How Far Left Has Party Gone

It’s not just that President Joe Biden (D) has actively catered to the Progressive-Democratic Party’s center, which is well left of what used to be the Democratic Party’s original position of the Center Left of our nation.

Party has gone even farther left.

…a [Rasmussen] survey released Wednesday shows 46% of registered voters in his Democratic Party now believe the country would be in better shape had they elected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders [I] as president.

And

Also in the Rasmussen poll, just 10% disagreed with the idea about the country being better off under Sanders and said the US would in fact be in a worse situation with him in the White House.

As bad as Biden is as President, it’s a watershed that Party prefers socialism to republican democracy.

Because

Here’s a short list of the ways President Joe Biden (D) and his Progressive-Democrat syndicate in Congress intend to take your money away from you.

  • Raise the top individual income tax rate to 39.6%

This applicable to the group of Americans at the top of our economic ladder: single individuals with taxable income of more than $452,700 and married couples with joint taxable income of $509,300. Never mind that these folks, far from just sitting on their money, (re)invest it, which facilitates innovation and job support and creation. Notice, too, that this tax restores the marriage penalty to our tax code.

  • the top capital gains tax would climb to 39.6% from 20% for Americans earning more than $1 million

This applies—Biden and his Progressive-Democrats claim—only to the very top. But it spills over. Preferential treatment of capital gains, which in the main are price increases that occur between when an asset is acquired and when it is sold, has under our non-flat tax code facilitated investing. That investing includes acquiring physical property and developing it for more valuable use for more people (housing development comes to mind), acquiring partial ownership of existing companies (which purchase money increases the value of those companies, which in turn increases those companies’ ability to raise money—for innovation and job support and creation), funding startup companies (which supports their innovation and job creation).

Capping interest in such investing limits all of those follow-ons.

  • Increase levies on inherited assets

Increase the death tax, they mean. They want to do this in two ways. One is to lower the death tax exemption threshold to $1 million from the current $11.7 million. Think about how many small businesses and farms will be destroyed by this lowered threshold.

The other way is to eliminate altogether the step up in basis of inherited assets. The basis step up means that, whatever the value of the asset was at the time it was acquired, its basic value is reset to its market value at the time of the owner’s death. Without the step up, whether those assets are stock share or the physical property of those small businesses and farms, this move, apart from the lowered exemption threshold, will force the (taxable!) sale of the assets just so the cash necessary to pay the tax vig can be raised. And that ignores the costs and litigations that will occur as heirs are forced to reach years, decades, often generations into the past to locate that original acquisition cost.

It’s almost like Progressive-Democrats don’t want us to pass anything on to our heirs.

  • End the private-equity tax break

This is the carried interest income that gets so much bad press. Carried interest is paid to partners beyond the value of their initial investment and is a payment for their efforts in increasing the value of the partnership (and in the value of each partner’s investment). While it’s accrued as an additional “fee” in real time, carried interest is retained by the partnership to support further investment and partnership growth and is paid out only when a concrete event occurs—an oil well comes home and is sold, or a hedge fund partnership is dissolved on reaching a preset milestone.

As such, carried interest is closely akin to capital gains, and the destruction of this has the same negative outcome for future investment as does damage to capital gains.

  • Hike taxes on corporations

Biden his syndicate want to raise the corporate tax to 28% from the current 21% level. This will reduce American business’ competitiveness and encourage them to resume their move to lower, foreign, tax rate jurisdictions—at the expense of American innovation and jobs. It’s also part of the syndicate’s effort to get a minimum corporate tax level set globally by an international consortium, which itself is designed to reduce national sovereignty over fiscal matters.

It’s all because Progressive-Democrats insist they Know Better how, and on what items, to spend your money than you do.

And We Thought Obama Was Bad

…with his penchant for finger-wagging in lieu of concrete action.

Here are the Houthis, demonstrating their utter contempt for the Biden-Harris administration and its diplomatic mouthpiece, SecState Antony Blinken (D).

First, President Joe Biden (D) cut off arms sales to the Saudis, hoping the Houthis would appreciate the gesture and play nice. The Houthis’ nice play was a drone attack on a Saudi civilian airport that wounded eight and damaged a commercial aircraft.  Blinken

“strongly” condemned the attack, adding that “we again call on the Houthis to uphold a ceasefire and engage in negotiations under UN auspices.”

After that condemnation, the not very chastened Houthis fired missiles into eastern Saudi Arabia, damaging homes and injuring children.  Blinken responded in no uncertain terms. Sort of.

This is completely unacceptable. These attacks threaten the lives of the Kingdom’s residents, including more than 70,000 US citizens.

The Houthis must begin working toward a peaceful, diplomatic solution under UN auspices to end this conflict[.]

Or else what, Blinken? What are you—or your boss, Biden-Harris—going to do if the Houthis remain unresponsive to porch dog yapping?

On the other hand, all that’s left for the Houthi management team to do is to turn their backs to Biden-Harris-Blinken and moon them.

California’s Regulations

Do they impact other States?

One regulation, in particular, concerns California’s potential regulation, under the upcoming Proposition 12, which seeks to control the amount of space hog farmers devote to each hog.

Nominally, Prop 12 is causing non-California hog farmers (and, presumably, the two or three California hog farmers) confusion, according to Tasha Bunting, the Illinois Farm Bureau’s Assistant Director of Commodities & Livestock Programs:

Prop 12 really doesn’t have all of their rules implemented yet. What exactly it is going to look like hasn’t been finalized. It is really putting our producers behind the eight ball from the get-go[.]

And then California finalizes its rules—however late in the game—and confusion supposedly disappears, and hog farmers around the US begin to adjust.

Or not.

Prop 12’s impact spreads beyond California’s borders only to the extent other States, hog farmers domiciled in other States, allow it to. There are plenty of markets, domestic and foreign, for hog producers. They don’t have to sell into California at all.

This Move Suits Me

Portland’s Mayor Ted Wheeler and his City Council are upset with Texas and our heartbeat law.

Portland City Council is to consider an emergency resolution this week to ban future travel, goods and services from the state of Texas in protest of the state’s new abortion law.
In statement released Friday, Mayor Ted Wheeler said City Council will hold a vote on the resolution on Wednesday, Sept 8, with the intent to ban Portland’s “future procurement of goods and services from, and City employee business travel to, the state of Texas.”

That works for me. Wheeler, acting as both Mayor and Police Commissioner, has actively condoned the rioting, looting, and arson that’s been going on in his city for more than a year, and he’s actively prevented his police force from protecting Federal property. He’s even, just recently, allowed a riotous clash between antifa and a far right group to continue to the point of gunfire by requiring his police to not interfere.

Portland’s City Council is working assiduously to defund the police altogether.

With the exception of those police themselves and the city’s other emergency responders, the city’s employees have shown themselves unfit for decent company. They’ll not be missed here.