Don't believe the headline hype on tax reform

I was talking with a friend the other day who lives in Europe who told me that, thanks to the one sided news people there are getting, mostly from CNN, most there think President Donald Trump is a terrible tyrant and the US is overrun by Nazis, racists and misogynists (thankfully, she doesn’t share these sentiments). She and I also talked about the lie we’re all hearing here: that poor Americans will be hurt by the Republican tax reform plan. 

It's not just cable news that's at fault. Print and web headlines are perhaps an even bigger problem. We're bombarded with so much information, all at our fingertips, that we now pick and choose what we will read in depth. This means many read a lot of headlines, but few articles.

If a person only reads the headline, though, it appears that the poor (and even the middle class) will have ever so much more tax burden. I’m sure that's exactly what the mainstream media are depending on. Here are just a few gems recently pushed out for all to see: “Poor Americans would lose billions under Senate GOP tax bill;”  “Senate Plan Would Raise Taxes On The Poor, Report Says;” “Senate tax bill would cut taxes of wealthy and increase taxes on families earning less than $75,000 by 2027.”

Here's how one publication put it exactly: "The committee’s (Joint Committee on Taxation) analysis...found that Americans earning $75,000 a year or less would also face large tax increases by 2027 because of the Senate’s plan to allow individual tax cuts to expire at the end of 2025."

So they are saying the bill will raise taxes because people's taxes will return to where they were when the tax cuts expire? Leaving aside the torturous logic behind that conclusion, it also relies on the premise that the cuts won't be made permanent. It's like saying George W. Bush was raising taxes on the poor by removing 10 million people from the tax rolls but having an end date on the plan in order to comply with reconciliation rules in Congress. Those tax cuts, by the way, were made permanent, for which Obama then proceeded to take credit for lowering taxes by virtue of not raising them.

The left is also claiming that, because the tax bill eliminates the individual mandate on health insurance, then, should the bill pass, millions of people would lose their health insurance. Well, that is nonsense. It only means that millions who are suddenly given the option to abandon the unaffordable, ineffective health insurance program that’s been forced on them would do exactly that: run from it in droves. And though Barack Obama and the Supreme Court tried to obfuscate the matter by calling the mandate a “tax”, a better word for a "tax" that is only paid when you refuse to buy service that you don’t want from a private corporation is “extortion.”

The other lie we’re hearing is that the rich would benefit and the poor and middle class would shoulder the burden. But the liberal elites making this claim should be well aware that the top few percent of wage earners in this country pay about 95% of the income taxes. If the rich did get a large benefit, it's because they are the ones paying the majority of taxes now, so any tax cut will proportionately affect them more. That's a good thing, and doesn't affect the poor negatively. It's not a zero sum game and, besides, the tax cut in question is targeted at businesses. Keeping taxes high on corporations – or raising them even higher – harms the poor and middle class even more because corporations simply pass those increased costs onto everyone else in the form of higher prices, higher fees and fewer jobs. Making America more competitive in the corporate world - which enjoys a 22% corporate tax rate on average in comparison with America's 35% rate - can only help more of us, not harm us.

But the liberal elites prefer to play the game of income equality, identity politics, and class warfare -- none of which, by the way, is a firm foundation on which to correctly run a country or, for that matter, an economic system. How nice if they would stop the false rhetoric already so we could work on common sense solutions to get the country back on track.

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Political usefulness to the left = immunity

Trying to keep straight all the latest allegations of carnal misbehavior among political elites is challenging. Trying to understand why such misbehavior is sometimes ignored and sometimes condemned is just a matter of politics. 

Take Bill Clinton's accusers from the good old 90s for instance. The women bringing accusations against President Clinton were credible. But they were destroyed by a supposed champion of women: Bill's politically ambitious wife. The media largely backed Hillary in her vicious actions to discredit and destroy these women because, like Hillary, the media and other leftists wanted Bill to be president. Even Bill's eventual confession of some of the abuse didn't dilute his support.

Now Judge Roy Moore of Alabama, known as, horror of horrors, a religious conservative, and who was leading the polls in his bid for the US Senate, is accused of assaulting women in one way or another. I have no idea if it's true (and if so, he needs to go, of course), but to the left, and to establishment RINOs, he may as well have brutally raped these women on film for all the hatred, disgust and chagrin being levied against him.  

But if you're a leftist, like Al Franken, you can have a photograph of yourself groping a woman while she sleeps and you will be praised because you owned up to it, as Franken has in his own way. The female staff of Saturday Night Live, Franken's old haunting grounds, even released a letter praising Franken and thanking him for his apology because "everyone makes mistakes." 

So it's not the horrendous action that's at play. It's how well loved you are - and how useful you are -- to the left that will get you a pass. After all, Franken is a huge supporter of leftist feminists' main prize possession: the right to abortion. They simply cannot lose him, so by no means, should he step down. 

But President Trump's vile comments made to Billy Bush, that didn't involve actual illicit physical contact with women? Well, ask Kathy Griffin and her ilk what should be done with him.

The key, in fact, is that one indeed be politically useful to the left. Now that Bill Clinton is considered expendable by the the leftists who protected him during his predator-while-attorney general-governor-president days, leftist feminists can now take the moral high ground and condemn his behavior. But if he were still in office and could have an impact on leftist (abortion) policy? Save him and condemn his victims at all costs.

Then again, his victims may just get their validation now that Bill is no longer in office. Juanita Broaddrick, who accused Clinton of rape while he was Attorney General of Arkansas, and who was absolutely vilified by women, including Hillary Clinton, who claimed to be pro-women -- is now being apologized to by feminists like Chelsea Handler, who suddenly believes Juanita. I wonder, though, was it worth the wait for Jaunita? Does she need feminists' support now? I doubt it.

Let's face it. If Al or Bill or now the latest one to be accused of sexual misconduct, John Conyers - were Republican or anti-abortion, they'd all be torn apart by the left. So the question is, while the left accuses Republicans of the "war on women" does the left really care about abuse of women, or is it okay as long as the guy doing it has something to offer them politically? I think the left has answered the question quite resoundingly.

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Are feminists ok with men taking their place? Seems so...

Earlier this year, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that transgender athletes should be allowed to compete in the Olympics and other international events without undergoing sex reassignment surgery, according to new guidelines adopted by the IOC. Medical officials with the IOC said they changed the policy to adapt to “current scientific, social and legal attitudes” on transgender issues.

Under the previous IOC guidelines, approved in 2003, athletes who transitioned from male to female or vice versa were required to have reassignment surgery followed by at least two years of hormone therapy in order to be eligible to compete.

Now, surgery will no longer be required, with female-to-male transgender athletes eligible to take part in men’s competitions “without restriction”.

Meanwhile, the IOC contends, “male-to-female transgender athletes will need to demonstrate that their testosterone level has been below a certain cutoff point for at least one year before their first competition.”

Hmm. I wonder what 'scientific' research was used to conclude that the only difference between men and women is the level of testosterone? Sexual dimorphism and basic biology seem to have completely passed these medical “experts” by in their rush to demonstrate politically correct inclusiveness. Besides, just how low in testosterone does a man need to go before he is rendered physically weak enough to compete as a “woman” without it being unfair to women?

What I want to know, in fact, is where are the feminists on this? For almost a century now, leftist feminists have been trying to undermine the value of femininity by encouraging women to stop having babies, to abandon domestic home life in favor of work life, and to basically deny their own nurturing nature – all while demanding that society recognize their “true worth”, whatever that is once you strip away all the unique traits that make women, well, women.

But now, it’s gone so far that real women aren’t even necessary. Men are taking their place, at least on the athletic playing field, and actual women are supposed to be okay with pretending that no matter how low the male hormone goes, men will still be physically stronger, and therefore, more successful in physical competition. Where is the feminist roar on that? I don’t hear it.

Diversity and national security: Where do we draw the line?

In response to the terrorist act committed by Sayfullo Saipov on Halloween, President Donald Trump was right to say political correctness has no place in the war on terror. Unfortunately, it appears political correctness has played a big role in this war in a way that undermines our efforts to stay safe. Back in 2014, for instance, the New York Police Department dropped a program that monitored potential suspects of Islamic extremism.  

Created in 2005, the program, known as the "Demographics Unit", was a simple monitoring initiative that sent plain clothes detectives to mosques and other gathering places for Muslims to see if anyone was pushing extremist rhetoric on the community. While it might seem a bit intrusive, let's not forget that in a city of 8.5 million people with as many as 800,000 Muslim residents in the greater metro area, thousands of people died in an Islamic terror attack in New York City.

The monitoring program was going well until 2014 when Sharia Law advocate and female liberal activist, Linda Sarsour, spoke out against the program. (If her name sounds familiar, it’s because she is the one who organized the Women’s March in DC earlier this year after calling for a “Jihad against President Trump” and publicly expressing her hatred for Israel).

According to Sarsour, as quoted in the New York Times in 2014, "The Demographics Unit created psychological warfare in our community.” She didn't offer any evidence to support that claim, but apparently it was effective enough to get the NYPD’s intelligence chief, John Miller, to agree that the program had to go.

But after Saipov ran his rented truck into pedestrians this past Tuesday, killing eight and injuring about a dozen, it was revealed that he frequented a mosque in Paterson, NJ, that used to be monitored as part of the Demographics Unit program as a possible destination for, “budding terrorist conspiracies."  

Unfortunately, because Linda Sarsour convinced the NYPD that it was politically incorrect for its detectives to monitor “innocent” people, they were unable to monitor at all. But without proper profiling initiatives, how can we expect law enforcement to detect possible nefarious players who want to do us harm?

The people who call such profiling “racially insensitive” first need to be informed that Islam isn’t a race. They then need to be informed that there is nothing “xenophobic” about a real problem that deserves no-nonsense attention and action.  As Americans have proven from the beginning of time, we don’t fear foreigners. We embrace them. In fact, the ones murdered by Saipov this week were foreigners. But we can’t be foolish about the issue. Just ask the Europeans who have been told it’s wrong to put any limits on immigration. 

Too bad Senator Chuck Schumer doesn’t agree. Despite yet another terrorist attack in New York City, he is still pushing the “Diversity Lottery” visa program that brought Saipov to our shores, while pointing a finger at those of us who dare to demand reasonable monitoring of who enters our country, either before they get here or after they arrive. 

But to Chuck, “every immigrant is special,” as he announced this week. Tell me, just how special is an immigrant who murders innocent people? Are we supposed to celebrate him in the name of diversity while continuing to allow an open-border approach to letting anyone in? I don’t know. Maybe we should ask the surviving victims of Saipov for their thoughts on the matter.

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