The Debate

I tortured myself last night by watching about an hour of the final Democrat debate in New Hampshire. What a bunch of myopic nothingness! I swear that the only candidate that was not embarrassingly pandering to “blacks, browns and people of color” was Amy Klobuchar (well maybe a little.) I must have heard the word “racism” snarled a hundred times. 

The rest of the arm-waving rhetoric was centered around various schemes to extract more tax money or silly ways to spend it. Do any of these candidates think beyond our shores ... or other than how to get minorities to vote for them? What about China’s hegemomy, federal deficits, stopping illegal immigration, entitlement spending, Muslim extremism, North Korea and Iran nukes, economic growth strategies, NATO policies, Middle East peace, etc.

One would think that the sun rises and sets on a very few domestic issues ... mostly of the vote-buying nature. What a waste of TV viewers’ time. The Democrats need to do something drastic if they don’t want to be swept away in November!

Headlines

Senators pelt Trump’s lawyers and impeachment managers with questions

Coronavirus live updates: Outbreak is ‘grave concern’ as infections spread beyond China

Bernie internals: Set for big Iowa win ...

WH tells Bolton not to publish book until classified info removed ...

Pomp, tears and bagpipes as European Parliament ratifies Brexit treary

Fed holds rates steady, affirms commitment to higher inflation

Anything Trump does to get re-elected is UNIMPEACHABLE, says Dershowitz ...

Actress tells jury: Weinstein teased film roles in exchange for threesome

New poll: Biden and Sanders running neck-and-neck in Iowa

‘In truth, I never lied’ — ex-Trump aide Flynn claims innocence as he seeks to undo guilty plea

Bust: Congressional Budget Office projects trillion-dollar deficits indefinitely ...

Poll: Michael Bloomberg leaps to second place in Florida

By the Numbers

Have the Trump tax rate cuts worked? Have tax receipts gone up despite large corporate and personal tax rate reductions? Well, here are the numbers: Tax Policy Center Table. Study them carefully and then I will chime in ...

As can be seen (in current dollars), federal tax receipts went up slightly from 2017 to 2018, the first year of the tax rate cut ... this is due to our economy growing even faster ... so it did pay for itself. But this increase was still slower than Trump had promised ... and he blames this on the Fed’s seven interest rate hikes in 2017 and 2018.

And such economic growth and tax receipt growth are forecast to increase again this year. After accounting for our low inflation, this increase (in constant dollars) is even greater. However, these 2019 and 2020 forecasts may be cut back due to the drag being felt from our trade war with China.

Unfortunately, Trump is emulating Obama with his firehouse spending ... making our deficit to expand once again and causing concern for our longer-term economic strength.  Yes, we can attribute this to a rebuilding of our military and locked-in entitlement spending growth. But we don’t have too many more years of such deficits before things will really bite. The forecasted deficits displayed in this table are a little scary.

More Fed rate cuts and a settlement to the China trade war would be helpful.

Slow Walk

“There are no golden moments.” — Tom West


It seems that almost everything is in a slow walk these days:


USMCA (NAFTA 2.0) ratification

North Korea and Iran denuclearizing

China trade deal

Fully fixing (or replacing) Obamacare

Securing our Mexico border and immigration reform

European trade dealings

Reduction of the national deficit


Some of this sloth is politically inspired by next year’s election. However, President Trump seems to have taken most of these delays in stride. He is showing remarkable patience and little frustration. Remarkable!

Perhaps building skyscrapers always involves frustrating delays ... so Trump has gotten used to the perpetual slow walk ...

Reverse Psychology

Rush Limbaugh pointed out something today that is so obvious that it is a wonder that we haven’t noted it before ... viz, whatever Trump is for, Democrats are against ... and whatever Trump is against, Democrats are for. This used to be jokingly how a parent could control an unruly child ... by using reverse psychology. “Don’t you eat that spinach!” “Please make sure you leave your room a mess.” And so forth.

So ...


If Trump wants to control immigration with a wall, Dems campaign for open borders.

If Trump wants better relations with Russia, Dems do a u-turn from their traditional fifth-column-ism and accuse him of being a Putin “cock holster.”

Dems are suddenly concerned with Trump’s national deficits after eight years of their own fire-hose spending.

Because of tax cuts, Trump’s economic miracle is just a continuation of Obama’s recovery.

Trump’s pointing out how many times reporters misrepresent the facts (“fake news”) is an attack on the First Amendment ... a rare Dem defense of same.

Since a few conservative states are placing restrictions on abortions, liberal states now are cheering for infanticide laws.


Given this cultural immaturity, maybe next year Trump should endorse whomever the Dems nominate for president ... to insure his re-election?

Modern Fables

Socialism works, it just hasn’t been done right yet

Trillion dollar federal deficits don’t matter

Human fetuses aren’t people

The planet has a fever

Women are not treated as equal with men

The Clinton Foundation does much important charitable work

All religions are moral and upright

Free healthcare and child care are human rights

NYT: ‘All the news that is fit to print’

Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016

Food allergies are rampant

Everyone should go to college

Wisdom comes best from our youth

Solar and wind energy can replace fossil fuels within 12 years

Land Mines

Ex-President Obama left quite a number of land mines for his successor, Trump, to try to dance around:

- North Korea's missiles and atomic weaponry threats

- Iran on a clear path to nuclear weapons

- Poor economic and personal income growth

- Worldwide Jihadi terrorism

- China's South China Sea expansionism

- Immigration quagmire ... caused by lax enforcement

- Failed Muslim states: Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan,Yemen

- Hollowed-out U.S. national defense forces

- Over-regulation

- Poor relations with Israel

- Cybersecurity threats from around the world

- Unsustainable welfare/government transfer programs

- Incomplete ISIS and Syrian conflict resolutions

- Burdensome fiscal deficits and deadly national debt levels

- Huge international trade/balance of payments imbalances

- Obamacare in extremis

- Deteriorating race relations

- Crumbling national infrastructure

- National security and political leak torrents

- Increasing crime rates in many of our cities


But to Obama's credit, we were adored by most Western European leaders ... particularly due to his stance on global warming.

Afterward: There are only three reasons why Obama would have left all these problems for his follow-on ... indifference, incompetence ot by design. Historians will sort this all out, but my vote goes to the last choice.

While Our President Slept

The contrast is dramatic. Donald Trump's ability to multitask effectively is quite impressive. His focus and energy are daunting. In comparison, our current much-younger president is lackadaisical by his nature and ideological by his actions ... but I suspect history will judge him even more harshly because of this Trump juxtaposition. Most of the kinetics in the Obummer administration came not from our Teleprompter-in-chief (apparently, his primary function) but instead from his bloated go-get-em staff. He can often sound and look sincere when reading his staff's well-crafted rhetoric. But his indifference to the full spectrum of his presidential duties is often obvious by his body language or lack of action ... and is brought even more into focus by comparison to our new president elect.

Obummer was too often an inattentive president. There is little argument that he would mainly focus on five things: getting back at those whom he saw as oppressors of blacks, open borders, global warming, setting Muslims a place at the table ... and his golf game. Everything else; the economy, entitlement reform, the loss of our middle class, rebuilding our infrastructure, defeating terrorism, strengthening our national defense, reducing government waste, tax reform, regulation reform, etc. seemed to be distractions to him. I don't think he even gave a hoot about health-care reform or free trade These were treated merely as check boxes for his expected legacy. I think if you were to ask him to explain the ups and downs of Obamacare or TPP in detail without his Teleprompter, he would stutter and flounder.

zzzzzzz!

Pattycake

Senator Patty Murray (D, Washington) just submitted the Democrat’s first 10-year budget proposal in the last four years … about a week after Representative Paul Ryan (R, Wisconsin) offered the Republican’s perennial plan … and about a month before President Obama has promised to submit his administration’s fiscal guidelines.  This is topsy-turvy.  The Congress as per the Constitution requires that the President must offer his budget by the first Monday of February to be followed, traditionally, by the Senate and the House reconciliations (see: Redhaired Grrl ).  Needless to say, although Paul Ryan has created a ten-year path to zero deficits, Patty Murray does not even offer a feigned attempt to do so.  And, in his “leading by following” style of (non)-governing, Obama’s budget is expected to even outdo Patty Murray’s profligate taxing-and-spending proposal.

To be specific, Patty Murray’s budget includes about $1.5 trillion of additional tax increases and fire-hose spending that culminate in annual deficits well above $500 billion continuing well after the ten-year view of her document … resulting in a total increase in our national debt by over $7 trillion by 2023 (to $24.4 trillion).   Please explore the details of this budget proposal at: Powerline Blog.  But what is even more maniacally unrealistic is that Patty Murray is using economic (GDP) growth expectations that are obviously science fiction.  Here they are as calculated by a clever reader of the Powerline reference, Mike McNary, and offered therein:

Year    Expected GDP Growth
2014            3.81%
2015            5.92%
2016            6.58%
2017            6.20%
2018            4.93%
2019            4.52%
2020            4.40%
2021            4.32%
2022            4.26%
2023            4.23%

Such robust economic expansion is possible and has happened in the past (like under Ronald Reagan), but Obama’s record for GDP growth shows that a 2% annual increase is the best he has been able to produce … but this was before his recent actual and additional hoped-for tax increases and the impact of Obamacare on our nation’s economy.  So, dear reader, if Patty Murray (and President Obama) have their way with us, there is no possibility that this country can outrun fiscal ruin over the next ten years.

Afterward: It's even worse!  Senator Sessions exposes Democrat double-counting budget mendacity.  See: Breitbart Story