Category Civil Society

Oct 28 2021

Beware The Government That Wants to Tax “Unrealized Capital Gains”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on October 27, 2021 | Sundance | 201 Comments

Taxing “unrealized capital gains” sounds like a catchy and obscure way to make wealthy people pay more in taxes, but it doesn’t work.  A government that moves in this direction ignores the reality that people are not static.  The process also involves “taxing wealth” which then becomes an arbitrary definition.

Unrealized capital gains are not income, they are simply increases in value.

If your home was worth $200,000 last year and $300,000 this year, you have an unrealized capital gain of $100k.   A 15% tax bill on that value increase means the homeowner would have to pay $15,000 to the IRS.

Joe Biden is proposing to pay for his multi-trillion expansion in debt through this type of tax upon billionaires.   Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted this was part of their thinking to help pay for the Biden budget last Sunday.  WATCH:

Proposing a tax on money that does not exist is the peak of government.   Sure the proposal applies only to billionaires who have massive gains in their stock portfolios, but billionaires are not esoteric titles.  Billionaires are people who can, if needed, move their physical location and avoid any U.S. tax on their wealth.

This is the same reason why corporations move the location of their home offices to countries with lower tax rates, a process called corporate inversion.

If Elon Musk, Warren Buffet or any other multi-billionaire wanted to avoid U.S. taxes on their personal wealth they can (relatively easily) change their official residence to Mexico or any other nation where the value of their yet unrealized wealth would not be taxed.  That individual inversion process is an easily predictable unintended consequence.

As noted in The Hill:

[…]  Biden is suggesting that he will pay for the new spending by taxing people not on what they have earned but what they could earn from selling assets. Most people have assets that increase in value over time. Consider a family home. Over the course of many years, it can easily double in value, but you do not “realize” that money unless you sell it. Biden is suggesting that the government should start taxing you based on any increased value of the things you own, even though you have not actually made that money. It doesn’t matter that the home or stock or art could ultimately go down in value after you are taxed on the higher value. Indeed, if you tax some unrealized gains, you could in extreme cases force people to sell assets like a home to pay the tax on income that they did not make.

The administration has started where few would object: billionaires.  (read more)

Additionally, another issue arises if the previously taxed asset goes down in value; an issue where the depreciation or loss becomes a negative tax liability.  Meaning if you already paid taxes on an increase in value for an asset, and the following year that asset drops in value, the federal government would then owe you money to recompensate you for a realized loss.  If you paid $15k on a $100k increase in the value of an asset, and the following year that asset drops in value by $100k, the $15k you paid would be deducted from the current year tax liability.

There are constitutional issues with the federal government taxing wealth or assets; however, the overarching premise behind every proposal is that all wealth belongs to the government.  You hear this ideological perspective when people say “tax expenditures” or spending in the tax code.  The idea is that your income is what the government permits you to keep, NOT what your labor has achieved.

The ideology behind taxing “unrealized capital gains” is the same ideology in the premise of “sharing the wealth.”    It is an ideology that stems from a belief that your dollar earned comes at the cost of my dollar not achieved.

Beware the voices who would advocate for taxing unrealized gains in wealth as a source of government revenue.  Once you start down the path of taxing wealth you set up a process where the U.S. government controls the limits of where that wealth is defined.   It will never stop at billionaires….

Oct 28 2021

Recap of Attorney General Questions During Senate Hearing From Senators Cruz, Grassley, Hawley, Lee, Cornyn


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on October 27, 2021 | Sundance | 320 Comments

Attorney General Merrick Garland appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about his involvement in the drafting of a DOJ memo to the FBI requesting support for investigations of parents who attend school board meetings across the country.

While the topic is downplayed by U.S. corporate media, the specifics of the issue are pertinent in that they highlight the politicization of the Justice Department by DOJ officials throughout main justice and the various offices of U.S. attorneys.

Garland was prompted to write his instructions as an outcome of the White House coordinating with leftist political operatives within the education system, specifically the National School Board Association.

It seems apparent, from the questioning and responses today, that Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco was the central DOJ official who coordinated the political intent of the memo.  Monaco was previously President Obama’s homeland security advisor and lawyer in the White House.  Within the main justice structure, Lisa Monaco is now the head of the DOJ National Security Division, the agency given the prosecutorial power within the Garland memo.

The background of the memo involved parents becoming aware of Critical Race Theory (CRT), essentially Marxist lesson plans within various regional school boards.  The parents responded to the information by confronting school boards across the nation.  The left-wing political operatives were caught off guard by the massive assembly and grassroots organization of parents in almost all states.

The CRT and education issue galvanized across party boundaries as Republican, Independent and Democrat voters -who are also parents- united in a common cause against the Marxist indoctrination material that is akin to the same playbook that triggered the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

Quickly awakened parents and concerned citizens were confronting the issue, and their commonality became a political risk to Democrats.  This triggered contacts from various left-wing organizations to the White House.

The Joe Biden White House -filled with Obama ideologues- responded to the threat of intense political damage, by organizing pushback against parent groups through the various educational organizations, teachers unions and community activists.  Their assembled strategy resulted in the letter from the National School Board Association, to the DOJ into the awaiting hands of DAG Lisa Monaco.

Monaco, having previously seeded the discussion within Main Justice about the political threat, then organized and helped draft the memo quickly signed by AG Merrick Garland.  The NSBA letter arrived on Friday, and the AG memo instructing the FBI to target parents was signed the following Monday.  Everything in the background of the issue highlights how the political needs of the White House become the focus of activity by the U.S. Justice Department.

In essence, the Merrick Garland memo highlights how the DOJ is weaponized against the political opposition of the White House; this is the larger issue.

Given the recent examples of the DOJ being weaponized against their political opposition, the Garland memo is seemingly just another data point in an endless assembly of data-points that prove just how corrupt the U.S. system of justice has become.  However, just because corruption is rampant and transparently obvious does not mean we should allow ourselves to become numb with anticipation of that corruption.

Action to address that corruption starts at the local level with a committed and engaged citizenry who actively address and hold accountable their local school board members and educational officials.

The intent of the Garland memo was to frighten parents away from the corruptions within the education system with the threat of the FBI investigating them.   If you allow your behavior and expectations to change based on fear, those who count on fear to manipulate the outcome will win.

Many people view these confrontations by Senators as nothing more than public displays that amount to no accountability.  In part, that is correct; however, it is not the responsibility of a senator, any senator, to confront the school board member where the origin of accountability needs to reside.

The role of a U.S. Senator is to hold the federal arm of the DOJ accountable and put them on notice.  This is what they are doing.  The role of the engaged citizen is to address the educational manipulation on a local level.  You cannot abdicate your responsibility to confront corrupt activity in your neighborhood to Washington DC.  It is the role and responsibility of the parent/citizen to deal with that corruption.

Snarking at Senators for confrontational hearings might feel like a good way to deflect our responsibility.  However, all it does is erode the foundational principle behind our constitutional republic which is built upon individual rights and responsibilities that start at the local level.   Those who believe the federal government should address local school board issues, are, by nature of their argument, asking for a larger system of centralized government.

Ted Cruz:

Josh Hawley:

Mike Lee

John Cornyn:

Chuck Grassley:

Posted in 1st Amendment, Big Government, Big Stupid Government, Cold Anger, Deep State, Dept Of Justice, 

Oct 28 2021

Senator Tom Cotton Confronts Attorney General Merrick Garland Over Using The National Security Division of DOJ to Investigate Parents Attending School Board Meetings


Posted originally on the conservative tree house October 27, 2021 | Sundance | 288 Comments

One of the lesser highlighted aspects to Attorney General Merrick Garland using the FBI to investigate parents as domestic extremists when they attend school board meetings, is that Garland put the prosecutorial process in the DOJ- National Security Division (DOJ-NSD).

From the perspective of the general public, the DOJ-NSD has become a well known division within the DOJ in the past several years, because it was within this division where the lawfare alliance constructed their political targeting operations against candidate Donald Trump.  The DOJ-NSD is where the secretive title-1 FISA applications are created and submitted to the FISA court.

As established by AG Eric Holder and DAG Sally Yates, the DOJ office of inspector general, the internal self-checking mechanism to act an a watchdog, was also blocked from having oversight into the DOJ-NSD throughout the era of Barack Obama.  This lack of oversight was intentional to keep the DOJ-NSD political operations hidden from any review.

The DOJ-NSD was the home for John Carlin, Mary McCord, Andrew Weissmann and Bruce Ohr among others who conducted the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s classified email use and later into candidate Donald Trump via the FBI Crossfire Hurricane operation.  It is the DOJ National Security Division that selects targets for prosecution (ex. FARA) based on political affiliation.   In this round of questioning by Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator focused on the use of the DOJ-NSD by Merrick Garland.  WATCH:

Oct 27 2021

A Fauci Funded Experiment Tormented Dogs as Insects Ate Them Alive


Armstrong Economics Blog/Disease Re-Posted Oct 27, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Whether you’re Republican, Democrat, Independent, Libertarian, or even an Anarchist there is a general consensus that taxpayer funds should not go toward TORMENTING ANIMALS. Under Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded “research” that involved caging innocent beagle puppies while sandflies ate them alive.

The White Coat Waste Project, a non-profit watchdog, has been examining Fauci’s funding of the Wuhan lab. The more they dig, the more dirt they find. “Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sandflies so that the insects could eat them alive,” White Coat Waste Project stated. “They also locked beagles alone in cages in the desert overnight for nine consecutive nights to use them as bait to attract infectious sand flies.” Around 44 dogs were subjected to this painful death under the pretense of it being an “experiment.” The cowardly “scientists” removed the dogs’ vocal cords to avoid hearing the pain they experienced while being tortured to death.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not require testing on dogs to approve a drug. There was no reason for this deplorable experiment or the lengths they took to ensure those dogs suffered. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) called Fauci’s actions a “reprehensible misuse of taxpayer funds,” and is demanding answers. In fact, 24 bipartisan lawmakers are now actively pursuing a closer investigation to see why Fauci allowed such cruelty to occur on our dime.

No one seemed to care about Fauci funding Gain of Function research at the Wuhan lab (besides Rand Paul). This man is touted as our savior when he is potentially one of the masterminds behind the entire coronavirus crisis. The hashtag #FireFauci has been trending on Twitter and people are beginning to wake up to what’s going on behind the curtain as Fauci is only a piece of a larger puzzle. This will likely not be the last secret that is revealed from Fauci’s dark past. What other “experiments” does he have up his sleeve? This man is a complete menace to society and deserves to be fired and criminally prosecuted for each and every one of his crimes.

Oct 27 2021

Political Cartoonist Fired in Australia For Showing Truth


Armstrong Blog/Tyranny Re-Posted Oct 27, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Michael Leunig was sacked by the Australian newspaper “The Age.” Vaccines mandated by government have never taken place in history. How dare someone call into question such dictates of governments. Then to have the audacity to equate such tactics to the practices of Communist governments where liberty was never even a privilege, no less a right. In Australia, they are already hinting that you will need continued boosters to retain any rights whatsoever. The press has crossed over to the other side. They now stand against the people and are merely transforming into propaganda organizations as they were under communism.

Here we have Hillary telling BBC that Britain should fire anyone who refuses to take a vaccine, even for religious reasons, now that it has been leaked that these vaccines were made from aborted fetuses. Those in government are out to control people because socialism is collapsing. They are moving to a new authoritarian form of government where they intend to terminate democracy as they have done in Europe. The people never get to vote for the head of Europe nor for the European Commission that makes the laws. Nobody in real power in Europe ever stands for election. They are bringing this system worldwide. The NEW NORM is you have no rights anymore — everything is simply a privilege that they can withdraw as they please.

These same tactics in Russia led to civil war. Will that appear in the West 2022/2023?

Oct 27 2021

Three in Ten Workers Would Quit Before Receiving the Jab


Armstrong Economics Blog/North America Re-Posted Oct 27, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Denver International Airport, the fifth-busiest airport in the USA, held a job fair this past weekend with an expectation of 5,000 visitors. Only 100 people showed up. It is understandable why people are hesitant to work in a notoriously regulated environment where they will likely be forced to wear a mask all day in addition to the vaccine.

The latest poll from KFF COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor shows that 87% of unvaccinated workers oppose employer vaccine mandates. When asked if they would get the jab, 50% said that they were “not at all likely” to get vaccinated. If mandatory weekly testing was required as an alternative to the vaccine, which is an option under Biden’s regime, 30% said that they would simply quit their jobs.

The US Chamber of Commerce has even asked the Biden Administration to delay the vaccine mandate until after the holiday season to avoid losing workers. The National Retail Federation has asked the White House to delay the mandate by at least 90 days too. Analysts are already predicting that workers will leave in droves once the mandate goes into effect. Although weekly testing remains an option, that will take time and money. The Retail Industry Leaders Association believes that workers should pay for their own weekly tests, which should go over well with the estimated 4 million unvaccinated retail workers.

As Powell stated last week, inflation will not subside until we reach maximum employment. Restaurants, retailers, and other businesses are beginning to close or condense hours. Even with wage increases, people are not returning to work, and it is time for the current administration to understand why.

Oct 27 2021

The Cycle of Everything


Armstrong Economics Blog/Understanding Cycles Re-Posted Oct 26, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Do you think only the left is evil?

FG

ANSWER: Of course not. If you understand cycles, markets go up, and then they go down. It is NEVER a one-way street. Politics is the same. Sometimes the Democrats are in power, and then it flips to Republicans (Conservative v Labour). If you go to the extreme far-right, you end up at the same place as the extreme far left; the only difference is their reasoning. Both will oppose their opponents.

This is what cycles are about. I would no more support the extreme right as I would the extreme left. Civilization works ONLY when LIBERTY prevails. Once one side demands their opponent must conform to their ideas, the very purpose of civilization no longer exists. If we are not respectful of one another’s rights, then we must also surrender all our rights.

If you understand cycles, we buy in bull markets and sell in bear markets. You will lose everything if you take only one side and ignore the trends. Politics is the same. During the 19th century, the Democrats were the slave owners. Agendas and principles always change with the cycles.

Oct 27 2021

Turning Your Hatred of Trump Against Yourself


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Oct 26, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Do you think Trump was a better president? He was a moron!

HJ

ANSWER: I really think you are too caught up in this idea that the president is actually in charge of the country. I have said from the outset, the 2020 election was NEVER about Trump v Biden. If you really think that Biden is in charge, I don’t know what to say. No matter what party you ever voted for, it is an agenda that rules, not the president. That was Trump’s problem. He thought being president meant you actually ran the country. The Deep State is in charge, and, make no mistake about it, they set the dark agenda.Video Player00:0001:12

Even Schumer admitted that no politicians will EVER criticize the intelligence community, for they have “six ways from Sunday” to get you. The country is NOT a corporation. The president is not in charge of it, and that is a known fact in Washington. They are allowed to play with social benefits. Beyond that, the Deep State will not tolerate interference. It would take the military to take down the Deep State. We have no right to vote them in or out, and no politician will ever do anything against them. It is in so many ways a dictatorship behind closed doors.

The Deep State was supposed to release all the papers on the JFK assassination during Trump’s term. They convinced him to grant them a delay until after the election because they KNEW he would lose. Now under Biden, they are using COVID as an excuse not to release them, and the talk is there will NEVER be a release because the real source was the Deep State — not Russia.

I have been against Biden not because of him personally nor because I thought Trump was a better man. My position has been BECAUSE Biden is only a puppet, and the BUILD BACK BETTER agenda is a global agenda headed by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum. This is NOT a Republican v Democrat war. Biden has just implemented mandatory vaccines even for Americans who want to travel internationally. In Australia, Victoria is already telling people they will need regular booster shots to retain whatever limited privileges he is granting while converting emergency power to permanent legislation. That is coming everywhere worldwide.

This is We the People v a Foreign Enemy of State — The World Economic Forum. I am sure you will not believe me because you just hate Trump so much. Based upon your emails, you are just a fool who has been manipulated by this agenda. Trump stood in the way. He had to be removed. They had Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. To pull this off, Trump had to be removed.

In his Scranton speech, Biden said, “We will take, literally, millions of automobiles off the road. Off the road.” Gasoline is approaching $9 per gallon in California. Biden tried to track every transaction down to $600. Did you look at his bill trying to take 10% of everybody’s salary and force it as a loan to the government paying an annuity? That is what collapsed the city of Mainz during the 14th century and started the German hyperinflation following the December 1922 forced loan. Were any of these measures even raised during the election? Did you vote to surrender 10% of your salary and surrender your car?

It is sad. But this is only going to end in civil unrest. They have no right to take the Constitution, tear up our rights, and transform them only into privileges that can then be taken away or eliminated at their discretion. Our liberty is something people fought for over centuries. You are willing to relinquish the blood of all those who died fighting for this cause of freedom. Rest assured, your hatred of Trump has been used against you, and you are so blind to your own rights that you are destroying the future of your own posterity.

Oct 27 2021

Another Let’s Go Brandon


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Oct 26, 2021 by Martin Armstrong

Oct 27 2021

Senator Josh Hawley Releases Email Showing Sketchy Biden Administration Guidelines for Afghan Refugee Evacuation


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on October 26, 2021 | Sundance | 95 Comments

This evening Senator Josh Hawley released an email (via Twitter) showing the evacuation guidelines given by the administration to the U.S. officials on the ground in Kabul Afghanistan.  The email details quoted instructions to Gregory A Floyd from someone in the administration speaking on behalf of Joe Biden.

As noted by Hawley: “This email was shared w/ me by an American official present in Afghanistan during the evacuation who was shocked by Administration’s failure to vet Afghans before they were evacuated. Email details orders from Joe Biden to fill up the planes – even without vetting:”

Team,

President Biden phoned Ambassador Wilson with the following directive about who to clear to board evacuation flights.

 “1. Anyone with a valid form of ID should be given permission to go on a plane if that person plausibly falls into the categories we will evacuate: U.S. citizens and LPRs plus their immediate families, LES plus their immediate families, those entitled to an SIV, and Afghans at risk.

2.  Families including women and children should be allowed through and held to fill out planes.

3.  Total inflow to the U.S. must exceed the number of seats available.  Err on the side of excess.”

This guidance provides clear discretion and direction to fill seats and to provide special consideration for women and children when we have seats. I expect that C17 flight volume will increase.

Thank you.

Greg