January 6, 2019
President Donald Trump delivers impromptu remarks to pool reporters as he departs the White House for Camp David.
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Monthly Archives: January 2019
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposed to Raise Individual Tax Rates to 70%
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Jan 7, 2019 by Martin Armstrong
I have warned that all the talk behind the curtain I was hearing when the Democrats won the House was that as soon as they go in, they would be looking at raising taxes to where they use to be back before Reagan. Well it did not take long. The new Congresswoman from New York with ZERO experience in economics, is now arguing to raise taxes on the “rich” Americans to 70% to her idea of a“Green New Deal.” She has also come out and called Trump a racist totally failing to understand that there are only four races, black, red, white, and yellow. Mexican is not a race it is an ethic group just as Americans are not some mythical single race. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came out on Friday and said:
“You look at our tax rates back in the 60s, and when you have a progressive tax rate system, your tax rate, let’s say, from $0 to $75,000 may be 10% or 15%, etc. But once you get to the tippy tops, on your 10-millionth dollar, sometimes you see tax rates as high as 60% or 70%.”
Of course, the tax cuts in the 1960s were introduced by John F. Kennedy – a democrat. It was those high tax rates that drove American manufacture offshore to begin with. Americans are taxed on worldwide income. When I testified before the House Ways & Means Committee, the question they ask me why did no American firms get any contracts to build the Yellow River Dam in China? I explain that Germans did not pay worldwide income tax so when they big on such a project, they were already 40% less. Any German personnel that went there were also tax free. Ocasio-Cortez is clueless about taxes and economics.
I have to state plainly. I am very much aware of the trend in Washington. It looks like our taxes are going to rise significantly!!!! As interest expenditures soar consuming a greater and great proportion of total spending, both parties will resort to rising taxes. I see Trump as the last hope in holding off that trend for the one thing he does understand in debt servicing. But I have also warned that our models show Trump is a reaction within a bear market trend in government. So I am not hopeful of the future to say the least.
Personally, this means at some point I will have to make a decision. I shut down operations entirely and just walk the beach, or I will have to resign my citizenship and leave for Asia. I have not made that decision. I just have to realize I personally need Plan B and Plan C. Part of the Crash & Burn requires someone like Ocasio-Cortez to complete devastate Western Economies. Once she raises that taxes in the USA to such levels, the rich will flee as took place in France and economic growth will collapse causing unemployment to rise and presto = civil unrest.
The greatest flaw in American politics is that the tax rate is not stable. It reflects the brainwave of someone suffering from Schizophrenia. Nobody would sign a lease to an apartment where it allowed the landlord to rise the rent anytime if he determines he needs money. This is why companies left in the first place. Not because they paid a worker $5 instead of $10 an hour. It was to get guaranteed deals with respect to fixed taxation rates.
Categories: Politics, The Hunt for Taxes
Trump & His Wall
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Jan 7, 2019 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Do you support Trump’s Wall? They say Trump’s wall is a waste of money and won’t work. Do you disagree?
GH
ANSWER: To me, it is really irrelevant. It is far more important to the people living there on the border who are tired of all the crime and nonsense lacking security. There are also many hard-working people trying to get in for a better life. While the press and Democrats bash Trump and call him a racist over this issue even when Mexican is no more a race than being an American, Obama deported more people than any other President. Nobody called Obama a racist.
As an employer, you are REQUIRED to ensure the person you hire is LEGAL. Verification of employment (VOE) requests on current or former employees can come to an employer from government agencies. The employers cannot lie on such a request from the government or suffer up to even imprisonment for false answers. The law requiring employers to identify an employee is not something Trump created. They were passed back in 1986.
I understand all the yelling about trying to prevent illegal aliens as being racist is political labeling for surely anyone who believes that is really stupid for Mexican is not a race. Nevertheless, there are a host of laws that are impacted by the attempt to work illegally. Even to get a decent apartment, they run a background check on you and may deny you for any criminal violations or lacking legal status and a job. Illegal aliens are not able to rent such places leaving them at the highly questionable level of living typically in very poor areas that operate in cash. The call to eliminate cash is also a covert backdoor way to get rid of illegal aliens nobody will say publicly. Eliminate cash and you eliminate their ability to work under the table.
Indeed, there are a host of laws in conflict over this very issue of illegal aliens. It is even a crime under 8 U.S. Code § 1324 to bring in and harbor certain aliens. Employers can go to jail for hiring an illegal alien and you can go to jail for helping them to get into the country.
Over the centuries, there have been some walls were constructed to keep people in like a prison. That was the case with the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall.
In the case of the Roman Wall in Britain, known as Hadrian’s Wall, the Picts or Scots were constantly raiding the northern Roman communities. Instead of trying to conquer the Picts, they build a wall to keep them out.
It was the state Chu who first constructed the Chinese Wall. It was during the Qin Dynasty that China became one empire. To defend off the invasions from northern invaders, Emperor Qin Shi Huang had all the walls joined up. Thus, the Great Wall came into being.
The oldest wall to keep invaders out is known as the Great Wall of Gorgan located near modern Gorgan in northeastern Iran, at the southeastern corner of the Caspian Sea. The wall is believed to have protected the Sassanian Empire to the south from the peoples to the north, known as the White Huns. It was the most ambitious and sophisticated frontier walls ever constructed in history. It effectively kept the invasions of Huns from overrunning Sassanian or Persian Empire. It was 121 miles in length (195km) with over 30 fortresses spaced at intervals of between 6 and 31 miles apart. It was only surpassed only by the Great Wall of China as the longest defensive wall in existence against the very same people.
Many believed that the Great Wall of Gorgan was constructed by Alexander the Great. It was known for centuries as the Gates of Alexander which were a legendary barrier that was constructed in the Caucasus to keep the uncivilized barbarians of the north from invading the land to the south. During medieval literature, the Gates of Alexander were believed to be associated with the Biblical tribes of Gog and Magog from about the 6th century onward.
The question of will such a wall work? It will unquestionably reduce the traffic. Historically, such walls prevent massive invasions. They will not stop someone from tunneling under or circumventing them by sea or air. We have invisible walls between all countries. It is called – Papers Please!
Trump’s biggest problem is that he offends may with some of the things he says. In all fairness, the Democrats will oppose whatever he wants because politics has degenerated to such an extent that it is no longer about what is best for the country, it just opposes the opposition at all costs. This is becoming manifest on both sides.
I am sure the Deep State would love it. It may keep Mexicans out, but it will also keep Americans in. Make everything legal once again except Heroin and watch the drug trade end just as ending prohibition undermined the Mafia. They use to tax marihuana until nearly 1970 as well as cocaine. Such laws will never stop people from using them and they only create drug wars and violence.
Cheney – Rice – Rumsfeld – Kristol
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Jan 7, 2019 by Martin Armstrong
There have been assertions that the formidable group of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice were responsible for all the deaths in the Iraq Conflict. A number of people have responded to the piece I wrote about the movie VICE. This threesome called themselves “the Vulcans”, after the Roman god of fire. Cheney served as the White House Chief of Staff, from 1975 to 1977. In 1978, Cheney was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives representing Wyoming and reelected five times serving until 1989, when he was the House minority whip in 1989. Cheney was selected to be the Secretary of Defense during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, Sr, holding the position for the majority of Bush’s term from 1989 to 1993. Remember these years!
What I know from sources was that there was an intelligence report dated September 21st, 2001, that stated bluntly that there was NO evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Later, in the 2004 9/11 Commission report, they too concluded that there was NO “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Cheney effectively authorized the Iraq Invasion which began on the 20th of March in 2003. Cheney allegedly used the national security excuse to keep Bush sequestered after 9/11 so Cheney could run the government unobstructed.
In 1976, Bill Kristol worked for Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s United States Senate campaign. Later, in 1988, Kristol was the campaign manager for black Republican Alan Keyes’s unsuccessful Maryland Senatorial campaign against Paul Sarbanes. So Kristol was on both sides of the aisle. He then taught political philosophy and University of Pennsylvania and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. It was 1985 when Kristol first went to work in the White House serving as Chief of Staff to Secretary of Education William Bennett during the Reagan administration. Then Kristol became the Chief of Staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (1989-1993) in the George H. W. Bush administration. This is when Kristol and Cheney were working together.
Kristol wrote the War Over Iraq: Saddam’s Tyranny And America’s Mission with his co-author Lawrence F. Kaplan, which was published on February 1st, 2003, one month and change BEFOREthe invasion. Note the timing. This was written to support Cheney. It takes time to publish this book.
Kristol’s book states that the rationale behind the preemptive strategy against Saddam Hussein is simply that he is a dictator who threatens both his own people and the world. That is sufficient to justify the United States invading another country before he does further harm. Kristol offered no evidence to support his case and he simply stated that “we do know that Saddam is a terrorist.”Kristol went as far as to criticize both the first Bush administration and the Clinton administration for allowing the Iraq threat to grow.
Now, based upon INSIDE White House sources, when someone first joined the staff in the White House under the new Bush Jr. Administration in 2001, at the very first meeting the focus was not on the prospects of a recession into 2002, but on invading Iraq from day one!!!!!!
This audacity of manipulating nations under the pretense to prevent future wars is really deranged. Just for the record, yes I know Bill Kristol and he even spoke at one of our WEC events in 1996. I disagree with the neocons and I disagree with intervening into nations to create democracies. Some cultures have never had a democracy and neither do we. We are a Republic using the pretense of Democracy for if we were a true Democracy there would never have been a war to invade Iraq.
No More Needs to be Said!
3:24 / 13:06 Jobs & Wages Jump: Can Growth Tide Lift Trump?
Trump paid $130K to Daniels – Clinton paid $350k to Jones
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Jan 6, 2019 by Martin Armstrong
Paula Corbin Jones was the former Arkansas state employee who sued U.S. President Bill Clinton for sexual harassment. He paid her $350,000 to keep quiet and Trump paid his own money $130,000 to Stormy Daniels – the porn star. And the Democrats want to impeach Trump for that when Clinton has a history of hitting on the girls that work in government with him.
Pocahontas to Run for President
Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics
Re-Posted Jan 6, 2019 by Martin Armstrong
The stage has been set and Elizabeth Warren, aka Pocahontas, is to Run for President. What is going to be really interesting besides her becoming more vocal now for the next two years, will be the revelation of how corrupt she really is. She has bashed the banks and is the closest thing to a full-fledged Marxist in the Democratic Party so will the like of Goldman Sachs fill her purse with money to defeat Trump?
We all know about the claim Warren made to get into Harvard Law School back in the 90s claiming she was a Native American. She claimed that she was pointing to “family stories” passed down to her through generations as evidence. Harvard had singled her out claiming she was a leading Native American student. Warren later acknowledged that she had listed herself as a minority in an Association of American Law Schools directory. Warren maintains she never furthered her career by using her heritage to gain advantage.
Then analysis from Carlos Bustamante, a professor of genetics at Stanford and an adviser to Ancestry, said: “While the vast majority of the individual’s ancestry is European,” he concluded of Warren, “the results strongly support the existence of an unadmixed Native American ancestor in the individual’s pedigree, likely in the range of 6-10 generations ago.”
So if there was some involvement 6 to 10 generations prior, it is hard to see why someone would have the audacity to even claim she was Native American. In the process, her release of a DNA test that suggesting such a distant a lineage to a Native American ancestor sparked outrage among real Native Americans who felt she was using such a weak cultural and social ties for political gain.
It just seems disingenuous to claim someone who is a blue-eyed blond is Native American with such a distant connection. Sure, in my distant past, on my father’s mother side was married to a German in the late 1600s in New Amsterdam before it became New York City. I probably have as much German in me or more than Warren has Native American going that far back.
Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? Arkansas Sheriff Deputy Shoots Family Chihuahua…
January 5, 2019
This is severely disturbing. Faulkner County, Arkansas, Sheriff Tim Ryals is now facing massive backlash thanks to a camera phone and social media.
A Faulkner sheriff deputy named Keenan Wallace was caught on camera shooting a small dog while investigating a neighborhood call reporting an aggressive dog. Initially the County Sheriff was slow to respond to the outcry; then the video went viral on social media. [Warning, this is disturbing]:
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Thankfully the dog named “Reese’s” survived being shot.
ARKANSAS – The Faulkner County Sheriff has fired the deputy who was caught on camera shooting a small dog. Sheriff Tim Ryals said in the statement he felt deputy Keenan Wallace had numerous opportunities to deescalate the incident.
Sheriff Ryals added it appears no state law was violated. The investigation will be turned over to the prosecuting attorney’s office for further review. (media link)
I can’t even fathom….
The Sheriff Office statement (source):
A GoFundMe for $5,000 has been set up to help pay for surgery – SEE HERE
Indefatigable Trump Tweets: “The Wall is Coming”….
January 5, 2019
President Donald Trump knows he holds the right position…
The question is, can the White House communications team take control over the consistently (intentionally?) failing communication strategies from the GOP legislative leadership within the House and Senate?…
If the President Trump White House communications team can get the House GOP, Senate GOP and national RNC communications teams to follow his path, they would be far more successful.
Centinel2012 