#9801
Donald Trump tweets that his cabinet picks' views are not his.
#9802
This is the first article in a series that reviews news coverage of the 2016 general election, explores how Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated by the most of the American media. D…
#9803
A Central Texas woman accused of firinga shot at another woman during an argument was indicted Wednesday for killing a child the victim was holding.
#9804
Bottom line, these two are bad for America but who's worse? Does one deserve to be prosecuted over the other?
#9805
Protesters surround building, chant vulgar slogans.
#9806
One in every five dollars spent in the United States goes toward health-care expenses. Singaporeans spend less than one in 20. They live longer lives and report more satisfaction with their health care system. What do they do right that the United States might imitate? Singapore requires that its citizens pay into a health-care fund. This, in effect, ensures the “health care for all” that fervent backers of Obamacare so desired. But in practice the system resembles Social Security more than Obamacare. It’s less of a welfare payment than a deposit into a savings account. This allows for universal coverage, a
#9807
Read the list carefully. If your child falls under one or more of these categories they could be a “far-right extremist.” Please get them to the nearest re-education (aka public school) facility immediately. Subject them to at least 12 hours of CNN every day for the next 90 days and put a Barack Obama “Yes …
#9808
The long-entrenched establishment powers that be, don’t much care for Donald Trump’s remarkably effective use of social media to bypass the Mainstream Media filter and communicate directly to the American people. And so, a campaign was initiated to create pressure to have the President-Elect agree his Twitter and related social media accounts would not be …
#9809
#9810
WASHINGTON--Sen. Ted Cruz spent the weekend campaigning in Iowa with Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, by his side. Gohmert, one of the first congressmen to endorse Cruz's presidential bid, joined him…
#9811
Someone's not gonna be happy...
#9812
Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 1 percentage point among likely voters who were polled a few days ahead of the much-anticipated debate between the two presidential candidates. The debate will take place Monday evening. The ratings for the televised matchup between the two candidates are expected to be at record highs. Two-thirds of registered …
#9813
Every spring, millions of progressive households join with their conservative neighbors and busily get to work doing the exact same thing. They open TurboTax, take documents to an accountant, or sit down with pencil and paper at the kitchen table to figure out how to pay the smallest amount of taxes possible. Sure, they may have disagreed on what tax rates should be or whether certain deductions should exist, but after the rules are set, both sides apply them, work diligently to minimize their tax liability, and celebrate when the refund is larger than expected.
In all my years on this planet, speaking to friends and family members on the left and right, I have never — not once — heard anyone say, “You know, I could have taken that business-expense deduction, but I decided the troops needed the cash more than me.” Yet to read Twitter, one would think Donald Trump is a monster for (apparently) using legal tax breaks to offset future earnings.
According to leaked documents obtained by the New York Times, Trump took an immense loss in 1995 — an amount totaling nearly $916 million. The paper then notes that this amount would be enough to allow Trump to pay no income tax even if he made $50 million per year for the next 18 years. The Trump campaign didn’t deny the fundamental facts of the story, and the commentariat was off to the races — hashtags and all.
Since this is 2016, it was hard to find rational discourse. Trump defenders proclaiming his “genius” were cleverly eliding his catastrophic losses. Indeed, Trump had endured massive financial setbacks, and he had himself primarily to blame. Yet his attackers were almost certainly hypocrites. How many of them have skipped standard available deductions for the purported good of the commonwealth? Yes, the tax code is complicated, and, yes, it is intentionally crafted to provide benefits to particular classes of business, but that’s simply progressive wonkery in action. Technocrats are constantly fiddling with the code to incentivize or discourage certain kinds of business activity.
To be sure, another shoe may soon drop. The Times has strongly hinted that it has more documents, and we may discover that Trump’s tax filings crossed legal lines. Or we may not. But, for now, the story is lurid mainly because of the numbers, not because of the underlying principle. A man lost money, he was thus entitled to take deductions. He almost certainly took those deductions. Wake me up when this gets interesting.
What is interesting, however, is the speed at which pundits can impose new moral standards. Writing in the Washington Post, columnist Allan Sloan notes that while both Trump and Hillary Clinton are filthy rich, at least Clinton’s tax proposals would cost her money, while Trump stands to benefit immensely from his proposed tax cuts.
The story is lurid mainly because of the numbers, not because of the underlying principle.
But the proper standard for economic effectiveness and moral propriety is not whether any given tax proposal will cost a candidate money (by that standard, virtually every tax-cutting Republican would fail the moral test) but whether the policy would increase prosperity and enable human flourishing. When a politician considers a tax proposal, he should disregard his own self-interest entirely — weighing its merits regardless of whether it costs or saves him money. His own personal experience is relevant only to the extent that it informs his knowledge as to how tax policies work in the real world.
Moreover, I want wealthy, public-spirited Americans to pay less in taxes and provide more charitable contributions. Charity dollars are typically far more efficiently spent and allocated to help our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens than tax dollars, which prop up our soul-destroying welfare superstructure. Leftists argue that Trump’s tax dollars would have been outlaid to support “troops and vets,” but the majority would have gone to the exact same causes that the rest of our dollars support — immense entitlement programs, massive bureaucracies, and debt service.
#related#Sadly, however, it appears as if Trump has hardly been the model philanthropist. And his continued failure to release his tax returns leaves his supporters hanging by a thread. All those hailing Trump’s “genius” may be forced to eat their words if later leaks show that he’s little more than a lawyered-up tax cheat. For the time being, however, the story is much ado about nothing. We already knew Trump faced massive financial challenges in the 1990s. We all knew the tax code allowed past losses to offset future earnings. The rest is just math.
Unless another shoe drops (and it well might), it’s time to return to the truly pressing issues of our time. After all, another beauty queen might be nursing an ancient grudge. Americans have a right to know.
— David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review.
#9814
Rep. Tom Price purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would have directly benefited the company, records show
#9815
For once, don?t blame the Donald! Mayor de Blasio caused traffic mayhem for his own political gains on Thursday night as he headed a massive anti-Trump protest in Columbus Circle. Sand trucks…
#9816
#9817
NBC's $12billion deal may have been a risky investment as the Olympic Games continue to lose millions of viewers each season, causing NBC to lose money to make ends meet with advertisers.
#9818
The Department of Justice is scrubbing references of radical Islamic beliefs from the transcripts of calls Orlando terrorist Omar Mateen made to police during his massacre, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Sunday.
#9819
#9820
He disavows Louis Farrakhan, but is speaking next week for the Hamas-linked Muslim American Society.
#9821
Bill O'Reilly reacted to the approximate $500,000 that has been raised for the Talladega College 'Marching Tornadoes' band's trip to participate in the Inauguration Day ceremony for President-elect Donald Trump in Washington.
#9822
#9823
A 17-year-old boy was killed and one other person was wounded in separate shootings Thursday night on the South Side.
#9824
Actor James Woods zings the liberal media for its recent attacks on Dr. Ben Carson. That darn Ben Carson! Hiding ...
#9825
One of the revelations in Friday’s indictment handed down by Special Counsel Robert Mueller was that alleged Russian attempts to sow disunity in 2016 included the organization of both pro- and anti-Trump rallies in New York City on the Saturday after Election Day. A check of their November 12 coverage showed both CNN and MSNBC gave enthusiastic coverage to the Russian-organized anti-Trump rally that day, with live reports every hour. Correspondents celebrated the idea that it was “a love rally,” and repeated the marchers’ anti-Trump mantras, such as: “We reject the President-elect.”