When Republicans were putting together their tax reform plan last year, a chorus of critics warned that it would devastate state budgets. Like so many other claims, this turned out to be false.
A “news analysis” in the Washington Post said the tax law would make “it harder for states and cities to pay their bills.” read more
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You may have heard of the new tax being levied on companies in the Seattle area. IBD reports that the Seattle Politburo (city council), “unanimously passed a ‘head tax’ of $275 per full-time worker on any company in the city that makes more than $20 million in gross revenues. The city says the $48 million in new taxes will go toward affordable housing and providing emergency services for the city’s swelling homeless population.”
Allow me to translate. The $48 million in new taxes will go toward, but not quite make it to its final destination. Oh, some of will be used to build “affordable housing” and provide “emergency” services, but a good percentage will likely be siphoned off and spent on increasing the size of the Seattle bureaucracy and increased regulation. It’s what liberal statists do. They see a pile of money and recklessly spend it. They also regulate, to the point of strangulation. It will be déjà-vu all over again. read more
The Iranian ruling regime is racing to save the landmark nuclear deal after President Donald Trump bucked European powers and walked away from the agreement with a vow to reimpose a package of harsh sanctions on the Islamic Republic, according to U.S. officials and regional experts who say the hardline regime is scared about losing the sweetheart deal.
Leading Iranian officials have been locked in tense meetings with European countries and former U.S. officials to ensure they continue to uphold the deal and keep doing business with the Islamic Republic.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, one of the country’s lead negotiators, held a series of meetings with European Union countries on Tuesday to plead with them about saving the deal and ensuring Tehran remains open for business as the United States tees up a package of sanctions that could cripple Iran’s already ailing economy. read more
The federal government collected far more taxes this April than it did a year ago, despite the “budget busting” Trump tax cuts. So, we’ll ask again: Are the tax cuts paying for themselves?
According to the latest monthly report from the Congressional Budget Office, revenues in April totaled $515 billion — a 13% increase over last April and an all-time high for the month. read more
“Guaranteed jobs” is fast becoming the latest rallying cry for Democrats. And a new poll finds that 46% of Americans approve of it. Don’t read too much into that poll result.
Other prominent Democrats have latched on to this plan, including those with presidential ambitions like Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Cory Booker. read more
Earlier in the week, I wrote a column about how our federal government overlords have a penchant for 
giving our money away as if it were their own. And often times the money goes to the undeserving. In it, I concentrated on a $1 million payment the Justice Department is gifting to the state of Florida, city of Parkland and Broward County to help defer the costs of the massive response to the Parkland school shooting. My beef wasn’t just the million-dollar gift, but that the feds were in effect rewarding them for the incompetence of the cowards of Broward County – that it would not have cost so much if the deputies had done their jobs in the first place.
Fortuitously, a day later, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a 33-page report chronicling wasteful government spending. Who knew we had a governmental office that actually cares about what the feds spend our money on? read more
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Ever wonder why it takes multiple trillions of dollars to run the federal government? And why, no matter how large the federal “budget” gets, we never have enough?
We all think of waste, fraud and abuse, but there is another contributing factor. It’s death by thousands of cuts.
The feds give money away like it’s theirs to give. It’s not. It’s either ours or it’s borrowed. Either way, we will be the ones who have to pay it back and pay interest on the massive and ever growing debt.
A million dollars is a lot of money to you and me. But to the feds, it’s almost incalculable. It’s like you or me dropping a penny on the street. As it rolls away, would we chase the coin in our want to retrieve it? No we wouldn’t. Very few would do such a thing. It’s only a penny after all. It will hardly be missed. But if you start rolling thousands of pennies, it will eventually add up to a sizeable amount.
Well it was reported on Monday, that the Department of Justice rolled a million dollar penny down the street and it ended up in Florida. read more
The reparations movement for leftist blacks in America may have just hit the jackpot. All this time they
have been trying to vilify the right and turn the government to their cause, and for decades they have essentially missed the mark.
What is the Reparations Movement?
Well, according to the website, “Reparations Movement for Justice,” the movement entails, “Restoration, Restitution and Reparation. This is for Money, Gold, and Land Owed to African Americans (The Freedman Bureau Bill: 400 Years of Back pay).”
Is that back pay with or without interest, and would it be adjusted for inflation? Just questions that need to be answered. read more
As the media relentlessly focus on the federal government’s burgeoning debt, a new report says that states face their own ticking debt bomb: the exploding liabilities for lavish state and local public-employee pensions. Reform won’t be easy, but there is no choice.
Indeed, as Reason blogger Eric Boehm notes, “The really scary part is that pension debt keeps increasing despite the fact that taxpayers’ contributions to state-level pension plans have doubled as a share of state revenue in the past decade.” read more
Progressive socialists have taken over a once glorious state, full of opportunity, new ideas, and weather that most in this nation would fight for. I arrived in California during my Navy career and stayed because I thought the shiny sparkling California I saw at the time would remain the beacon for the rest of the country. California has always been called the tip of the spear of changes in this country.
The spear of change has been turned on the people of this state, of which, unfortunately, I am still one. A wave of progressive social policies has been forced upon those people in the middle class who still work. The effort that these workers show leads to nothing but high state taxes, higher gas taxes, higher costs of living and housing due to restrictive land-use regulations.
Leading the nation in the number of homeless in our cities, and illegals throughout our State has reached epidemic proportions. A drive through Los Angeles, San Francisco, or any other major city in California will show countless homeless, immigrants and illegal aliens living on the street, making entire sections of the city uninhabitable. Business is leaving in droves, no longer willing to pay high taxes and adhere to devastating business regulations.
California is willing to follow progressive socialist business regulations to send as much money to the State and close out the opportunity for business growth. California ranks 48th in the Tax Foundations 2018 State Business Tax Climate Index. After the businesses were destroyed, our Governor Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown rammed through Proposition 30 increasing sales and income taxes, also destroying the Californian middle class. read more
