A Taxing Time...at Tax Time

Was it as bad for you as it was for me? Sending Washington money we earn, but Washington doesn’t, I mean? It’s not just being part of half the nation that pays taxes while the other half doesn’t that bothers me. It’s the waste and unnecessary programs and agencies that have long outlived whatever usefulness they once had (if they were ever necessary). And still President Biden wants to raise taxes even more without proposing a single dollar be cut to reduce our unsustainable $34 trillion debt. As The Washington Times reported: “(Biden) wants to impose a 25% minimum tax on all income not currently taxed — including unrealized gains on assets — for Americans with a net worth of $100 million. Mr. Biden has also urged Congress to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% up from 21%.” No American should be forced to endure the annual torture of compiling records and filling out tax returns. Many other nations have far simpler systems. Even the instructions for filling out forms for the IRS need instructions to understand. It is why so many must hire tax attorneys, who fulfill the role of language translators. Just one example: Enter your gross farming and fishing income reported on Form 4835, line 7; Schedule K-1 (Form 1065), box 14, code B; Schedule K-1 (Form 1120-S), box 17, code AN; and Schedule K-1 (Form 1041), box 14, code F. See instructions. Got it? The Congressional Budget Office predicts the U.S. will add an average of $2 trillion in debt annually for the next decade. That’s more than$5 billion of debt daily for the next 10 years. We borrow more than$200 million every hour. That’s $3 million every minute, $60,000 every second. If that’s not enough to make your blood boil, consider a tiny fraction of the misspending that occurs in Washington. For the past nine years, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has published a“Festivus Report” exposing outrageous examples of unnecessary federal spending. In his latest report he writes: “I am highlighting a whopping $900,000,000,000 of waste (emphasis his), including an NIH grant to study Russian cats walking on a treadmill, Barbies used as proof of ID for receiving COVID Paycheck Protection Program funds, $6 million to promote tourism in Egypt, and $200 million to ‘struggling artists’ like Post Malone, Chris Brown, and Lil Wayne. No matter how much money the government has already wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.” There’s much more. Google Festivus Report and be aghast at what we are doing to ourselves. Ultimately, this is the fault of voters who won’t restrain politicians and don’t select people who will restore America’s financial future and balance the budget, as was so recently done during the administration of Bill Clinton. If too many voters keep fueling the gravy train, the only option will be an Article V constitutional convention, provided by the Founders for such a moment we are now facing. If a future Congress refuses to attack the debt an Article V constitutional convention will be the only way to balance the budget and return power to where the Founders originally intended it – to the people. Nineteen of a required 34 states have already passed resolutions calling for a Convention of States. Other states have passed it in one legislative chamber, and still others have it under consideration. Our current oppressive tax system can be analogized to Dracula, who is never satisfied with the blood he sucks out of one victim, but must constantly look for new sources to bite. We must drive a stake in the blood- sucking government’s heart, or we will end up driving one in ourselves and the country we have known and loved will be no more.

When Will the Cop Killings End?

Another day, another dead New York City police officer, another grieving widow. The familiarity of these incidents should breed more than contempt. Instead, we get meaningless condemnations from politicians who are responsible for putting district attorneys in office that do not protect the public. Too many of them release career criminals, some of whom commit new crimes, including the murder of cops. The latest, but likely not the last if things don’t change, is the widow of slain New York City cop Jonathan Diller. Officer Diller was gunned down by a criminal with a lengthy rap sheet. Diller’s widow, Stephanie Diller, 28, asked a question that has been asked by other widows of murdered officers: “How many more police officers and how many more families (she and her husband have a one-year-old son) have to make the ultimate sacrifice before we start protecting them”? Good question. And the answer is? (see below). In 2022, the widow of another slain NYPD officer, Dominique Luzuriaga (her husband was Jason Rivera) spoke during his memorial service: “The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service.” Who is responsible for “the system”? It’s not only the people mishandling it, though they deserve plenty of blame. System members include New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg. Bragg seems more concerned with “getting” Donald Trump rather than keeping dangerous criminals off the streets so New Yorkers feel safe and protected. Other big cities with “woke” prosecutors are experiencing similar tragedies and disrespect for law enforcement in the wake of the “defund the police” movement. In Los Angeles, George Gascon is another failed DA who regularly gives get-out-of-jail-free cards to violent criminals and other dregs of society. There are others. Some of their campaigns were financed by billionaire lefty George Soros, who seems to have bought the view that criminals are unfortunates who haven’t had good breaks in life. Most people who might be said to have had bad breaks have not turned to crime, so that is a weak argument. The ultimate responsibility (and therefore they have blood on their hands), are the people who vote for governors and district attorneys who believe that criminals are victims of (name your excuse) and deserve second, third, even fourth chances. Too many use those multiple chances in ways any rational person could predict. What are voters thinking, especially when they have the power to change things by voting for law-and-order candidates? If Republican Lee Zeldin had won the last New York governor’s race it is likely he would have ousted Bragg and others who coddle criminals. Too many people vote for a party label and not the policies of the candidate best positioned to fight crime. If voters don’t like what is happening, they should try something else. Otherwise, the blame is on them. We now have what C.S. Lewis called a “humanitarian theory of punishment” in which the criminal is treated better than the victim and the victim’s widow and children. The fundraising campaigns, while helpful, can never make up for the loss of a husband and father no matter how much is raised. These women should not be widows. Their husbands should be home with them and their children. They might not be widows if the criminals were in jail and people felt the streets (and subways) were safe as they once were under previous governors, mayors, and prosecutors. Every Republican should make replacing soft-on-crime prosecutors, mayors, and governors a top issue in the November election. If not, expect more widows and fatherless children.

One More Try at Reducing the Debt

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be.”– Polonius to his son Laertes in “Hamlet” It may be too late given the number of Americans who have willingly allowed themselves to become dependent on government more than themselves, but it’s worth trying. Our $34 trillion debt is unsustainable, according to most economists. If we don’t act soon, we will be worse off than we are now. Our economy could collapse. The economic future is not bright if we continue down our current path. According to Statista Research,“ By 2034, the gross federal debt of the United States is projected to be about $54.39 trillion.” President Biden wants to raise taxes again on “the rich” and corporations without cutting spending. Revenue is not in short supply. Fiscal discipline is. A change in spending will require a change in attitude about what government should and should not do. The U.S. has experienced a fiscal year-end budget surplus five times in the last 50 years, most recently in 2001. Debt is bipartisan and it will take a bipartisan approach to reduce or eliminate it. During President Biden’s term, national debt has increased by $4.7 trillion (he wants to spend more), a rise of 16.67 percent as of last September. During Donald Trump’s one- term presidency, the national debt increased by $8.18 trillion, a 40.43 percent boost. Part of that was spending to fight Covid-19, part was the fallout from tax cuts for the wealthy. Still, this was less of an increase than Barack Obama (69.98%) and George W. Bush (105.8%), but each of them served two terms. Part of Bush’s spending was on Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/ 11. Only 14 of 45 American presidents have overseen a decrease in debt. Calvin Coolidge was the last one. That was 15 presidents ago. Coolidge said: “… a good many proposals are made by people that have very excellent things that they would like to have the Government do, but they come from people that have no responsibility for providing ways and means by which their proposals can be carried out. I don’t think in all my experience, which has been very large with people that come before me in and out of Government with proposals for spending money, I have ever had any proposal from anyone as to what could be done to save any money.” Why not form a group of consultants I would call a “what works coalition.” Invite historians, scientists, economists, people of good character and others who love America and ask them to examine government spending, separating the “wheat from the chaff,” the necessary from the unnecessary. They could issue a report to the public and Congress ridiculing wasteful and needless spending and pressure our elected representatives to end those underperforming or nonperforming programs, earmarks and agencies as a patriotic gesture. And yes, Social Security and Medicare must be reformed to save it for the future. The media could help if they would. Weaning people from addiction to government will take time, though some have been able to go “cold turkey” when it comes to other addictions. Most importantly, what is needed is a change in attitude back to the view some previous presidents, the Founders and the public had toward government. Just as we don’t see a doctor when we are having car trouble, neither should we look to government to solve problems best dealt with individually. Government can encourage good choices and penalize bad ones (lower taxes on the successful is one reward and allowing people to suffer the consequences of bad choices – within reason — is another). Government should not subsidize bad choices, as if good and bad are equal. That will ensure more bad choices and fewer good ones. If we don’t start making good choices now and seriously reduce our debt there may be no way back. History teaches us that lesson. Look it up.

Checking the Black Box

Two men with decidedly different political outlooks have been my go-to sources on race in America. They are Dr. Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., professor and director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Dr. Gates has just published his latest book, “The Black Box.” The title is a reference to a box on hospital forms for newborns which one must check to confirm their race. Gates rightly calls this an “absurdity,” largely because there are no racial “purebreds,” and regardless of how we look on the outside, we are all equal on the inside. My first reaction upon reading his book was surprise that I didn’t learn much of what he writes about in high school or college. My second reaction was anger because I didn’t. One reason, I think, is that all of my teachers were white and textbooks sanitized the past in order to promote a “my country right or wrong” patriotic narrative. Dr. Gates uses the black box as a metaphor for how African Americans were once “locked in” when it came to expressing themselves in writings and, in some instances, locked themselves in by accepting this type of racial censorship as “the way it is.” As with his other books and PBS films, Dr. Gates exposes not only the thoughts and beliefs of some of the nation’s Founders, but of equal importance he uncovers the works of African American slaves and other Black people who were often censored by white society. It is hard to believe in today’s world that the writings of some Black authors had to be validated by committees made up of white people, the rationale being that many believed “Negroes” too dumb to be able to express themselves. The opposite, of course, is true as the author brilliantly shows us. Practically everyone knows about Thomas Jefferson’s flaming phrase in the Declaration of Independence: “… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” but how many know Jefferson’s beliefs about Black people? In his “Notes on the State of Virginia” (1785), Jefferson claimed their racial features, intellect and morals were “fixed in human nature” and so must necessarily be ruled over “by the fine mixtures of red and white.” There’s more from that work and it’s even worse. “Consider this paradox,” Dr. Gates writes: “Blackness was an arbitrary category invented by Europeans and Americans in the Enlightenment to justify the horror show of Black subjugation … the very concept of race is the child of racism.” Thanks to advances in DNA research, “what we popularly call ‘race’ is a social construct.” As has been said by others, the only true race is the human race. About “The Philosophy of History,” published in 1837, Dr. Gates writes, “G.W.F. Hegel wrote that Africa ‘is no historical part of the World; it has no movement or development to exhibit.’” Hegel claimed – falsely – “that Africa lacked a tradition of writing, either in European languages or indigenous African languages … (like others) He ignored the Black written tradition in Arabic at the University of Timbuktu. It didn’t fit his thesis.” It didn’t fit his thesis could be said about supporters and practitioners of the slave trade and Jim Crow laws that kept Blacks from voting in the South. “The Black Box,” along with the writings of Thomas Sowell, ought to be mandatory reading in every high school and American University, in large part to make up for the suppressed writings of talented and intelligent Black people of the past. They deserve the attention and praise most were denied in their time.

Moscow Massacre: Could It Happen Here?

A mass shooting at a concert hall in Moscow killed more than 130 people. With many others seriously or gravely wounded the number of dead is likely to rise. The Islamic state released a statement claiming “credit” for the incident. Eleven suspects have been arrested. Early reports suggested the U.S. Embassy in Moscow had advance warning of the attack. The Daily Mail reported White House Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said: “Right now we don’t know to what extent this warning [from the US Embassy in early March] and this attack are related. But we had some concerns about the possibility of a terrorist attack in and around Moscow earlier this month.” The question that must be asked, as it has been suggested for some time, due to our open southern border, is this: Could it happen here? The answer must be an unequivocal yes. In fact, it has already happened here on Sept. 11, 2001. Does anyone seriously think America’s enemies would not be encouraged by that previous attack and the Moscow atrocity to conduct a repeat operation in America? With such easy access to the country and with so many fanatical beliefs floating around the world, what would deter them? The Cato Institute has noted t hat since 2017, “US Border Patrol has apprehended 342 border crossers who were on the Terrorist Screening Dataset, also known as the terror watchlist. Those numbers have shot up in recent years to 169 in FY2023 and 49 to date this fiscal year. Last month, The Daily Caller reported that Border Patrol apprehended an al‐​Shabaab terrorist and released him into the United States in March 2023 after a mismatch on the watch list. Later, the government discovered that he was on the watchlist, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested him within 48 hours. The Daily Caller’s headline was “ICE Confirms It Finally Nabbed Terrorist Allowed To Roam Free For Almost A Year.” FBI Director Christopher Wray has testified several times before congressional committees about his belief that a national security threat exists because of the 1.8 million “known gotaways.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is unable to confirm that every suspected terrorist who crosses t he border without proper documentation has been detained by Border Patrol. It doesn’t take many as we saw on 9/11 and have seen in the Moscow concert hall incident to produce mayhem. While 9/11 was predictable – Osama bin Laden and other members of al-Qaida issued fatwas calling for attacks on the U.S. and American citizens and declared war on the United States and the terrorists trained in how to takeoff in airplanes, but not land – so the warning signs will have been seen should infiltrators pull off another 9/11, or worse. If that happens, count on the Biden administration to blame Republicans as they are currently doing for refusing to vote for a bill that would legalize 5,000 migrants per day coming to America. In 2003, Tom Clancy published a timely novel titled “Teeth of the Tiger.” The plot in part is about Islamic terrorists who make a deal with Colombian drug smugglers. Crossing the U.S. border, they head for four shopping malls in Middle America where they murder innocent civilians. Again, it doesn’t take much to wreak havoc, tank the economy and strike fear into the hearts of everyone. It could happen again here and likely will unless this or a new administration moves quickly to find the suspected terrorists who have already snuck in before they can activate a plot worthy of a Tom Clancy’s novel.