Author Archives: Bok
Trump Income Tax Short Form
Two pages of the 2005 Donald Trump income tax return fell in to the hands of Rachel Maddow last week. On her show she played it for all it was worth. It turns out it was worth about $38 million to Uncle Sam in taxes paid on an income of $150 million. That’s an effective rate of about 25%. The revelation made The Donald look good compared to accusations that he doesn’t pay any income taxes at all.
It also made him look good compared to Barack Obama’s 2015 effective rate of 18.5%, Bernie Sanders 2014 effective rate of 13.5%, and Mitt Romney’s 2011 rate of 14.1%
Even Van Jones called it a good night for Donald Trump.
The purloined returns showed up in the mailbox of journalist David Cay Johnston. He says he knows nothing. Revealing private income tax information is a felony.
Trump denies that he had anything to do with it.
Republicans’ Pre-Existing Condition
The Republicans are selling a health care plan with no mandate that you buy it. And they won’t turn you down if you have a pre-existing condition. So why would you pay for health care before you need it?
Here’s Dr. Krauthammer on that:
It’s not just Donald Trump who ran on retaining this new, yes, entitlement. Everyone did. But it’s very problematic. If people know that they can sign up for insurance after they get sick, the very idea of insurance is undermined. People won’t sign up when healthy and the insurance companies will go broke.
Sixty Five Thousand Dollar A Year Middlebury College Minds
Middlebury College students, and some of their professors, didn’t want to hear what author Charles Murray had to say. So they turned their backs on him and chanted slogans during his lecture. Then, as he was forced out of the lecture hall, protesters assaulted him and his group. A Middlebury professor accompanying Dr. Murray was injured.
Tuition, room and board, and fees at Middlebury College amount to $65,000 a year.
Conspiracy Theories Run Wild in Washington
Conspiracy theories are running wild in Washington. But there is no evidence that President Obama climbed a pole and personally wiretapped President Trump’s phone. Angela Merkel’s phone? Well, maybe a little.
Fox News’s Judge Napolitano says Obama got the Brits to do it for him.
Update 3/21/17:
The L.A. Times reports that Fox News has pulled Judge Andrew Napolitano off the air. He had claimed to have unnamed sources who say Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. The Brits say that’s ridiculous.
“By bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints,” Napolitano wrote in a column on FoxNews.com.
The judge also claimed that Fox News backed up his claim.
“Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now-president of the United States was surveilled at any time, in any way,” Shepard Smith told viewers Friday.
Are You Now, Or Have You Ever Been, In a Russian Golden Shower?
The right leaning New York Post, Townhall, and left leaning Nation editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, writing in the Washington Post, have something in common. They all compare the senate Democrats’ obsession with Russians to McCarthyism of 50 years ago. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?
It’s fitting and proper that a comedian got the ball rolling for the Jeff Sessions act in this Russian circus. Senator Al Franken based a question to Senator Sessions on a bogus story in Buzzfeed about a Russian dossier on Donald Trump. It claims Trump hired prostitutes to pee on a bed Barack and Michelle had slept on in a Russian hotel.
Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been?
Franken asked the senator what he would do if there’s any evidence of contact with Russians in the course of the Trump campaign. Sessions replied, “Senator Franken, I’m not aware of any of those activities. I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians, and I’m unable to comment on it.” You can roll the tape here on Politifact.
Then, as night follows day, two meetings with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak surfaced. One was in Sessions’ senate office. The other was a group introduction at the RNC in Cleveland. Senator Sessions says those meetings were in the course of his role as a senator and didn’t involve the Trump campaign.
Senator Claire McCaskill insisted that sort of thing just isn’t done. But her twitter account says otherwise.
