90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, September 20, 2018

Authoritarians Against Authoritarianism!

Even More Winning: Jobless Claims Unexpectedly Fall to Lowest in Nearly Half a Century

Jobless claims unexpectedly fell again last week to the lowest level since November of 1969.

First-time claims for state unemployment benefits came in at 201,000, down from 204,000 in the previous week. Economists had predicted a rise to 210,000.

Jobless claims are a proxy for layoffs and have been closely watched for signs that trade disputes and escalating tariffs could be costing Americans jobs. Record lows indicate that what many have described as a “trade war” is weighing far less on the U.S. economy than predicted by critics of the Trump administration.

Weekly jobless claims can be volatile so economists often look to the four-week moving average of initial claims. This declined by 2,250 to 205,750, the lowest...

#confirmkavanaugh

Federal revenues jump from faster growth . . . more than twice what the tax cut was supposed to ‘cost’

Tax Policy: Cutting tax rates frees up capital to be deployed more productively in the private sector

If there’s one thing every liberal will do when talking about tax policy (and most “moderates” and a fair number of “fiscal conservatives” as well), it’s to scoff at the notion that tax cuts can pay for themselves.

The supply-side proposition has always been that it’s the growth of the economy, not tax rates, that determines federal revenues. If you look through history, you’ll see that federal revenues are usually right around 18 percent of GDP regardless of what the tax rates are, so the best policies the government can set are the ones most friendly to growth.

This is what will get liberals cackling in derision. And it’s not just them. Every Ferris Bueller fan knows George H.W. Bush called supply-side Something-D-O-O economics (“Voodoo Economics,” said like Ben Stein, thank you very much), because he joined the rest of the Beltway crowd in dismissing the idea that raising or lowering tax rates would ever do anything but raise or lower tax revenues commensurately.

It seems intuitive to you and me that changing tax rates and tax incentives would affect people’s economic behavior, but don’t try to convince the left and their media friends of that.

Then again, you could actually look at the most recent results. As Steve Moore writes in today’s Wall Street Journal, the Trump tax cut is paying for itself. By a lot:

Compare the August 2018 economic forecast from the Congressional Budget Office with the one from June 2017, before the tax cuts passed, and we discover some very good news. The much higher than expected economic growth in the wake of the Trump tax cut means that U.S. gross domestic product will be higher than expected every year over the next decade.

Even if we assume a reversion to the pre-Trump 1.9% growth path, the ratchet up in GDP this year translates into $179 billion in unexpected output this year, $465 billion next year, $654 billion in 2020, and so on. This magic of compounding yields more than $6 trillion additional GDP over the decade thanks to the faster growth already achieved.

The federal government is expected to capture a bit more than 18% of that extra output in tax revenue—about $1.1 trillion over the 10-year window. That’s well above the $400 billion to $500 billion expected revenue loss from the corporate tax-rate cut.

Corporate tax revenues are down this year, but receipts from nearly every other tax source are rising at the federal and state levels. The higher growth this year alone will give states and cities almost $20 billion in windfall revenue. No surprise then that many states are reporting “unexpected” gains in tax collections this year and will have budget surpluses.

This is the part the left fails to understand, willfully, I suspect.

Cutting tax rates frees up capital to be deployed more productively in the private sector. You might collect less from corporate taxes, but the capital those corporations didn’t pay to the government will be invested in...

Another "We'll Have More Flexibility After The Election" Moment...

BREAKING: Deep State Unmasked, U.S. GAO Auditor Admits “I Break Rules Every Day”

United States GAO (Government Accountability Office) Auditor Pushes Socialist Agenda During Work Hours: “No one knows I spent six hours yesterday doing social media for DSA.” (Democratic Socialists of America)
Resistance Against Administration’s Agenda: “If you’re in an Executive Branch agency, you can slow ball things to a degree… maybe you get fired or resign or whatever, but you slowed [Trump’s agenda] down.”
On His DSA Membership: “…it’s a socialist organization and we want to destroy capitalists.”
“We have a bunch of just like communists, like no prefix, and that’s basically me.”
GAO Auditor: “Do I care more about having this job, or do I care more about the [DSA] movement, and I was like… obviously the movement.”
GAO Auditor Admission: “I break rules every day… at any point I can get fired.”

(Washington DC) Project Veritas has released the next in a series of undercover reports which unmask the Deep State. This report features a Government Accountability Office (GAO) employee and self-proclaimed Communist actively engaged in potentially illegal political activity. Natarajan Subramanian is a government auditor for the GAO and a member of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (Metro DC DSA).

Metro DC DSA is a socialist group that works to advance progressive issues in the Metropolitan DC area. Subramanian’s political activism may directly violate federal statutes as well as the “Yellow Book” rules which apply specifically to government auditors.

Subramanian says that Federal employees in executive branch agencies can deliberately work less efficiently in order to slow down the implementation of the President’s agenda:

“If you’re in [an] executive branch agency you can slow ball things to a degree, that it’s like ineffective, and maybe you get in trouble, or maybe you get fired or resign or whatever, but you slowed [Trump’s agenda] down for a certain period of time.”Secretive Socialist Activism in the Federal Government

In conversations with Subramanian this year, Project Veritas discovered that in addition to being a Federal employee he manages social media and communications for...

There are those who believe that The New York Times is biased against President Donald Trump. Some would even say it is a source of “fake news.”

To them, this gem from The New York Times may come as quite the shocker. In a tweet referring to an article they published, The New York Times actually gives Trump some credit for a smart policy move:

In the article, they note that there were two particular concerns when Trump announced a withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal.

“If Mr. Trump’s approach worked too well, oil prices would spike and hurt the American economy. If it failed, international companies would continue trading with Iran, leaving the Islamic Republic unscathed, defiant and free to restart its nuclear program.”

They go on to state that “the policy has been effective without either of those nasty consequences, at least so far.” They have come to the conclusion that Trump was right, “so far,” based on certain observable factors.

First, oil prices. “Remarkably, the price of oil in the United States has risen only modestly while gasoline prices have essentially remained flat. The current global oil price hovers around $80 a barrel, $60 below the highs of a decade ago.”

This may be related to the fact that Iran’s own exports are declining. Even oil companies in counties that still want to work with Iran on the nuclear deal have been “bailing out of deals with Tehran.”

According to CNBC, French energy giant Total CEO Patrick Pouyanne said, “Large energy companies cannot risk doing business in Iran in light of U.S. sanctions on the country.”

Was President Trump right to pull the U.S. out of the Iran Nuclear Deal?Yes No

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He told CNBC, “There’s not a single international company like Total who can work in any country with secondary sanctions. I don’t have the right. It’s just the reality of the world. The reality is that the capital of the world today is in the hands of the U.S.”

“Is it right that in this world the U.S. (is) using that … to impose some rules for other countries? That’s a debate.”

Total is not the only company that sees working with Iran without a waiver from the U.S. wouldn’t make financial sense. The New York Times wrote, “The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington think tank, found that 71 foreign companies planned to withdraw from Iran, 19 intended to stay and...

Project Veritas has released the second installment in an undercover video series unmasking the deep state. This video features a Department of Justice paralegal Allison Hrabar reportedly using government owned software and computers to push a socialist agenda. Also featured is Jessica Schubel, the former Chief of Staff for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the last Obama administration. Both Schubel and Hrabar make admissions revealing that federal employees are using their positions in the government to resist or slow the Trump administration's policies, some breaking laws in the process. Featured in this video are:

Richard Manning of https://www.firetheswamp.com

Bill Marshall of https://www.judicialwatch.org