Sen. Elizabeth Warren: ‘Fox News Is a Hate-for-Profit Racket That Gives a Megaphone to Racists’

It would be more accurate to say that Elizabeth Warren is a hate-filled rager who gives a megaphone to the race-obsessed Left.  Leftists judge others by themselves

“Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) declared Tuesday in her explanation of why she turned down an invitation to one of the network’s town hall events.

In a series of tweets, Sen. Harris attacked Fox News, accusing the network of promoting the “life and death consequences” of racism and conspiracy theorists:

“Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.”

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Democrats are already plotting to raise your taxes after 2020

In spring 2015, 18 months before the 2016 elections, the tax reform legislation of 2017 was taking shape. Virtually every Republican candidate was talking about fixing the broken tax code with pro-growth tax reforms which reduced tax rates and broadened the base. After winning the White House and maintaining control of the House and the Senate, Republicans enacted their tax reform plan within their first year.

Now, in spring 2019, 18 months before the 2020 elections, the tax increase bill of 2021 is taking shape.

Virtually every Democratic presidential candidate is talking about undoing the 2017 tax reform and raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and a long list of specific tax increases is under serious consideration.

As a result, the largest tax increase ever enacted could happen if the Democrats win the White House, retain the House, and regain control of the Senate.

Every taxpayer should start preparing now for the possibility of these tax increases, and more importantly, begin making the case for how damaging these tax increases would be to the economy, our financial markets, and economic prosperity.

The following is a brief summary of the actual tax increases proposed by Democratic presidential candidates and members of the House and Senate, and which will be ready for enactment in 2021.

Individual Taxes: Congressional Democrats (Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, and others) have proposed a repeal of the individual tax cuts enacted in 2017, a massive tax increase for millions of middle-class taxpayers, a return to a top tax rate of 39.6%, and a 5% surtax on top of that. Several House members (Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts) have called for a 70% top rate, while another one (Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota) wants a top rate of 90%. Other members have proposed sharply higher payroll taxes to fund new government spending programs.

As if this is not enough, a number of presidential candidates (Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.) have proposed a new wealth tax, to be levied every year on some Americans' assets and property. Once in place, it will almost certainly be expanded every year to cover more people.

Corporate Taxes: Many Democrats want to repeal the corporate tax reductions enacted in 2017, raising the corporate tax rate back to 35%, close to the highest rate in the world. Others are pushing for raising the 21% rate to 28%. One candidate (Elizabeth Warren) wants to go even further, imposing a new 7% tax on corporate profits above $100 million, a tax that would hit 1,200 businesses and surely result in job losses and price increases.

Investment Taxes: In addition to raising the top individual and corporate tax rates, which would reduce saving and investment, many legislators and candidates also want to tax capital gains as ordinary income, raising the maximum rate to more than 40%. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has gone even further, proposing to tax, at the new higher rate, unrealized capital gains annually, rather than when sold. Wyden and many others also want to tax capital gains at death.

In addition to taxing capital gains, numerous candidates (Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and House and Senate members (Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii) want to impose a tax on stock and bond transactions. This financial transaction tax would hit workers' pension plans and the retirement savings of millions of middle-class families.

Estate Taxes: A number of proposals have been advanced to raise estate taxes. One proposal from Sanders would reduce the estate tax exemption from $11 million to $3.5 million, which would hit family farms and small businesses, and raise the top estate tax rate to 77%.

Tax increase proponents say these tax increases will only hit the wealthy and big corporations, claims which resonate with many voters. But to raise the revenue needed to pay for the many new promised spending programs, the actual tax increases will need to be broad based and hit every taxpayer in the country.

Over the next 18 months, voters need to hear how these tax increases will damage the economy and their economic future and well being. These tax increases will reduce take-home pay, destroy millions of jobs, harm financial markets, and reduce the saving and investment needed to keep the economy growing. If these tax increases are enacted, our roaring economy, with higher than 3% growth and the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, will come to a crashing halt.

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Bernie Sanders Thinks Medicare for All Would Solve America's Health Care Problems. It Would Make Them Worse

There is a crisis in the nation's health care system. But that crisis is Medicare itself—the program as it exists today.

In an op-ed for USA Today, Sanders says the current status quo is an "economic and medical emergency for millions of Americans." The solution, he argues, is to expand Medicare, the health coverage program for seniors, into a national, government-run health care program, because Medicare "guarantees coverage."

But that guarantee only goes so far—and we may discover its limits sooner rather than later.

In 2026, Medicare's hospital insurance trust fund is expected to become depleted, according to a report last month from the program's actuaries. Initially, it will bring in enough money to pay for about 89 percent of its expenditures. Over the next 20 years, that figure will dip down as low as 78 percent.

Insolvency doesn't mean the program shuts down entirely. But what it does mean is that in less than a decade, the program won't be able to pay all of its bills. When that happens, the program's supposed guarantee won't mean much at all. Health care for millions will be in jeopardy because of the federal government's consistently poor fiscal management.

People who rely on the program may not be able to access the care they need or may face much longer wait times. Benefits might end up being scaled back, or practically unavailable even if they are theoretically guaranteed. Alternatively, Congress could raise taxes to finance the program's full costs. Higher taxes, reduced benefits, longer lines, or some combination of the above: When a shortfall hits, those are the primary options.

Sanders' call for Medicare for All, in other words, ignores the longstanding problems with Medicare itself. His advocacy for single payer is almost entirely unresponsive to the longstanding fiscal challenges of the federal government's largest health care program, which, despite their predictability and inevitability, have proven stubbornly difficult to solve. If anything, Medicare for All would increase the scale of those problems, and put care for millions more people on the line in the process.

Under Sanders' vision of Medicare for All, private health insurance as we know it today would be outlawed. That doesn't just mean no competition. It means no alternative and no escape. So if the program struggles to meet its obligations, and care suffers as a result, there's essentially nowhere else to turn. Sanders would trap every American in a system that would almost certainly struggle with financing from the outset.

That's because Sanders, it's clear, has no idea how to pay for the program he has in mind. His proposal is vastly more generous than comparable universal coverage programs run by other countries. Multiple estimates have found that it would add about $32 trillion to the federal tab over a decade, even under generous assumptions. Yet Sanders has never proposed a specific financing mechanism to offset the massive increase in government spending his single-payer plan would entail.

Nor has he answered numerous other practical, necessary questions that designing and implementing single payer would entail: How exactly would health care providers be paid? What would happen when the expansion of coverage increased demand for health care services—especially if provider payments are simultaneously cut?

American health care has real problems; it's expensive, bureaucratic, and inequitable. But decades of government intervention has, if anything, only made these problems worse—if not created them in the first place. The tax break for employer-sponsored insurance in the aftermath of World War II locked people into job-based coverage and encouraged the purchase of ever-more expensive plans, insulating individuals from the cost of their decisions. The creation of Medicare (and to a lesser extent Medicaid) rapidly funneled huge amounts of federal funding into the hospital system and coincided with decades of increased national spending on health care. Federal health care programs now represent what is arguably the nation's largest long-term fiscal challenge.

But now the long term is almost here. And instead of addressing the deep and difficult problems that persist the current system, Sanders and his followers appear to have only one answer, which is to keep doing the same thing, but more of it. Sanders-style Medicare for All isn't the solution to our health care crisis—it's just a much bigger, much harder to solve version of the same crisis we already face.

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Socialism Is Not About Compassion; It’s About Control

Charlie Daniels

What I write here is admittedly theoretical, an opinion cultivated by trying to figure out the end game of those who seem dead set on turning America into a socialist nation, and, at least in my opinion, wittingly or unwittingly, serve a cause that is neither being acknowledged or admitted to. It is but a shadowy end game that lurks in the enclaves of international politics and intrigue.

Obama told America that the manufacturing jobs that had exited America would never come back. Yet he has been proven wrong. I have a hard time believing that an urbane, well-educated president who was privy to international economics and intelligence wouldn’t know what it would take to bring those jobs back to America and was naive enough to actually believe what he said, especially since his successor has made great strides in that direction in two short years.

Could Obama have meant that he didn’t want the jobs to come back, and if so, why not?

We’ll explore that possibility a little further on, but let me lay a little more groundwork here.

What has happened in every instance around the world when the people have either chosen or been forced to accept a socialist government?

Without going through the mechanics of the causes, I think we all know, they all turn into totalitarian, dictatorships with the hand full of elites in control, living in luxury while the masses suffer the results of a system that was doomed to fail from the day it was adopted.

The government controls everything, from the allocation of jobs and education to medical care, military conscription and distribution of food.

Nothing takes place without official permission, which causes almost total dependence on the government. Nobody gets a say in who leads the country except the ones who already lead it, and political dissension and protests are not allowed. Any dissidents can expect a midnight knock on the door.

In America’s case, if a socialist should be elected and had support in Congress, the transition would not come in one fell swoop. It would happen in increments.

How many people are on entitlements? How many people are already totally dependent on government for everything?

Now, having established the fact that millions of Americans have no income, food, housing, medical care or any of the other necessities of life without government assistance, let’s move on.

What if the government stopped sending the monthly check citing the violation of some arcane and meaningless statute, and what would the desperate recipients be willing to do to start the flow of money again?

Answer: almost anything. They may agree to live where they’re told, send their kids to whatever school they’re told, etc.

Now, admittedly, entitlements don’t affect all citizens, and they do not give the government total control over the whole population. But let’s take health care as an example.

What if the only way to see a doctor or have needed treatment was through a government bureaucrat who looked at you like a side of beef, having no medical training and no compassion and was only capable of dispensing “take a number, take a seat”-type attention to your medical problems.

What happens then? You and your loved ones are at the mercy of a cold machine of government entity with an “if you don’t like it, you can lump it” attitude. So you have no choice but to get in line and hope for the best.

How about the price of gasoline and electric power?

What if the sitting House and Senate members were to pass a law that a president can stay in office for twenty years and a packed Supreme Court would uphold it?

The point I’m making here, with a modicum of facetiousness, is that you cannot go down the road to socialism without giving greater power to the government, actually total power, because the whole idea of socialism is giving everything to the government and letting them dole it out as they see fit – putting massive power into the hands of unscrupulous people who have proven they are not above corruption or playing favorites.

They abuse the power they have now. What would they do with this kind of control?

And what would you do if you woke up one day and found out that the president – with unanimous approval from both houses of Congress – had joined a world organization of nations with their headquarters in, shall we say, Brussels?

The answer is: you’d scream and holler, but there’d be little else you could do because you’ve given control of your life and your country to a cabal of globalists in D.C. who slipped in through the back door, their hands full of shiny gifts and promises of free healthcare, free college, guaranteed wages, a cradle to grave carefree utopian life with nothing to worry about but breathing.

Do you think this couldn’t happen in these United States?

What could the people of Russia have done if Stalin, Khrushchev, or Putin for that matter, had joined such a world organization? They’d have no way to fight back, no recourse, and the same is true of China and any other communist dictatorship.

A totally in control government can do anything it wants to, and if they decide to be part of a one world government, the disenfranchised, disarmed public could do little but complain.

Global government is not just a theory, it a very real threat to every free person on the planet, and the United States of America, with its passion for personal freedom and individualism is a fifty-pound fly in their ointment.

If you look at it from the point of view of someone who didn’t much like this nation the way it is and thought the only way to make it better is an all-powerful monolithic government, and who also knows that the fewer jobs there are, the more government dependence there is. Is it possible Obama just didn’t want those jobs to come back?

As we all know, Hillary was a shoe in for the 2016 election, and she was merely a continuation of the initiatives the Obama administration put into place.

“The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”

I know it’s a lot to think about, but if you love America, I would advise you to do some digging and make your own decision about these things.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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