% say it would be good. And notably, among the 18-34-year-old cohort, 58% favor socialism while 37% disfavor it.

Those numbers hang like a dark cloud over America’s future, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Interestingly, according to Gallup, Americans still favor the free market over government in multiple areas, including technological innovation, health care, and even basic things like wages, distribution of wealth, and the economy overall. And the comparison isn’t even close.

By contrast, Americans favor government over free markets when it comes to protecting consumers’ online privacy and environmental protection.

This creates quite a mixed picture, even a contradictory one. As a matter of simple math, there have to be millions of Americans who say they favor some form of socialism, yet favor the free market in general when it comes to certain aspects of their lives.

How can that be?

As it turns out, Americans define “socialism” in quite different ways. Traditionally, socialism has meant government ownership of the means of production—businesses, factories, etc. But today, only 17% of Americans hold that definition, according to Gallup. Meanwhile, 23% equate socialism with vague notions of social equality. Another 23% have no opinion on the matter.

So, the public meaning of “socialism” today is indeterminate, meaning that public opinion toward “socialism” doesn’t tell us very much about people’s policy preferences.

But even if it did tell us a lot, public opinion isn’t the surest predictor of what will pass in Washington. After all, big-government policies have often passed in spite of public disapproval.

Obamacare is case-in-point here. At the height of the Obamacare debate in 2010, 59% of Americans disapproved of the bill while just 39% approved. That didn’t stop Obamacare from passing with a supermajority in the Senate.

We should also recall that big-government policies have often come in moments of great national crisis. These moments are often exempt from the dominant themes in public opinion.

Polling trends may be stable in a free-market direction, but when a moment of crisis comes, the public often tolerates—and even demands—immediate action from the government.

That usually translates into an expansion of government.

This happened in both the Great Depression and the Great Recession following the 2007 financial crisis. A host of new programs were created that had little to do with immediate economic recovery—yet they became entrenched parts of the federal government and remain with us to this day.

What’s more, Americans have come to assume these programs are legitimate functions of the federal government. The status quo trains us in what is acceptable, so once a policy becomes enshrined in law, it’s very hard to get rid of. That makes staving off such policies in the first place all the more urgent.

Today’s fight over socialism is in large part a branding war. The left constantly rebrands itself. In the mid-20th century, progressives decided to adopt the word “liberal,” since “progressive” had fallen into disrepute. The same thing eventually happened to the word “liberal,” so now, they’re back to the word “progressive.”

We see this with socialism, too. America’s avowed socialists know the word “socialism” is radioactive in America, so they’ve championed their policies in terms of “fairness” and “equality” while allowing socialist ideology to color those terms.

Such is the strategy with Sanders’ “Medicare for All” bill, a proposal that would allow the government to take over American health care, putting us in league with Canada and the U.K. The bill polls surprisingly well with the public (56% approve) until respondents learn that the bill would abolish private insurance. Then, support plummets to 37%.

That’s why the fight for truth in policymaking is so important—and why the left’s branding tricks are so pernicious.

Americans still have a gut instinct in favor of freedom and the free market, as shown in the details of the Gallup survey. Conservatives should use that to their advantage by dismantling the left’s branding charade.

The truth of each policy proposal must be placed into the light of day—because once such bills pass, America will “find out what’s in it.” Once that happens, yesterday’s fringe view could become the new normal.

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California to Pay Health Care for Illegal Immigrants

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Democratic legislature have reached an agreement that would insure 90,000 low-income illegal immigrants residing in California with full health care benefits.

The agreement reached would be available to those who are low income, between the ages of 19 and 25, who permanently reside in the state. The 90,000 illegals would be insured through the California Medicaid program, commonly referred to as Medi-Cal.

The Sacramento Bee says the plan would be implemented by January 2020.

“While it’s not all we sought, it will provide a real tangible difference for people, especially for those around and below poverty and for middle income families who don’t get any help under the federal law,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access.

“Indeed, a family of four earning as much as six times the federal poverty level -- or more than $150,000 a year -- would be eligible to get about $100 a month from the government to help pay their monthly health insurance premiums,” Fox News reports.

In order to finance the illegal immigrants, the state has enacted an Obama-era regulation commonly referred to as the “individual mandate” that taxes those who aren’t covered by health insurance.

The final budget must be approved by the state legislature which is expecting to vote on it later this week.

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Why I'm Never Going Back To California

Calfornia's Democrat-controlled government spends its time crafting laws to jail people for using the wrong pronoun while the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles has become an international disgrace.

A week or so ago, Dr. Drew Pinsky spoke with Fox News host Brian Kilmeade about the horrific conditions on the streets of Los Angeles, America's second-largest city, before making the frightening prediction, “There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles."

Pinsky described to Kilmeade what he believes to be the almost medieval conditions in the City of Angels and compared local politicians to Nero, the infamous Roman Emperor who allegedly fiddled while his nation burned.

"We have tens and tens of thousands of people living in tents. Horrible conditions. Sanitation. Rats have taken over the city. We're the only city in the country, Los Angeles, without a rodent control program. We have multiple rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus. We're gonna have louse-borne illness. If measles breaks into that population, we have tuberculosis exploding. Literally, our politicians are like Nero. It's worse than Nero," Pinsky said.

Homelessness and trash are a growing problem for residents in Los Angeles and as the garbage piles up, so do the rats, fueling concerns about flea-borne typhus, according to a report this week.

Pinsky said the city's homeless situation and sanitation crisis are out of hand and politicians are doing nothing to stop it. He believes the mentally ill will suffer the most and that officials are not reacting to an eventual epidemic reported Victor Garcia of Fox News.

"It's like nothing I've ever seen in my life," Pinsky said. "I feel like I'm on a train track waving at the train and the train is going to go off the bridge. The bridge is out."

Pinsky added, "Here's what I want to do, I want to take away qualified immunity from the politicians so we can go after them for reckless negligence."

Tammy Bruce recently explained that one glance at the formerly Golden State is a frightening embarrassment. The latest indictment of liberal leadership is the trash heap of Los Angeles. Literally. Despite the emergence of louse-borne typhus, Los Angeles can’t seem to get its act together.

According to Ms. Bruce, Steve Lopez of the Los Angeles Times reported on the obscene condition of downtown Los Angeles, “A mountain of rotting, oozing, stinking trash … stretching a good 20 yards along a skid row alley. Rats popped their heads out of the debris like they were in a game of Whac-A-Mole, then scampered for cover as a tractor with a scoop lurched toward them. … The trash problem is not confined to any one street, but this particular location on the 800 block of Ceres Avenue is surrounded by food distribution companies that sell to shoppers, vendors, stores and restaurants. I counted seven within a block, so you have to wonder — given the colonies of football-size rats — about the potential contamination of the food supply chain and the spread of disease.”

This disaster did not just thunder into LA like an earthquake – unpredicted and without human causation – it’s been brewing for quite some time, but what have the Democrats who run California and LA been doing the past few years?

On October 4, 2017, California’s then- Governor, Democrat Jerry Brown, signed legislation that would punish health care workers with a fine, and potential jail time, if they decline to use a senior transgender patient's "preferred name or pronouns."

"It shall be unlawful for a long-term care facility or facility staff to take any of the following actions wholly or partially on the basis of a person’s actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status," the bill reads.

Among the unlawful actions are “willfully and repeatedly” failing to use a transgender person’s “preferred name or pronouns” after he or she is “clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”

The law states that if provisions are violated, the violator could be punished by a fine “not to exceed one thousand dollars” or “by imprisonment in the county jail for a period not to exceed one year,” or both, Brooke Singman of Fox News reported.

So, the California legislature was able to craft an excruciatingly detailed law to make sure people suffering from gender dysmorphia and other mental illnesses are not upset by the use of their non-preferred name or pronoun, but what happens when it is confronted with a trash problem of epidemic proportion?

Tammy Bruce reports “Gov. Gavin Newsom called growing homelessness in California a national disgrace as he announced Tuesday that he is launching a task force to find solutions amid a housing crisis in the most populous state.”

So, instead of dealing with the reality of the problem, Mr. Newsom announced the creation of a task force, the members of which will travel around the state and make recommendations. There’s only one recommendation that will work and will change the state’s fate, says Ms. Bruce: a plea to all California voters to stop electing Democrats.

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Nikki Haley: Don’t Call Political Opponents ‘Evil;’ ‘I’ve Seen Evil’

Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former Governor Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) told attendees at Turning Point USA’s Young Women’s Leadership (TPUSA) Summit that American politics are “reaching the point of hate” now that politicians are calling each other “evil,” simply for having policy differences.

Politicians’ passions have become toxic, Haley said Friday during a question and answer session with TPUSA President Charlie Kirk, The Daily Caller reports:

“I believe in being passionate, I do. But when it gets toxic and I say that now it’s getting to where people are calling each other evil. They’re hiding behind anonymous things and they’re saying things that are really reaching the point of hate.”

Haley said it’s wrong to call political opponents evil when they’re just expressing different ideas, because she has seen true evil during her travels with the United Nation:

“When I hear them call each other evil, it bothers me because I’ve seen evil. I’ve been to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they use rape as a weapon of war. I’ve been to South Sudan where they’ve taken babies from women’s arms and thrown them into fires. … That’s evil. What we’re having in our country is a debate of ideas. That’s it.”

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