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Saturday, August 17, 2024
Another Trump Flip Flop: From Anti-Bitcoin to Pro-Bitcoin.
While some of Trump's policy flip flops are older than some of Harris', Trump's Bitcoin flip flop is quite recent. In June 2021 Trump told a Fox Business reporter, "Bitcoin, it just seems like a scam. I don't like it because it's another currency competing against the dollar."
Trump is a super flip flopper. Trump registered as a Republican in 1987 and since that time, he had changed his party affiliation five times. In 2001 he was a registered Democrat. In a 2004 interview, Trump told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "In many cases, I probably identify more as Democrat." In a July 2015 interview, Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and said, "I identify with some things as a Democrat." Trump was pro-choice before he was pro-life.
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Thursday, August 15, 2024
Trump is Losing it! He is Delusional. Says Harris Crowds are AI Generated
Recently Trump said that the large crowds at Harris' rallies were not real, that they were images generated by Artificial Intelligence. This is nuts! If your uncle said this, he would forever more be known as your crazy uncle.
This is the kind of stuff you expect from the deep dark corners of the web and from people like Alex Jones. This is in the same category of stuff as saying that a school shooting was a red flag operation, and the dead children were actors. It is like claiming 9-11 was an inside job and that the airplanes that flew into the buildings were optical illusions and that the building collapsed from planted explosives. It is like believing a pizza parlor in D.C was part of a Democratic Party linked pedophile operation and ordering a "pepperoni" or a "bacon" was an order for a certain characteristic of a minor you wanted to abuse. It is like believing the moon landing was faked or that California wildfires are caused by Jewish space lasers. It may not be as evil as some of the things above, but it is as delusional and irrational.
Reporters were there, including those from the Times and Washington Post, and local median, and many other news sources and numerous attendees posted video of her arrival on social media. To believe the crowds were not real is to believe anything.
Does Trump really believe this or is he lying trying to get other people to believe it? I am unsure. For a long time, I believed Trump was a liar. I am beginning to think he is not. If a person says something untrue but they actually believe what they are saying is true, they are not lying; they are delusional. I am starting to believe he believes the untruths he spouts. I think he is delusional. Maybe he really believes the 2020 election was stolen. Maybe he really believes Harris' crowds are AI generated fakes. Trump has always been obsessed with crowd size. I think he can't stand it that Harris is drawing larger crowds than is he. His response is to not believe and try to find an alternative explanation. He comes up with this explanation. He is getting worse. Can this guy be trusted with the nuclear code?
What concerns me as much as Trumps delusions, maybe more so, is that his followers don't care. They hear Trump say this about Harris' crowds being AI generated images and they either believe it or don't care. Someone should tell Trump he needs help, but they won't. The Trump public should be concerned, but they aren't. We are living in the fable of the king has no clothes.
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Wednesday, August 14, 2024
To Save Conservatism from Itself, I Am Voting for Harris
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| David French |
... Let’s take another assertion that should be relatively uncontroversial: Political violence and threats of violence have no place in the American democratic process. Yet threats and intimidation follow the MAGA movement like night follows day. ... But only one party has nominated a man who was indicted for his role in the criminal scheme to steal an American election, a scheme that culminated in a violent political riot.
... we should make the argument — firmly but respectfully — that this is no ordinary race and that the old political categories no longer apply. ... how many Republicans would have predicted that voting for a Democrat would be the best way to confront violent Russian aggression and that the Republican would probably yield to a Russian advance? ...
I’m often asked by Trump voters if I’m “still conservative,” and I respond that I can’t vote for Trump precisely because I am conservative. ... The only real hope for restoring a conservatism that values integrity, demonstrates real compassion and defends our foundational constitutional principles isn’t to try to make the best of Trump, a man who values only himself. If he wins again, it will validate his cruelty and his ideological transformation of the Republican Party. If Harris wins, the West will still stand against Vladimir Putin, and conservative Americans will have a chance to build something decent from the ruins of a party that was once a force for genuine good in American life. (Read it all)
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Tuesday, August 13, 2024
Eliminating Taxes on Tips was a Bad Ideal when Proposed by Trump, and a Bad Idea when Copied by Harris.
Isn't it strange that both proposed the idea while in Nevada? Not really. It is called pandering or buying votes. Nevada has a larger percentage of its people working in the hospitality industry than anywhere else and Navada is a battleground state. If Tennessee was a battleground state, Harris and Trump might come to Nashville and propose removing taxes on earnings from income received from songwriter royalties. It would make about as much sense.
Much has been made over Kamala copying Trump's idea. I don't fault a person for adopting the idea of his opponent if it is a good idea. Cutting taxes on tips is a bad idea.
Under current law, tips are treated as ordinary income and subject to both federal income and payroll taxes. In many professions, tips are the major portion of a person's income. In addition to ending the taxing of tips, Harris said she would also raise the minimum wage. According to The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget these two proposals together would add between $100 and $200 billion to the deficit over ten years.
This is an insane thing to propose at this time. We are headed for a financial cliff. Government Debt to GDP in the United States is at an all-time high of 126% and interest on the debt is exceeding the total defense budget and is almost as much as we spend on Medicare. Runaway inflation is a real possibility. Under current laws Social Security will exhaust its trust funds by 2034, and then benefits will be cut by 23%. I don't think benefits will really be cut. Congress will pay the money that was coming out of the trust fund out of the general fund, which means larger deficits and more borrowing.
I favor cutting taxes if the tax cuts are revenue neutral or if offset by reduction in government expenditures. Cutting taxes, especially targeted corporate taxes, may actually result in an increase in tax revenue. Money not taxed can be used for job creating expansion and new investments. Cutting personal tax rates or increasing tax credits may result in greater consumer spending which may be beneficial for the economy. However, that is not always the case. Just cutting taxes unless targeted and strategic leads to a reduction in tax revenue. With our massive national debt and looming Social Security crisis, we do not need to be cutting taxes, just for the sake of cutting taxes. Some conservatives have favored cutting taxes whenever they have the chance in order to "starve the beast." That doesn't work. When revenues fall short of covering expenditures, government does not cut expenses but simply borrows more money. The only way "starving the beast" works is if we had a requirement for a balanced budget.
If any of my liberal friends are reading this, their response will be to cut taxes on middle income and poor people and make the rich "pay their fair share." The rich already pay most of the income tax. Corporate taxes are a business expense, and taxes paid by corporations are actually indirectly paid by their consumers. I know many don't want to believe it, but raising tax rates, specially making them more progressive can actually raise less revenue and lead to a shrinking economy. Making the rich pay their "fair share" is not a solution to our financial problems. That is not to say that some tweaking of some taxes could not be beneficial, but soaking the rich is not a solution.
Not only would exempting tip income from taxation increases the speed at which we barrel toward the financial cliff, it would also be very difficult to enact and would encourage more tax cheating. Already tip income is notoriously under reported and tax evasion among people who earn their money from tips is rampant. If tip income is to become exempt from taxation, one would see a shift in how people charge for services. The actual charge for a service would drop and a large gratuity would become the norm. Millions of people would figure out a way to call their income "tips," and since employers must pay FICA on employees' income, employers would be motivated to help employees earn more tips and less wages.
Not only would this proposal to not tax tips be bad for America's fiscal health and difficult to enact, but it is also unfair. A lot of people get most of their income from tips. Some restaurant workers and certain entertainers make a lot of money and most of it is in tips. Why should the income of the waitress be except from taxation but not the income of the dishwasher, the cook, or the busboy? There are a lot of musicians playing in bands on lower Broadway playing for tips only. Is it fair that they be except from all income taxation and the person cleaning up the trash on lower Broad not be exempt?
Why stop at excepting tip income? A lot of people get a bonus at the end of the year if the company does well or if the owner is feeling generous. Is a bonus, not sort of like a tip? Maybe all bonuses should be exempt from taxation. And, what about commissioned salesmen, ...
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Saturday, August 10, 2024
Trump says he will blunt the central bank’s autonomy should he win a second term. This could be disastrous.
by Rod Williams, Aug. 10, 2024- There are a lot of reasons to fear a Donald Trump second term, the primary one being that Donald Trump is an authoritarian at heart who attempted a coup that failed but his next coup attempt may succeed.
Second on my list of reasons to fear a Trump second term is that I believe he will greenlight Russian aggression, destroy NATO, and abandon America's leadership role in the world.
I would say my third reason is that Trump is mentally and temperamentally unfit. He flies by the seat of his pants, relies on his instincts instead of data and informed analysis, and reacts to events emotionally rather than rationally and is not well-grounded in a set of principles to guide his actions. Along with that, he thinks he is the smartest guy in the room and sees no need to read or prepare or seek advice. I think this was always true of Donald Trump, but in his first term this characteristic was curtailed and mitigated by establishment and sane people who keep him within the guardrails. This was because Trumpism was new and the people he had to rely on were establishment and sane. In a second Trump term he will not have those kinds of people to steer him. He will be surrounded by loyal sycophants who are as crazy as he is.
There are other more specific things that I fear from a second Trump term. I fear he will end the Federal Reserve's autonomy and unleash runaway inflation. When Trump was President he appointed Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve, a position to which President Biden has since reappointed him. While Trump served as president, Powell angered Trump by keeping interest rates higher than Trump wanted. Trump unsuccessfully tried to browbeat the Fed chair and Federal Reserve Board members into lowering interest rates and called them "boneheads” and at at one time asked in a social media post who was a bigger “enemy,” Mr. Powell or China’s president Xi Jinping (link). In 2019 Trump said the Fed should set interest rates at zero.
On Thursday Trump said presidents should be allowed to influence the Federal Reserve in setting interest rates. This is frightening. High interest rates are never popular. They are not popular but often necessary to curtail inflation. Where politicians can set interest rates or "print money," nations experience massive inflation. People almost always want cheap money. They see the answer to raising prices as having more cash in their pockets. They want to pay off accumulated debt with money that is worth less than when they borrowed it. Cheap money is a populist demand and a demagogue's response.
With government Debt to GDP in the United States reaching an all-time high of 126% and with interest on the debt exceeding the total defense budget and being almost as much as we spend on Medicare, runaway inflation is a real possibility. We need an independent Fed to cool the economy when it gets overheated. We do not want a Fed that reacts to popular opinion. Allowing presidents to have more say over interest rates would reverse a long-standing norm of central bank autonomy and could lead to a disaster.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump didn’t explain in detail what kind of role he envisions for himself in setting interest rates, arguing only that he should have a say in setting them. But, he said he is more qualified to make decisions than many Fed officials about monetary policy because of his business experience. “I made a lot of money,” he said. “I was very successful, and I think I have a better instinct than, in many cases, people that would be on the Federal Reserve or the chairman.”
A group allied with Trump has produced a document outlining options for curtailing the Fed’s independence. To read more about Trump's call for curtailing central bank's independence and what the Trump allied group has called for, and what others are saying about Trump's proposal follow this link, this one, and this.
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Friday, August 09, 2024
Trump picking Vance is just one more sign that Trump is categorically unfit for office.
And the truth is, there is something genuinely unsettling about Trump’s VP pick:
- He’s hostile to no-fault divorce and has even suggested that women should stay in violent, abusive marriages.
- He proposed that parents of children under 18 should get extra votes.
- He claimed “childless adults” are “more sociopathic” and make America “less mentally stable."
- Supports InfoWars lunatic Alex Jones, saying that he represents “important truths.”
- Admitted to being “plugged into a lot of weird right-wing subcultures.”
And it’s not just the substance of what he believes, but also the style. Vance is steeped in a particular strain of online, right-wing thought that is angry, punitive, and deeply unappealing to the great majority of American voters. And anyone who believes these far-out ideals—let alone campaigns on them—should be nowhere near the White House.
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TN continues legal push to cut Nashville council in half. I say enough is enough. Give it a rest.
by Rod Williams, August 9, 2024- As reported in The Tennessean today, State officials are appealing a court ruling that let Nashville keep its 40-person Metro Council. On July 29th, a split panel of three judges struck down a state law passed in 2023 that capped councils for all metropolitan governments in large cities at 20 members. In effect, the law as it was written only applied to Nashville. Two of the three judges said this violated protections for home rule in the Tennessee Constitution. The Tennessee Attorney General's office filed its appeal Wednesday of this week.
State legislators justified passing the law capping the size of a cities governing body in the name of efficiency, but I don't think anyone is buying that. This law was passed, along with other laws that took certain decision-making powers away from Nashville and gave them to state officials, as a way to punish Nashville after the Metro Council rejected a draft agreement to host the 2024 Republican National Convention.
The State needs to give it a rest. This is pure vindictiveness. After the Council refused to pursue attracting the Republican National Convention, which we would have likely gotten, the State retaliated with a series of measures to punish Nashville. These included taking over the Sports Authority, the Airport Authority, a measure to protect racing at the Fairgrounds, a measure abolishing Metro's police civilian review board, and the measure to cut the size of the Council. I understand the State's frustration, but this vindictiveness is too much.
Metro should have pursued the Republican convention. The City rejected it for no other reason than it was a Republican convention. To host it certainly would not have implied support for the Republican Party or Donald Trump. We host a lot of conventions that may not represent the views of the majority of Nashvillians. We recently hosted a Bitcoin convention. That does not constitute an endorsement of Bitcoin.
Hosting a major party convention is a big deal. Milwaukee attracted over 50,000 visitors. Nashville is a more fun place than Milwaukee and if Nashville had hosted, the number of visitors would have probably been even greater. The economic impact for Milwaukee was estimated to be a $200 million revenue boost. I am always a little skeptical of the claims of a financial boost from any major event because often it is a gross estimate and not a net calculation. Hosting a big convention, like a major party convention, means other conventions do not take place during that time period and other tourist who would have been here or not here because the convention takes all of the hotel rooms. So, while the claim of economic benefit may be inflated, to host such a convention is never-the-less an economic plum. Also, it cast a spotlight on the city which attracts other tourist and other conventions and maybe corporate relocations. That is a hard intangible to measure but it is a benefit of hosting such an event.
Hosting major events can be disruptive and inconvenient for a few days to people who go downtown and there is always the threat of disruptive protest and violence at a political convention. However, I think Nashville was foolish for rejecting the Convention. I would feel the same way if it were the Democrat convention we were considering.
The City was petty for rejecting the Convention and the State was vindictive for the City's pettiness. Metro has won on most of the efforts to punish it. The law abolishing Metro's version of a police civilian review board did survive. The measures that failed did so because they violate the Home Rule Amendment to the Tennessee Constitution, which prohibits that state from passing measure that only impact one city without approval from the local residents of the city impacted.
Some critics of the state's actions will make the argument that this vindictiveness on the part of the State is hypocritical because Republicans are quick to condemn the Federal government imposing its will on a state and they see the relationship of federal to state, analogous to the relationship between state and city. I reject that analogy. States have real sovereignty; cites do not. Home rule gives cities a certain amount of sovereignty; the Federal government does not give the States their sovereignty. Cities are chartered by the state. It the state wanted to abolish a city; it could do so. The Federal government has no authority to abolish a State.
Some critics of the state action will lump all State actions curtailing Nashville's decision making into the same bucket. I don't. When Nashville tried to impose requirement on developers that they build so many units of affordable housing in each new development, a policy called "inclusionary zoning," the state passed a law preventing the city from doing so. Some years ago, when the city attempted to become a sanctuary city, the state stepped in and prevented Nashville from doing so. The recent action regarding civilian review boards falls in this bucket of political and economic policy decisions. There are others, that do also but do not come immediately to mind. If not for the State our progressive city would probably have its own minimum wage law, and rent control, and price controls, and would protect what is called "gender affirmation health care" for minors, and would ban Big Gulps. I am pleased that the State preempts the city from taking certain actions and stops Metro from becoming the San Francisco of the South.
So, while on policy issues, I support state supremacy and preemptions; when it comes to taking over the Sports authority, or the Airport authority or reducing the size of the council this are governance issues. These vindictive actions by the State are as distasteful as was Metro's pettiness in rejecting hosting the Republican convention. The State needs to give it a rest and return to a normal relationship.
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Thursday, August 08, 2024
The U. S. has borrowed $5 billion each day this fiscal year
The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
We’re nearly at the end of fiscal year 2024, and while most of America is focused on the momentum in the race for the White House, beneath the surface our nation’s fiscal health has continued to worsen. We’ve just surpassed $35 trillion in gross debt, and today’s CBO projections estimate we’ve borrowed another $242 billion in July, or $5 billion each day this fiscal year.
Regardless of who wins this November, the next president will have to confront a laundry list of fiscal decisions shortly into their term, including trillions in expiring tax provisions, a debt ceiling that will need to be raised or suspended, expiring spending caps, and major trust funds edging ever close to insolvency. These decisions will have lasting impacts beyond the next four years, whether we choose to address them thoughtfully and responsibly, or whether we choose to continue down the path of careless indifference.
Our fiscal trajectory cannot be left on autopilot – the stakes are far too high and the consequences far too steep to leave our national debt climbing in perpetuity. Considering the sheer size of the challenges we already face – interest costs on course to exceed our defense and Medicare budgets, deficits barreling toward $2 trillion, and no plan in the works to turn things around – how can we afford to sit idle any longer?
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Wednesday, August 07, 2024
David French: If Conservatism is going to Have a Viable Future, then Trump has to lose.
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| David French |
David is a conservative scholar, and his politics is informed by his Christian faith. He is a former attorney who has argued and wow several high-profile religious liberty cases. He has been a columnist for National Review, a fellow at The National Review Insitute and a senior editor at The Dispatch and is currently a columnist for The New York Times. To read his Wikipedia profile, follow this link.
I am in total agreement with this statement from David French.
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Gov. Bill Lee says he is perplexed by gloating Trump calling him a ‘RINO’
Key Points
- Donald Trump slapped the GOP governor with the “RINO” moniker following the Senate District 2 primary
- Incumbent Sen. Jon Lundberg, who carried Lee’s school voucher bill, lost to Bobby Harshbarger
- Harshbarger’s mother is Congresswoman Diana Harshbarger, a friend of the president
BY ANDY SHER, Tennessee Journal, August 7, 2024- Republican Gov. Bill Lee confessed Wednesday to being flummoxed by Donald Trump labeling him as a “RINO,” the acronym for Republican in Name Only, last week on the former president’s social media site Truth Social. “I can't really explain what that was about,” Lee told reporters Wednesday following an event where he spoke to the Department of Environment and Conservation and advocacy groups. But Lee still pledges to support Trump's bid to return to the White House. Read more.
Rod's Comment: I can help Gov. Lee out on this one. It is because now it is the Republican Party that is Republican in name only. Former standard bearers such as Mitt Romney, John McCain, both George Bushes, and Ronald Reagan would all be considered RINO's now. The Republican Party is now the Trump Party. The modern Trump era Republican Party is the party of the Trump cult. Even if you kiss his ass, if you are not Trumpy enough the Cult of Trump will label you a RINO. Wear it as a badge of honor!
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