Tag Archives: political parties

Projection

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Here’s CNN commentator Van Jones on President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday:

My first take: “A psychotically incoherent speech mixing cookies with dog poop.” #SOTU #peoplesSOTU #cookiesanddogpoop pic.twitter.com/phYf4PFb0E
— Van Jones (@VanJones68) February 6, 2019

It’s a minute-20 excerpt from Anderson Cooper’s show at the link in the tweet, and Jones went on throughout his tirade in that vein.

That’s all consistent, though, with Jones’ wholly balanced position while he was in the Obama administration that Republicans are “assholes” because they didn’t agree with Obama’s policies and policy proposals.

His projection, it’s clear to see, has gotten even more irrational.

Be Like Sweden

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That’s what the Progressive-Democrats say we should do, especially when it comes to taxes.  Here’s what the Swedish tax structure, that we’re supposed to emulate, looks like, pretty much straight from the horse’s mouth: Catherine Edwards, Europe Editor, for The Local, headquartered in Stockholm.

  • Property tax: virtually eliminated 10 years ago. Nationwide, property owners pay an annual tax of 0.75% of the property’s taxable value, capped at 7,412 kronor ($820).
  • Inheritance tax: abolished (not reduced to zero; this tax no longer exists) in 2005
  • Gift tax: abolished (not reduced to zero; this tax no longer exists) in 2005

Inheritance (estate) and gift taxes were eliminated by unanimous vote in Parliament

for reasons including improving conditions for running a business…, which will facilitate generational succession[.]
Taxes on inheritance and gifts…caused complications when the majority of an inherited estate’s value was tied up in a business or property, forcing many heirs to sell family homes or businesses to stump up the cash for the tax, in some cases leading to their bankruptcy.

Where have we heard that before?

On the matter of income tax, Sweden has a top national tax of 25% on income above 638,500 kronor ($70,400), with county and municipal tax rates running to and additional 11% and 21%, respectively.  A wage earner thus surrenders as much as 57% of his wages to the taxman—and he’s guaranteed to lose nearly a third of it to his local taxman.  On the table in Parliament, though, is a proposal to cut that national tax rate to 10%.

Oh, and Sweden has a corporate tax rate of 22%—which they’re also looking to lower further.

Understand, though: this is not an endorsement of the idea that we really should emulate the Swedish tax system (except for the inheritance and gift taxes part). It’s an indictment of the ignorance of the politicians of the Progressive-Democratic Party who demand high, and higher, taxes and use Sweden (among other nations) as justification (leaving aside the irrationality of the idea that one nation doing something makes it a good idea for other nations to do it, too).

All Your Prosperity Belong to Me

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Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT), who caucuses with the Progressive-Democrats, has joined the Progressive-Democratic Party’s race to the bottom.  The President wannabe has proposed his cynically named For the 99.8% Act, which is targeted explicitly against the 588 Americans he hates the most: the 588 most successful of us.  His bill would deny these few Americans their ability to pass on the outcome of their success to their heirs, their families; his bill would overtly punish these most successful—and their families—for their success.

It’s a bill that’s borne of personal animosity and rank envy.  It’s a bill that would

establish a 45% tax on the value of an estate between $3.5 million and $10 million; a 50% tax on the value of an estate between $10 million and $50 million; a 55% tax on the value of an estate in excess of $50 million; and a 77% tax on the value of an estate above $1 billion….

Sanders rationalized his punitively confiscatory tax by claiming that what’s really needed is

stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs, and a more progressive tax system.

He is ignoring the fact that the more progressive our tax system, the more it and the purveyors of progressivism punish success.  He is ignoring the fact that folks like the Walton family, the Kochs, and Jeff Bezos—from whom alone he would confiscate some $304 billion—have created more jobs and more higher paying jobs and have done more investment in work skills than anything Government has done.

Sanders is ignoring the fact that that money doesn’t sit in some vault as cash or gold bullion.  It’s invested, plowed back into the economy to create innovation, businesses, jobs, philanthropy, educational opportunities—even health coverage plans—all things Government cannot do as well, if at all.

For all Sanders’ and his Progressive-Democrat cronies’ rationalizations to the contrary, this bill and its ilk are nothing but the actualization of their mindless resentment of the achievements of others.

The Party’s Core Philosophy

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And it even attacks its own.  In a Wall Street Journal article centered on Beto O’Rourke’s potential for a Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential campaign, there appeared this giveaway.

[S]ome Democrats have privately groused that he should have shared some of the $80 million he raised in 2018 with fellow candidates in the party.

There is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s core ideology: their demand to redistribute OPM, ideally to their own special interests.

“That’s not the O’Rourke campaign’s money.  He didn’t earn that.  He had help.”

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

In the Liberal Stock

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Neomi Rao is in one, now that she’s a nominee for the DC Circuit Court.  She’s currently serving as the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs Administer, which means she’s already been vetted by the Senate—bipartisanly.  The Senate already knows who she is and what her abilities and qualifications are.

Well, never mind.  It seems, according to BuzzFeed—you remember the purveyors of a Cohen false news story so dishonest that even Mueller had to go public with the BS flag—Rao “wrote inflammatory op-eds in college.”  The horror.

Here’s an example of that inflammatory writing:

It has always seemed self-evident to me that even if I drank a lot, I would still be responsible for my actions.  A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober.

Victim blaming?  Rational people wouldn’t think so, but….

The Progressive-Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee actually are taking Buzzfeed seriously.  The idiocy.

As The Wall Street Journal put it in their editorial at the first link above, none of that

is relevant to how she might rule as a 45-year-old judge with adult life experience.

The WSJ misunderstands, though.  Rao’s not the life experience of a wise Latina, so it’s irrelevant.  The intervening years don’t exist.

And that’s a tool wielded by those Progressive-Democrats and their NLMSM arm in their efforts to smear another conservative jurist.