Bombshell: Senator Joe Manchin Won't Vote for 'Build Back Better' (VIDEO)

He made the announcement on Fox News this morning, of all places.

At the New York Times, "Manchin Pulls Support From Biden’s Social Policy Bill, Imperiling Its Passage":

WASHINGTON — Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, said on Sunday that he could not support President Biden’s signature $2.2 trillion social safety net, climate and tax bill, dooming his party’s drive to pass its marquee domestic policy legislation as written.

The comments from Mr. Manchin, a longtime centrist holdout, dealt the latest and perhaps a fatal blow to the centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s domestic agenda, barely a day after senators left Washington for the year after Democrats conceded they could not yet push through any of their top legislative priorities, from the social policy bill to a voting rights overhaul.

“I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Mr. Manchin said on “Fox News Sunday,” citing concerns about adding to the national debt, rising inflation and the spread of the latest coronavirus variant. “I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no.”

In a statement released shortly afterward, he was scathing toward his own party, declaring that “my Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face.”

“I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful,” he said.

It amounted to Mr. Manchin’s most definitive rejection of the sprawling measure, which party leaders muscled through the House in November, after maintaining a drumbeat of concern about its cost and ambitious scope. With Republicans united in opposing the legislation, Democrats needed the votes of all 50 senators who caucus with their party for the measure to pass an evenly divided Senate, effectively handing each of them veto power.

Mr. Manchin’s comments provoked an unusually blistering broadside from Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, who accused Mr. Manchin in a lengthy statement of reneging on his promises. As recently as Tuesday, Ms. Psaki said, Mr. Manchin had pledged to work with administration officials to finalize a compromise agreement and had even shared his own outline for legislation that mirrored the size of Mr. Biden’s initial $1.85 trillion framework.

“If his comments on Fox and written statement indicate an end to that effort,” she said, “they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the president and the senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”

Mr. Manchin outlined what he would support in a July 28 memo signed with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, which became public in late September. As of Sunday, it remained unclear whether an overhaul of the legislation could both salvage Mr. Manchin’s support and retain enough liberal votes in both chambers.

The impasse jeopardizes Mr. Biden’s reputation as a dealmaker — he had campaigned on his ability to capitalize on nearly four decades of Senate experience to helm negotiations and unite his party’s narrow majorities in both chambers. Mr. Biden had poured weeks of work into talks with Mr. Manchin, inviting the senator for breakfast at his Delaware home in October and insisting that the West Virginian could ultimately be swayed.

At stake is what Mr. Biden has hailed as transformative, New Deal-style legislation that would touch virtually every American life from birth to death, from subsidies for child care to price controls for prescription drugs to funding for the construction and maintenance of public housing.

Failure to pass the measure also would deal a setback to vulnerable Democratic lawmakers bracing for what is expected to be a challenging midterm campaign in the coming months. They had hoped that passage of the bill would help their political standing, given that Republicans are widely expected to reclaim control of the House...

Still more.

 

Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice

At Amazon, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay.

Think Gas Prices Are Too High? In This California County, a Gallon Costs $6

Shoot, I see signs for $6.00 in Santa Monica. It ain't just one county.

At WSJ, "Mono County, Calif., has the highest gasoline prices in the state with the country’s top prices as costs soar across the U.S.":

Think Gas Prices Are Too High? In This California County, a Gallon Costs $6 (@acaldwellwsj / Wall Street Journal)https://t.co/zlmvxjrDcDhttps://t.co/TnBWIi1miK

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) November 21, 2021

BRIDGEPORT, Calif.—When Miguel Lujan needs gasoline for his truck, he gets it in Carson City, Nev., located 80 miles from his hometown. It’s worth it, the store clerk and roller-derby player says, to pay one-third less than the local average of nearly $6 a gallon.

California currently has the highest gas prices in the nation, an average of $4.70 a gallon of regular unleaded, according to AAA. Gasoline prices in the U.S. were up 50% in October from the same month last year, amid rising inflation.

The most expensive gas in California is here in Mono County, a 13,000-person tourist destination on the border with Nevada that is home to the Mammoth Mountain ski resort. The average price for a gallon of regular unleaded is $5.66, according to AAA.

In Bridgeport, a town of about 550 that serves as the county seat, the two gas stations were selling regular unleaded for $5.95 and $5.99 a gallon last week. In the nearby town of Lee Vining, which serves as a gateway to Yosemite National Park, a gallon of regular cost $6.09.

Mr. Lujan said he makes the trip to Carson City about three times a week and sometimes takes the bus to save on gas. He fills canisters, routinely keeping about 100 gallons stored in his house.

He started buying gas out of state soon after moving to Mono County four years ago. “The first year I was here, I spent more on gas than anything else,” he said.

President Biden on Wednesday called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil-and-gas companies are illegally keeping prices high. Outside analysts were skeptical whether the FTC will find sufficient evidence to substantiate those claims.

California has long had the highest gasoline prices in America. It has the highest tax, at nearly 67 cents a gallon, and only a few aging refineries, which sometimes go offline because of maintenance or other issues, are capable of producing gasoline that meets the state’s standards meant to reduce air pollution.

Though $5.66 represents a new high, inflated gas prices are nothing new in Mono County. Local residents and analysts attribute that to a variety of factors including its distance from population centers from which deliveries including gasoline come. Sacramento, the closest major city, is about 200 miles northeast.

Even with the high prices, gas stations are able to operate primarily because of tourists who buy gas on their way through, according to Linda Smith, a clerk at the Lee Vining Chevron station.

“They come in and complain,” Ms. Smith said of customers unhappy with the station’s prices. The most common reason she gives, she said, is that it is difficult to operate a business in a remote area that relies on seasonal tourists.

“We’re a pass-through town,” she said.

Station owners in Lee Vining and Bridgeport didn’t respond to requests for comment. Owners of gas-station franchises typically set their own prices based on factors such as wholesale costs, expenses and competition.

Some people stop at the stations in Mono County simply to gawk at the prices.

Tony Malais pulled over at the Lee Vining station Tuesday afternoon on his way back to Boise, Idaho, from Southern California. He had filled his Cadillac sedan in Northridge, outside Los Angeles, for $3.79 a gallon and hoped to make it to Nevada before needing to fill up again.

He had already stopped to take a photo of the station’s price sign on his way into California. This time he bought a soda. “I had heard it was about $5 a gallon. But I was surprised to see it over $6,” he said.

Pam Mowat, a real-estate agent who also runs a vacation and rental property business in Mono County, stopped by the Chevron on Wednesday. She said sky-high prices at the few area gas stations was a fact of life that local residents had gotten used to.

“I live here, I don’t have a choice,” said Ms. Mowat, who spent about $55 for roughly nine gallons of regular. She said she was headed to Reno later in the day, and would fill her Subaru Forester there, where AAA reported an average price of $4.20 a gallon for regular.

Rose Lierly said it isn’t just gas prices that are high in Bridgeport. Costs for nearly all supplies for Big Meadow Brewing Co., a small brewery she runs with her husband, have been on the rise in recent months.

“I used to buy [cases] of bottled water, 48 for $5.25. Now I get 32 for $5.25,” Ms. Lierly said. “It’s just because we are so remote here and freight charges are going up.” ...

Senator Manchin Could Singlehandedly Kill Build Back Better

The House is expected to vote tonight, but chances are slim in the upper chamber.

At CNN, "Democrats gear up to pass social safety net bill Thursday night but major obstacles await in the Senate."

Biden Has Lost Support Across All Groups of Americans — But Especially Independents and Hispanics

 At FiveThirtyEight, "Over his first nine months in office, President Biden has lost support among Americans of all stripes — men and women, Black voters and white voters, Zoomers and Baby Boomers."

Tax the Rich? Okay, But How Much is 'Rich'?

Following-up, "House Democrats Consider 26.5% Corporate Tax Rate (VIDEO)."

One of these days Democrats will describe my income, as a college professor, as "rich." 

Seems like "rich" has been defined down consistently over the last two decades. Four-hundred thousand annually is usually the number you hear, but inflation's never figured into Democrat numbers, so people just making good money, but by no means wealthy (which in my opinion are folks with wealth in the tens of millions, at least), are always caught in the trap, as the clutches of government reach down farther and farther as time goes on.

At NYT, "Proposed Tax Changes Focus on the Wealthy":

So how do you define who’s wealthy?

The latest proposed tax changes from the House Ways and Means Committee essentially say a wealthy individual is someone who earns $400,000 a year or a couple with $450,000 in annual income.

“Rich is just the term we use to describe people who have more than us when we don’t think they deserve it,” said Brad Klontz, a financial psychologist in Boulder, Colo. “The definition of rich is entirely subjective,” adding that “$400,000 is just an arbitrary number — it might make you ‘rich’ in Middle America but middle class on the coasts.”

Four years ago, when the last changes to the Internal Revenue Code were made, the emphasis was on a lower tax rate for corporations and for super-wealthy individuals, particularly those who owned real estate and could profit from a very specific tax-deferral strategy on property.

This time around, corporations aren’t going to be paying significantly higher taxes, at least not as high as some progressives wanted. Instead, the tax legislation focuses on raising revenue from the wealthy.

“All of this legislation is focused on the individual and upping the ante for the wealthy,” said Michael Kosnitzky, a partner at the law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. “Increasing the corporate tax rate does not get at the wealthy because corporate taxes are paid by the shareholders, who get less dividends, the employees who get less salary, and the consumer, who pays more for goods and services. These proposals get at personal income tax.”

The proposed top income tax rate of 39.6 percent looks like the old top rate of 39.6 percent from 2017. It kicks in at $400,000 of income for an individual and $450,000 for a couple, which is slightly lower than the income level in 2017. Currently, the highest income tax bracket, at 37 percent, starts at $523,600 for an individual and $628,300 for a couple.

But those affected by the new rate would also pay more because there are fewer deductions than there were in the tax code before the 2017 changes.

“You have to look at the effective rate,” said Pam Lucina, chief fiduciary officer and head of trust and advisory services at the financial services firm Northern Trust. “We have far fewer deductions, so that 39.6 percent rate is a much higher rate.”

The one that affected many people was the loss of the full deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT. In the 2017 changes, the deduction was limited to $10,000 and primarily affected people who lived in Democratic-controlled states in the Northeast and on the West Coast, where state income and property taxes are high.

Limiting it brought the U.S. Treasury more money. In 2017, the unlimited deduction cost the federal government an estimated $122.5 billion; the cap brought that number down to $24.4 billion the next year.

The details of the tax proposal are still being negotiated, and lawmakers representing the states affected said they hoped that they could reinstate more of the SALT deduction. One proposal would double the deduction to $20,000, not a wholesale return to what it had been.

The tax that has defined this year’s discussion has been capital gains. The proposal in the legislation — raising the rate to 25 percent, from 20 percent, for people earning over $400,000 — came as a relief to two sets of taxpayers: the very wealthy and anyone who might inherit property.

The Biden administration began the year talking about raising the capital gains rate to the ordinary income tax rate for high earners and disallowing a provision that enables people to inherit property free of capital gains.

The administration’s original proposal talked about having a top capital gains rate of 43.4 percent — the top income tax rate plus the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income that pays for Obamacare — for people earning above $1 million. But most of the attention was drawn to President Biden’s proposal to end the so-called step-up in basis at death — which erases all the taxable gains in assets that are passed on to heirs. Repealing that would have brought in an extra $11 billion in tax revenue annually.

That proposal has since been dropped.

“No loss of the step-up in basis is a big win for wealthy families,” said Edward Renn, a partner in the private client and tax group at law firm Withersworldwide.

But that change wasn’t made to save wealthy families. It was done because the change could hurt families of more modest means who had assets to pass on to their children.

“The provision benefits very wealthy people who have built businesses,” said Justin Miller, the national director of wealth planning at Evercore Wealth Management. “But it also benefits any person who is inheriting a home from their parents and grandparents that could have hundreds of thousands of dollars that could be subject to capital gains tax. It would have impacted a lot of people, not just the top 1 percent or the top 0.1 percent. It would not have been a popular strategy.”

Taxes affecting estates and large gifts have long been ripe for tax changes. One change would bring the estate tax exemption back to the level it was at in the Obama administration. But that isn’t likely to raise more revenue from megamillionaires and billionaires. While the proposed exemption would fall to about $6 million a person from $11.7 million, the estate tax rate would remain at 40 percent. That’s what matters to the largest estates...

 

House Democrats Consider 26.5% Corporate Tax Rate (VIDEO)

The top marginal tax rate for individuals could rise to a whopping 46 percent! Dang, maybe higher!  

Meanwhile, AOC's out the Met gala with a "tax the rich" gown, wtf!

Absolutely loathsome. I try not to hate --- anything or anyone, as it's against my values and not good for my health.

But Democrats make it hard, man.

At WSJ, "Lawmakers are expected to propose a smaller capital-gains tax increase than Biden wants":

WASHINGTON—House Democrats expect to propose raising the corporate tax rate to 26.5% from 21% and imposing a 3-percentage-point surtax on individual income above $5 million, according to two House Democratic aides familiar with the plans.

The tax increases would be part of the House Ways and Means Committee’s plans to pay for the party’s priorities in a fast-moving budget bill. Those items include an expanded child tax credit, a national paid-leave program and renewable-energy tax breaks.

House Democrats also are considering raising the minimum tax on U.S. companies’ foreign income to 16.5% from 10.5% and increasing the top capital-gains tax rate to 28.8% from 23.8%. Lawmakers are also expected to raise money by expanding Internal Revenue Service enforcement and might include other tax increases on corporations and high-income individuals.

Until now, House Democrats have been coy about their tax-increase plans as they try to navigate between moderates worried about the economic impact of raising taxes and progressives eager to tax the rich and expand the social safety net. Rep. Richard Neal (D., Mass.), the committee chairman, has said that detailing tax-increase plans too soon can give too much time for opposition to build.

The plans, aimed for a Ways and Means Committee vote later this week, will face challenges as Democrats try to determine how far they are willing to go in reversing the 2017 tax cuts and imposing stiffer burdens on corporations and high-income households.

Some Senate Democrats, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Mark Warner of Virginia, have said they don’t want to raise the corporate tax rate above 25% from its current 21%. The Biden administration and Democrats such as Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden of Oregon have advocated for far more aggressive capital-gains tax increases than congressional Democrats are willing to support.

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, praised the committee’s ideas and said the administration looks forward to working with lawmakers.

“This meets two core goals the president laid out at the beginning of this process—it does not raise taxes on Americans earning under $400,000 and it repeals the core elements of the Trump tax giveaways for the wealthy and corporations that have done nothing to strengthen our country’s economic health,” he said Sunday.

The committee hasn’t yet released details of its proposed changes, effective dates for each provision or estimates of how much money each piece would raise. The proposals could change significantly as lawmakers debate and vote on them.

On Sunday, tax lobbyists and congressional aides were circulating a four-page document that roughly spells out how Democrats would get to $3.5 trillion to pay for their spending and tax cuts over a decade.

The document doesn’t say how final a plan it is or whether Democratic lawmakers have agreed to it. By showing the scale of the tax increases needed to hit that budget target, the document could prompt lawmakers to scale back their aims or issue debt to cover some of the cost.

It includes $1 trillion in tax increases on individuals, $900 billion on corporations, $700 billion from drug-pricing policy changes, and $120 billion from tougher tax enforcement. Adding miscellaneous other changes and an assumption that the economy will grow reaches $3.5 trillion.

Democrats have a narrow path. They can lose no more than three votes in the House and none in the Senate, and lawmakers such as Mr. Manchin are aiming to shrink the bill from the $3.5 trillion target that Democratic leaders have set.

Democrats agree broadly that they are willing to raise the corporate tax rate and the top individual tax rate. But other areas, particularly capital gains and international tax rules, have proven trickier.

The Biden administration’s capital-gains plan has been facing sustained opposition from rural Democrats. The administration plan would impose taxes on unrealized gains at death, with a $1 million per-person exemption and special rules to protect farms and family owned businesses. Under the Biden plan, the top tax rate would increase to 43.4%, the same as ordinary income.

But those protections haven’t swayed lawmakers from rural areas, despite the Biden administration’s arguments that foregoing change would allow billionaires to escape income taxation on their gains at death. Under current law, people who die with unrealized gains might owe estate taxes, but not income taxes. Their heirs pay income taxes only when they sell and only on gains since the prior owner’s death.

In the document circulating Sunday, those changes other than a smaller capital-gains rate increase aren’t included.

As outlined in the document, high-income households would face a series of tax increases. The top rate would increase to 39.6% from 37%, with that top bracket starting at $400,000 for individuals and $450,000 for married couples. Those thresholds are lower than what the Biden administration has proposed.

The committee also could pare back a tax break for businesses that pay their taxes on their owners’ individual tax returns. Those companies, such as partnerships and S corporations, would face caps on a deduction they got in the 2017 tax law.

According to the document, many business owners also would begin facing a 3.8% tax on their profits. Currently, a tax at that rate applies to wages of high-income individuals and to passive income, but active business profits are exempt. The proposal, like the administration’s plan, would impose that 3.8% tax on high-income business owners.

The combination of those changes would mean that some taxpayers could face a top marginal federal income-tax rate of 46.4%...

Obscene.  

San Francisco Considers 'Congestion Tax' on 'High Earning' Drivers

This is a total scam.

As if Frisco couldn’t drive out residents any faster. *Eye-roll.*

At Fox Business, "San Francisco considering congestion tax on high-earning drivers: The San Francisco County Transportation Authority is studying the prospect of congestion fees."

Democrats Are Bankrupting America (VIDEO)

Wyoming Senator John Barraso:

Sen. John Barrasso: "The Democrats seem to be determined to bankrupt America. This spending spree is a reckless tax and spending spree. It really does seem to be Bernie's [Sanders] effort to socialism. It's his manifesto." pic.twitter.com/Om9TEtKdvv

— The Hill (@thehill) July 25, 2021

Leader McConnell May Back Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle

Apparently this is the one piece of the Dems' legislative agenda that McConnell will support --- probably because the bill is larded with billions in bipartisan pork-barrel spending.

At Politico, "Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win":

Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.

The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.

Other than questioning its financing, McConnell has aired little criticism of the bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, even as he panned Democrats’ separate spending plans on Wednesday as “wildly out of proportion” given the nation's inflation rate.

His cautious approach to a top Biden priority reflects the divide among Senate Republicans over whether to collaborate with Democrats on part of the president’s spending plans while fighting tooth and nail on the rest. Many Democrats predict McConnell will kill the agreement after stringing talks out for weeks, but the current infrastructure talks are particularly sensitive for the GOP leader because one of his close allies, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is the senior Republican negotiator.

McConnell is aware of the conventional wisdom that he will ultimately knife the deal and is taking pains not to become the face of its opposition...

RTWT. 

 

A Last Look at a Remarkable Presidency

At Issues & Insights, "Trump’s Top-10 Triumphs":

President Donald Trump became an ex-president on Wednesday, as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States. We wish him nothing but the best. But before we let Trump go, we thought we’d review some of his biggest accomplishments while in office. We call them “triumphs,” because they were all big achievements executed against great odds.

More than any other president of recent memory, Trump fought hard for average working Americans. And contrary to the epithets thrown at him by his far-left detractors in the Democratic Party, his policies helped low-income and minority Americans most of all.

We believe – we hope – that Trump’s post-presidential career and reputation will resemble President Ronald Reagan’s. For those old enough to remember, Reagan also was called every vile name in the book, from “senile” to “fascist” and everything between. Yet, today, in retrospect, his presidency shines as a beacon in our nation’s history.

Given the at-times unhinged nature of the criticism directed at Trump’s presidency by the left and Republican “never-Trumpers,” Trump’s performance in just four years was nothing short of remarkable. He promulgated dozens, if not hundreds, of successful policies that other presidents talked about, but never secured.

He reached so many we can’t highlight all of them. But here are 10 that we believe stand out — and that future presidents (are you listening, Joe Biden?) would be foolish to reverse or overturn:

1. Slashed taxes on individuals and businesses. As an earlier administration said, “It’s the economy, stupid.” As much as anything, Trump’s growth-boosting $1.9 trillion in tax cuts and doubling of the child tax credit led to the bottom-up growth of our economy, as unemployment rates plunged for African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics and women, and poverty rates plummeted to an all-time low in 2019, before COVID-19 struck. The bottom 20% of incomes posted a 16%-plus rise, the largest ever for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder.Yes, Wall Street and Silicon Valley moguls made out well as stocks boomed. But so did average Americans, especially the middle class. More than half of all Americans now own stock, a fact that’s lost on those who curse the stock market and “tax cuts for the rich.” By the way, the top income earners were the only group to pay more to Uncle Sam under the Trump tax cuts. And income inequality under Trump fell, after rising during Obama’s eight years in office.

2. Forged peace in the Mideast. The big media have tried to pretend that Trump’s unorthodox but astoundingly successful peace deals don’t exist. But it’s no accident that Trump has already been nominated — twice — for the Nobel Peace Prize. He deserves it. This year, thanks almost entirely to Trump’s efforts under the “Abraham Accords,” Israel has normalized diplomatic ties with four Arab League members: Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco. Jordan and Egypt already have ties. Terrorist sponsor Iran, meanwhile, has never been more isolated and on the defensive than it is now, thanks to Trump’s pulling out of President Barack Obama’s phony “nuclear deal” with Tehran’s mullahs. And while the terrorist group ISIS still exists, it has effectively been neutered, a shell of its former self, pushed out of nearly all its strongholds in Syria and Iraq.

3. Created Operation Warp Speed. The Chinese virus hit the U.S. hard. It’s now clear that China’s communist regime downplayed the deadly virus outbreak early, leading to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus that official data show has killed 400,000 Americans. Trump was ridiculed and berated for daring to think he could push the creation of a new, effective vaccine within the remaining months of his term. Yet, as Bloomberg noted on Wednesday, “Vaccinations in the U.S. began Dec. 14 with health care workers, and so far 16.3 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally … In the last week, an average of 806,716 doses per day were administered.” The vaccine critics were dead wrong, and Trump’s push may well end up saving hundreds of thousands of lives in coming years.

4. Deregulated the nation’s economy. It’s not sexy. But Trump promised to cut two regulations for every new one proposed. He beat even that estimate, cutting eight regulations for every one added. If you think that doesn’t matter, consider this: Regulations currently cost the economy nearly $2 trillion a year, or about $14,000 a year for every U.S. household. Trump’s rule-cutting saved the average American household an average of $3,100 a year.

5. Got rid of Obamacare’s “individual mandate”. By far the most odious element of Obama’s first step toward socialized medicine was its requirement that all Americans must buy health insurance. For the first time ever, the U.S. government forced its citizens to purchase something, whether they wanted it or not. This part of the 2010 bill was clearly unconstitutional, as a federal appeals court ruled late last year. Americans are, for now, safe from being forced to buy insurance policies they don’t want. At least, that is, until the new Democratic administration begins its push for Medicare for All, or some other nationalized health care scheme.

6. Restored Supreme Court balance. By naming three new justices, Trump assured Americans that the court’s days of rulings based on politics and ideology, not the Constitution, are over. At least for the foreseeable future. Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, are all strong constitutionalists who have sterling reputations for fairness and non-political legal decision making. “A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers,” Barrett said during her nomination hearings in the Senate, a fitting description for all Trump’s choices. That includes the more than 230 judges he appointed to the federal bench.

7. Forced NATO to reform. Trump pushed NATO members to live up to their commitments to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense, part of a 2014 deal that came after years of NATO countries shirking their duty to pull their own weight in the military alliance. In Trump’s first year in office, just four of the 30 NATO members met the 2% floor. Today, 10 do, and more will increase spending by $400 billion by 2024. By demanding NATO to keep its promises, Trump likely saved the West’s main military alliance.

8. Encouraged U.S. energy independence. By encouraging fracking and approving the Keystone XL pipeline, Trump set off an energy boom. And he did something that no one thought possible just four years ago: He made the U.S. energy independent for the first time in 70 years, meaning we would no longer be held hostage to unstable petro-powers and the vagaries of foreign energy supplies. Fracking enabled the U.S. to boost its output of natural gas, with many major utilities now using the cheap, clean source of energy instead of coal and other major sources of carbon dioxide emissions. The result: the U.S. is one of the only major countries whose CO2 emissions are plunging, with output now at the lowest levels since 1985.

9. Reformed immigration and built the border wall. Despite being called a “racist” and “fascist” and “anti-immigrant,” Trump has now built more than 450 miles of wall to restore control of our nation’s borders against illegal entrants into the U.S., including gang members, smugglers and drug dealers. As journalist Deroy Murdock recently noted, “federal apprehensions and encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border have plunged from 977,509 in fiscal year 2019 to 458,088 in fiscal year 2020 — down 53.1%.” A blow to Mexico? Not according to a recent Reuters headline: “Mexico’s Lopez Obrador says Trump helped Mexico.“

10. Withdrew from the Paris Climate Deal. The U.S. is the only major country actually living up to the Paris Climate Accords’ steep cuts in CO2 emissions. But the deal is still a bad one, since it commits the U.S. and other major industrial nations to shrink their economies over the long run to meet arbitrary CO2 limits in the future. Meanwhile, fast-growing countries such as China and India have few binding requirements on their emissions. The result: Those two countries, with more than a third of the world’s population, continue to spew CO2. This year China’s coal use surged above 2015 levels, “undercutting climate pledges,” according to a news report out this week. Biden’s plan to rejoin the Paris deal will only bolster China and hamstring the U.S. going forward. It’s a climate-based “America last” policy...

Still more.

 

Democrats Will Lie

A great post at Issues & Insights:

Dems Will Have To Lie About Their Agenda To Win, Poll Shows https://t.co/gC7eZKmDcL

— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) September 19, 2019

Related, at Twitchy:

‘Wheeee!’ Bernie Sanders announces what else will be paid off for you if he’s elected president https://t.co/P9uq1Vtb3N

— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) September 21, 2019

Bullet Train Work Blows Past Cost Estimates

This is the biggest scam ever.

It's astounding that the Democrats can pull off these boondoggles, but the "sheeple" continue to vote them back in. Maybe a reckoning's coming? We're seeing some trouble brewing in cities around the state over the sanctuary law. Perhaps change will ripple into other policy areas as well.

At LAT, "High-speed rail project vastly underestimated cost of relocating utility lines beneath Fresno":

High-speed rail project vastly underestimated cost of relocating utility lines beneath Fresno https://t.co/PM2oJxoNVb pic.twitter.com/3GC2qkRVbk

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) April 18, 2018

Another day, another embarrassing headline for the Capitol Democrats' High Speed Fail. It's time to defund #CAHSR and invest in projects that actually provide benefits to ordinary Californians. #CADeservesBetter https://t.co/1SXaNnOCEZ

— CA Assembly GOP (@AssemblyGOP) April 18, 2018

#CAHSR is a national disgrace. With no federal money and no current private sector investment, this project is now California taxpayers’ worst nightmare as they are left holding the bag. https://t.co/a5uHYQDB3C

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) April 18, 2018

Buried beneath Fresno were some costly surprises for the California bullet train authority, which disclosed Tuesday that the price of utility relocations along a 29-mile section of railway has surged from a 2013 estimate of $69 million to $396 million.

Although it was known that moving gas lines, sewer pipes, water mains and communications wire to make way for the route would be more expensive than originally expected, the magnitude of the increase — nearly a six-fold jump — puts into better focus why the project's costs are rising so sharply.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority board on Friday took up the problem, hearing from its staff that the original estimate contained a number of miscalculations.

The number of linear feet of utilities that have to be moved was underestimated, as was the cost per foot for the job, according to a staff memo. Then, there were utilities that nobody even knew were in the ground. The authority changed its mind about some of the work, as well, the report said.

The original cost estimate was based on work performed by the rail authority's regional consultant, the staff memo said. It did not identify the company, but rail authority records indicate the regional consultant from before 2013 through at least 2015 was Los Angeles-based Aecom. By 2017, the company was no longer on the job. The company did not have an immediate response when contacted.

The history of the utility relocations suggests some turmoil in management decisions — which the rail authority staff said it would not repeat in the future.The original plan was to have AT&T and Pacific Gas and Electric Co. move their own equipment, rather than allow the main construction contractor, Tutor Perini, to do the work.

After getting started, however, the two utilities came back and told the rail authority that they were having trouble meeting the schedule. So, the rail authority handed the job to Tutor Perini in February 2017 and increased the budget to $159 million.

By September 2017, the rail authority arrived at a new cost estimate of $396 million, which was not made public until Tuesday. The price hike is part of the $2.8 billion in cost increases for the Central Valley work that were disclosed in January and were incorporated into the draft 2018 business plan released last month.

The higher costs would deplete the budget for the utility relocations by April, according to the staff memo. So the board approved moving $40 million from a future contract reserved for installing track in the Central Valley to cover the utility work in Fresno. That $40 million will fund the utility work until July, the memo said...

Total waste. This is actually sad. Just a minuscule fraction of that funding could finance 10s of thousands of underserved students at community college, and that'd be just a start.

Disgraceful is right. Sheesh.

Laura Ingraham Warns Trump: You Promised a Border Wall, Not an 'Opaque Electric Fence' (VIDEO)

The problem for me is that even if Trump gets his wall, a DACA deal with the Democrats won't pay off at the ballot box. I doubt many leftist voters will switch over and vote GOP just because Trump caved to political correctness. Leftists won't see Trump as compassionate. They hate him with the heat of a million suns. That's just fact. Playing to the base has been the key to winning for this president, and he risks alienating those voters. I don't know if independents will give him credit. We'll see. Some conservatives like Lori Hendry and Linda Suhler will stick with Trump no matter what, but movement media conservatives like Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, and Michelle Malkin won't be pleased. They'll excoriate the president on this issue, and rightly so.

In any case, here's Ms. Laura, from her show last night:

The Tax Reform Bill is Killing and Raping Americans

Oh my goodness this is cracking me up!

Leftists have lost their minds, heh.

From yesterday's roundup, at Maggie's Farm, "Tuesday morning links."

BONUS: Today's roundup, "Wednesday morning links."

Paul Krugman: 'Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies'!

It thought this was a Photoshop at first, but no. It's a legit headline at NYT.

(See Memeorandum.)

Michelle tweeted:

Every unhinged Krugman column, every week #EvergreenNYTOpedHeadlines==> pic.twitter.com/TbhHVsNW1I

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) October 15, 2017

President Trump Shows How it's Done

From Jill Lawrence, at USA Today, "Trump shows GOP how it's done: Scrap absolutism, deal with reality" (at Memeorandum):

The Freedom Caucus is the tail that aspires to wag a whole country though it represents just a sliver of Americans. Even within the House it's outnumbered by moderate centrists.

President Trump wrote a book on deals, and so did I. Mine is shorter and didn’t sell quite as many copies, but it was a deep dig into how political agreements are born. The process — slow, plodding, painstaking, strategic, and did I mention slow? — is nothing like what went on with Trump, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Nothing at all.

As a citizen, I’m thrilled by the lightning round between the Republican president and his two Democratic amigos. It feels strange but wonderful to get hurricane aid, keep the government in business and increase the U.S. borrowing limit (sparing the world a financial crisis) — all before we even began to type our traditional angst-ridden headlines about polarization, paralysis and brinksmanship.

As a liberal, I’m also pretty psyched. If Pelosi (the House Democratic leader) and Schumer (her Senate counterpart) are even half the geniuses Republicans seem to think they are, Democrats may be well positioned to help protect undocumented young immigrants in a program Trump just canceled, and to keep a lid on the deliverables to rich people who are anticipating huge tax cuts.

If I were a centrist Republican, I’d be intrigued by this hint of bipartisanship. Could it be that the GOP fever is finally breaking, five long years after Barack Obama predicted it would? If so, all it has taken is Obama’s exit from the stage, absolute Republican power, and a president like Trump.

It turns out that a lot of what Obama did wasn’t so god-awful. The problem was who did it (him) and in some cases how he did it — executive actions or, heaven forbid, party-line votes. Quick, pass the smelling salts.

The latest of many examples is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. In the absence of congressional action on a new immigration law, Obama unilaterally started a permit system so people brought here illegally as children could work and study without fear of deportation. The conservative backlash was ferocious.

But now that Trump has canceled it, with a six-month grace period for Congress to “do your job,” as he put it, a growing number of Republicans — including Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan — are looking for an escape hatch.  Whose idea was it, anyway, to destroy the lives of some 800,000 young people who are working, studying and have never broken the law? Who are engines of our economy, or could be, if we let them stay? It turns out it’s not popular to kick the “dreamers” out of America.

Turns out as well that repealing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, is not popular either — especially when the Congressional Budget Office has found that every variation on a replacement would cost people more, take away consumer protections, and insure far fewer — up to 24 million fewer in one case. Those protesting repeal at town meetings included conservatives and Trump voters as well as liberal Democrats. Those seeking a bipartisan compromise to stabilize markets and improve the law include more than a few Republican senators and governors. Those trying to get Congress to abandon repeal and move on include … Trump. At least as of Friday.

It wasn’t popular to pull America out of the Paris climate agreement, as Trump has done. It wouldn’t be popular to weaken fuel efficiency standards developed by the Obama administration, with consumers or even apparently with the auto industry.

And it won’t be popular if, as expected, the tax “reform” push by Trump and congressional Republicans turns out to be mostly about tax cuts for the rich. Three-quarters of Americans say Trump should not lower taxes on the wealthy and close to that many said a year ago that taxes should be raised on the wealthy.

Buoyed by gerrymandering and cultural shifts, Republicans have had years of success winning elections at every level. They have mistaken that as popular support for free-market health care, trickle-down economics, extensive deregulation and callous social policies. Will months of failure on Obamacare repeal, capped perhaps by a groundswell of support for DACA, finally drive the message home?

The aggressively conservative House Freedom Caucus has been like the tail wagging the GOP and aspiring to wag the whole country. But its three dozen hard-core conservatives don’t represent anything close to a majority of Americans. Even within the House, they may be outnumbered by the moderate centrists of the Tuesday Group, estimated to have as many as 50 members...

Trump needs to get Democrats to bend toward his will, not the other way around.

Bipartisanship is fine, as long as it tilts conservative.

That said, I like how Trump is going rogue. He's amazing sometimes.

More.

Trump Will Test Democrats' Tax Patriotism

From Professor Glenn Reynolds, at Instapundit, "MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Trump Will Test Democrats’ Tax Patriotism: President’s plan would make high-tax blue states pay their fair share."

Nationwide Protests Over Donald Trump's Tax Returns?

Well, ahem, the times they are a changin'.

Seems like there's a lot more pressing problems than worrying about the president's tax returns. And besides, it's not like he's not paying his fair share. Just ask the idiot Rachel Maddow about that.

Either way, see Instapundit, "THE TEA PARTIERS PROTESTED THEIR OWN TAXES. NOW LEFTIES ARE PROTESTING OVER SOMEONE ELSE’S: Nationwide marches set to protest Trump tax returns."

California's Crisis of the Interior

Following-up from yesterday, "Jerry Brown Wins $52 Billion Gasoline Tax in California (VIDEO)."

From Joel Kotkin, at the O.C. Register, a great piece, "The Other California: A Flyover State Within a State":

California may never secede, or divide into different states, but it has effectively split into entities that could not be more different. On one side is the much-celebrated, post-industrial, coastal California, beneficiary of both the Tech Boom 2.0 and a relentlessly inflating property market. The other California, located in the state’s interior, is still tied to basic industries like homebuilding, manufacturing, energy and agriculture. It is populated largely by working- and middle-class people who, overall, earn roughly half that of those on the coast.

Over the past decade or two, interior California has lost virtually all influence, as Silicon Valley and Bay Area progressives have come to dominate both state politics and state policy. “We don’t have seats at the table,” laments Richard Chapman, president and CEO of the Kern Economic Development Corporation. “We are a flyover state within a state.”

Virtually all the polices now embraced by Sacramento — from water and energy regulations to the embrace of sanctuary status and a $15-an-hour minimum wage — come right out of San Francisco central casting. Little consideration is given to the needs of the interior, and little respect is given to their economies.

San Francisco, for example, recently decided to not pump oil from land owned by the city in Kern County, although one wonders what the new rich in that region use to fill the tanks of their BMWs. California’s “enlightened” green policies help boost energy prices 50 percent above those of neighboring states, which makes a bigger difference in the less temperate interior, where many face longer commutes than workers in more compact coastal areas...

Keep reading.