Monthly Archives: January 2023

The Failure of the Trump Tax Cuts

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They failed to live down to the claims of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians who’ve decried them since their enactment. They’ve also exceeded the expectations of the CBO.

The government collected a record $4.9 trillion in revenue last year, according to the latest report from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan federal agency. That’s nearly $500 billion higher than what the CBO had projected.

In particular, those Left-hated reductions in corporate taxes didn’t yield the Left-promised drop in Federal revenue:

Receipts from corporate income taxes, meanwhile, were $425 billion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 25%….

Regarding that disastrous tax cut that was only for the rich:

…receipts from individual income taxes were $2.6 trillion, exceeding CBO’s projection by 11%.

With all that money rolling in, it doesn’t seem like any particular group of Americans got any special breaks. But the Feds did, from the increased economic activity that resulted from all that pre-2017 tax cut money staying in the hands of private citizens, who know better than our Government Betters where and how to spend our dollars.

That greater money-handling wisdom is illustrated by these tidbits:

…business investment increases spiked by the end of 2019 by 9.4% compared to the pre-tax cut trend…. For corporations, real investment was up by as much as 14.2%

This is what the Progressive-Democratic Party wants to put an end to with Party politicians’ demands to tax ever more, spend ever more, and unconditionally raise the debt ceiling so as to potentiate their addiction to ever-increasing spending.

They’re trying to get their mojo—and our dollars—back.

Sounds Like a Personal Problem

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New York City Mayor Eric Adams (D) is having a crying jag over the influx of illegal aliens arriving in his city.

We are at our breaking point. Based off our projections, we anticipate being unable to continue sheltering arriving asylum seekers on our own….

That overwhelming inflow? “More than” 3,100 “asylum seekers” in the past week, with 835 “last Thursday alone.” By his own estimate, his sanctuary city has received around 40,000 asylum seekers since the spring of 2022.

New York City is proudly a sanctuary city, and Mayor Adams is just as proud of his city’s status as a sanctuary city. Yet he both beefs about being taken at his word with illegal aliens sent—with the illegals’ prior written permission—to his city for the promised sanctuary, and he has chosen to do nothing since his accession to the Mayor’s Mansion (notice that: his mansion) to prepare his sanctuary city to receive sanctuary seekers.

Meanwhile, the cities and towns along our southern border, from western Arizona to Texas’ Gulf Coast, are inundated with millions of illegal aliens per year and nearly 48,000 just in the first three weeks of this year, not in the 10 or so months since the spring of 2022. These cities and towns truly are overwhelmed.

For Adams and his staffers that works out—if my third-grade arithmetic serves me well—to nearly 16,000 illegal aliens per week so far just this month. Again, for the benefit of Adams and his staffers, and again if my third-grade arithmetic serves me, that’s nearly five times the inflow that New York City has been experiencing. And not for just the few months that Adams’ team has been facing, but for the last two-plus years.

Adams has a personal problem, centered on his virtue-signaling hypocrisy and his squalling about being held to his word. Us average Americans are getting fed up with his whiny attitude.

A Few Questions

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Then-Vice President Joe Biden (D) retained an (unknown and still growing) number of classified documents, taking them with him when he vacated his Vice Presidency in January 2017. I have some questions. In no particular order,

  • he signed the documents out of their secure storage, or he had a staffer sign them out for him. Where are the sign-out logs showing what document(s) were signed out and who signed them out—including for whom if it wasn’t the actual user of the docs?
  • when were the documents signed out?
  • what is the level of classification of the documents?
  • What is the subject matter (in general terms) of the classified documents Biden had (and still has?) squirreled away?
  • what is the nature of the documents?
    • were they finished products?
    • drafts?
    • notes for a draft or taken during meetings that were then classified by the note-taker?
    • some combination of the three?
  • what was Biden using these classified documents for or intending to use them for when he took them with him as he left office?
  • where is the documentation that the National Archives receives that identifies Executive Branch classified documents as they’re created?
  • when did the National Archives receive that documentation?
  • when do National Archive logs indicate the National Archives received the classified documents themselves, as listed on that prior documentation?
  • from whom do those logs indicate the National Archives received the documents?
  • when did the National Archives start asking questions about the classified documents it knew had been created but had not yet received?
  • where are the certifications the National Archives receives that the classified documents it received are the only copies of those documents?
  • who signed those certifications?

In the end, it’s clear that Biden, despite his claims to the contrary, knew and knows full well that he had those documents and has kept them all this time. He’s the one who signed them out or had a staffer sign them out for him. He’s the one who didn’t return them and sign them in when he was through or had a staffer do so in his name. He’s the one who moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from his VP offices to…someplace…between the time he had them in his VP offices and the time the Penn Biden Center was created. He’s the one moved those classified documents, or authorized an assistant to move them, from their ad hoc location variously to the Penn Biden Center and to his residence-cum-classified storage facility.

Finally, as Vice President, he had no declassification authority whatsoever beyond the authority of anyone with a clearance to declassify the notes he took and classified at the time he took them.

One more Finally: Biden says (now through his Presidential staffers) that he has no visitor logs for the building he occupies in Delaware and in which he garages his Corvette because, he claims, that’s his residence. This is nonsense. As soon as Biden moved those classified documents into his garage and a room in that building adjacent to his garage, that building ceased being his residence and became a classified storage facility. Visitors are required to be logged in and out of classified storage facilities, regardless of who lives there, and any of those visitors or Biden himself who viewed or removed from storage for viewing those classified documents are required to log them out and back in. The lack of logs is illegal.

One last Finally: Biden claims he advised the National Archives promptly as soon as his uncleared personal lawyers noticed he still had them. Promptly? He’s known for the last six years that he had these documents. What took him so long to get around to “promptly?”

Federal Debt Ceiling

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The Progressive-Democratic Party says they’ll refuse to negotiate on raising the debt ceiling. Not at all. Those politicians are looking to hold our nation’s weal and our national security hostage against their demand to spend, spend, spend.

Republican Party politicians—at least those in the House and some of them in the Senate—insist that the debt ceiling can’t be raised without agreement on spending cuts in the next and subsequent budgets: not agreement to talk about cuts, but actual, specific cuts.

These Leftist politicians insist that the debt ceiling is solely about current bills that must be paid and that future spending questions—cuts or otherwise—are separate questions and must be negotiated separately. This is badly mistaken.

Today’s debt ceiling problem is the result of past failures to cut spending: failures to agree to do more than just talk about cuts and, where cuts actually were agreed, failures to honor those agreements. The next budget’s spending will impact the next debt ceiling and create pressure to raise the ceiling again. Failure to accept, or even to recognize, the relationship between a debt ceiling and budgeting just leads to functionally automatic debt ceiling raises and so functionally automatic debt increases.

Current debt ceilings and future spendings are inextricably intertwined. The Republicans in the House need to stand tall and not allow any debt ceiling increase without agreement to specific, measurable cuts (not reductions in increases) in future budgets’ spending on specific programs. Senate Republicans need to find backbone and stand tall on this pairing, also.

Progressive-Democrat refusal to negotiate on this puts our nation’s debt crisis squarely on their backs, and no place else. Their refusal to negotiate is just their demand to continue spending us average Americans‘ money in ever increasing amounts, their demand to drive our nation ever more deeply into debt—demands born of the irrational concept that money can be created out of the æther with no economic consequence.

Facebook Collusion?

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According to the latest installment of Email Revelations, Facebook—i.e., Mark Zuckerberg, since he owns an outright majority of the voting shares of his Facebook (and its reincarnation, Meta)—responded to pressure from the White House (which can only mean President Joe Biden (D), since he’s the White House guy in charge) rather meekly (IMNSHO).

Facebook told an official at the Biden White House in March 2021 that the Big Tech company took action against the “virality” of “often-true content” regarding the COVID-19 vaccines, in addition to suppressed misinformation about the shots.

Zuckerberg, via his (identity redacted) staffer:

As you know, in addition to removing vaccine misinformation, we have been focused on reducing the virality of content discouraging vaccines that does not contain actionable information. This is often-true content, which we allow at the post level because it is important for people to be able to discuss both their personal experiences and concerns about the vaccine, but it can be framed as sensation, alarmist, or shocking.

Can be framed as…. By whom, exactly? Apparently by Zuckerberg and his minions.

Is Zuckerberg an abject coward, then, caving to unenforceable “pressure,” or is he all-in with the Progressive-Democrats and their demand to control speech?

I write, you decide.