Here are my observations on the news of the day.
THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA, so eager to project President Trump in a negative light on his otherwise successful Asian tour, attempted to show him as impatient while feeing Koi in a pond with Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Photos of Trump dumping the entire box in the pond were sent around the world along with Tweets from reporters with CNN, Bloomberg News, Buzz Feed, The Guardian and the New York Daily News. One Twitter user wrote: “Abe is basically watching in polite rage-horror as the epic orange buffoon tries to kill his fish.”
Further evidence of how the media is complicit in generating the president’s approval/disapproval rating.
Brian Fallon, CNN contributor and former Clinton advisor, ridiculously Tweeted, “Obama did it better.” And get this, The Guardian ran a story about the dangers of overfeeding fish.
What most of them failed to show was that Prime Minister Abe dumped his entire box in the pond before the president did so. Both men were spooning the feed into the pond before dumping the remains. Click here to see video proof.
(Photo by Marcus Santos, N.Y. Daily News)
PC RUNNING AMOK – The New York City MTA subway service will no longer use the identifiers “ladies and gentlemen.” They have gone gender neutral to be more inclusive, and will no use “riders” and “everyone.” Look at the accompanying photo and tell me how many of these commuters you think give a damn. When is this nonsense going to stop?
ON THE SUBJECT OF PC AND BEING OFFENDED – I attended a concert by the Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra held in a local church auditorium yesterday, where a large cross hung on the wall behind the band. No one seemed offended. Perhaps it was because the audience was made up of people 60 years of age and older. We grew up in a more tolerant era.
FOR WEEKS NOW I have been cautioning you that the left would have you believe that the Republican tax plan will benefit the rich and ignores the middle-class. Last week, Kevin Williamson, writing in the National Review, humorously took on one of the left’s propagandists at The Washington Post, Catherine Rampell.
“The Republican tax plan may be kind of dumb, but if it were three times as dumb as it is, it would only be half as dumb as the Washington Post’s analysis of it,” Williamson wrote. “Catherine Rampell … offers up a truly batty take on the Republican tax plan: that it too strongly favors “passive” income in the interests of those who spend their days – here comes the avalanche of banality – yachting and charity balling … popping bottles of champagne and hunting endangered wildlife.”
Rampell used her column to hammer the reduction of taxes on inheritances as a benefit to “a handful of born-rich idlers who will never work and never feel the need to.” However, Williamson points out that inherited assets and gifts make up a tiny share of the wealth owned by the richest Americans – about 15 percent for the top wealth quartile.
“By contrast,” Williamson states, “inherited assets account for about 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent of the second lowest. There’s a reason for that: Low income people don’t have much in the way of assets at all, but many of them inherit a farm or a home from their parents or grandparents.”
It’s better known as the death tax, and we’ll have to wait and see if it survives the Senate-House conference.
ON THE SUBJECT OF THE TAX PLAN – I was pleased to read Larry Kudlow’s positive piece, “A pro-growth GOP tax cut is on the way – this year.” For those who haven’t been following the development of the plan, Kudlow is one of the outsiders who has been working with the Trump administration since the spring of 2016. “Congress will come up with a significant pro-growth bill, because tax cuts are still the centerpiece,” Kudlow wrote.
“There are glitches in both the Senate and House tax plans, but most of them can be corrected,” he says. Despite rumors of delaying the business tax rate reduction – an idea Kudlow sees as “a bad idea” – Kudlow continues to believe “the all-important business tax rate will come down to 20 percent from 35 percent. That’s the key to economic growth, and the biggest beneficiaries will be middle-class earners.”
Favoring the nuclear option, Kudlow asserts, “The GOP must not let process stop growth-producing tax cuts. Growth is too important. So, let’s play hardball, GOP, and do what’s necessary to get these pro-growth tax cuts legislated and signed before year-end.”
IN THE VIEW OF ONE ECONOMIST – “The new tax plan, while far from what I and other tax specialists would design, will boost the economy, generate more revenue, maintain fairness, and raise Americans’ living standards. It’s imperfect, but worth passing,” wrote Laurence Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University and president of Economic Security Planning, Inc. in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
CUT SUBSIDIES FOR WIND POWER – The Wall Street Journal editorial board reminded us of the more-than-three decades of subsidies of tens of billions of dollars we taxpayers have been “investing” in wind power. The paper’s opinion piece referred to “the business of making electricity from spinning turbines remains inefficient and heavily dependent on federal aid, i.e., the American taxpayer.” “Tax reform is a chance to tell the wind racket to get off the dole but it isn’t clear Republicans are up to the task.”
One can only imagine the number of lobbyists who have surfaced from the Washington swamp to persuade Congress to take care of their special interests in the tax plan. I say, let’s eliminate all corporate welfare.
NO NEED TO PANIC …. YET, I wrote on November 9, 2017 regarding the outcome of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial elections that went Democrat. But my sometimes-respected columnist Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal Saturday, appears ready to throw in the towel on Trump and the GOP in 2018 and 2020. She spends too much time in the eastern corridor.
